My Auction Find

My MIL invited us to join her at a furniture liquidation auction this past Saturday. While she bought a bunch of things for their lake house renovation, I scored this cute pedestal table and chairs to go in our basement:

Decisions, Decisions.

We have a little bit of extra money right now set aside to work on some home improvement projects. The problem is, we can't decide what to do!

Option #1: Replace our current laminate kitchen countertops with something else...Corian (not Ryan's vote), natural stone, engineered stone, or something called Granicrete. It's similar to a faux finish for your countertops made to look like granite.

Along with option #1, I would like to install new recessed lighting in the kitchen and possibly install a cream subway tile or cream beadboard backsplash.

Our actual cabinets:



Backsplash Choice #1 (with countertops similar in color to photo #2):



Backsplash Choice #2:



Option #2: Build walls in our basement to section off a new storage area and Ryan's gym. The problem with option #2 is that I would also want to replace the basement carpeting, repaint the horrid red paint job that the previous owners did and install a bar. That would take us WAY over budget.

Hrmm...