The Final Result - Our Finished Kitchen

This is what we had as our cute kitchen for nine years...until cabinet doors started falling off faster than we could fix them and countertops started peeling away.

 And here is our after!

I still am working on the fun details like a roman shade over the sink and the fun knick knacks.  

It will come.

For now we are grateful to have the working kitchen and that we lived to tell about it!

 

Picking Out the Granite

I finally went to Dal Tile in Salt Lake and found these beauties...Yellow River....they were in stock and were just what I was looking for.  A little more than what I was hoping to spend but at this point, I didn't care. 

Dan had not been along for the ride on these shopping adventures.  He HATES things like this.  We work like this on large purchases:  I shop and pick things out, he takes a look at it and then says "Whatever you want baby." 

 He did look like a very convincing inspector in his orange vest.

 

We picked out the two slabs we needed and placed our order.

  

I love it!

I also ordered this beauty of a faucet from Amazon.   

 The Bellevue Faucet in brushed nickel.

Don't Take a Counter Top For Granite!

Not this girl!  

Not after what we went through to get ours!

We had a friend recommend the company Bedrock Quartz to use as our fabricator and I cannot sing enough happy praises about this company!  

They had a large in stock selection to choose from IF...I had liked what they had.  

But I tend to have a vision of what I want in my mind and then it takes me forever to find it, if I am lucky.  More often than not, it doesn't even exist.  

So I started the hunt looking in granite yards all over the Salt Lake Valley and ended up choosing a slab at a place called Contempo.  Which I later found out is the most expensive place you can go to.  

 

I knew I wanted something with "movement" in it.  Not splotchie or spotted or that looked like throw up.  I fell in love with this slab called Crema Typhoon.  

Done!  

They had five slabs in stock and I only needed two!

Not so fast.

They were all spoken for, even though no one had put money down on them.  Because that makes sense to hold items for people when there is me standing there with cash in my hand ready to buy.

But they can order me some!  

Great!  

From Brazil! 

Not so great. 

They told me to wait two weeks.  

Which didn't seem like that big of a deal.

Two weeks passed and they told me to wait another week.

Then I called to check (three weeks without a counter OR placing an order anywhere with my cabinets already in)

and the counters were...

stuck in customs. 
Still in Brazil. 

I LOVED that Crema Typhoon.  I searched everywhere to see who else had it.

 No one did and I knew I needed to move on.  Who knew when it could come in and if it would even look like these slabs?

Lesson learned for any future build or just to pass along.  

Your counter tops should be the FIRST thing you look for.   I could have at least had slabs on reserve that would have been ready to go when the cabinets were in had I known!

I Left You Hanging!

We have a fully completed kitchen, I promise!  I realized that I haven't blogged in a long time (does anyone really blog anymore?) but I should at least post pictures of our finished project!

We finally got all the cabinets in and the doors were being finished. 

 I then had the thrill of appliance shopping. Not my favorite thing to do so I made it easy on myself and hit Lowes.  We knew we wanted stainless steel and I knew for sure that I wanted a double oven, a quiet dishwasher (with our open floorplan that is a must!) and I went from there.

I ended up with a great deal on an LG suite.  I chose the French Door Refrigerator with Dual Ice Maker.  Don't let the sleek design fool you, this fridge can pack it in, it's HUGE!

I love the three separate drawers and the large deli drawer underneath.  The doors hold a TON and the shelves slide in and out to make room for different items. 

For the stove I went with the LG 30 inch 5 burner Double Oven with Gas Range.  I love that I can cook two things at once!  It was really the only way to get a double oven into this space and I've been really pleased with it!

We were really excited to finally have appliances back in the house and a semi working kitchen again! 

 We saved the old kitchen laminate counter to set on the top until the counter tops came in.

Doesn't it look classy?

Next up? 

THE COUNTER TOPS!

Also known as, the entire reason our project went over budget and seven weeks past our time frame. 

In Go the Floors!

 For our cabinets...I worked with this awesome guy named Cory at MC Mill & Design here in Utah.  He was recommended by the lady who does my hair and I was sold instantly when I got his bid. 

 He was very nice and professional.

His bid came in less than half of our home improvement store quotes... but for fully custom job 

 I poured over Pinterest and magazines for months, but ended up using a design from a magazine that my sister in law happened to send me.  I love seeing all the painted cabinets but I was really just going for simplicity.  We know this isn't our forever home and I wanted to keep things prefect for me, but also perfect for anyone who happened to buy it in the next 10 years.

 The floors were going in and the kids talked us into hanging stockings and putting up the cheapy tree. 

 The big boxes in the living room are the best things we purchased....TOTO Drake toilets from Home Depot.  

NOT kidding.  

The ones we had before were horrible.  As in, the boys plunged a toilet weekly upstairs.  So gross.  These had a review that stated that "Al Bundy couldn't even clog this thing up."  

Even at $256.00 each,who could resist a review like that? 

Besides, toilet shopping is not very fun and I wanted it to be quick. 

I am happy to report that after 6 months, we have not used a plunger ONCE in our house.  

That alone has made that money well spent.

 Floors!

 Floors!

 Front room - floors.

Then the exciting stuff started to happen...Cory and his crew started to install the cabinet boxes.  We had the island extended by a whole bank of cabinets to give us some extra space and storage.  

SO glad we did this!

 We chose taller cabinets that would extend as high up as we could with the slanted ceiling.  This gave me another shelf at the top of each cabinet for storage. 

 

Dan pretending to look happy that this is moving along.

The Bathroom Wanted in on the Action

Why stop with just the kitchen?  

We should totally re-do the bathrooms too.  

Because nothing is better than not having a place to cook AND not having a place to bathe. 

 At the same time. 

 Our reasoning was this...look carefully at the bottom left corner of the shower.  The wall was coming off.  Nothing was there anymore.  After hearing from some other Centex homes owners, we were sure this was causing mold.  We ripped out the shower KNOWING we would find it everywhere. 

Guess what? 

We didn't.  

Ruh-roh.....

Yes, I just quoted Scooby Doo.  Because I felt as stupid as a cartoon dog by adding on to the already huge project/expense.

 So this is when you sweetly ask your husband what he thinks about putting a tile shower in.  He is cranky about the project and says "Whatever you want babe." 

Dan is pretty great like that.

 We went with Surface Art Venetian Reale Collection porcelain tile in Napoli.

 This was going to be used in our bathroom as well as the kids bathroom floor upstairs. 

 

 Then there is this moment where you joke with the tile guy that you hope he installs the right color.  And you inspect the box he opens - YUP!  

 

Right color!  

Except the box he showed you was the FLOOR tile (right color) and the WALL tile box was left unopened (not the right color.)

 And you have to break the news to him the next morning that it's wrong.  

 It was very brown....

He gets a little angry with you and you hope he doesn't key your car on the way out. 

It was nice enough, but I didn't really want two tile colors going on. 

 We had to completely reorder everything since matching up the color lots would be nearly impossible.  Add another eight days onto your project. 

Color #2 was chosen and this time I went with the same company and tile, but choose Antique Onyx.  

I love it even better than the first choice!

And you wait....

 In the meantime we expanded the shower and made it 6" bigger.  Doesn't sound like much but it is a huge difference!

 I realized last minute that I could add a niche!  There are SO many details that go into these projects that the simplest ones somehow get lost.  

I love having this now, so glad it occurred to me to put it in!

 The shower was opened up, sealed, Dan installed a new drain.

I picked out the new fixture at Lowes. It's the Kohler Linwood model and we love the rain shower feature.