Long awaited update - Trim and Backsplash

Time has passed since our last update. Life has been busy and since the kitchen has been deemed as "usable" we moved back in and started using right away! We knew the window and door trim needed to be done, along with a back splash, but we took the summer and fall from renovating. We've been thinking about the trim for a long time, however we couldn't find our window trim to match the rest of the house. We were left with a few options a.) strip and repaint trim that we kept from old kitchen (not fun since I already stripped two doors and the pantry closest in the bathroom)A b.) have custom trim made ($$$) or c.) pick a window trim that wouldn't match the rest of the house.  

We fluttered around a lot with the trim, going back between the options almost regularly.  I was determined to have the same trim throughout the house, but after visiting lumber yards and home improvement stores, was not able to find anything similar. To keep a long story short, we ended up needing to complete the trim for our refinance. Our mortgage guy was able to give us a contact for a mill work shop. The mill work shop was able to get us in contact with a wood shop that could make our trim. In the end, I suppose we went with Option B, however all said and done it came out to slightly cheaper than buying from the mill work shop. Here are some before and after pictures. 

No Trim

With Trim

Back Slider with Trim

A second pressing project was the back splash! Wow, what a chore trying to pick out the tile. After visiting 8 tile stores over a series of three or four months, we were had basically given up on finding a suitable back splash. Jeremy really wanted marble, and I was on board with that. Seemed that none of the samples really went well and if they did they were mucho dinero. We never really fell in love with a back splash....until we started searching on houzz.com.  We found an awesome back splash only to find it was discontinued.  After some more searching we found this tile, it was quite a process to physically locate a sample, since we had to find a tile store that distributed this brand. We (me) ended up making many phone calls and ended up finding this marble at a great price!! Overall we think the back splash does a great job tying together the space. The back splash truly makes a stunning impression in the space!

Even more amazing is we had family help installing the tile (which meant it was done in like 1/5 of the time it would have taken us). Thanks Tommy Tile & Amy! 

Tommy Tile's work in action

Finished backsplash

Sink side with backsplash

Yes yes, we also did get a TV as a Christmas present! It has a sweet swivel mount so the TV can go all sorts of ways. No reason to ever leave the kitchen...in fact I'm writing you from the kitchen peninsula now!

The moral of this post is sometimes both procrastination and patience pays off.  While we sat on kitchen projects for the majority of the summer and fall, we ended up getting a getting what we wanted and at a really good price.  

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the kitchen! Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

Month of (Non) Progress

Well its been a month since we last posted (thats my bad)!  I'd like to say its all finished, but we still have plenty of little tasks to finish up. We'll talk about those later. When I last posted pictures of the granite install I purposely left out pictures of the floor.  I didn't expect me to be such a slacker in posting the pictures and updating the blog!
  
Here are some pictures from the floor poly.

First coat of poly

Second coat of poly

Final coat of poly, still wet.

We don't miss the tile in the kitchen. I'm sure my feet will love the floor in the winter time when the floor isn't icy cold! I suppose I'm more careful about wearing shoes and picking stuff up when I drop it off of the floor to avoid scratches and staining.  So far floor is holding up well.

Recent progress on the kitchen/bath include:
We picked out and installed a toilet.
Ordered a mirror for the 1/2 bath (will be here on Wednesday) and hopefully in one piece.
We received the fridge panel, it is temporary installed with a clamp.
We googled for hours on the right location for cabinet knobs---still seems TBD, hollar if you have opinions.
We argued discussed the right location of the cup pulls...which meant we only installed two.....
I finished stripping the bathroom and kitchen entry doors (whattt a project---post to come on that).
Mom washed, cleaned and organized our kitchen. What a saint. She has a nice picture on her iPhone of all the dishes she washed by hand. I then told her our dishwasher has a 1-hour wash cycle. If she reads the blog maybe she'll send me the photo and I'll post :-)
Installed light fixture in eat-in part of kitchen.
Took the plastic off our appliances :-)

Still have a long to-do list:
Paint & Prime two doors
Paint slider and three windows
Install kickboards
Install crown molding
Install cabinet hardware
Put in trim----really would LOVE to match trim with rest of house, however don't feel like stripping TONS of trim and some may have been damaged during demo.
Pick out a BACKSPLASH so that Tommy Tile and SISIL can come do it
Pick out stools for eat in portion.
Order light for over kitchen sink.
I'm sure it keeps coming....just can't think of anything.

