Antique Faire Awesomeness

Molly Mo's Antique Faire did not disappoint. I've decided that I'm going to it every year from now on. We had a great day and found a lot of treasures.

I got an AWESOME vintage kitchen scale!!  I. love. this. Not only is it cool looking, but it actually works!

I bought 3 cool amber bottles. Since I've had Cliff, I haven't been able to have plants in my house, but this is his test - two plants on a counter he can easily get to.  I found a glass amber tray that I had buried in a box and discovered that two of my small terracotta pots fit on it. I transplanted a couple of succulents and there you have it!  We'll see if he can resist eating them. (He laid by them and sniffed them for about 10 minutes earlier today...no chomping, though.)

I also bought a cutie-pie old wire basket. Perfect for fruit! Or...?

And last, but definitely not least, I found what I've been looking for FOR EVER.

A little white metal bistro set!!!! Once I make super cute seat cushions, it will be PERFECT! Goodbye old camping chairs!!

My precious...

Being a general contractor has its perks. One of them being finding amazing deals at our suppliers. Check out this beauty we got for our kitchen.

It's a Blanco Medallion. It's stainless steel (brushed nickel). And at Home Depot, it sells for $529....FOR A KITCHEN FAUCET!! I can't believe it. (Yeah, yeah, I know there are more expensive ones, but holy cow, that's a lot for something that shoots water!!)  We got ours for about $400 less than that. Now I can go buy a one-way ticket to Hawaii...or a new TV...or a new wardrobe...or more new things for my kitchen.

I love me a good deal!

Kitchen Adventures

I know the 5 of you who read this blog are chomping at the bit, ready for me to reveal my brand spankin' new kitchen! I hate to disappoint you, but it's not done yet.  We've been working hard on it, but we've run into a few...adventures.

Adventure #1 - We shattered a 3'x9' granite slab. Yep, 250 bucks down the drain. As I always say, "What doesn't kill us makes us more broke."  We bought another piece and moved on.

Adventure #2 - Remember the great deal on door/window trim (casing) that we got? Yeah. It wasn't the same stuff.  Unfortunately, Mark didn't notice until he had already installed it on some of our doorways.  The one we picked was very square...this one has soft edges. Needless to say, it's the one we're sticking with!

Adventure #3 - Mark thought it would be a good idea for ME to lay the tile in our kitchen (while he made all the necessary cuts).  I'm a perfectionist and our 62 year old floor is not. Mark had to intervene a few times, but we're all still alive.

So, as you can see, remodeling doesn't always go the way you want it to.  You learn that you have to be a little bit flexible and have a lot of patience (throw in some good spousal communication and you've got it made!).

To hold you over until the big reveal, here are a few sneak peaks.

I leave for Washington DC on Saturday and get back the following Friday night. I'm hoping to be able to use my kitchen when I get back!

Guess what's different

Obviously we have loads more work to do before our kitchen is "finished", but Mark added a few more touches today that makes this room feel a little more "done".

Notice anything different?

1. Crown moulding, check!
2. Plywood decking, check!
3. Wood panels on end cabinets, check!
4. He even went to Lowes today and bought all the cabinet hardware (pulls) as you can see in the picture above. They're not installed yet...that will be a real finishing touch...but they are stainless steel and look like this (image from here):

Mark does not waste time - I just heard a "pow!" and a "holla!" come from the kitchen area...he's laying Hardibacker on the kitchen floor in preparation for our stone/tile floors which, no, we have not picked out yet.  He also just finished the wiring for the double wall oven and microwave. Everything just gets us closer and closer to a real, working kitchen!!

And now for a story ... We (that was the imperial we - meaning Mark) had a major score at Big Orange, otherwise knows as The Home Store That Is Taking 90% of My Paycheck yesterday...he went in and talked to the special order people about our moulding situation (door and window casing).  The style we like only came in Hemlock and it was going to be a pain to prime and paint, so he asked if it came in the already primed MDF.  They looked and found that they do have it - but only by special order.  Wondering how much it was, he asked and while the sales person was making the call, he did some math and figured it would be near the price of the Hemlock which was a little over a dollar a linear foot.  The sales person got off the phone and said to Mark, "It'll be .28 cents a linear foot."  And he said, "Give me one million feet of it!"  Kidding...but he did get more than he needed.  I have no idea how it was that price, but that was a God deal (good deal), for sure! (Makes me think of our double wall oven.)  :o)

Pictures speak louder than words.

