Kitchen- before and after

I'm still not 100% happy with the way our kitchen has turned out (I could go on forever), but here are some before and after pics:

Kitchen at move-in:

Now:We changed out the appliances two years ago, shortly after moving in (we chose black to match our refrigerator, and I actually think black looks better than stainless in our kitchen...even though stainless is all the rage right now!).

Last spring, we got a big tax refund and decided to use the money towards new countertops and backsplash. I'm not a big fan of the light wood cabinets, but we didn't want to spend money on refacing (or buying new ones). We decided on the black galaxy countertops (black with some copper flecks)....and I love it (except that water stains show up easily!). Then it came time to figure out a backsplash. At first I wanted to go bold, and I wanted to cover it entirely in glass mosaic (I asked opinions on our blog). But my friend Erin put a photoshop picture together of what it might look like, and I was surprised how "busy" it looked. I also liked the idea of using 3X6 travertine (natural stone) laid out like bricks. So with the help from a lady at Daltile, I decided to do the subway tile travertine, with a strip of glass mosaic just along the middle.

So we had the backsplash installed four months ago, and I've been frustrated ever since! When I saw it completed, I didn't like it. The travertine wasn't as dark as I expected, making the glass stand out too much. But when the travertine was wiped with a wet washcloth, it instantly became darker. The installer agreed, and told me that DE Flooring (where we purchased the countertops/backsplash) could seal it, to give it that "wet" look. So I called our salesman Ricardo and told him I wanted the tiles to look darker, and he told me that it's very expensive for them to seal it, but that I should just go to Lowe's and pick up some sealer and do it ourselves.

So this is what I did (not realizing that there are a million different sealers out there).....and we put five coats of sealer on the backsplash, just like the instructions said. I noticed that it wasn't instantly getting darker, but I thought that would happen as you apply more coats. But after it was done, it was obvious that it didn't make it much darker (maybe a tiny bit).

A couple of months ago I was just frustrated and went back to DE Flooring to see if there was anything else that could be done. When I showed pictures to Ricardo, his response was, "you should have used an enhancer to make the tiles darker." Sure enough, they carry this "enhancer" product that's designed specifically to make natural stone have that "wet" look. Why in the world didn't he tell me this to begin with?!

I could go on and on about that place, but I will stop. We learned about a product that can strip the current sealer off, and I got a small sample. It doesn't seem to be working, but we haven't tried it exactly as the instructions say. Hopefully we'll do that this week. If it doesn't work, Dean is going to try to make an appointment to speak with Ricardo and Abdul (the owner of the place) to see about having them do it for us. This is a (supposedly) reputable place in our area, but we've had nothing but trouble with them.

I took these pictures at night, and the travertine does look darker at night. It mainly looks bad in the daytime, and especially when the sun is shining directly on it. I know that our kitchen looks leaps and bounds better than when we started, but it's just frustrating to spend the money and not get the exact result you want (especially when I was given wrong information and all of this could have been easily avoided!).