Final touches on the kitchen

We have been getting the final little bits done lately.  And it's been hectic!  (On another note, Brad's mom broke her hip and is in the hospital, so we've also been working with that).

Last Friday was a busy day.  We got the marble vanity tops installed in the master bathroom, the appliances installed in the kitchen, the carpet was worked on, the front door was installed, the deck was started and the cedar shake siding was installed!  WOW!  Busy! 

Here are a few photos of the kitchen to hold you over! 

This is a faucet I picked up on Ebay (love it!!) for $150.  It retails for $250.  It was new in box.  The faucet pulls out.  You might be able to look close at the granite- between the faucet and the soap dispenser, there's another hole.  :( We told the granite guy to put three holes (faucet, soap and air gap) BUT, apparently the code does not require an air gap if you have a garbage disposal. So, we have an extra hole.  Which I am not pleased about.  It's fixable- another soap dispenser, covering it with the metal flange thing that came with the faucet kit (if the plumber can find it...I gave it to him!) or putting a fake air gap on, or just putting an oil rubbed bronze plug.  It's not the end of the world, but I'm not super happy about it either, and it's totally our fault.

Here are the cabinets with our double oven!  The oven is a 30 inch, and the cabinet is 31 inches.  Needless to say, it's a tight fit.  Technically, a 31 inch cabinet is for a 27 inch oven.  We should have gotten a 34 inch cabinet.  It looks fine, but it was so close!

You can also see the hardware, which I installed all by myself!  Got them from Target.  The handles were $9.99 for 6 and the bin pulls (on the drawers) were $4.99, but totally worth the extra cost. Thanks again to Amy for picking some up for me out of town!
Here is the shiny, new refrigerator.  We built this cabinet using two pieces of MDF and wrapping the outside with bead board.  We bought the top 24 inch cabinet and it doesn't actually reach the back of the wall.  It was the cheapest option to have the built-in look without the built-in cost! 
More to come soon.  We are having an issue with rain/dirt/sod and a tiny run-in with the EPA! Oops!

The kitchen continues

Brad pointed out that I had not posted a photo of the kitchen lately.  So, here it is.

The island is stained, the granite is installed, the large piece over the stove is in, and the sink is waiting for its faucet.  The only thing missing? That cabinet on the back wall to the left of the large piece.  Um, yeah, about that.  I might have not paid full attention when ordering the cabinets.  We wanted the piece to be perfectly centered so we bought two 20 inch cabinets to flank it.  BUT the cabinets on the bottom, well they did not.  So in order to have the black piece centered over the stove cabinet, we had to special order another cabinet there - an 18 inch.  And the other side really needed a new one too, a 24 inch, but we couldn't bear buying two more special order cabinets, so we opted to use a piece of filler.  We got the replacement cabinet a few days ago, but haven't been able to install it yet.

This is the glaze that we will put on all the white cabinets.  It kind of looks gross and dirty this up close, but we did it to our last kitchen and it turned out fab.  

Just wipe the glaze (cabinet stain -you can order it from Lowe's or Home Depot) on and wipe off as much as you want.  We leave a small amount all over the surface, and more in the cracks.  Let dry (may take a few days) and cover with poly.

The kitchen comes together

The granite is completely installed and we got an amazing deal on it!  

There was a tiny bit of miscommunication (in that I don't think we actually told the granite guy we changed our minds...) and we ended up with the Black Galaxy instead of the Absolute Black.  So there are tiny little gold flecks.  But I think they look brown and will tie into the cabinets really well once we antique them.

Here is the kitchen from a distance.  The island is New Venetian Gold (there's a great vein running though it that you can barely see from here)

Here is a close up of the sink.  It's a granite composite (we were offered a free sink, but it would have been stainless steel, and free is good, but all my fixtures are Oil Rubbed Bronze, so we thought the grey/black look of the granite would work best.  OK, Brad didn't actually care, but I did!).  We bought one from Home Depot, but when we gave it to the granite guys, they noticed that it had a funny back lip that slanted.  Which was a design feature to hold an in-sink cutting board, but would have looked strange.  So we took it back, and bought this one from Lowe's (And it was about $80 cheaper, which was great!)

