Kitchen Counters

All our kitchen counters are in, ready to be used. The granite was installed this morning and looks beautiful. It's a really pretty dark charcoal/green color. Now all we need are our cabinets to be finished (no comment) and our appliances to be put in place and voila!

Along with our granite installation came our sink installation! Oooooh! The farm sink that I really, really wanted was too expensive, but this big ol' Kohler cast iron undermount is a close second in awesomeness. Makes me just want to do dishes.......or not. But it has the potential to inspire dish doing desires!
I can't believe I forgot to post a picture of our beautiful butcher block counter! I found some oak panels at the Builder's Bargain Center in Medford and thought that rather than paying a crazy amount of money for real butcher block (well into the thousand dollar range), I'd buy several of these panels and see if someone could make something pretty out of them. The tricky part was that the panels were slightly warped, none were exactly the same size or thickness, so though it seemed like it'd be a snap to my unversed-in-carpentry-mind, it was no easy task. Our wonderful cabinet makers had pity on us (thanks to our dear Busha's mad sweet-talking skills) and took on the task of putting together the panels for us and finishing them up all pretty-like. They did such a phenomenal job. I really must post the before pictures so that you can get the full effect. Total cost of "butcher block"=less than $50. Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about.

The THREE Hour Door

I will have it be known that this image is saved in my photo library as "Damn Door." And with good reason. I was busy painting the cabinets, one of my favorite past times, while Brett & Chip were hanging this door. A seemingly simple task, right? Wrong! Hour one went by...and many brush strokes. Hour two went by, along with many painted cabinets (begging for more, and more, and more coats, mind you). The third hour came accompanied by verbal frustration from CHIP! (*note that verbal frustration was not in the form of expletives as it would have been had I been the one hanging the door, but rather in the form of simply and calmly stating, "This door is a nightmare.") This means serious business if a form of frustration is evoked from the steadiest-eddy there is. The unevenness of our floors and walls were the real problem, but Brett & Chip's diligence proved to be successful. I think that my shouting from the other room to "Nail that sucker!!!" really aided in the successful hanging of this door.

There's one more door to hang, and we are all really, really hoping that we will not have a re-run. Stay tuned.

Date Night

Brett & I had a date night on Friday! What did we do, you wonder? We enjoyed our first dinner at HOME! We ate on our new butcher block counter! ...and we painted trim and caulked, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that we ATE DINNER AT OUR HOME. No, I did not remove a blindfold from Brett's eyes seconds before this photo was snapped. That was his actual expression on his own, with ample time (10 seconds to be exact).

Halle-freaking-lujah

This is well deserving of its very own post. We have a toilet. Inside. I repeat myself:

HALLE-FREAKING-LUJAH

Painting in Progress

We are saving ourselves a considerable amount of money by painting the cabinets ourselves. I keep reminding myself. It seems only fitting that I would begin this particular post with that statement of fact, because here we are, cabinet-painting-day number three, and I have been wrestling with the thought that it may have been worth it to pay somebody to do this. But, no! We must...push....through! We are saving ourselves a lot of money! We are able bodied. We can do it. Painting is easy! ...Oh, but someone else could be painting....NO! We are saving ourselves a lot of money. Do you see the struggle? Erg...

Anyway, here are the cabinets pre-paint. Oh, the good ol' days.

And here they are mid-paint. They look pretty good from afar. Believe me when I say, however, that there's much work to be done yet. Mistake number one was not priming before painting. I know, I know...Painting 101. Here again, we thought that perhaps the rule of thumb didn't apply to us. We were wrong! Dead wrong! These here cabinets have 3 coats of paint, and are in the process of being sanded...and will be requiring yet another coat. Oh, joy. I will say, amidst heavy complaints, that they are looking good. We are pleased with the product, and will be even more pleased upon completion.

**Note that it is I, Andrea Zundel, who is complaining the loudest. Brett, bless his heart, seems near incapable of complaining about something so base. Jerk. Fine, I'm alone in my complaints. Any use of "we" when associated with a complaint is actually just an "I" or a "me".

We will be getting our granite tomorrow!!! EEEEeeeEEeEeEEee!!!

Cabinet Installation, Part I

Our kitchen is beginning to look like a bonafide kitchen. Unreal. We are gettin' there! The cabinets arrived yesterday, and will be completely installed by the end of the day today. We have more work to do, of course, because they all need to be painted, BUT just having them in the space does wonders to our home. One very big plus that I forgot I'd requested is that the counter height is 3" taller than the average. Chopping veggies and doing dishes will no longer be a back straining task. Finally, a kitchen suited for us!!

This is the hutch we had built in, which we are loving. It is in our dining room (Marshall's Room), next to the hall that leads to our guest room. The right side is for miscellaneous kitcheny things and the left side is our pantry. R-A-D.
Here's the guest bath with the wainscoting and trim. It's looking good. Chip did a really great job putting this up. I spent yesterday evening caulking the baseboard and top trim pieces, and realized a few things by the end of the project: 1) I love the look of beadboard wainscoting, 2) I'm really glad we don't have it throughout our whole house, due to the caulking work necessary, 3) I don't like caulking. Maybe there's some technique I'm missing? If you have any advice, I'm ALL ears!! I better suck it up, because I have a sneaking suspicion that much, much, much more caulking is in my future. Oh, dear...

Chip's current project, among many, is tiling our bathroom floor. It's looking really good! Stay tuned for more.
It's happening. It's becoming our home before our very eyes. Counters will be installed Monday; we're hoping to have a usable bathroom soon, hopefully by the end of the weekend; appliances will be installed by next week. It's getting close to the point where it's move-in-able. So close!!!

Hardwoods, how I love thee...

I got a sneak peak of the floors on Friday morning with their fresh finish, and was wowed. They turned out simply beautiful. Such life has been added to our house. The rich colors of the wood are fantastic. Feast your eyes on these, though you may just have to come and visit in person and see with your own two eyes to appreciate properly.

Today proved to be a busy day. Our on-demand hot water heater was installed. It turned out to be a bit more involved than anticipated (story of this house), but it's done. We now have a sa-weet hot water heater ready to rock!

I realized pretty early on that my involvement with the installation of the hot water heater was not going to be remotely helpful. I decided I'd be of better use beginning to tackle our crazed backyard. WOW. We have our work seriously cut out for us. Chip bought a chipper (I hope you appreciate this sentence as much as I do) this weekend, and we put it to good use today. I felt like such a b.a. chipping up that brush, and discovered pretty quickly that it's harder to feed wood into a machine than I thought. I am currently typing from the lay-down position because I feel whipped after a long day of chipping and wrestling branches.

When Brett was done helping with the hot water heater and electrical work he took over my chipping job, and then became my branch moving companion. We got quite a lot done, but realize that we have many more days to invest. We are fairly certain the yard hasn't been tended to in a very, very...very, very...very long time.