This week we are working- I mean my father is working on the electrical in the kitchen. This is definitely a job we would have had to hire out if we weren’t lucky enough to have someone skilled at it. Thank Pa!
This has made us start to think about lighting and the space as a whole, dining room and kitchen. We don’t want too much going on but we want some pendant light
For now, we are looking into these two globe lights as our pendant lighting. We will have one over each window. We are leaning towards the globe from West Elm. What do you think?
Calhoun Glass Pendant- Pottery BarnGlobe Pendant- West Elm
When working with natural stone, or mostly natural stone countertops it can take a six to eight weeks between ordering and installation. With our goal of finishing the kitchen in October it is time for us to get serious about choosing our countertops. We have searched The Home Depot and Lowe’s for granite and quartz. Between these big box stores quartz wins out.
Our plan this week was to visit two local stone dealers to see if they had a bigger selection. We visited two local dealers, North American Stone and Rocky Mountain Granite. North American Stone had a much larger selection of granite than the big box stores, but their price of quartz was nearly $30 more per square foot. On Saturday, we headed to Rocky Mountain Granite. There selection was four-times that of The Home Depot and Lowe’s and nearly three-times that of North American Stone. We found four to five options for us. During our visit they took our drawing and measurements we provided and copied them. After we searched through the slabs they took down some of our top choices and emailed us a quote two days later. There service is definitely top-notch.
Right now here is what we are looking at in granite:
Imperial White
Imperial WhiteKashmir WhiteKashmir White
We plan to head to Lowe’s tomorrow to see if they can get either of our top choices in granite and price out the quartz. We will provide updated photos of our top quartz options.
We changed our mind from the early days of the kitchen planning. We originally were thinking black granite countertops, now we are thinking a light white/gray. What do you think? Too much white; not enough contrast, or nice and airy?
We have been pondering flooring before we even closed on our home. We are fortunate to have beautiful hardwood floors throughout the entire house that were re-finished as part of the purchase deal, however our kitchen, bathrooms and laundry room all have white ceramic or white marble tile that we really dislike.
Don’t get me wrong, white flooring is beautiful but it is really not practical, especially for high traffic area spaces. Our laundry room for example serves as the entryway from the back of the house and the entryway from the garage and it is also the through-way from the garage to the basement. We are constantly trekking through there and the white flooring shows any and all kinds of dirt, not to mention stains from paint and other things.
Now that we are renovating our kitchen we decided to put new flooring down in the kitchen and have it continue through to the laundry area and downstairs powder room. In comes the decision-making and compromising.
decorpad.com
In my mind, hardwood flooring is the best decision. We can control how light or dark we want it. It has some give if you drop plates, glass, etc. on it. It will keep my feet warmer through the long Rochester winters.
Marshall feels differently, for him it is porcelain tile all the way. His main point on this is that the rest of the house is hardwood and the existing hardwood floors are original to the house. His point-it would look awkward if the hardwoods don’t match.
Is there a proper flooring for kitchens? In the end, I decided I wanted him to be happy. He feels so strongly about it and on this point I can definitely be persuaded.
Lowe's Store- Taken by Marshall
So, porcelain tile it is and we’re in luck. We found porcelain tile we like at Lowe’s. In the meantime I am on a hunt for a new pair of cozy slippers that he will be gifting me soon!
Yesterday Marshall and I decided we were sick of living with mismatched window treatments, so we went to Lowe’s on our lunch break and picked up some bamboo shades. After dinner we got to work. Ok, Marshall did most of the work, but I provided the eye needed to get the job done while working on our wedding thank you notes.
We started with old clearance panels that were chocolate-brown. The panels were too heavy for the room, but they were a temporary solution until after the wedding. I was so happy to take those curtains down and put them away. Marshall then removed the curtain rods and measured the space for the bamboo shades. We hung the bamboo shade and then measured for the curtain rod. We placed the curtain rod and viola… it looked amazing. Even Marshall as convinced. We love this technique, thank you YoungHouseLove.
I worked on wedding thank yous
We liked how clean and finished the new window treatments looked, Marshall finally hung the mirror on our mantel. With the exception of wall art, our living room is starting to come together!
The new weekend is almost here and I am just writing about the old one, so I’m a little behind. The dueling house projects continued this weekend. Saturday was the same as last weekend; women on the outside painting and men on the inside making a mess, I mean making our kitchen beautiful.
