KITCHEN

Without further ado...our KITCHEN!

(*NOTE: photoshopped image. click on the photo to enlarge, then press the 'back' button to come back here)

Here are some closer-up shots:




Finally, a couple of close ups of the granite:



Left to do: Install toe-kick faces, choose and install back splash, install recessed lighting. That's it. :)


So...what do you think? Worth the wait?

Catching Up

As promised, two posts in one day! We're back from the granite yard - but we'll get to that later. First, lets catch you up on some of the things that have been in the works over the last couple of months.

Jesse didn't think we gave you all a good enough look at our pendant lights last time. Here they are again for your viewing pleasure.

We used to have a pretty ugly door coming into the house. We had bought a new one quite some time ago but it took us a while before we were able to install it. It turns out that it was a harder job than we had originally thought (if there's a theme to this blog, that's it!) -- but Jesse ended up doing an absolutely wonderful job on it. He had to cut out around the door, as it wasn't a big enough opening for the new one. Then he had to fill back in where he had measured incorrectly... Generally, doors come with a crappy metal threshold -- this was not good enough for Jesse so he constructed a BEAUTIFUL oak (to match our floors) threshold. I had never even thought about thresholds...but I'm sure glad he did!

Below is the old door and the hole that didn't quite fit our new door.

Here's our new door waiting to be put into its rightful place.

And finally, our front door!!! It's made out little house a lot brighter. It's not painted yet -- it will eventually be a glossy white (hopefully soon!) You can see the threshold down there at the bottom.


NOW...what to do with that old door. It looked pretty crappy, right? But it was Mahogany veneer...maybe it could be cleaned up? And we really do need a desk...they've been asking for those tables we borrowed back at work... Aha! We'll make the old door into a desk for our office! And I know just the person to tackle the job!

He really did a great job -- I didn't even recognize the door when I came home. I had gone off to procure us some legs for the table. The legs are a bit kooky -- but so are we. Even Jesse warmed up to them in the end. If you click on the picture you'll get a much better view.


Our cabinet doors are almost finished. We've got the panels and the fillers all done and ready to install but those doors have been giving us a heck of a time. Mistakes were made, tempers flared, but hopefully we'll have them installed in the next week or two. Below is a close-up of one of the finished panels. Everything is Maple and we finished it with tinted finish with an airless paint sprayer.


As I told you earlier -- we just got back from the slab yard. We forgot to take pictures of the granite we chose but I found one on the internet that looks pretty similar. As always, it cost double what we had budgeted but that just means that Jesse and I are giving each other the counter top for Christmas (and our next few birthdays...)! It's a variation on Ubatuba called 'Peacock' -- it's going to look beautiful in our kitchen! They come and measure on Monday and it will be installed by Saturday at the latest! If you're in the market, we ended up going with Amazonia, Inc. - they were fair and helpful, which is what we look for in companies to whom we will be gifting with our arms and legs.



That's it! You may also notice a new picture of Jesse and I over there on the right hand side of the page. It was taken at Pat and Jenny McAnany's wedding.

Cheers!

PS: My sister, Meshion, is in the process of buying a house. You can check out all of her ups and downs over at Meshiandthehouse.blogspot.com

New Kitchen! (Almost)

It's been a while. We've been stalled. Jesse started school again and we ran low on that stuff that makes the world go 'round ($). We've done a few little things, which I'll post later today, hopefully -- what I wanted to tell you is that the ball is rolling again! Jesse and I are about to leave to go to the granite yard to select our counter top! We've been rolling with that plywood sub-counter top for a couple of months now...longer than we had anticipated. It's getting grimy and it's time to cover it up with pretty pretty stone.

Here we go!!!

A Kitchen! (sort of)

It's been a while. I know. Should I explain why? Okay. Well, about the time we returned from New York, I began working 75 hour weeks with my normal job and a few side projects I took on (to fund the renovation.) Jesse was also working 75+ hour weeks on the house, but with nobody around to photograph him few pictures were taken. Also, with us both working so much, any time not spent working was spent sleeping. In addition, we had to have everything ready before last Thursday, July 31st - ready enough for three house guests and pre-wedding parties for 20+ people. Things have been tense.

We pulled it all of though, with very few hitches. We married off the McAnany's (Jenny and Pat) and had an absolute blast doing it. Some of the pictures made it online (facebook), some didn't.

For this post, I'm going to take you back to the beginning and bring you into the present.



The first two pictures are the kitchen pretty much as we found it back at the end of March.





Now we'll jump ahead to mid June after we had knocked the wall out between the kitchen and living room and Jesse had some of the kitchen framed in.






Late June: We have our cement backerboard installed over our subfloor and Jesse has fabricated the toe-kicks for the cabinets. Things are starting to come together...




Mid July: We have drywall! And the travertine floor has been back-breakingly lain/laid?




Mid to late July - we have cabinets! They came on a pallet - Jesse's job was to figure out how and where to assemble them. You'd think this would be easy - but it's only easy for a trained, experienced cabinet dude. Below is the progression of the installation. This took about two working days-ish. As a side note, this is maybe a week before our guests were to arrive.







