Granite Goes In!

So a few years ago, I learned a nice little lesson about candles.  If you don't blow them out, they keep burning and burning and burning...all the way until there is no more wax or wick.  By this point, the glass gets so hot that it can melt to the surface it's sitting on and then eventually explode.

I may have learned that by experience.  Ok, I did.

I had a candle burning on our lovely Formica kitchen countertop one day.  The house smelled nice and all was well.  Except for the fact that I forgot to blow it out before we went to bed that night...or the next morning before I went to work...  So when I got home that afternoon, a melted candle bottle was attached to a melted and bubble piece of Formica and glass was everywhere.  Yay.  (I am still so grateful every day that our house didn't catch on fire...blow out your candles!)

Well, we finally decided to get that little oops fixed.  And the only functional and practical way to do that was to completely change the counters.  So since we won't be in this house too terribly much longer, we decided to up the value of it and go with granite. {so now, I'll be able to enjoy beautiful granite counters and get spoiled to them and then have to probably revert back to something else...whereas if I hadn't burnt the counter, we wouldn't be getting granite, I wouldn't know what I was missing, and all would be well!  But I digress...}

Hunter had debated on installing it himself, but we actually found a few companies whose installation costs were low enough that it was well worth it to pay them to do all of that.  We used The Best Granite based on several recommendations.  He did opt to do all of the prep work himself though to save some pennies.  So Saturday night, he disconnected everything, popped out the sink, and got going.  We set up a sheet screen to help keep the sawdust and smell at bay (and to keep a certain little miss out of there while daddy worked...not an easy feat).  Since the Formica is so smooth, he had to sand down the tops of those to give the granite something to adhere too.  He also had to cut off the edges flush with the cabinets.  His mom came over that night to help him out which was nice (especially since she actually enjoys all that kind of stuff!) since being all fat and pregnant, I couldn't be back there with the dust and smells.  Anyway, that all went well and more quickly than we had anticipated.

Plus I walked in the kitchen that night and found this little message written out in my boy's handwriting.  Made my heart smile big!

Until the next morning when the guys showed up to install and they laid down the first piece.  The edge wasn't deep enough to cover the existing counters.  So in the middle of them cutting and measuring, Hunter had to chisel and rip the whole counter off of the cabinets.  Thankfully, we didn't have to lay down new plywood and they could work with just the shims.  But those counters were nailed and screwed to those cabinets like nobody's business--and the icing on the cake...they were grouted into the tile backsplash.  It was quite the task, but as usual, my big ole handyman took care of it no problem.  Downside to this--I didn't have time to empty my cabinets because he was in such a rush trying not to get in their way.  So now I have to wash/rinse everything in all of my drawers and bottom cabinets...  Joy.

This also meant that they couldn't finish installing the new ones on Saturday as they had planned, so that left me kitchenless all weekend.  We managed ok for a few days, but this solidified the fact that I don't want to have to live in a house through a kitchen remodel without easy access to another one.  You don't realize just how much you use your kitchen sink!  

But now they're finished and they're beautiful!  They really don't look all that different--we picked about the closest pattern to the Formica we had since we already knew we liked the way it looked.  But they're shiny and pretty and easy to clean and I love them :)

Loving them so far!