Frugal Living~~Do It Yourself!!

Over the past 2 weekends, we have started some work on the inside of our house.  When we bought our house 3 years ago, all the walls in the house were either white or cream colored.  At first we were glad, white goes with everything, no need to paint the walls before moving in.  Now that we've lived here for a few years, it was time to start making it our own!  We painted the kitchen/dining room last spring and tackled the living room the first weekend.  We are very happy with the color and think that the room looks nice!



We just work them sooo hard!!



This past weekend, we tackled another part of our kitchen~~the countertops!  We (well, to be honest, mostly me!) had thought about what to do with the countertops, but it was just a huge expense we didn't/couldn't take up.  Then a while ago, I saw  THIS post from Frugal Fine Living about her kitchen countertop re-do using Giani Granite.  Hubby and I thought about it for a while and decided to do it last weekend.

Giani Granite is a granite paint for countertops.  You can order it through their website, and now they are selling it at Walmart.  We bought the Sicilian Sand color for our kitchen for $70.  We had to wash the countertops down very good the day before, and the night before, we primed the counters with the black color.  We now had black countertops~~no turning back now!!

The next morning we started with the coloring of the countertops.  You are given 3 different colors in your kit depending on the finished coloring you want.  They tell you in the directions which color to put on first, second, and third.  You can really create anything you want on your countertops.  If you want it a little darker, add more of the darker (first) color and less of the lighter (third) color.  If you want it lighter, use more of the lighter and less of the darker.  When you are all finished painting, you sand it down and apply a couple of layers of the topcoat for a shiny "granite" finish.  Here's our finished product....

(Please excuse the dishes in the sink.  We couldn't use the dishwasher for 24 hours and didn't want to wash them until we were done with the countertops to protect against water damage on the counter!)

Overall....we are very pleased with how the counters turned out!  It was a nice change from this...

....and only cost $70!  We're looking forward to doing the bathroom countertops next!

Have a great day!

Blessings,