Kitchen Plans!!

Alright so Wednesday afternoon while Spencer was hard at work in the recruiting world, I went with Bob our lovely kitchen designer and shopped for the rest of the things for our kitchen, everything from backsplash accents to the all important kitchen sink. Spencer said I could pick whatever I wanted ~ so I did. Thankfully he liked it all. Ask me about it, and I'll let you see my kitchen in a bag. Ha ha. The places gave us samples of everything so I have little pieces of what my kitchen will look like when it's finished in only a month or so!

The kitchen faucet! Complete with two spray settings and a head with a magnetic catcher (apparently that's a big deal according to the saleswoman ~ I never even new such things existed).

Samples of everything for the kitchen. Bottom right: our lovely cherry cabinets with brandy glazing. I'm so excited about the glass doors we'll have on some of the cabinets. I can finally unpack the wedding china! Bottom left: black granite for the countertops, much improved over the cream laminate in the rent house, remind me to never have that again. Top: subway style tiles for the backsplash, including decorative pieces for above the stove. And last but not least underneath all the other samples is the floor tile we'll be using. Notice the lovely dirt color specs in it. Ha I won't even have to clean :). (Ha okay I know you can probably figure out what is a cabinet sample and what is a granite sample I just thought it was funny to use directions, I'm not insulting your intelligence I promise haha).

Close up of the reddish decorative tile we're using as an accent above the stove. I found out red natural stone is really hard to find! We were trying to find something to go with our exposed brick column in the kitchen and we ended up going with this instead of trying to match it with a slate or a gag!! glass tile. Okay I think glass tile is pretty, just not with everything else in our future kitchen.

And we bought our appliances!! Pictures to come soon . . .

Minor Delays

So we were supposed to have a new bath tub when we went today, but the plumber had some delays, and it isn't in yet! So those pictures will have to wait for next week, but in the mean time some more major updates (okay well some look some look like destruction, but I promise they're all part of our master plan, insert evil laugh).




With our strangely warm weather here in Tulsa the contractor duo (our contractors are father and son and they're just pretty funny) decided to start power washing the trim. We're going to be repainting it all, but first we had to get all the old grime off!


Goodbye ivy!! Our chimney was all covered in ivy, we thought we'd be tackling that beast on our own, but looks like this time we were saved!!





Make room for the new picture window! Okay so this is my favorite part of the front room. We're adding in a big window, with three big panes so we'll have a pretty view out to the street and we can keep an eye on anyone hanging out on the front porch :). Okay I realize this doesn't look like a window yet, but it's the framing for it. Come on have an imagination!

Time for a little more demo. The upstairs bathroom! We decided against keeping the old tub in there (dont' worry we're keeping the old tub, we just have to decide what to do with it! We looked up that kind of tub at Lowes and they're over two thousand dollars! So we're not quite ready to part with it yet!). So instead we needed to do a little demo to make room for a new tile shower, not quite as fun to soak in, but much more functional, and most importantly, leaves enough room for a toilet and sink in the world's smallest full bath.

And last but definitely not least, ta da, our new back door! The old one had a funky lock and wasn't in very good shape so we decided to get a new one and once again let our contractor pick it out since it is the back door after all and I think he did a pretty good job!

Next step: tub and walls! Looks like they'll get started with the dry walling right after Christmas. I can't wait!

Picking out a tub

Okay so I know we're behind. I'm just avoiding going to the house because it's sooooo cold and the heater isn't running yet and last time I went there I lost my voice for a day. Okay enough whining :). We picked out cabinets this week!! I'll post a pic when I can find one. And apparently we just need to pick out a bath tub for the downstairs and once it's installed inspections can be done and the dry wall can start going up. So tonight we're off to shop for a bathtub . . .

Note: So apparently picking out tubs is more stressful than we thought! Most show rooms close at five, hmm how is that supposed to work? And Lowe's makes the assumption you can't fit a one piece unit in your already built house because it won't fit through the door ways, but we have gigantic doorways and walls so it's not really a problem. So we decided to let the plumber just get a standard one. Which is what he had offered to do in the first place. I guess we should just let the professionals do their job :).

Out with the Old, In with the New (Mostly at Least)

Alright so while we partied with the fams and stayed up all night watching my rig run a pressure test, our contractor and his plumber and his heating and air guy and his electrician were hard at work bringing in all the updates.

