Left side is old, right of the sink is new. But with new doors and new appliances, it looks the same!
The tile really warmed up the room. We are so pleased with the look. Kitchens should be warm and cozy in my opinion.
Several people told us that we should go with current trends to be more sellable. But we aren’t selling anytime soon and when we do, today’s trends will be old hat. It’s fun watching shows where they are tearing out dated, some times only 10 years or less old, kitchens.
It does look warm and inviting! Ready to cook and entertain. Large enough to let people help but not too large for them to get in the way by milling about!
My sister is notorious for redoing her kitchen when nothing is wrong with it. She just gets bored. I agree that you just need to do what you want because new buyers will probably change things anyway!
Case in point: our house was just painted before we bought it but we hated the colors so we had it painted the colors we wanted. Many people would have just left it for a few years, but, we don’t know how many years we have left so we are going to enjoy what we want. Good for you!
Nice to watch the work progress to this lovely end!
I love it! You really captured the feel of those old copper tiles!
@marionberries Oh, wow! It looks soooo nice! Not only cozy and friendly, but also nicely functional! Congratulations to you and your the DW on getting all the way to here.
@Immaculata and @AntBee My sympathies on the mice! UGH. We take them on every year, I think. I don’t even know what it would take to block all their entrances with the wall foundation. I do think our population is down along with the squirrels and chipmunks, which I believe is because there was a litter of 4 fox kits this spring in the neighborhood. And there is supposedly a bumper crop of some kinds of berries so a lot of folks have way fewer birds like we do - which means way fewer spilled seeds under the feeder.
Around here, I am finally making the kind of progress that looks like progress on my dining table for the deck! Yesterday I was able to finish gluing up the top and today I was able to draw a 54" circle on it and rough cut the extra lumber off! Tomorrow, I hope to do a more detailed cut and start sanding. It’s our last sunny day for awhile (possible snow starting Sunday), so it would be nice to get as much sanding done as I can outside. My trusty sander broke in an unfixable way today, so I will have to get a new one tomorrow and I can’t guarantee that it will hook up to the dust control system out of box.
Anyway, it’s finally starting to look like it could become a tabletop!
I always thought that was a funny perspective…decorating your house with other people’s taste in mind. As if the only reason to redecorate/renovate is to sell the house.
The tiles look lovely!
And since our aging cat is not allowed out any more, the voles and mice in the yard have been having a party. We lost most of our potato crop to the hungry little critters. Ground hogs eat everything not fenced, the squirrils bite holes in the tomatoes. The bunnies just munch on all the clover in our grass. At least we didn’t have any deer wander through this year. We are in town but apparently some years we are on their route through town.
Mice are the worst. We set traps everywhere they could get in. I also have used, in my garage, these huge traps that sit on top of 5-gallon buckets…basically, the mice walk the plank to get the food and tip themselves into a bucket of water. Cleared out an entire colony in one night. Steel wool to plug up any cracks - they won’t chew through it.
We put steel wool in all the holes, filled them with mortar, then tiled and sealed. You’d think that’d be enough …. I think I’ll take a better look this weekend, burying my head in the sand is not a good idea when it comes to pests. The only thing I can imagine is maybe they gnawed a new hole through the brick wall in a place that’s not covered by tile? I don’t know how these guys gnaw through bricks.
We have an old wooden house. I am sure there are a multitude of tiny fissures and cracks acting like a big “Welcome to the Fair!” gate right into our house. I hate to kill anything, but they simply cannot live here. I like @Edel ‘d friend’s method of writing evictions notices lol
You are up early! Morning!
I find dead mice in the yard. I am guessing that they are eating the bugs that have been in contact with the stuff they spray in our monthly service. Not sure because I have asked them to use non-lethal products for animals, so it could be just a natural death.
A mouse definitely would not survive inside my house. My cats are avid hunters. No bug or creature survives, not even gnats! We have put metal screening over all vents, including the dryer vents and all external openings have been filled with that foam stuff (which, btw, mice can gnaw through so it does have to be reinforced with steel wool). They still find ways in!
Oh, my handyman says that openings for the stove gasline and the dishwasher water pipeline have to be sealed…anything that goes outside…if there is an opening, they will find it!
We used to have brick foundation on sand, timber floorboards, brick walls. Occasionally we’d have mice, but they mostly stayed in the kitchen behind the kickboard. I actually think mice are pretty cute so if one brave mouse sneaked out from under the kitchen once a year to find some crumbs to eat I thought it was funny.