Sunday, however we had a set back as we woke up with a water problem. We knew last weekend that we had another backup of some kind, but we weren’t sure how serious. Thankfully, our town covers backups from the main to the house. We gave them a call and had them snake our main line. After a series of other checks and tests we moved on. That being said, most of Sunday was spent on the water problem.
Some good news is that we successfully placed the beam on Saturday and removed all remaining supports, and our house is still standing!
We carefully removed the remaining upper cabinets; why you ask? The space between our current upper cabinets and counter is 14 inches and the standard is 18 inches.We decided that we want to raise the cabinets to the standard of 18 inches (space between cabinet and counter). So we removed the cabinets and the remaining soffit. It was a good thing we did, we quickly noticed that the window above the kitchen sink needs to be replaced. The current size of it wouldn’t look right with the new cabinet height. Here are a few pictures of our progress.
When we purchased our home last October we began to see the style of our home everywhere, similar to when you are thinking about buying a car and you begin to really notice all the cars around you when you never did before. For some reason we became fixated on the gutter systems of the homes that were similar to ours. Our gutter system had four downspouts in the front. Really chopping our house up into four parts. To make the downspouts stand out even more, they were white and against the stone they really screamed, “look at me.”
We knew we wanted to paint the house this summer out of necessity and desire, so we decided to change out this excessive gutter and downspout system at the same time. I’m seeing a trend we really like piling on to house projects with more projects! Here is the work we have done so far…
Tools needed to get this doneUsing Seamers, Marshall sealed the inside of the gutterCut the downspout to the right sizeBeforeDuringAfter
Now we simply have to paint the new downspouts and we are all set.
The most important goal for me, with window treatments, is making the room feel as open and cozy as possible. YoungHouseLove, one of my favorite blogs, recommends using panels with bamboo roman shades/blinds to create the illusion of a big window. When you hang the shade, hang it above the window molding and same with the panels- framing the window. I love this idea and I have had a hard time thinking of anything else lately. We finally got our new panels from Pottery Barn (at a great price) just purchased for our living room; to make the windows pop and to introduce some texture to the room I am going to try this.
Marshall doesn’t like this idea. So, I will keep you posted as to who wins, or compromises!
YoungHouseLove.com
What do you think? Is this a great idea to maximize space and create the illusion of a large window, or is the idea of a bamboo shade just crazy?
As a wedding gift, my brother is crafting us a beautiful bookcase for our home. The piece is almost finished and it’s ready hinges, stain and the perfect cabinet latch. We looked at pulls and latches at The Home Depot and Lowe’s and didn’t find what we were looking for. My brother checked Woodcraft and still didn’t find what we were looking for. Finally, Marshall searched the internet and at lunch today we took a field trip into the city to Historic Houseparts, Architectural Salvage and Restoration Supplies. Here is what we choose…
Albeit a little eerie, Historic Houseparts had exactly what we were looking for. They had hundreds of latches, hinges and more hardware than I have seen in a long time. You can search through hardware and old parts pulled directly from local historic homes or you can choose from brand new fabrications. In addition to hardware, they have historic light switches, lighting, clocks, columns, doors, windows, molding, sinks, bathtubs and more.
If you love all things historic and vintage and you happen to be in the South Wedge, visit Historic Houseparts or visit their website.
In one weekend you can really accomplish so much. With the men in the kitchen doing demo, electrical, plumbing and more, the ladies were outside painting. My mom is an excellent painter, but she didn’t know it until this weekend as my father doesn’t let her paint! We painted the sun porch and finished the second coat on the front of the house. Here’s a look into what the men did inside.
A long work day, turned into an even longer work day when we returned home to painting and prepping the kitchen for demo day. We worked until dark on opposite sides of the house. Marshall finally finished the top of the house and I worked on painting the trim on the sun room.
After painting, we moved inside and worked on prepping the kitchen for demo day #1.  We emptied some of the kitchen cabinets and arranged the food on a plastic shelving unit in the dining room. We then took the doors off the cabinets and shifted everything in the dining room against one wall away from the wall that is being removed. We also taped plastic between the living room and kitchen archway in hopes to minimize the dust in our stress free zone! Here are some photos of our nightly handiwork; it has to look worse before it looks better… actually we don’t think it could look any worse!
Our Fine House 