Living in My Beautiful Kitchen

It is hard to pick a favorite place, but my kitchen is definitely a great space. It is sunny and bright and spacious. I like the deep windowsill and the farmhouse sink. Great for washing those big pots.

Here you can see the two colors of granite counters.

I love cooking in this kitchen. It has taken me some time to decide how best to organize it,

 but that is a good problem to have!

It has been a few years since I cooked with gas, but I like it and am glad to get back to it.

The motawi tiles on the backsplash I showed close up on a previous post.

The white tiles are subway tiles and there is a green glass accent tile.

This picture shows my island and the great light fixtures!

 My old cookstove has it's own special place, next to the door to the pantry.

And on the other side is the butler's pantry, the breakfast nook and the door to my office.

This is the pantry.

So come on over for lunch!

My Craftsman Influence Kitchen

This is finally starting to look like a completed kitchen!

The top drawer has to be cut down because it hits the gas line.

 The tile backsplash  --  white subway tiles with green glass tiles and Motawi Tileworks tile accents.

The lights over the sink and over the island are all from Schoolhouse Electric in Portland.

All the appliances are in except the refrigerator. We are using the refrigerator we have in our current house.

The island and this cabinet are stained oak.

I am so anxious to get moved in and actually use this kitchen.

But as you can see we are kind of living out of the pantry! : )

Day 305 -- Oak Hardwood Floors, Kitchen Cabinets

Well, it has been three weeks since I wrote anything. It has been three rather stressful weeks. There is no doubt that things do not always go the way you plan and the drama increased before it decreased.  But eventually, with a lot of prayer, things worked out.

So here is what is happening:

The hardwood floors have been installed and they look amazing.

[They will be stained and finished later.]

The cabinets arrived and they are getting installed.

They aren't done but so far I love them!

This is the laundry room.

And Bryan is wiring the garage.

So all in all this has been a good week and things are moving ahead!

Next week should be another good one!

December and Cold Weather Have Arrived

December is here! Wow  --  time is flying by. The retaining wall guys are working. It is bitter cold so not much fun to be out there. I think it is actually colder in the house than outside!

Last Friday the painter finished up the last of the "car siding" boards. [I helped] Hooray! That was a lot of boards! If you look to the back of the shed past the 'drying rack,' you see the stacks and stacks of boards.

I am trying to get a few things figured out before the drywall comes in. Things like: do we want central vac? and how about an audio system? and the security system? and TV and phone lines? do we need a phone line? What kind of internet is available out there? All things that might be nice to have figured out while the walls are open.

Yesterday I had to go to the county courthouse. Apparently our permit did not include a finished basement. So I had to get that corrected. We also had some issues with the city and the county arguing over who was responsible for our address when the security company calls. No one was claiming us! But I think we got that fixed by changing our address.

Then we went to a flooring place and were thoroughly overwhelmed by options in flooring! They are really pushing prefinished wood floors but there aren't as many color options with prefinished. None of these decisions seems to be easy. Just when you think you know what you want someone throws you a new curve.

Today I spent time with the cabinet guy. He brought me a sample of the cabinet door in white oak. I am excited! Some of the kitchen will be stained white oak and other parts will be painted cabinets. But there are still so many decisions to make. I have discovered the website Pinterest can be very useful for pulling together things that I like.

A Rainy Week

Wednesday, Aug. 10, Day 29: Met the a cabinet maker. He looked over the plans and went over every room, not just the kitchen. He had some interesting ideas and was open to everything I told him I wanted. I am anxious to see what he comes up with and I just hope it is a price we can work with.

Thursday, Aug. 11, Day 30: Got the pricing on doors. They are expensive! I have to do some thinking about each door to decide what we really need to do. Also got the samples of the colors of siding. We are using James Hardie cement siding and would like to get the prepainted siding but really didn't want to choose based on a small square in a brochure. I think we have a winner!

The concrete flatwork guy is putting down rebar and the HVAC guy is putting in the tubing for the floor heat this week. We have had some rain this week and it is keeping things from getting done as quickly as possible. Hopefully we get everything done soon because the floor is scheduled to be poured tomorrow.

Insulation, rebar, tubing

Basement in moonlight

August 12, 10:30am -- storm on the horizon - I thought I would mow at the farm but it didn't happen!