We removed the timber floor, poured 12” of concrete on the foundation, added insulation, underfloor heating, a cement floor and tiles on top, so living under the floor is absolutely impossible now. I guess the mice were not happy when I forcefully evicted them so they are now squatting in the walls. I guess cavity walls are basically a highway for mice, but when we tackled the pantry and closed all the gaps I thought we were done. I just would never have guessed they would be able to create new holes…
I’m not a big fan of cats honestly, but sometimes I feel we need one! I wouldn’t necessarily want a cat in my pantry but it’s better than a mouse.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to tell if a cat will be a mouser or not. We have had cats that let mice walk on them!
This is the only mouse I have in my house at the moment! 
I don’t know if I shared it on LC so forgive me if I’m repeating myself:
I used to speak aloud to the mice in my old post-college apartment. “If I don’t see you or anything as evidence that you’ve been here we’re all good!”
One day I was watching Tv in the living room and a mouse walked right down the middle of the room as if he was coming to catch up on his favorite show. “Did it start? Can I have some popcorn?”
One always ruins it for everyone.
My recent “what the heck!?” mouse moment involved one of the cats. He had been at his post in the kitchen (by the sink and dishwasher where mice have been known to enter) so I said, “good boy, tell those mice to stay in the walls or better yet out of the house!”
He must have taken me very seriously because he started pulling on the loose kickboard, stuck his paw into the wall and pulled out a mouse! Chaos ensued. Kid cheering “good boy! Such a hunter!” Pacifist husband fretting “did he kill it? He didnt kill it did he!?” Me, a dog person who hasn’t lived with a cat in 30 years chasing the cat yelling, “good boy! Drop it! Drop it!”
The cat dropped it and I grabbed the lifeless mouse in a paper towel to dispose of it… when I discovered it was very much NOT lifeless so I raced it out the back door and put it in the yard. I saw my neighbor wave to me just as I called out to the ground, “Now, please, tell the others no coming in the house!”
TheMisterT has a very soft heart for animals, so we have to use live traps, which seem to have about the same efficacy as the others. However, a mouse’s range is way larger than their size might suggest, so I end up having to drive them away from the house! And in order to not just be giving them a long, sad death, I have I have to choose a spot with shelter and food sources. And in order not to be just making this someone else’s problem, likely someone who will not care to use live traps, I have to choose very carefully. All the while driving with a live mouse in a trap in the car with me! And I think at our house, they aren’t always going for our food, but using us for a warm, dry place while collecting wild food and birdseed. I have more than once begged, “If you would just keep your poopin’ and peein’ outside, we could live in harmony. I don’t poop and pee all over your stuff!”
Hahahaha…what a great story.
I love the stories!
When my husband and I first got married, we lived in a trailer in the middle of a Christmas tree farm. Lots of critters! We were watching TV when a mouse appeared up out of one of the burners of our stove! My husband is loathe to kill anything, so he flipped popcorn at it. We watched the mouse eat it right in front of us. After that, it seemed to come in nightly to get his popcorn!
But, of course, the thought of a mouse or mice crawling all over our kitchen was really ick, so we ended up closing as many of the gaps under the trailer to the stove and other applicances.
I think my husband missed his little buddy so he made a mouse house under the stairs outside and put popcorn and seeds inside.
Now his thing is with squirrels!
I don’t care if they’re outside, but if they invade my space, they’re gone. Sorry, not sorry. Mice carry parasites and diseases. They destroy everything. I can live peaceably with spiders in my home (they catch the bugs that sneak in and are harmless to people and pets), but I draw the line at anything that threatens the health of my family. Thankfully, the remodels sealed up most of the cracks they used to sneak through and my new cat has shown himself to be an avid hunter (he brought us a ‘gift’ shortly before we officially adopted him into the house). I love our local wildlife, but they have to stay outside where they belong.
Oh. most definitely, we do have to consider that many people die from diseases borne by rodents! They also destroy things like wiring and even clothing if they are inside and once they urinate or defecate on items you have no choice but to throw out the items!
Yes, stay outside or else! Cute or not, there is no place for them in our spaces.
I emptied out the pantry floor and found a path of droppings leading to a small gap on top of a wall tile. I guess the tile was pushed forward a little bit and the sealant was a bit crooked there and that’s how they found a way in. They are definitely smart creatures! We filled up that gap with sealant and just in case, we added a new layer of sealant on top of the whole row of wall tiles. And not a neat amount of sealant like last time - a big fat layer of sealant. It looks like someone went wild with toothpaste, but I don’t think mice can push their way past it now. Other than the damaged bag of macaroni I found earlier it seems they didn’t touch any food. I’m so glad that after last time I invested in plastic buckets for flour! Plus I decant everything that comes in cardboard or paper into glass mason jars. I think mice are wonderful creatures but they need to stay far away from my food!! I don’t feel bad about setting traps if I have to but making sure they can’t get in is more effective in the long term.
Now the pantry floor was empty I was able to sweep and wipe it down, too, hopefully this time it stays clean and I’ve finally blocked all the entrances.
