Our open house was a smashing success – thanks to everyone who stopped by and humored us ;)

It was great to finally share our progress with so many friends and family members. We’ve been in the house for nearly a year, and this was the first time I wasn’t mortified to have guests spend time downstairs. (The upstairs is still quite awful, but at least it’s out of sight)

You would not believe believe how many tasks we accomplished in the week before the party, including….. (drumroll please)….. our new, beautiful, porcelain tile kitchen floor!

(more details after the cut)

You’ll have to ignore the dirty footprints – I cleaned so much prior to the party that I’m boycotting mops for at least a week. The tile we used is from Home Depot, and is called “Jackson Ridge” I believe. We went with a dark, textured tile to hide dog dirt. The color is a brownish-blackish mix with green tones in it, and reminds me of mossy stone.

The new paint color is Sherwin Williams’ “avacado”, and I’m totally in love with it. It looks great next to the french doors, which are a nice rich mahogany color. We’ve got molding to put up, hence the not-quite straight edges.

We also salvaged some tin tile from the old kitchen ceiling (which is hiding under the new kitchen ceiling, and can be accessed through a crawl space) to use on the backsplash. I failed to take a close-up “after” photo, but here’s what it looked like prior to cleaning:

The paint was flaking off, so I did some heavy scraping and cleaning before we spray-painted it “anonized bronze”, which is pretty much black. It was a last-minute quick fix, but it looks really nice and matches the pantry ceiling, which still has the original tin tile and tin crown molding in it.

A fuzzy, out of focus “after” image:

Speaking of the pantry, it’s looking good too!

No shelves or door yet, but walls are a big step forward.