This is the small side wall by the refrigerator cabinet.  I still LOVE the microwave cabinet!  These are a great solution if you don't want to do the mircohood vent or have it sitting on your counter.  We originally wanted to have a really cool roll-top cabinet that sat on the counter where we could hide the microwave and other small appliances, but when we decided on the corner pantry, that idea fell to the wayside (because it would have been in the corner - and now there's no corner).

And the last wall we got completed (at around 5 pm on Sunday) is the stove wall.  Instead of dropping a bunch of extra cash on a stove cabinet that is deeper and adding decorative spacers with legs (that whole set up would have cost $600!!!), we pulled the cabinet out from the wall 4 inches and wrapped the sides in bead board.  Before we stain it, I might add two small round "feet" under the edge to really make the stove area pop and look like a piece of furniture.  The added a rounded edge around the stove area, which is the feature that I really wanted!  So, we have a very high-end looking kitchen, but at a fraction of the cost.  

Total cost on cabinets= $5,500

Total cost on granite= $3,500

There is so much going on right now, that I hardly have time to eve write about it!  This past weekend we finished up hanging the kitchen cabinets.  Technically, we kind of finished last weekend, but there was some 'scope creep' (a little industry lingo meaning that someone changed the original project by adding on – and yes, that someone was me) and it took a little longer but looks awesome!

First, I might have suggested that the microwave cabinet be pushed out with two 2x4's so that in addition to being taller, it would also be larger (which would help the crown molding fall on the side, rather than hit the door).  BUT, if we are going to have the sides stick out, they should probably be wrapped in bead board (like the stove cabinet).  

AND, we might have bought the wrong size bead board, causing us to go BACK to Lowe's again.  BUT, I told them (husband and his brother) that it was OK, because they could get it when they get the bead board for the refrigerator cabinet that needed to be built.  

THEN I realized that the guys from Casa Blanca Granite and Marble said they would install the granite sometime early this week, and well, if the granite is being installed, shouldn't we have the corbels and bead board on the island before?  So, we stopped the door painting and went to Home Depot to buy that.  And again, it looks awesome. 

When we bought our cabinets, we could have bought matching boards to wrap around the back, but they were $70/ each and we would need 4.  Instead, we bought two sheets of bead board (@ $35 each) and ordered the matching stain with the cabinets.  That will occur sometime in the near future.

The kitchen is well on its way and I couldn't be more excited.  We bought a sink with a single bowl that is pretty huge!  It's black composite granite.  And despite a previous post about the granite, we changed our minds on colors (surprise!) and opted for a beautiful piece of "New Venetian Gold" for the island and "Absolute Black" for the back counter. (Which rocks because I can go back to the really cool crackle pendant lights over the island!)

Cooking up some problems

This week has brought more and more problems.  Not huge-life-altering-problems, more like annoyance level equal to a gnat-on-red-bull-problems.  The Kitchen.  My beautiful, beautiful kitchen.  I went back to Lowe's and visited with Dan, who surprisingly did not run when he saw me coming.  We moved the dishwasher and replaced it with a smaller cabinet in hopes of widening the walkway to an acceptable width.  We also added twenty inches of cabinets on one of the walls.  So that is done, and I promised that I would only be back to order them.  Let's hope I can keep that promise.

So, the amazing piece that we bought to be the centerpiece of the kitchen will need to house a vent hood for the oven.  We had planned for that and (stupidly) assumed that the vent could be directed straight out the back.  Nope.  It has to go up.  Well, the piece will end up being about 8 feet tall but the ceiling is 10 feet tall.  So our builder gave us three options.

1) Have the pipe stick up out of my BEAUTIFUL CABINET (and paint it the wall color)

2) Build a box around the pipe, which will still stick up out of my cabinet

3) Push the pipe into the wall so that it is not visible from the kitchen, but would create a crazy "bump out" off the back of the house that would be bricked around.

Um, no thank you.

We are going to attempt to build a faux cabinet over the top that will cover and extend all the way to the ceiling.  If it works, it will look gorgeous.  If it doesn't I'll have wished I had not shared this with everyone.