You can taste it, can't you? Well, here it is - kind of. We still don't have any cabinet doors, drawers or hardware, but darnit, we have appliances. And shelves. And a plywood sub-countertop. I wish we had a picture of everything without all of the supplies - but please realize that this all took place the DAY that Shannon and Dave were scheduled to arrive. Thank goodness their flight was delayed seven hours or so...




As a reminder, this is the kitchen we had planned:




Just because I'm a bragger, check out the bannana hook!





Another set of before and afters: the dining room.

If you enlarge the picture below, you'll see what we moved into as far as 'window trim' goes. Not much.




Remember our makeshift counterspace from the time before permits? Last March - May?



And now, with the skill of Jesse, our lovely dining area. Our window trim is not finished - it's lacking primer and paint and such, but you get the idea.




Below are a couple pictures of our beautiful floor. Oye! The work that went into this. (I'm sure Jesse says that about everything, but the floor was the one thing that I really really can say that I did a lot of the work for.)




Just in case you wanted a close-up of our pendant lights -- there are three of these above the bar-height eating area that separates the kitchen and living room.



We also finally have window screens and blinds in the back of our house - the bedrooms. Here is a shot of the office.



We've still got a ways to go, but we're on our way. Jesse's parents are coming for a visit next week. After that it's:
1 - Finish cabinets (doors, drawers, etc.)
2 - Granite counter tops
3 - Backsplash

Then maybe we'll take a break before beginning the bathroom renovation - which includes moving, building, or removing five walls. Hahahahahahaha!!!

We'll keep you posted!

Back to work

After a nice vacation in New York, we're back to renovation reality. I'll post some pictures of our trip soon, but for now I'll show you what Jesse's been up to since he got back earlier this week.

First off, because we lack a solid door between our super hot garage and our kitchen, it's been getting really really really hot in the house. In case you don't believe me, here is a thermometer at 1:00pm. It would be even hotter if I hadn't gotten up at 6am to open some windows to get a cool breeze (making sure to close them before 10am.)


I'm not sure how well it comes through, but this light blue will be the color of our living room area.

This green will be the kitchen color - although the yellow around it makes it look a little more yellow than it is.

Here it is. Our (dirty) kitchen that Jesse's been drywalling and taping since Tuesday. What you can't see is how he also hung drywall on the ceiling - BY HIMSELF. I'm still not sure how he managed that. But I don't ask questions of super renovation man.

A while back I promised better pictures of my car - once Liz sent me the pictures from my Mother's Day surprise trip to New York of Sawyer, Dylan and I. Alas, they never came. But since we were there, I took some initiative and got them off her camera myself. Now that I have my pictures, here's the promised picture of my car. I really really really love it.

Ah, Cheeba. I thank the universe that she's still with us. You see, Jesse picked me up at the airport yesterday around one o'clock in the afternoon. For some reason, I was super super tired and fell asleep on the sofa around 3:00. At some point, Jesse decided to move me to the bed and since it was hot in the bedroom, opened our bedroom window (which does not have a screen.) I slept and slept and slept some more. He came to bed at 11:00 (at which time I woke up and asked if it was dinner time...) and apparently forgot to shut the window. And he closed the bedroom door, locking Cheeba in our room.
Around 1:30am I woke up to a dog barking and a cat fight. I saw the door was shut and the window was open and ran to the window in time to see Cheeba being attacked by a cat twice her size near the edge of the canyon. Oh my goodness.
I screamed (but Cheeba couldn't hear me as she is deaf), scaring the other cat away. By the time I got outside (in my underware with no shoes) both cats were gone. Yelling may have happened. At Jesse.
We searched the canyon for about a half hour with headlamps and flashlights. We just couldn't find her. Finally, I heard the next-dog-door barking again and I ran back up to the house. Nothing was there but I started talking to the dog, asking it where Cheeba was. All of the sudden, I heard a sheepish little "mew" behind me. I turned around to see Cheeba running toward me and I scooped her up as quickly as I could.
She had a bite mark on her back, was missing several whiskers and was very very dirty - but alive and happy to be back inside. She demanded pets then drank water like she'd never had any and ate a ton of food. I watched her for quite some time, happy she'd been returned to me.


Phew!

More to come later.

Travertine Station

We woke up Friday morning and realized that we needed about two more bags of self-leveling compound for the floor - we were hoping we could get away with the five we'd put down Thursday evening, but it just wasn't meant to be. We put the two last bags down and went back to the Big Orange Box while it dried to get mortar, sealer, and all that jazz. We also stopped by our friend, Robert's, house to borrow his wet tile saw - which ended up being invaluable.


Of course we had to put our stamp down - because who can resist wet cement?

We started by arguing about the pattern we wanted the 12x12 tiles to be in - and came to an agreement on a brick layout at a 45 degree angle to the room. We had to lay all the tiles down and figure out which ones needed to be cut:

Jesse on the tile saw. No time for bathroom breaks.




Here it is all laid out and cut - if only we didn't have to start picking it all up to lay the mortar down...
Time to start laying down mortar - at midnight...

This is as far as we were going to get - 3:30am and headed to bed...

A nice early start at 12:00!

Check out the 'stache and the guns. He should be illegal.



Last piece!!!!!!!!!!
All those tiny little 1/16" spacers really add up. Done. 9:30pm on the 4th of July. Well, at least we heard the fireworks.