The kitchen is the heart of the home

The kitchen is nearly complete! The cabinets and counter tops are in. When designing the kitchen, we asked a lot of people for advice on the colors to go with for cabinets, counters, walls and tile. We ended up deciding on a color called Cashmere for the cabinets and a dark granite counter that has some browns and tans in it.  Looking at it all together, I think it's tied together very nicely. It's very hard to imagine everything when you're choosing out of a showroom. You can see how the pieces match, but it's hard to know for sure that it will look good until everything is installed.

Fred went to the house after the cabinets and counters were installed and had kind of a freak out because the counters seemed different from the sample we picked. I tried to assure him that with granite, each piece was a little different. He was convinced it was black and pink, instead of black/brown. So he decided at 7:30 on Friday night that he wanted me to see it. I kept telling him that even if it was wrong, there's nothing that could be done until Monday and we'd be at the house anyway that weekend. He didn't care and off to the house we went. I was starting to get nervous that it was black and pink cause Fred kept freaking out, so when we got to the house I was hesitant to go in. When I walked into the kitchen and looked at the counter in the light, it looked fine. It looked black/brown. I explained to him that the difference is that the brown parts were bigger than what was on the sample, but it looked good. I think Fred saw the counter in the afternoon light and it looked more pink than brown. So all is well for that. Looking at the kitchen nearly complete, I'm so excited to finish everything and get moved in. It is exactly the kitchen I've dreamed of and will certainly be the heart of our home.

Upstairs bath tile- not yet grouted

We still have a lot to do though. We're still working on the upstairs bathroom. I hope to knock that out this weekend and hopefully the Master bedroom. If we can have a weekend where there isn't four million things going on, we may actually get some work done. The tile guys have put down all the tile in the bathrooms and laundry room, so those are almost ready to go!

Downstairs bath tile

The guys are supposed to come this weekend to do the outside. From what I hear a whole crew is coming and they're going to work Fri-Mon to get it all done. I'm hesitant to believe it will be completed that quickly. We're painting the outside trim white and some of the doors will be white and the front door will be red.

The electrician is also supposed to finish up this week, thankfully! We've had several issues lately with the breakers. I'm also hoping he'll get the track lighting in the kitchen up and the ceiling fans in the living room and bedrooms up. It would be nice to have overhead lights in those rooms- currently there is none. The best part is that the appliances are supposed to be delivered this weekend. Hopefully, the plumber will get out there soon to finish up his stuff, so we can get the dishwasher and faucet installed.

Laundry room tile

Our ETA is November. Hopefully before Thanksgiving, but we still have so much scraping, sanding, priming and painting to do, I'm just praying we're done by the end of the year. Looking around the house, I can see how far we've come. We're trying to keep the integrity of the house, but make it into the home it should be. The home was built with so much stability and character, that we would be doing it a great disservice to renovate instead of rehabilitate. We've been doing research on the house trying to find information on what the inside and outside looked like after it was built, because we want to restore the original charm. I hope we can accomplish the task.