Counters & Cabinet Hardware

Counter tops ended up being really fun!  Here's how it all went down...

First - Choose slabs to place on order.
It was pretty neat seeing how they moved pieces around for me to see.

Here are the chosen ones.  They are consecutive slices which keeps the coloring and the veining close to identical.  That gives the fabricators more wiggle-room when it comes to laying out the design and deciding where to put the seams.
 

The fabricator came to our house, put down the 3/4" base plywood, and then made up the templates.  He used super thin strips of wood, hot glued together, and then wrote notes all over it (where the seams were, which edges to finish, etc.).  The granite in our last house came pre-fabricated and anything they needed to cut, they just did on-site.  So this whole process was new to me.

Then I met with the fabricator's boss (a.k.a his wife) at the stone yard where her and I worked up the details of the design.  She would tape the templates to the slabs and then mark it all off.  This ended up taking almost 3 hours!  It was crazy how much tinkering we had to do with it in order to fit everything on those two slabs.  Plus there were a couple less pretty sections that we wanted to avoid, or at least have in less obvious places.  When all that was set in stone (har har har get it) the fabricator picked up the pieces, took them to his shop, and his team went to work.

About a week later they came for the install.  Here is an in-progress shot.  Isn't it pretty?  I'm in love.

I thought we could get by for a while without hardware, until I realized that you can hardly open anything due to the full-coverage cabinet faces.  So now we had to choose some hardware, pronto, if we were going to be able to unpack!

Oh, before I show you our hardware choices I should show you the faucet.  Ian really wanted one of these huge pull down ones, which was fine, except a lot of them run $1K-$2K and like 3 feet high.  Get out!  Seriously. No thanks.  So when I stumbled on this one from Overstock.com for $170, I was all over it.  I agonized over this after I experienced dish-washing over Thanksgiving at my in-law's home.  They had a similar faucet but it didn't extend far enough and it hurt my back from having to lean over to reach the water.  Who would have thought?  So I had to find something with a long reach, not 10 feet tall, with a sprayer, and not one million dollars.

I didn't pay super close attention to the finish I guess, cause when it came it was a super shiny chrome.  It looked awesome, but I was expecting something more dull... it doesn't look so shiny in the pic, right?  Buyer oversight, but whatever. It's pretty.

So that brings us to cabinet pull #1 - this one is a simple chrome finish.  When we got the sample , as soon as I touched it you could see finger prints everywhere.  I wasn't crazy about it. 

This is the trendy Euro pull style that is really in right now, in brushed nickel.

And this was another brushed nickel option.  #3 is the winner!

It was a choice between #2 and #3 -- and this one gets it because I think it's a little more simple, classic, and a little narrower when viewing from the front.  It does stick out a little further than #2, so I hope that's not a big deal.  I also read a lot of review about people saying #2 style was annoying because their clothes would get stuck on the ends of the bars.  Convinced me.  What I loved about every style though, is it came in tons of different sizes!

I also had to read a ton of kitchen forums regarding varying hardware finishes.  I feel assured that our shiny chrome faucet will still look badass next to our brushed nickel cabinet pulls.  Don't tell me otherwise  ;)

Another in-progress counter top/back splash, along with blue tape hardware guides. 

House - Cabinet Update

My dad spent the greater part of last week installing the kitchen cabinets and I am in love!

He got everything in but the kitchen sink base.  There are a few things that need to be done around the window, and not having the cabinet there makes it much easier.

I knew that the soft close drawers came standard, but a surprising feature that I did not expect was that the doors also have soft close.  They can be like 8" open and still close softly by themselves.  Rad!

We had to cheap-out on some of the roll-out shelves because the cost was skyrocketing for that stuff and we found we could install them on our own, later, for much less.  One *must have* for me was an appliance lift for my stand mixer, only the cost to have it come installed for us was astronomical   Instead, we got a plain base cabinet, ordered the mechanism direct, and my dad put it in.

Cool, huh?

IRL - Where my baby will live.

As part of a special Home Depot was having when we ordered everything, we got a free tiered cutlery divider drawer.  Only, it didn't come put together for us, so being my handy dandy learning self, I took the standard drawer front and locking mechanisms off, and put them on our new cutlery drawer.

Now I have to move on to my next - major anxiety inducing - project of counter-tops and back splash.

If you recall my inspiration pic, they had some stone counters with horizontal 'lines' running through it.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  Finally the nice people at Houzz.com answered my questions and I learned the stone was natural quartzite (like granite but more firm and less porous).  NOT man made like quartz which we originally were going to get, except you didn't get the cool natural variation in the appearance.  So then I had to find a stone dealer that carried quartzite.