New hookups for sinks in the kitchen! The plumber's also been working on our sump pump in the basement and trying to figure out what to do with our tiny bathroom upstairs! Still no solution on that one yet.




Lovely new hookup for washer. And what oh my goodness it's not in the middle of the kitchen?No way! It actually has it's own room!





Our one small surprise so far. We didn't think we needed any new ceiling beams, but turns out some of the beams in the front room were sagging and needed to be replaced and we also needed to add some new support on the sides of the rooms. Too bad those aren't real 2" by 4"s like in the rest of the house.





New furnace! I think the contractors will be more grateful for that then us, at least at first. The inside of the house is frigid right now. They have a big space heater but it's still probably less than 50 degrees in the house. Bring on the heat! Too bad that also means two gas bills till we vacate the rent house :).

Check out the new recessed lighting in the front room! And vent work! I can almost feel the heat blowing out of the vents right now. And no more window units for air conditioning!!! Look closely and you might be able to see some of the sagging ceiling beams they're still working on supporting.

And the grand finale! No more cloth wires! Okay there's still one on the ground, but it will soon be in the dumpster!!

No More Walls!!!

All our walls in the trash! (This is the second dumpster they've filled full of plaster and lathe and old wallpaper!!)

Our back room! No more red linoleum! Bring on the breakfast nook.

Looking from one of the bedrooms, through the hallway, into the kitchen!

Looking through the bathroom and the bedroom into the back room.

Front room, soon to be the home of a new window! Bring on the new electric and HVAC!

Mini Updated

Okay just so you don't freak out with the lack of posting over the past week, I thought I'd give everyone a little piece of mind :). They've just been ripping out walls and ceilings all week long! The rubble all kind of looks the same so I didn't think you'd want to see endless pics of nails and plaster and dry wall on top of plaster and waynes coating on top of dry wall on top of plaster and fifteen layers of wallpaper. Okay that might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Right now we're still ironing out the kitchen details. I met with a guy from Kitchen Designs by Jim Thompson and he's going to go over a plan with me on Monday. We'll see if I like him enough to pay him to do the kitchen (which yes our contractor is okay with). Apparently alot of cabinet makers shut down over the holidays so it looks like we need to get the cabinets ordered asap! Alright I'll try and post more pics next week. Hopefully they'll start the electric then!

http://www.kitchensbyjimthompson.com/

Ha just for fun. Enjoying our rent house while we can:

Tornado in the Hell House?!

Ah so today a tornado went through our house!

But wait we're still smiling! Is that our bathroom in the background?

Spencer behind bars in our living room! Yep that's the front door in the background.

Check out the original wiring in the house! And yes this picture is rotated, I'm having issues right now turning it right side up :). The wires were just wrapped in cloth and then when they had to go through wood, they went through ceramic nobs to make sure no sparks hit the wood. Notice how all the lights are on it the house! Too bad we have to take out perfectly functional electric!

Looking into the living room for one of the bedrooms! We're still trying to figure out what the strange pipe is between the frames, any ideas?
And yes last but not least umm entertaining, the lovely bathroom! Good by fake tile walls!


Alright on to more kitchen planning. I'm almost done sketching my plan, I'll scan it in once I'm finished!

Here you go:

Demo!!!

So the contractor started! I think i'll just the let pictures speak for themselves.

The kitchen!!!!

So my goal for the weekend: figure out what I want in the kitchen, besides walls of course :).

The work begins!

Okay so just a mini post today, we had a bunch of people over from work and church and TU over yesterday to see the "before" so that everyone can appreciate the "after" that much more. It was fun just to get to show everyone how bad it looks right now and also how cool the neighborhood is and how close to our offices! It takes about five minutes to get there from work and that includes walking in the parking garage!

So Monday we signed the contract with our contractor and he starts ripping out walls today! More pics to follow I'm sure :).

Day One!!

We own a house! Or I could say Bank of Oklahoma owns us. On friday afternoon we closed on our home! First we headed over to the BOk mortgage headquarters to sign all of the construction loan paperwork. Our friendly construction loan lady reminded us that we do have to pay for that, apparently some people these days just don't realize they are actually promising to pay, go figure. Also we must keep the house insured or she will be very angry with us, which is a little hard to imagine considering she is miss bubbly!

