Corona Confessions...

We have now been under quarantine for 3 weeks, I really thought I would have so much more accomplished. I had such good intentions when this first started, I was going to get my house spic and span, the garden would be tilled and mulched, I would bake and do art with daughter and oh so much more.

3 weeks in and the house is really falling to pieces, I told the cleaning people to stay home and take care of themselves, with all of this extra time on my hands I could certainly clean my own house. NOPE. I realize I hate cleaning my own house. Normally I love to clean windows this time of year, not this year. In three weeks’ time, I have cleaned 8 windows, outside only, and if I’m being perfectly honest, husband did 5 of those. Every morning I wake up with the resolve to really get something done today. I am still working, but not a whole lot. At the end of each day, 5:00 by these new, lowered standards, I sit on the patio, glass of wine in hand and realize, not much is checked off my list.

But I’ve decided to give myself a break, the most important chore is getting done and that is spending time with my daughter. We have baked, and done artwork, gone for long walks and bike rides even a couple of picnics. We’ve had a spa day and a mini make-up lesson. Maybe tomorrow we will do mani/pedis. When it comes right down to it, this time is a gift. We are lucky enough to have a home to be quarantined in and people we want to be quarantined with. Our neighborhood is amazing and we are blessed with surprise music and 6’ apart happy hours. All-in-all if we just get to connect a bit more, then this is truly a blessing and spending this time racing around trying to accomplish everything at once would be the real waste of time.

So, from our family to yours, I hope you too can give yourself a break and enjoy just being, because really, isn’t that what life should be about???

And hey, stay safe out there…

The Big Reveal!

See, even the inside of the pendants are orange! Orange just makes me smile.The counters are Quartzite with a 2.5” mitered edge which gives it a substantial feel. If you’re going to sell your first born for counters, you want all the bang you can get!

The remodel is done and we are thrilled! We took a dark, cluttered kitchen and added light and order to the chaos. I like it so much, that I have actually cooked in it a few times. In the end we stayed pretty close to the original plan. We had to change out the encaustic tile since it was unavailable which caused me to waiver a bit on the cabinet color but I am happy I stuck to my guns. I had considered going with an off-black color for the lower cabinets to match the fireplace but I wanted to strike out and go with a bit of color. I let the house be my guide when deciding on color. I went to my favorite items in my house, the dear head over the fireplace (shown in the previous post) a large picture of a pear up close that is orange with a blue/teal background, an old metal sign with bits of teal. My powder room with tealish wallpaper and big orange polka dots and an orange ceiling. So it came down to orange or teal. Orange was just NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, so teal it was. I was fussing over the shade and not coming up with anything that was just right until I went into the Benjamin Moore store and saw their paint sample stand for the small line called Williamsburg. The color jumped right out at me and I knew that was the shade. In the photos, the lower cabinets look blue but they are really a dark teal called Everade, does anyone know how to pronounce it? or what that means? Drumroll please…Here are the pics…

There used to be cabinets here but we painted and moved those to the pantry. These shelves are made of white oak and stained a greige to match the new dining room table. More about that later. The two questions I get asked the most is, did you have all of those dishes? Yes. I had everything except for the black and brass vases. The second question is, do you actually use those dishes? Yes. I am practical and everything gets used on a regular basis. We ended up going with a stacked pattern to keep with the clean linear lines. I would have preferred smaller grout lines but this size allowed us to use full tiles and not have 1 row of 3/4 tile.

This sink and faucet are my favorites! The sink is a Kohler it has a 3 or 4” divider splitting the sink into thirds. Perfect for washing large pots and pans or cleaning small amounts of veggies. The faucet is by Cal Faucet in uncoated brass, also known as a live finish.

This is the before and after of the pantry. You can see that before we just had wire shelving that in the real world does not stay neat and tidy like it does in magazines. The glass cabinets are the ones that were in the kitchen prior to the remodel, now painted white. In the pantry we went with a herringbone tile to give a little visual interest to what is nearly an all white pantry. On the other side we had floor to ceiling cabinets built, I wanted a space large enough to fit brooms and the Dyson, and a place for the microwave. Underneath we added a beverage cooler to free up some space in the refrigerator.

We had some warping of the wood in the pantry due to one very sloppy dog, so we replaced the wood with encaustic tile which I am obsessed with!

I was able to negotiate a better price from the fabricator which led to the purchase of a new dining room table. You know…”while were at it…”

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So there you have it, all done and being put to good use.

Here is the before…

Go With The Flow

This has been an interesting time to be doing a remodel. We tried to order as much in advance as possible; lighting, hardware, sink, faucet were all sitting in the garage before the contractor swung a hammer. But the tile…with new tariffs in place getting items from other countries was difficult. We went through 4 to 5 tile choices from several different countries before we found one we could get without holding up the process too long. The floor tile was the biggest challenge, the cabinet color was chosen based on the “deer head” over the mantle and the floor tile chosen to match the cabinet color. When we found out that the floor tile would not be shipped from Mexico for 3-6 months, another choice had to be made. The tile did not exactly match the cabinet color and we toyed with the idea of changing the cabinets to a more blue shade of turquoise. In the end, the original color of the cabinets was just too beautiful to change (Benjamin Moores, Everarde Blue) Since the cabinets would not be butting up to the tile directly, the slight shift in shade is not noticeable.

In the end it all worked out for the best and I am crazy excited about the results. The big reveal is coming soon. I was planning to wait for professional pics but that could take too long and I am not big on patience.