I finally found it at a place in Miramar called Tutto Marmo.  They call themselves a Natural Stone BOUTIQUE.  To me Boutique = majorly expensive.  I went in, saw the beautiful stone, and knew I had gone to a place of no return.  It didn't help that this was pretty much the one and only renovation 'thing' that Ian wanted, and agreed with me on.  Le Sigh.  And of course, we can't do it all with one slab.  I'm going to head over in the next couple days and pick our two slabs.  Hoping to have enough left to do full-back splashes, but we shall see!

So that's where we're at.  I got one more room painted this weekend, leaving only the master until we are ready for carpet.

House - Paint and Cabinets

We've been doing lots and lots and lots of painting. It feels like the painting never ends!  For one reason or another, we're are having to paint every room of the house.  And even though some rooms are pretty low priority, we figure it's still easier to do now while we can slop it all over the floors.

By far the hardest room color choice was the one we'd be using through all the hallways and main living areas.  I definitely wanted to go more grey than brown (cause I'm trendy that way, and a follower), but we were still going to have beige carpet.  I tested 4 colors in few different rooms and put them next to our carpet and tile samples.  This is a pretty horrible pictures, I know.  They all look the same. haha.  But in person, and in different lighting, they were quite different.

From left to right --
1 = too purplish
2 = too yellow/beigeish
3 = WINNER
4 = too bluish

We had the ceiling scrapers/painters do the hallway along the staircase since it was super tall and awkward.  Here is what it looks like when they were finished.

The more and more of that yellowish brown color that gets covered up, the happier I get!  

Here is the kitchen, primed/painted and ready for some cabinets!

Cabinets delivered yesterday!  Whohoo!!!  

Dad started to unpack and get them ready for mounting.
Notice the second fireplace in the back?  Loving how much brighter the room feels with the fresh paint and pretty fireplace.  What type of mantle should we put there?  A TV will go above.

Brick-Anew

One day I was scouring the web for fireplace brick painting techniques when I stumbled across this product called Brick-Anew.  They advertise a kit that helps you transform ugly red brick fireplaces into pretty fresh looking brick.  I was a tad skeptical, only because the detailed "how-to" instructions were no place to be found, but there were so many user submitted before & afters that I decided to go for it.

When I got the package in the mail, it came with a 10-minute instructional DVD.  This was starting to sound overwhelming...  You basically paint the entire surface (brick and mortar) and then follow it up with 4 more colors using varying techniques (brush, roller, sponge...)  to create variations in every brick.  I was watching the demo thinking it is not for someone like me...perfectionist... likes things symmetrical... etc.  But alas, after a solid weekend of non-stop brickwork, we had two amazingly transformed fireplaces for a couple hundred dollars.

Before

Base Coat.  Already such a difference!

Done!

I just love how it still looks more natural looking, as opposed to just solid painted brick.  It looks even better now with the room painted.  I did the same thing to the smaller fireplace in the other living room.  =)

Halloween 2012

We celebrated Halloween first with the Beta kiddos, then again briefly on the actual holiday.

Happy witch.

Scary Witch

Witch who hasn't quite got walking down but wanted to Trick-Or-Treat

Witch wanting to hang with older neighborhood kids.

Witch getting candy from G-Ma for mommy to eat. 

House - Moving Stuff Around

A lot has been happening over the past month or so. I'll try and explain!

First, we got fumigated.  Peace out wood-destroying-pests.

As an aside - whenever I see a tented home, I think someone may be inside cooking meth.

Then came all sorts of fun stuff...  Notice a few things in the pic below:

1. The small doorway to the dining room in the back was moved over about a food to the right.
2. The full wall to the left, along the hallway, was extended a few inches.  By doing #1 and #2 (insert potty joke here) we will now be able to accommodate regular 24" depth pantry cabinets and our fridge along that wall.  We only had 1 ft of depth there before.  Pretty useless.
3. We now have a gas line running over to the back wall for a cooktop. You can't see it now because...drum roll please....
4. All our ceilings have been patched up, scraped of the hideous "popcorn", re-textured, and painted.  What a world of difference that made throughout the house!!
5. Can lights were moved around some so they will be more appropriately symmetrical with our new cabinet layout.
6. The short wall in front was extended another foot or so in to the kitchen on the right.  Pretty much just so it covers the whole cabinet that will be there. 

Doorway moved from kitchen to dining room. View from entry.