Next post will hopefully be bathroom reveal! That will be complete as soon as I can get the hubby to install the mirror.

Granite is in, kitchen is usable!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we've just been crazy busy here. The last time I posted we had the granite templated. They did the template on Friday and installed on Tuesday. For those counting it means for approximately three months (Feb 11-May 8th) without a usable kitchen.  It actually went pretty quick and for the first two months we managed well with our temporary kitchen. At the end we got lazy of cooking in our temporary set up and tended to eat out more often.  

Our fabricator told us our granite is Kasmir White, but it kinda looks like Bianco Romano. They had Branco Romano in the yard and it looked totally different somewhat pinkish. I'm not sure what it actually is as there was no tag....so I think I'm just gonna confuse everyone and call it Kasmir Romano for fun.  

We're really enjoying the granite, probably a combination of having usable countertops...scratch that usable kitchen...and the beauty of the granite is a close second. Hope you enjoy the pics.

My favorite section of the granite

Annnd the sink fit!!!!

And here's what the overall kitchen looks like:

We put a 12" overhang on the end for eating

Anddd the most awesomness sink which basically fit like a glove once we took out some of the bracing for the sink base. Probably couldn't of fit a sink a few millimeters larger than this guy.  I ordered this one because it got great reviews, decently priced and someone said it would fit in a 30" sink base.

Which comes with the most awesomest faucet. Yes, it comes with two streams of water. One for spray and one for a pot pourer. And yes, I am really excited to have the soap dispenser. Actually Jeremy, the dishwasher, should be most excited of all. 

Our bathroom granite came in too. Fabricator said it was Bianco Romano and looks like the Harvest Cream sample that we had at home. I think I'm keeping the bathroom a secret for another week or so and reveal that all at once :-).

More updated to come! Next update will have pictures of the finished floor and whatever progress we make during the weekend. Kitchen progress is a lot slower these days as it is nice to enjoy the weekend.

Vintage Stove Burners & Granite Template

I'm currently in Hudson, WI for work and this week TOMORROW the granite comes (yay!!!!!!) and the floors are being finished!!! It should actually look like a kitchen when I get back! I've already told Jeremy he must take pictures so I can see them ASAP!



I've been searching for something vintage to put in the kitchen.  I found this on thekitchn.com and thought this was soo neat! see link -> http://www.thekitchn.com/look-stove-grat-160030

Courtesy of thekitchn.com

You can buy the grates on ebay, however my mom found me something even cooler. I am NOW the proud owner of some cast iron industrial stove burners. Look how cool these are!! Yes, some people may have thought I was weird ensuring I won the bid for these before my kickball game but I think they are really neat and can't wait to find a spot for them somewhere in the kitchen.

Ok, on to the kitchen part. Thursday night we did alot of running around trying to get a few things hashed out before the granite template,  little things like installing the fridge panel, taking out the temporary sink, making sure our new sink would fit in the sink base (nothing like waiting until last minute).  Lastly, we had to install our bathroom pantry cabinet.  

Here's a picture of the granite template in progress:

 

On Saturday we watched our Stone get templated:

 

And I gotta throw in a picture of some food because on Sunday morning we used the middle burner which has an interchangeable griddle:

Other work going in progress:
Jeremy's working on the stack moulding and crown
I'm working on stripping 80 years worth of paint off the bathroom and kitchen doors

We really need to pick out a toilet for the bathroom and soon we can pick out a tile backsplash. Still plenty to do: install cabinet hardware, move stuff back into the kitchen, do some touch up painting, paint the doors and windows, and install/paint trim. 