So then we headed over the title company and met our realtor and signed a bunch more papers and handed them the check for the property! The title now says we own 303 N. Tacoma! We headed over to the house right afterwards even though we've seen it a bunch of times because we were so excited!!! Ha our loan lady asked us if we were going to spend the night there but we decided not too considering the state of the inside :). We did stay long enough for some neighbors to see us though (which we found out the next day).

Alright work day number one!! On Saturday we headed out to start conquering the quarter acre yard we just acquired. Here are some pics of the progress (after almost two hours of yard mowing and pulling weeds and vines from the sidewalk).



Spencer mowing the gigantic yard. He's already working on ways to garden so there's less yard to mow :)



The beautifully mowed yard!



The sidewalk! Okay this might not look that exciting but before you couldn't see the concrete at all!! I piled six trash bags full of dirt and weeds and long vines.



All the trashbags!



Random art. Okay random stuff I picked up from the yard and porch.

Alright but now for the best part. We met our neighbors! Across the street is Peaches and her grand kid Niko (who has already been offered to us to help clean the ivy of the house whenever we need it ~ sweet!). Her two daughters live down the street along with a set of twin grand babies who are "double trouble" and will "tear your house right up." ha. Then today after church we met our next door neighbors who were glad to see that no weird couple moved in next store, which apparently they'd been afraid of. They thought we looked relatively normal ;). Apparently we are also "really young" according to the neighbors who have mostly lived there for over twenty years. They offered to watch our house for us though, so looks like we'll be safe. Alright not thinking of anything else right now ~ more on the construction part to follow soon!

Woo hoo!

Okay unless anything goes weird, we close tomorrow!

Change of Plans

Okay so these are a little late, but last weekend we decided to take a break from the house work and take a mini trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Conveniently while we were there it was corvette weekend! And we decided to buy this instead of a house!!!

Okay so I might be lying. But we did get to see a bunch of sweet corvettes and I decided I still like the BMW 1 series better, although the old school Stingrays are pretty sweet.

While we were there we also spent some time in coffee shops (go figure) and biking (although the trail ended up being exactly 4660 ft, which we didn't read until we had reached the end of the two minute ride) and hiking at roaring river state park in my grand old homeland of Missouri!! Oh and we also had really good Italian food and cooked our own steaks and watched four straight hours of HGTV ~ I think the house buying thing is getting to us! Oh and we looked at a bunch of local artwork and ended up with a really pretty white vase with a lily on it.

On the house front, if all goes as planned we'll close by the end of the work week! All we have to do is resubmit our construction bid to the bank and sign our lives away!

Enjoying a really froo froo drink while reading Esther and planning out the day.

A place we could have paid five dollars to picnic at (yes i know that's bad grammar). We found our own free place to eat ~ a really, really hick place in Eaglerock, MO that had pink wallpaper and pictures of eagles all over the wall, including puzzles that had been finished and then glued together!

The gorgeous view from the shortest bike ride ever!

Structural Inspection ~ Grade A+

Okay so all we had left to do to satisfy the appraiser and the bank was to get a structural engineer to verify that the foundation was secure and we weren't going to need to spend any money on that or the roof. So yesterday we had Ange's dad come out and look at it (yes that is his day job in case our loan officer is reading this ) and he said it has some of the best bones of any house he's seen of that age in the area! Looks like someone already put a bunch of work into adding supports to the roof and to fixing foundation issues.

So, our grand total for foundation repairs: $0!!!

Now all we're waiting on is closing date! It should be Thursday or Friday of next week. Then bring on the sledge hammers!

More from our inquisitive loan officer

Jenny posted last about our quirky (but helpful) loan officer. Jenny's mostly been handling the loan side but this last Friday I thought I would help out and give the bank a call to take some of the pressure off. Anyway, here is my conversation:

Loan officer: so where did you find your contractor? Is he just some guy off the street?
Me: on the better business bureau. He had the best rating and had been around for the longest time.
Her: oh, have you seen any of his work?
Me: yes.
Her: oh, how did you find the house?
Me: our realtor.
Her: oh, ok.

It kind of felt like an interrogation. She's being really helpful, though, so I guess we'll let her ask lots of questions and think we are crazy.

