If it weren't for bad luck...

Last Wednesday morning I walked into the kitchen to see water where a cabinet should be. Hmm. Seeing how the water is tapped off in the kitchen, it could only come from one place, the washer. Sure enough, the soak load had lost half the water over night.

So here's a tiny little addition to our budget. :-)

But at least I do have a new, pretty, quiet washer and dryer. The old washer shook the house so much that we didn't dare wash anything after the kids went to bed. Now you can stand next to it and not realize that it's washing!

Over due update

I said I was feeling overwhelmed and I guess my not posting anything for a week reflects that. :-)

It was all behind the scenes work last week. There's new wires in the walls now, so not much to take a picture of. On Saturday we left the house all day so that the electricity could be turned off and the box upgraded. It doesn't sound exciting, but for us it is. Being out of room in our electrical box has stopped a couple of projects we've wanted to do. Now we have more than enough room.

I just heard from my contractor that the preliminary electrical inspection did pass, so he's about to hang dry wall. Now that sounds like progress!

Day 17--It's happened...I've reached overload

I thought all the big decisions were done--the cooktop, the dishwasher, the cabinets and counters, and so on. But no...

With our contractor starting work, there's even more decisions. The can light won't fit over the sink due to a floor joist, so now what? What kind of lights over the island? Ugh... Can I just say "Surprise me!"?

Plus to top it off, the Blue Jean paint that we picked out was more Baby Blue. Pretty for a baby blanket but too much for our kitchen. So Kate and I get to paint more sample paint squares tonight.

Counter Stools

The kids are excited. We found stools for our counter so they can claim the space as their own.

We were happy because these are half the price we were quoted on stools matching our kitchen table/chairs.

Luckily the chairs aren't too heavy to move (like the ones at the beach house we recently rented) but are heavy enough to not budge when Charlie climbs in. I'm just hoping we can sit them in one place and avoid moving them much to keep our floors looking nicer longer.

Day 16--It's all gone!

We were sore and tired Sunday from a late Rascals Baseball game with the Brownie troop, but got to work anyway. The old pantry and walls surrounding the fridge are gone too.

BTW, removing cabinets is much easier than drywall!

Day 15

Where's my kitchen? On Saturday we got the remainder of the cabinets removed, along with the cooktop, sink, and dishwasher. This picture was taken before the oven was pulled, but it was gone on Saturday too--along with that wall.

Dishwasher

Our dishwasher must know it doesn't have long to live. If I even fill it half way right now, it won't clean the dishes. Plus the silverware tray has a new 2" hole in it!

So I'm really happy to be getting this new pretty dishwasher. We found this at the same scratch and dent store as the cooktop. Neither appliance have a scratch that we can find, but they both had great prices!

Day 9--We rest

It's Father's Day! So we took the time for a fun trip to a Cardinals game. The kids even got to run the bases!

Day 8--Now I have a hole in the floor to match!

We got very busy Saturday AM and made a lot of headway. Besides tearing out a lot of stuff, we also have most of the cabinets emptied. OK, the stuff is piled in the dining room, but it's out of the kitchen!

By the way, that's not a dirty lens in this picture, it's all the drywall dust in the air!

Ken also wanted me to be sure I put up a picture showing that I'm working on this too!

Day 6--There's a hole in my ceiling!!

I left Ken alone for just a little while to take the kids to swimming lessons. When I came back, I found part of the soffit in my garage and a hole in my ceiling!

The floor plan

We're taking our "U" shaped kitchen and making it "L" shaped with an island. The great thing about this is how easy it will be to get from the working areas of the room (the sink and cooktop) to our deck or table.

The top of the picture is the wall with the window on it. The cooktop goes to the left. The wall opposite the window will still have the refridgerator and a new cabinet pantry to replace our built-in pantry.

Counters

When we first saw this granite installed, we totally fell in love with it. There are many variations of black with small silver sparkles, but this granite has 1-2" pieces of silver in it.

This picture doesn't give you the depth of shine that the silver in the counter has. It's a little more flashy than we usually are, but I think it'll be amazing. Plus it'll be too pretty to clutter!

Day 5

If the cabinet won't behave, we just take a sledgehammer to it! Then watch the cheap cabinet fly!

Look at my kitchen now!

Day 2 Continued

We managed to get the greasy, nasty vent hood down. And then we saw that the actual vent pipe isn't centered over the cooktop. That may be good since we're moving the cooktop a little to the left.

Day 2

This is the start...here we go!

















And ONE cabinet done!

The backsplash

We got really lucky and found a glass tile for the backsplash that we could afford. Most of the glass tile starts at $35/sf, but this starts below $15/sf! This is the color that we're probably going to use. It's called Blue Haze, but it's really a light grey.

We're going to use it in the 1/2" x 2" liner bars, installed vertically. It should look something like this:

The cook top

This was the first thing that we bought for the kitchen--before we even decided for certain that we would do it. It has that cool way of bridging two burners so for long griddles and the ability to change a burner from small to large.

I'm looking forward to the ease of cleaning this--and no burner coils for food to fall down into!

Flash Back #3

This is really old--Charlie was only 15 months old! But since the cabinets have such small (useless) shelves it was a perfect place for the kids to play.

Flash Back #2

I love this picture of Charlie and the fish tank! That's the one thing that the kids are sad about--no more fish tank on the counter. I'm not sure yet where we'll find to put it.

If you look at the wall where the microwave and over are, it is about to disappear along with the ceramic tile. We'll be putting in a new cabinet to house those, although we'll be using our old oven for a while yet.

By the way, what do we do with the paper towel holder???

Flash Back #1

This is a a couple years old (my hair is much longer again), but you can see the old cabinets, the impossible-to-keep-clean sink, the always cluttered counter and don't forget the nasty hood! I liked the border when we moved in, but that was 7 years ago so it's time for a change.

Day 1--Here we go!

June 7th


This is it! We have finally signed the contract and are on our way to our beautiful new kitchen. We've been thinking and planning and budgeting for months now. We've decided to not do it, to only do a little, to also do more, but now we've finally decided to GO FOR IT!

Our current kitchen was nice--20 years ago. The back of the cabinets has been loose for a couple of years. One of the doors split and then broke apart when I was a little too enthusiastic one day. The formica counter has stains and is warping--not to mention the stickers that Katie put on 5 years ago that I can't remove!

The one thing that we love is the floor. It's one of things that made us fall in love with this house. They stay and will be refinished at some point soon.