I have to tell you, it is so, soooooooooo nice to have a functional kitchen again. Here are some pictures of what we’ve been up to:

Don and I installing the Cork Underlayment:

Starting to lay down the Linoleum (Not Vinyl!):

The Finished Floor: (still needs a threshold, so ignore the seam)

Next the Stone guys came and installed our Soapstone. We had talked about doing the soapstone cutting ourselves, but ultimately decided to go with Architectural Stone out of Brentwood. They did a fabulous job and we’re super happy with it. We picked out two slabs that had a lot of green and a fair amount of movement in them. We also ended up with enough left over to save for another project we’ve got planned for in the future.

The poor guys were running late that day, and didn’t even get to our house until 5PM, and were working on our counters until after 9pm. Even so, they did a fantastic job. Here are the counters just after they brought them in:

Installing the Sink side, with seamless piece going in to box window:

The Bar:

Finishing Up the Install and Oiling the Stones:

And now we’re nearly complete:

And a little project we worked on yesterday, New Pantry shelves:

It’s really turned out wonderful. We’re now down to little things, such as trim – and the backsplash. I still don’t know what I want to do for basksplash. I was kinda trying to talk Mr. Man in to magnetic dryerase backsplash, but he thinks it would look jenky. He’s probably right – but it sure would be fun! (and as an added bonus, super easy) We need to decide soon. Neither of us wants to have the kitchen stay in a semi-permanent state of near-completeness. So that will be pretty high on the priority list. Anyhow – it’s been a crazy ride. I love being able to cook again and have already cooked up up some yummy dishes that I’ll post when I get another chance.