Choosing Kitchen Stuff

We had another kitchen meeting this afternoon to look at lighting, glass selections, and to discuss backsplash options.  We were disappointed to learn that our designer is no longer with the company right in the middle of the project.  We really loved her!  I am sure we are in capable hands though and we've been reassigned to another designer.  We are working with really wonderful people. 

We are deciding between xenon and fluorescent lighting for under the cabinets and halogen for inside the cabinets and the wall niche.  We'll probably go for the fluorescents since it is less expensive. 

We selected a bubbled glass that has a vintage feel for the lit corner display cabinet.  It's goes well with the time period of our house.  I think it looks classic and enhances the display rather than obscuring it.  I like it much better than plain glass.  It adds a little interest.  This picture isn't the greatest (taken with a phone so it is blurry) but you can see the detail of the bubbles that we like so much.  It looks like really old glass.

For the backsplash we are going to have another wall niche to hold oils and seasonings that I use regularly, and provide a place to display favorite cookware pieces.  I have some really beautiful platters that beg to be displayed.  We liked a tile we saw today that is high gloss and has an elongated diamond shape.  The framing pieces for the border echo the rope design that we have in our crown moulding and filler spacers, so we think this will tie the kitchen together.  We won't choose the black as pictured--we're going to choose bright white or a nice pale neutral, but it gives you an idea of the look.  This is a picture of a card with a picture on it, and not the actual tile.

We are still considering continuing the granite for the backsplash too, but that may be out of our budget.  We put a deposit on the slabs we chose today.  Here is a picture of our slab:

And just for fun here is picture I took of Jeff today with the Astromeria bouquet he brought home for me.  The only thing I love more than my handsome husband is my husband with flowers:-)  He makes me smile every day.

They're Selling Our Rental

Our landlord informed us Thursday night that a realtor would be stopping by the following afternoon to install a lock box on the door.  They are listing the house for sale. 

I don't want to have to move (again) before we move into our new house.  I'm not looking forward to having showings again; it was quite stressful when we sold our old house, and now our time is so tight and divided between maintaining this house and completing the extensive renovations at the new one.  So it's not a great time, but what can we do?  We're lucky to be renting this place, so we will just be as accomodating as we can and keep the place looking show-ready so they can hopefully find a buyer.  I just hope we can get adequate notice before showings because with my herniated disc it takes a long time to complete the housework.  We gotta step up our efforts to getting the new house ready to live in.

Broken Window & Broken Promises

Jeff went to the new house to cut the lawn and discovered shattered glass all over our dining room floor.  We were the victims of vandalism--someone decided to break our window.  We were so happy to have the windows installed at the house too:-(  It couldn't have happened at a worse time because we are very very busy, but as they say when it rains it pours. 

Maintaining two houses is getting to be time consuming, so having this mess to clean up didn't make us happy.  Jeff ended up getting glass in his hand.  It was a double window too, which will be more costly to replace.  We don't want to make a claim on our homeowner's insurance because of the requisite rate hike.  Insurances are such a scam.  You pay so much hard-earned money into them, and when it comes time for them to help you out when you need it, you can't even make a claim.  It's a shame, too, because this expense means that we won't be able to finish something else in the house.  The funds we budgetted for the reno are almost exhausted (and paying rent plus a mortgage and utilities for longer than we planned is cutting into the budget), so we'll just have to save up to do some of these projects.  There's a lot of work yet to be done.  We're overwhelmed, but still looking forward to a day when all of this expense and hard work pays off.  I would rather live in a beautiful home that we own that isn't yet finished than to go into debt and accumulate more worries.  What good is a lovely home if you are too stressed to relax and enjoy it? 

Now for the broken promise; we're dealing with a fraudulent seller on Ebay who lied repeatedly to us and never replaced the damaged statue he sent to us.  Ebay won't help us because the time to open a case has expired (yeah--because the seller strung us along by giving us his word that he was going to make the situation right).  I might stop using Ebay because of this, but what can you do?  There will always be low class people out there looking to make a buck off the back of another because they lack the intellect or God's grace enough to make it on their own.  I've been through it before with other companies and people in my life.  The best thing is just to let these things go and let God deal with the bottom feeders.  Life goes on.  I can always find another statue, and one way or another this home will be finished someday and we're going to love it!

We've decided to hire our carpenter to be our general contractor to complete our kitchen project.  We discovered that people wouldn't get back to Jeff with quotes because he is just a mere homeowner and not a construction, electrician, etc. business owner.  That has set this project behind so much.  I have a feeling this carpenter is the answer to prayers to get the project moving.  We are excited to move!  He said that will likely happen toward the end of August or beginning of September.  He's not sure if the marble flooring will work in one place we want to put it though.  He's not sure if the floor is flexible enough for it.  I hope we can figure a way around that because I love white marble.  It's timeless; it suits the time period of the house, and it gleams:-)

I can't believe we've been living in a rental for almost 2 years trying to move forward.  The journey began 5 years ago.  Half a decade.  For half a decade we've been trying to move into a new home, so I feel like we're stuck in a time warp.  We've lost a lot of our life to this, so it's discouraging when things like vandalism and rip-offs happen when we are working so unbelievably hard to fix up our home so we can finally move in.  We'll make it, though.

