Kitchen Gone Mexican

Matt and I have been making the most of our time here in Tucson while he looks for a job. Each day we get up early, have our coffee and then get to work on the house. We have made many improvements in these last couple of months with kitchen remodeling, painting, yard work, and a host of other odds and ends around the house. Here are a few pics of the kitchen so you can see how it turned out. We did this all ourselves with Matt's mom helping us on the tile work.

                                                                 BEFORE...

                                                                      AFTER...

We were inspired by a Mexican kitchen we saw at a store here in Tucson called Rustica which had copper cabinet inserts and was very colorful. Due to the cost-prohibitive nature of these special kind of cabinets we thought we'd try making inserts ourselves. We searched high and low for tin but in the end had to use aluminum. We chose a different southwest design for each cabinet pair and Matt hammered them out using an awl. We also used a bit of paint to give them an aged look and mounted them to our existing outdated cabinets giving them a whole new look. We then removed the orange laminate counter tops and constructed the countertops and backsplash using Mexican talavera tile. Craigslist made it possible for us to upgrade our appliances and then we replaced the sink and lights and painted. It all turned out muy bien! The only thing missing now is the dishwasher and saltillo tile on the floor. Someday...