{When I got home from work, I saw this.}

{Which color is more accurate? You'll have to come see for yourself!}

{A few more...}

{And a few more...}

{And, finally the 360 degree tour...}

     

Someone sure did a lot of work on his 27th birthday!!  What a guy!!

Cabinets??

Not yet.

I'm bummed. I really thought they were going to be delivered today, but now they say it's going to be Tuesday. I am no longer getting my hopes up.  Instead of spending today installing cabinets, Mark got busy working on our pantry and the pony wall "cap".

Our cute little pantry door is hung, door knob installed, and shelving all done and painted!

Here is our pony wall, all "capped". The trim you see here is what we are going to use around our doors and windows. Unfortunately, it's not "pre-primed", it's Hemlock, so we have to do all the work to prime and paint it. Bummer. But we found a style we both liked and that makes us happy. We painted the top with the same Acrinamel paint we used to paint our window seat.

On the kitchen side of this wall will be our gas cooktop. We were originally planning to have the ventilation be a downdraft, going down through the lower cabinet and out. But, we found we couldn't make it "out" anywhere...we just hit concrete. So...we have to have an island style hood over the cooktop. I'm kinda bummed because I liked the idea of the archway being completely open.  So, that's the latest thing we're trying to find a good deal on.

Maybe next weekend I'll have some shocking (hopefully in a good way) pictures for you!

We've Got Mud & Tape!

{Sunday}

A kitchen remodel in just one long weekend?

Totally doable!

We've Got Sheetrock!

{Saturday}

See my pretty barely-there archway that matches the one in the entrance to our living room?

I'm happy!!

Kitchen ...

...where did you go?

~Cliff

Kitchen: Show & Tell

For those of you who read this blog (I know there are at least two of you out there), I am sorry I haven't posted anything in over a week! I've been really busy - we went to California over the weekend, celebrated my birthday (28!?!), and I've been helping to plan a big dinner at my church on Saturday. Despite all of this, I do have a lot of updates to show you all.

Let's start with ... the kitchen.

As you know, we ordered our kitchen cabinets last week. We are getting them through JC Group Inc. We were very pleased with their price and selection - and the fact that you can special order cabinets from them in the exact style, color, dimension, basically everything you can think of customizing, for just a little more than the in-stock cabinets. You do have to be patient and wait 6-8 weeks for them, but we were happy to wait! I'm getting the style and color I want so I'm very happy! Plus, they give you a computerized layout of what everything will look like.

Let the tour begin! (All images were created by JC Group Inc, besides my really awesome drawing - that's all me - and the last picture.)

Here is the birds eye view of what it will look like...pretty much. You can see the layout anyway.  There is going to be an archway on the left side where the peninsula is.  The arch will connect the window wall  to the wall that is above (in this picture anyway) the doorway into the kitchen. Too hard to explain. You'll just have to wait and see!

The doorway to the left is the pantry doorway. The raised island thing above the cook top will not be there; it will be more of a "pony wall" and above it will be the archway. The back side of the peninsula is going to be sheetrocked, so that if you are standing in our dining room and looking toward the kitchen, it will look like this (the gray is wall/sheetrock, the white is open!...don't laugh at my drawing):

I wanted our kitchen to feel like a separate room, but still feel open, and the Mr. wanted a more open feel, so I think this is a really good compromise.  (The peninsula wall - sheetrock - is going to be higher than the countertop of the peninsula so I can have some backsplash behind the cooktop.)

Here's a view looking at our pretty double wall oven and microwave.  I was just going to put the microwave on the counter...but, after some thinking, decided that it would sure be nice not to have it take up precious counter space, so we decided on a base microwave cabinet.

Here we are looking at the side of the kitchen that will have the archway wall. I wish our view out our kitchen window was a nice pasture rather than other house, but oh well!!