Lessons learned

Things have been moving along.  The windows were switched (it turns out that only one is wrong, the on over the garage and one in the garage were reversed) and the plumbing has been roughed in.  Friday, we met with the electrician and decided where all the lights would go.  During that meeting, I realized I have probably spent too much time picking out tile and not enough time thinking about other things.  Like, where exactly our light switches would go.  Since we designed this house, (and not someone who, you know gets PAID to do this) there are several places where things may not make sense.  Like the fact that we have a pillar RIGHT beside our front door, just to the left. So, our door has to open to the right.  Which would be fine, except, now the light switch has to go behind the door.  Poor planning.  I mean, I would have NEVER thought of that.  So, much of the conversation with the electrician went, "Well, what do you think?"  And then I would agree with whatever he said.  Because, he's been doing this for much longer.  And he was working on Saturday.  (I'm finding that more people do that than I thought – maybe it's the economy.)  

Friday, they also finished putting on the roof shingles and began installing the HVAC.  We picked a dark brown roof color.  And we are using ridge vents instead of "whirly birds."  They are more energy efficient and look much nicer.

The electrician says that he thinks he can have all the electric roughed in by Tuesday or Wednesday.  It looks like we are still on target to have drywall up before the end of this year.  

We had planned to stain the concrete over the Christmas holiday then protect them (depending on when the drywall will be done).  Today, we set up some test spots and ran into a bit of trouble.  The floors aren't as nice as we had hoped.  They are scratched, there are a few places they have been written on, and you can see some of the swirl marks from where it was smoothed.  Hmmm.  So, now, we are back to the budget trying to determine if we can squeeze out another 5K for bamboo floors.  Which, I really hope we can.  We had planned on doing hardwood later (like in a few years) to help lower our total cost now.  

We also have a small problem in the kitchen.  The island wont be as long as we thought.  Instead of 11' 8", it's probably going to be more like 10'10" which probably isn't as devastating as it sounds to me.  Basically, we designed the kitchen on paper.  And once we got the walls up, we realized that what we had designed at Lowe's based off what we had dictated to our architect didn't leave a walkway between the island and the refrigerator.  So, to make the walk bigger, we have to scoot the island.  But, the pipes are already set for the sink.  The only option is to move the dishwasher to the left instead of the right and to put a smaller cabinet where the dishwasher was supposed to go.  Again, not awful, just not great.  But, with each little hurdle, we learn.  Which will be great if we ever decide to do this again.  And that of course will be determined when everything is over.

My Sanctuary.

The kitchen.  My home away from home, um, in home.  If I could turn my desk into a cabinet an plunk down a slab of granite, I would be in heaven.  

OK, maybe that's a bit much, but I do love to cook and bake and basically make a giant mess of the kitchen, which my loving husband cleans.  Because he is awesome.

In our old house, we had white cabinet that we antiqued with a glaze.  And then (after Brad pestered me about it) we added a small island, but we didn't want it to match, so we went with a dark chocolate, almost black and topped it with granite. 

We like these colors, so we are planning on keeping it very similar.  Brad found this photo, and we have been referring to it as our 'inspiration piece.'

So, off we went to find something that will either come close to this, or at least help us get across the feeling of grandness.  We ordered our cabinets from Lowe's (in Bryant), and the extremely helpful (and more patient than I would ever be) Dan helped us get what we needed.  Until, of course, we found this.

And we had to completely over-haul the kitchen design.  And Dan changed it all with a smile.  (Although after the third time we visited him, I'm pretty sure he cursed us after we left.)  This piece was bought at Carries flea market, and (before you say it, no, it's not a mantle) it is actually the top of an entertainment center.  Once it is sitting on our cabinets, it will be close to eight feet tall.  Which should look perfect with the ten foot ceilings.  It will go on the back wall, over the stove.  To the right is the double oven.  And on the left wall is the microwave over a small cabinet, next to the refrigerator.

The kitchen has an eleven foot bar that will be comprised of the mocha cabinets topped with kashmir white granite.

The back cabinets will be glazed off-white (just like our last ones) but topped with Black Galaxy granite. Despite the gorgeousness of stainless steel appliances, we think that the black appliances will work better.  Which we have already started hunting down, but that's another post.