 (I'm just realizing this post is going to get long.  Bare with me)

One thing I wanted in this kitchen was a cool range hood over our cooktop; not a microwave.  I also wanted it to be more centered on that back wall.  Here is is again, before.

Moving the cooktop location to the left, meant that the exhaust had to extend further to the left.  Of course it can't be that easy though!  In order to move the exhaust to the left, the AC duct in to the dining room had to be moved to the left as well.  And this ducting happened to be coming straight down from the middle of two upstairs bedroom closets.  Good times.

This is probably getting hard to follow.  But basically what ended up happening was my dad moved everything around, resulting in a larger closet upstairs for BK, and a smaller closet in what we're calling the guest room.  The AC duct running between the two new sized closets, in to the dining room, with space for the stove exhaust to run more center to the wall.  Ok, it's kind of hard to explain.

Here is BK's closet, about a foot bigger.  Girl will need all the space she can get  =)
So now the new AC duct is basically running down in the wall, where the new patching is on the right.

And then opposite that black wall is the guest room, which now has this smaller closet.
 

Pumpkin Patch 2012

With all the house stuff going on, we sort of ran out of time to take Brooklyn to a "cool" pumpkin patch, so one evening after work, we headed over for some quick fun at a small pop-up place.  We were probably only there about 15 minutes... just long enough to get a few pics before she we got bored.  

Off We Go

I just saw that it was almost exactly 3 months from closing on the sale of our last house to closing on the purchase of our new one.  It feels like it took forever, but we're happy to report, we think we've finally found something that was worth the wait!  Or at least, will be.....  Unfortunately my parents are still stuck with us for another month or two while we my dad gets to work on fixing the place up a bit.

Pending finances, here is all that we hope to accomplish prior to move-in:

• Replace flooring everywhere. - tile and carpet
• Gut kitchen - includes running gas, moving a doorway, moving electrical, and running water to new fridge location
• Gut powder room
• Replace downstairs interior doors
• Add canned lights to family room
• Paint everything except upstairs baths and one bedroom
• Scrape popcorn, texture, and repaint ceilings
• Fumigate and repair termite damage
• Replace floorboards throughout
• Wire for TV mount above family room fireplace, and new mantle
• Paint fireplaces in both family and living room
• Install pool security fence

We have had our keys for exactly one week and have made lots of progress!

Kitchen Before

Kitchen Before

Kitchen Before (that's the dishwasher pulled out -- no other appliances came with house)

Oh yeah!  That's me using the rotary hammer to bust up tile.  Ian did most of that while I did the cleaning up after him, but when he got tired, mama wasn't afraid to get down and dirty!  I couldn't walk for 5 days.....

Kitchen in-progress

Bye Bye tile!

20' dumpster getting full

So basically we've torn everything out that we plan to replace.  My dad is about down with the structural changes, and electrical.  Next up he'll be working on running gas to the cooktop and moving water for the fridge.  Cabinets are getting ordered today. Appliances are picked out. Flooring is ordered. Fumigation/termite work is schedule for later this week.  I think that's about it for now!

This is more or less the look we're going for, after the whole white white white kitchen scheme didn't pan out.

In other news, BK has started to take a few steps here and there, so we needed to get her some shoes for when we are out and about.  She wasn't sure what to think at first, but did like the way they tasted!  Mmm shoes.

Attn: Diaper Designers

I need to get a little diaper rant out of my system real quick...

The diapers that we got from Mary Birch upon Brooklyn's arrival were Pampers Swaddlers.  I thought they were great... soft... absorbent...the "wetness indicator" (perfect for novice diaper changers).  I continued to use the Swaddlers for quite a while, specifically Pampers Sensitive Swaddlers.

People recommended some store brands that I admit I have not tried.  Mostly because some of the freebie diaper hand-me-downs I've tried in non-Pampers brand just didn't quite do it for me. They're rough, or the tabs don't stick as well, etc.

Now, I'm only saying all this so I can get to the point(s) --

Why is it is near impossible to find Pampers Sensitive Swaddlers in Size 4?  Why do they not make them beyond Size 4 in general?  And most importantly why does the Pampers alternative (called 'Cruisers') only come with silly Sesame Street designs all over it?  Why can't I get a PLAIN WHITE DIAPER?!?!?!

stupid diapers

pretty white diaper

It annoys me to no end.  What is the point of having an elmo face printed on the butt of something that is only used to catch pee and poo?  Who is going to see it?  Is there some sort of entertainment value that I am unaware of?  I do not see the point. And I just want a plain white Pampers diaper that doesn't show stupid cartoon heads through the butt of my baby's cute little clothes.  Damn you Pampers!