I can't wait to have my kitchen look similar to the pictures above instead of this:

Okay. It's not quite that bad anymore now that our bedroom is walled off, but close!  It will be so nice.  We still are undecided still on flooring, countertops and backsplash, and we need to get appliances (we're going with stainless steel), so we've got a lot of work to do before a finished kitchen becomes a reality. But we're getting closer!

My Wall

On Saturday, I built my toilet-hiding wall with just a little help from Mark. It wasn't very hard - I just had to make the cuts correctly and make sure everything was square and level.

My saw and my first 2x3...the toilet-hiding wall is coming out from the back wall 30", so I cut two 30" pieces from this stud.

Then I cut the two end studs to fit. We squared and leveled all four, and once it was perfect, we nailed everything together and to the floor and ceiling.

I then cut my last stud, measured 16" from the back wall and put it in it's place. And, there you have your toilet-hiding wall!  Obviously a little more went into it, but those were the basic steps. The hardest part was probably squaring everything and leveling all the studs.  But, Mark was there to help and we have the huge 5 foot long orange level (seen in the foreground here) that did a wonderful job.

With this project out of the way, what do we have left to do? Haha...funny...a LOT!

Mark started sheetrocking some of the master bedroom ceiling, and once all the ceiling patching is done, he will start on the walls.  I think he has a bit more plumbing to do in the master bath, too.

I still haven't found kitchen cabinets. When we get back from Arizona, that will be my mission. This is kind of what I'm going for:

(source: www.kraftmaid.com)

I'm liking the sleek, not too traditional Shaker/Mission style cabinets in medium brown to chocolate brown. I'd like to go for a lighter granite (we're doing granite slabs), backsplash and flooring. It all depends on what is available near us and our budget!

A Craigslist Miracle

Well, it's not quite a miracle...more of a blessing.  We really wanted a double wall oven for our new kitchen (in stainless steel) and a new one freshly bought from the store was out of the question (we just didn't have it in us to spend $2,500 + on one).  So, we resorted to looking on craigslist.  After a while Mark decided that the best we could probably do was to find a single wall oven - the kind where the microwave is on top and the oven on the bottom - but I was determined to find a decently priced double wall oven.  As I was looking on craigslist yesterday, I found one for $100!  The problem was that it needed a new part.  The previous owner had a oven fixer mechanic dude come out and he confirmed what he needed...and it was only a $160 part.  My thought was this - a relatively new, exactly what we wanted, oven for $260 bucks - what a deal!  I convinced Mark it would be well worth the drive to Washington, so off we went!  Once there, we looked at it, loved it, and decided it was definitely a steal. The owner gave us all the info she had on the part, cost, where we could buy it, etc, and I handed over my $100.  We (actually, her husband and Mark) loaded up in the 'ol Subie and we started to say our goodbyes and thank you's, when she said to me, "We want to give you something...this back." And she handed me my $100 back.  My first emotion was probably confusion. I vaguely remember thinking, "Dang! They don't want to sell it anymore!"  But she said, "No, we want you to have it. Use this toward the part, that way it'll only cost you $60 to repair!" I looked at her husband and he was nodding in agreement.  Mark and I were pretty much stammering words like "thank you!" and "you're so generous" and "oh my gosh!" and "really?!" and "that is SO kind" for close to 2 minutes.  I, of course, started to get choked up and had to stop my blubbering thank you's. There was a little more small talk, more thank you's, and then off we drove with our first blessing of the year in the back.

Can you believe that?!  It really makes you think about the whole "pay it forward" concept, and just doing something nice for someone else.  On the phone, the lady told me when the part went out her husband told her just to go out and buy a new one; he didn't want to deal with replacing a part.  They obviously were able to give this away without any financial strain on them. It makes me think, what can I do to help others - financial strain or not - that would make them be as thankful (and shocked about the level of generosity) as Mark and I were today?  I'm not one for New Year resolutions, but I think this year I need to take this question to heart and make this year not only about remodeling our house, but about giving to others (rather than selling) maybe some of the stuff we will no longer need once we remodel (i.e. our current stove, fridge, microwave, etc.).  I challenge you all to do the same.

Without further ado, here it is!

 (BTW...I have NOT cleaned this up at all, so sorry for the smudges, dust, etc. But there aren't any scratches, dents, etc in it!!)