Last Preview

Here is my final kitchen preview before it is finished I don't want to show bits and pieces any more because it is such an extreme difference. Last week we got the new pendants up and the doors and drawer fronts all came off for the refinishing of the cabinets. It was a little easier to use the kitchen.

Just in time for us to escape to the desert, our kitchen got all tape off and prepped to spray.

This is what our living room is like now. Nothing else can fit in there. It is not a relaxing place to be.

It also stinks!!! We got home to an awful lacquer stink and the living room is so cluttered with boxes, chairs and appliances, we spent the evening in our room reading and playing games before bed. Little C loves that he can barrow books from the library on his iPod now! L and I played sequence and she beat me bad!

Remember on the last post I had my samples of back splash up? Well, I finally decided what I am doing! I went to Bedrosians, walked in with a mission in mind and bought a back splash almost immediately. I saw something on the wall and told the guy I wanted it. The bummer thing was the new die lot was a different color. They did have something slightly darker, though and I went with it.

The majority of people that I asked said to go with the blue. It was a beautiful color, but I went shopping and found all this...

The though of being limited to a back splash color was heart breaking so I had to let go of the blue. And, that's all I am going to tell you about the back splash! I hope it looks good when it is up!

Until next time, this is the only sneak peak at my white kitchen...

My back splash is in today so it should be going up at the end of the week. Monday my floor will get raised a couple eights of an inch and leveled then Tuesday, I start the wood. It has to be done by Wednesday because I have house cleaners coming Thursday (something I only do when we rent out our house!) Then Friday people to prep meals and Sunday extended family Christmas dinner. We have a very strict time schedule! ALMOST DONE!!!

Kristen

We Have a Countertop!

We finally got our countertop in! I am so excited. Our sink and stove will get hooked up tomorrow. I can use my kitchen again! But just when I can use it, I have to empty it all out. 

Here is my kitchen now. Today the granite went in and the drawer faces and doors came off.

Tomorrow I will get to use this beauty! It will be so nice to not have to walk upstairs to use the bathtub to wash some dishes.

In about 8 days, I will get to take all my pots and pans out of boxes to see how well they fit on the new stove top. The nice square stove top with no weird angles.

Tonight, the kids got to eat dinner at their favorite spot, at the bar. We are becoming very close with Chipotle. There are not many organic options when eating out.

See that door below? That is what my kitchen is changing to, Dove White from Benjamin More.

Now, I just need to come to a decision on the back splash. Both have things I love. The blue is hand crafted and the color just makes me happy. The gray arabesque is a very unique shape...

But what I love most about it is the aged look it has.

The thing I don't like about it is I feel like the color will get lost unless I have a ton of color on my counter. I have 2 more samples of arabesque tile I am picking up tomorrow, but they are just plain porcelain. If I am going to go with the more bland color, I at least have to have the aged look with the lighter edges.

I don't know, maybe I will come up with something completely different after making a 3rd trip to the tile store. I'll let you know next week what I decide.

Kristen

Progress... So Close, But So Far

 My street looks crazy. This whole time we have had a leak and repairs, our neighbor across the street has had the same problem. Nonetheless, I love driving down the street to see work trucks all over the place. It means progress.

This projects has had a lot of mess, a few set backs and some waiting around for people. But we are getting it fixed right. Every room in this house is now touched. It is like a brand new home. Look, no more hole in my kitchen! Not counting the cement they filled in that hole, they used 5 bags of cement to stuff in the void under the slab that was created by water shooting out for a month.

Since that repair in the nick of time, we got to keep our cabinet install date for today. The cabinets are back!

This is such a great feeling. Yesterday I dropped my husband off at the air port for a 4 day conference. I was a little stressed because I knew I was on call and likely going to be called to a birth. I also have 2 awards assemblies for my kids today, 4 soccer games for the them this weekend and last night alone both of the kids had to be in 3 places. So, sure enough as I was leaving the airport, I get a text from my client (5 cm but going leaving the hospital and going grocery shopping). It was an amazing birth! and I made home in the middle of the night to get a little sleep and make it to both kids assemblies. My kids also got to all their places and the dog got taken care of all because of my amazing community of helpers.

Needless to say, I started off the day a little tired and as it goes on that tired wears on my. When I am tired my patients are short. I have mostly been very excited about this project because we get to change a few things in the kitchen that I don't like, things I thought I would never be able to do. But, not just that, this time NONE of the work is being done by us. It is a different kind of stress, actually a ton less stress having a project that I know will be cleaned up when done, workers will protect my floor, it will be finished in a certain amount of time and my husband and I won't be exhausted in the process. There is a certain level I expect when people are being paid to do things. So, today when I come home and the cabinet guys are leaving with saw dust ALL OVER, I ask them  if they were going to clean it up before they leave. He told me he would sweep, but he doesn't have his vacuum with him... Ok, that's fine, I suppose. He swept and left. I went down stairs to take a look at my finished cabinets only to find sawdust crunching under my feet every where. I was so excited to take a nap before school got so I was just ignoring it. I'll clean later. But, there is so much and as I am looking around, I notice he didn't add the pull outs I asked for and he did this!

This is SO not a professional job! I was so upset. I sent a text to the project manager immediately and told him this is specifically something I said in the beginning I did not want. Then I told him about his rude cabinet guy and the mess he made. (By the way, I am the one that covered and protected my floor!) Long story short (and yes, there is more) This ugly disaster under the cabinets is getting fixed Monday and it will not anything else back, in particular the granite and sink. 

So, there is my complaint and I am extremely grateful for all this work and now, I am taking a nap for 30 minutes. Not enough time! (Plus, the darn dog is out snoring in my room like is so easy to be sound asleep in the middle of the day.) Maybe my kids will go to bed early with me tonight. Hopefully Monday more changed.

Oh, one more thing, the holes in the garage are all gone and it's painted today. My garage is put back and all new again.

Kristen

It's a Whole New Level of Dust!

Yesterday, after a week of no work, we had a portion of the foundation in our kitchen cut out. Our cabinets were supposed to go in last Wednesday, but we put that on hold because the hallow sounding sinking slab was a big concern to us. We decided to have Inline Construction come and check it out. We are glad we did! They squeezed us in to saw cut out a portion of slab that was sinking and fill any hole under it then repour new slab. I was in my room working and came out to a gray haze all over the house. Can you see in the picture? It looks kind of hazy? The picture just doesn't do it justice, that haze isn't the lighting, it is gray dust. 

Here is part of my kitchen, the part we are kind of using.

Then the other side. In the back left, you can see a gap under the slab. That gap was about 3 inches. There was nothing between the dirt and slab.

This picture is blurry, but you can see again a big gap. This gives a new meaning to a floating floor.

I don't know that they were thinking in the 60's, but they build houses with no rebar in the foundation and in some parts, it is only about an inch thick.

Today all the cement is cleaned out, it's filled and compacted. Now we are ready for some re bar and some new cement.

Another fuzzy picture of a gap under the foundation.

Hopefully this dust will settle soon and Friday my cabinets should be put back and soon I will have a normal house.

Until then, I finally went to Home Depot for paper and tape to protect my wood floor. I feel like every day of construction there is a new scratch.

Kristen