Sunday Salutations and Duct Tape for Momma

Good Morning and welcome to the start (or the end) of another week.  Depends on how you look at it I suppose. 
Momma and I did a little window shopping yesterday.  I was up early as usual and by 8:45 I couldn't stand it anymore so I woke her up by starting breakfast.  I had a loaf of Italian bread that had been hanging around all week so I made some French toast.  Or would that be Italian toast.  Whatever, it made for a great breakfast paired with some link sausage from Mr. Evans in the maple form.  Oh before I forget.  Kids if you use the last of the syrup please tell the guy that buys the groceries!  Nothing worse than having you breakfast almost finished and no syrup.  Thankfully I have enough ingredients laying around that I made my own.(syrup)

We stopped at the new house for a quick measurement or two and headed to the home improvement store.
I am building some custom closet organizers (instead of the goofy wire ones u can buy) and wanted some precise measurements.  While we were there I showed momma how I plan to tear down the walls and open up the kitchen.  We took some floor measurements for the living room as well.  We were going to go with carpet but changed to hardwood floors instead. Here are the choices:

From left to right

A--4.75 " wide handscraped Hickory Tuscany finish

B--4.75" handscraped Maple Modena finish

C--3.25" Genesis Birch cognac finish

D--3.50" Santos Mahogany finish

These are all engineered hardwood floors.  Prefinished with a 30-50 yr warranty.

They can be sanded and refinished but only once maybe twice.

Which do you like?  I'll reveal our choice in a later post.

We also picked out some nice 18x18 porcelain tiles for the kitchen and second bath.  They have a natural stone look like slate or travertine (porous) but don't have the maintenance like real stuff.  (the mutts haven't learned how to mop yet).  I like the large tiles.  It makes the space appear larger.  Goes down quicker too.  We settled on backsplash tiles for the kitchen as well.  A variety of glass mosaic and ceramic squares.

I have a sketch of the new kitchen and I can't wait to get started on it.  I found a beautiful cooktop and double oven yesterday as well.  Just over a grand for all.  I really wanted a gas cooktop but for the price I may go with the electric.  I also set my sights on a beautiful hand hammered copper sink.  The price was around $600.  It's gonna be tough to talk me out of that one. 

The current front living room will be transformed into a somewhat formal dining room with cabinets and shelving that extend out from the kitchen and also incorporates a built in desk area for the blog station.  Basically I just listed the things I wanted in my kitchen (practical) and then started looking at kitchen designs and pictures, colors and textures.  Picking out bits and pieces from other kitchens allowed me to design mine.  I must admit I have looked at hundreds and hundreds of kitchens.  I am still tossing the idea around of building my own cabinets.  Yeah I know honey!  These people don't want to hear us arguing over me wanting to build everything in the house from scratch so shut it!

Just kidding she would be fine with it as long as the duct tape doesn't come loose! :)

I figure I have a year to build all the cabinetry.  It's not hard.  I'm not sure I'm gonna do the dovetailed joinery but it will be nice custom made cabinets.  I can't really guesstimate on the cost savings because I haven't really compared it with anything yet, let alone sit down and draw up any plans for the actual cabinets.

Little by little I could build the cabs.  Store them in the garage and when the moment is right (climb in my tub with a...oh wrong post) install them.

Now on to countertops.  Yowza!  more than likely will end up with a solid surface top.  Sure I would love granite or quartz or some of that badazz recycled glass stuff but lets be honest.  In order for that Momma would have to get a second job and that would force me to remove the duct tape and well then we would be back to arguing about cabinets and we wouldn't be ready for a countertop.  See I think ahead!!

The island in the kitchen will be the best of all. A three tier design.  It will feature my cooktop, a prep sink, a 4 seat raised bar, a lower level informal dining table, a wine cooler and available storage for all things fun in the kitchen.  This will definitely be built by me.  A copper vent hood will extend gracefully from the ceiling.  Well maybe not copper but at least stainless. (copper all the way baby)

So anyways after visually spending thousands and thousands of dollars we went to a couple second hand shops in Lansing.  Used furniture close out specials all kinds of things.  New and used.  Our kitchen/dining room/living room is going to have a Tuscan inspired theme.  We love the warm and vivid colors and the way it makes you fell like just relaxing and kicking back with friends or family.  So in our travels we found these two pieces for the walls.

We were pretty excited to find them and paid only $40 for both.

Well it's 8:35 now so I'll guess it's time for some bacon and eggs and fried potatoes!!

Thanks for stopping by!!