Here's the most controversial to date of my house projects....the new trim was ok, hubby agreed that the old stuff was cheap looking and the stained pine looks much better. The bathroom in the basement was fine by him...it too was pine stained to match the trim (I'll post pictures of that one another day)...he didn't fight me much on the black cabinets upstairs because staining them made them too light for between the sink and the floor....the kitchen Island however, well he still isn't so sure about it. Me on the other hand...I'm actually liking my kitchen again, it isn't an oasis of ugly monotone oak cabinets when I hate golden oak to begin with!

Here's a rather rotten picture of before...flooring going right up the back of the island. I've honestly hated that single part the most since we moved into the house!

This point is where I was glad I ripped into it while daddy wasn't home...the girls and I were having fun ripping it apart. It made more sense to me to have the bigger of the two for pots and pans than baking stuff...so apart the entire thing came!

And I had a great idea for the inside...which meant while it was in pieces it was easier to remove the shelf than try and be careful once it was all put back together. 

And now it's not looking so horrible anymore, and the back is a whole lot better than seeing the flooring go all the way up! You can see the original color in the background...

Here's one of my favorite parts of the island re-do...no more standing on my head to dig out the pans I want! the girls think the drawers are great too...one of them crawls in and the other pushes the drawer in and out

And the finished product...I absolutely love it! It was a 50ish dollar change that made a world of difference in my golden oak nightmare! 

The island followed the crown moulding that I had wanted to put up for quite a while too...I did that first to make sure the black didn't totally ruin the kitchen...it was easy to put up and would have been easy to rip back out to replace with matching crown. 

Ignore the mess...that was mid re-do...no bathroom upstairs, and the kitchen was about half functional...the island, while that was where everything lived while we were using it! 

The saddest part of me liking my house again is we need a bigger one so all this was done just to sell it! Hopefully someone else likes it as much as I do, it's a 100% improvement from when we moved into our builder grade, white walled, finish quick so we can start another house to make more money expensive investment!