Still waiting . . . and random motherly comments from the construction loan lady

So we're still waiting on the appraisal. Apparently they're supposed to have it done by Thursday and then it will be definite crunch time to get it done by the 8th when we're supposed to close. In the meantime random comments from the lady we're working with to get approved for a construction loan:

Wow, are you sure you know what you're doing?

Does it need a new roof?
Me: No.
Who told you that? You're mother?!
Me: No. We had three (competent ~ okay that part was only in my head) contractors look at it and they all said the roof was fine.

Man i see this and I think you're crazy. My husband would probably see it and think potential!

Who's going to clean out the attic?

What about the random exposed wires in the basement? (okay confession, i didn't actually know there were wires down there because I haven't explored the basement yet considering there is no electricity and there's no telling what is down there! but the contractors walked through it . . . and i've decided to trust them ;) ha)

Oh and if you're going to hang a porch swing make sure you hang it from an attic beam. (okay this is just completely random! we never talked about this at all with her)

I just got your driver's license pictures and you guys are babies!! (wow I love the vibe of confidence I get from her)


Hmm i can't think of any more right now but I probably will later. The funny thing is regardless of all her comments she's still approving us for the loan :). So the random questions aren't really phasing me, they just make me laugh!

Waiting . . .

Okay not much to post right now. We're waiting on the bank to straighten out what information they need on the appraisal. Apparently everyone is confused by what we're trying to do! I'll just let the bankers work there magic and in the meantime keep dreaming about a new kitchen! On a side note, Tulsa set a new record yesterday! Random trivia: Yesterday Tulsa got 4.42 inches of rain (yes and lots of flooded streets); the last time the record was set was in 1902 and Tulsa got only a measly 3.5 inches of rain! Okay that's all, really I just like sweet thunderstorms.

Countering (aka Being Penny Pinchers)

Alright so we heard back from the bank yesterday and now we're just going back and forth on price a little. They dropped quite a bit off the price though, so looks like we'll be getting an even better deal! Bring on the paperwork!

Last night we got some shrubs to plant in pots, just to get ahead on our landscaping :).

Edit: They accepted our counter! Time to get to work!

Oh and it looks like we'll be throwing a "before" and "after" party. We'll keep you posted on when the "before" party will be. It'll probably be a little shorter than the "after" party considering we're not sure the toilet even works, maybe we'll rent an outhouse ;).

Making an offer!!!

Okay so we decided to make an offer on the house! We should get our paperwork to the seller (Bank of Oklahoma since it's a foreclosure) by tomorrow morning! We'll see what they say!

Uninformed Architect Wanna Be's

Okay so we're eating lunch with the contractor today to iron out some details. In the last few days, we've found out the bank needs more information than we were originally thinking. Besides an estimate on what all the repairs would cost, they also need "plans and specs" to approve us for a construction loan, which is apparently alot more specific than we had been anticipating. So . . . . I've been drawing up some plans ~ okay who am I kidding? I am not an architect or a designer :). Although I was remembering at one time I did want to be an architect, maybe I just never got rid of the itch? I'll just call it sketching for now. I'll see if I can scan them in some time soon.

Hopefully after lunch today we'll completely enlightened on the process and what all is necessary to obtain a construction loan . . .

Dreaming . . .

Okay so we walked through the house with the contractor yesterday afternoon, so that he could get a better idea of what we wanted. He threw around some numbers on how much things would cost, but he's supposed to get us the final numbers sometime this week! In the mean time it looks like we need to figure out what we want the kitchen to look like and how much money we want to spend on it. We could stick with the cabinets that are already there, but they aren't the greatest and there aren't enough to fill the whole kitchen so we'd have to find some to match them. Here are some of my brainstorming ideas on kitchens. And yes I do realize that these are all much larger than our kitchen would be :). I can still like parts of them though!

I like the cabinets in this one, and how light and open it feels.

I like the wall design in this one.

Okay more later!!

Waiting on the estimates . . .

Alright we're still waiting on the plans from the contractor. We're supposed to get them tomorrow!!! Here's a few pictures of the outside in the meantime . . .


Lovely gaping hole next to the utility meters. Maybe there's buried treasure under the house?!

Garage/shed/apartment out back. There actually is a toilet in here, so if anyone wants to come stay with us, let us know and we'll fix it up too :).

And . . . . sweet ivy on the chimney!!

Oh also, it looks like we might walk through a few more houses in Brady Heights that are for sale. We'll post pics if we like them :).