one small step for my kitchen

Our kitchen gives new meaning to the old saying "if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen."  It must have been added on at some point in the life of this old home and gets hot, hot, hot-even hotter than the rest of my unairconditioned, aging, brick home.  We don't spend too much time in here in the summer-a quick run in to get a drink, meals thrown together and ingredients grabbed from fridge and transferred outside to the grill.  The days of baking and cooking have to wait for cooler temps when you've got a kitchen like mine. 

Of course, that also means that all our kitchen renovations have been on hold for the summer.  (well, that's due to a combination of heat and budget-but even the cheap stuff has to wait when it's 100 degrees!).  We recently added a new dishwasher to the kitchen, which has made my life much more enjoyable-just ask my kids.  They haven't hear me say things like "don't you dare use another glass!!!"  or "can't you eat that spaghetti on a paper towel instead of a plate?"  We got a white dishwasher-I have a thing for the good old white appliances and this one puts us solidly on the side of white, with only the stove (and hood) being "bisque." 

We have been living without a countertop in one section of our kitchen since...well, since I decided to rip out one section of the hideous pink laminate "just to see" how that would go.  It came out really, really easily, but replacing it has been much, much harder.  After going around and around about what kind of countertops we wanted, I kept coming back to this photo:

From the blog, This and That   I love (love, love, love) the warm look of the butcher block and the soft shine of the wood and the white cabinets and the faucet--okay I love everything about this kitchen.  I love it even though I know my life is not ready for white cabinets.  I need something a little more forgiving in the slacker-cleaning department, but the wood was really growing on me. 

I was desperate to have a countertop at the very least to replace the one I tore out with such gusto back when there was still snow on the ground, so we headed to our local IKEA in search of the same countertop.  So, what once looked like this:

Now, looks a little something like this:

  Now, we just have to paint the cabinets, paint the walls, get and intall the rest of the countertops and change out the sink.  We still have a long way to go, but progress is progress!