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!!