That's it for now.  I can't wait to update you on the granite install!

 

Cabinets, Appliances and Dinner!

A few things to update on and hopefully you'll notice real progress happening in the kitchen.

The cabinet install is mostly done. We ran into an issue with the fridge panel height as our floors are not completely level due to the age of our house. Therefore, we'd need to heavily shim our fridge panels...since this wouldn't look right, we've had to return and then order taller fridge panels and cut them to size. As a result we didn't install the deep cabinet that goes above the fridge and the fridge panels. Everything else is in place and this place is actually starting to look like a kitchen!

Kitchen Cabinet Install In Progress

And yes...our dishwasher works..

Microwave installed, stove hook up and fridge plugged in. Life is good!

Additionally, last week our appliances came in. We ordered them online, which may be particularly scary for some people. However we did an exhaustive amount of research online and checked out all of the appliances in the store before ordering online.  We pretty much had our appliances decided upon in January and been patiently waiting for the point in the project where they finally came.  We ordered through appliancesconnection.com, who are out of Brookyln, NY.  We estimated we saved over $2000 from ordering through Home Depot or Lowes and about $2700 from full retail price. We totally nerded out on the appliances opting for the dual fuel GE cafe range, a matching convection microwave, and a samsung counter depth refrigerator. The range is my absolute favorite, an absolutely sexy showpiece of the kitchen!

We really couldn't wait to hook up the appliances and hooking up the range was quite an adventure! First we had to change out the 4-prong new style power cord to an older 3-prong power cord so it would fit into the wall receptacle. The gas hookup was pretty straightforward and only required two trips to Home Depot to get the correct part. Tonight we decided it was necessary to make sure both the gas stove and oven worked. On the menu tonight was: Chicken al Pimentos (chicken in a hot pepper, chicken stock, lemon, white wine sauce), brussel sprouts with bacon and scallops and tomato and basil risotto.  

Perfectly normal to be cooking dinner with drill next to you....

Bacon, brussel sprouts, scallops...mmmm good!

 

The granite people are coming on Thursday to template. We can't wait for that. Our sheetrock countertops just aren't cutting it!. 

Cabinets

Our main motivation for starting the kitchen crazily in the winter time was the attractive pricing/sales on cabinets during the winter months. We estimated that we saved $3500 by ordering our cabinets during this special promotional period. Additionally, we plan to install the cabinets ourselves which saves an additional $1800.  In the northeast you have to be somewhat crazy to live without a kitchen in the winter time.  Luckily, this winter was an extremely mild winter which helped. As said previously we got our cabinets for Lowe's. We got semi-custom cabinetry which offers a surprisingly awesome number of options and crazy drawer accessories. Some of the neat cabinets to mention are a message center with whiteboard and key hangers (upper left hand corner of photo), super lazy susan on the bottom, 30" pull out drawers near the sink, and trash/recycling center.  The drawers are full pullouts and all drawers and cabinets have soft-close.  Our base super lazy susan is actually to big to fit through the sliding door. We're going to have to remove the doors to get that thing in.

Taking the cabinets out of the boxes was also pretty entertaining. They are all well wrapped and protected for shipping. I'm sure it will take months dispose of all of this in the recycling bin. Right now we lined the floor with the cardboard boxes to protect the new hardwood floors. 

We have endless amount of cardboard corners and cardboard boxes at the house.

We chose shaker style cabinets in a slightly off white color called coconut. We're excited to see what they look like once they are all installed and outfitted with the cabinet hardware.

Kitchen with cabinet bases

We got our hardware off overstock.com.

The drawer pulls will look like this:

Photo from overstock.com

 And the knobs will look like this:

Photo from overstock.com

We're HOPING that our large sink fits in the sink base. It's difficult to find a large sink to fit in a 30" sink base cabinet. They seem to be 24" or just about 30". This is what it should look like:

Photo from faucetdirect.com