This will all be worth it one day.  I need to focus on the positives:  We bought a spacious and amazing home with amazing potential in one of the nicest and most sought after areas of the county.  The neighborhood is great and we have plenty of land.  And I got to custom-design my own kitchen that I've seen in my dreams.  It's going to be one fantastic place to live!  We're going to have a beautiful life there.

Too Excited To Sleep!

My mind kept racing with great ideas, so I gave up trying to sleep.  After a day nursing a migraine and a meeting with the carpenter, I started thinking ahead of the kitchen and picturing the rest of the rooms.  It started at the hardware store today when I was picking out paint cards to bring home.  I started staring at them and wondering which colors spoke to me.  So many ideas popped into my mind so I had to draw them.  I have designed the dressing room and guest room already!  I can't wait to start those projects--and I hope I can make the ideas a reality.  I feel so inspired!

Figures!

The house in Baltimore county that we tried to buy for well over a year will be back on the market.  Jeff got a call offering him first crack at it.  Hmpf! 

I'm surprisingly emotional about this.  I wanted that house more than anything.  I hate banks.  They jerked us around so long for this short sale.  I am sure the bank probably just put band-aids over the mold damage just enough to resell--without any regard for the health of the family who decides to buy it.  They'll get a great house though, but I hope the leak/mold is disclosed to them. 

Knobs--ugh!

The curse continues.  LOL.  I gotta laugh, or else I'd cry;-)  Yesterday the knobs & pulls for the kitchen arrived and they are gorgeous--however, one of the glass knobs has a manufacturing defect that makes it impossible for the screw to go through during installation.  Glad I checked all 35 of them out!  Just emailed the company and hopefully they can send a quick replacement.  The quality of everything was just amazing though with that single exception.  I'd by from houseofantiquehardware.com again.

In Every Life a Little Tree Must Fall...

So the gigantic historic Oak tree on our lawn isn't in great shape.  A gigantic limb has fallen off into the yard and it would take about 20 men to move it.  We're going to need a chainsaw to chop it up and haul it away.  I think the tree is really unhealthy, so we're going to call a tree expert to have a look and see if it can be saved.  With our luck I do not want it to fall on the house. 

It's sad because I fell in love with the tree and it gives character to the yard.  One of the neighbors told us that it's the only surviving Civil War era tree in the area, which is why it's on a registry (hence the plaque we found on it).  We really want to save it.  Last Fall the orange leaves were absolutely gorgeous.

Last night we went to check the humane trap to see if we caught the pet mouse.  Not yet, but I noticed that since the wall is down now I can see that the floor in the dining room is a full 4" higher than the kitchen floor.  That's where the peninsula is going on top of, so I am not sure what we are going to do to fix that problem.  Oh, I would love a day without a problem!

We've had a string of bad luck lately, but we're working really hard to get things to come together.  Bel Air Construction has been wonderful in helping to guide us.  They have set up a meeting with an electrician and plumber next week so we can get this show on the road.  Jeff and I are learning a lot in this process and we're trying to make smart decisions.  We adore this house and want it to be a happy home, so we know these efforts now are going to pay off bigtime later.

One nice thing:  the knobs and pulls arrived today and they are stunning!  They will be like jewelry to enhance the cabinetry.  I'm trying to stay excited by holding onto the vision of a finished kitchen.  I picture myself making a big Italian family dinner in there and I see everyone, including me, smiling!

Windows are Installed

Finally something is complete at the house!  Well, almost.  Jeff decided to only get half of the windows done for now so we can use the money for other projects, but we were able to lock the rate we got.  American Design & Build did a fantastic job for us.  I hope that within the year we can finish the rest.

While the windows were being installed, Jeff finished gutting the kitchen.  He finally took out the sink and dishwasher and all the base cabinetry around them.  In the process he found a domestic fancy brown and white pet mouse.  He tried to catch him, but he got away.  We're setting a humane trap there tonight and if we're able to catch him we will take care of him and keep him happy.  I feel bad for the poor little thing.  I think Jeff tore out his home.  We can give him a much nicer setup if we catch him though.  Jeff said he was a cute little mouse. 

Our Electrician Is Incompetent & We're Cleaning Up The Garage

I can barely walk erect after 2 days of cleaning up the water damage in the garage.  We don't have renter's insurance, so we can't make claims on anything we lost.  We lost some small items, quite a few sentimental items, and a mattress set has to be thrown away.  My favorite antique piece, a new armoire, a brand new bed have mold damage to them, but we think we can get the mold off.  I really hope so.  That bed is gorgeous!  Heartbreaking to think it's unsalvageable.  I also lost some vintage designer handbags that belonged to my grandmother:-(  I also had many books that had to be recycled. 

Besides the physical pain of dealing with a bad back during all of this, there was some emotional pain too.  In unpacking damaged boxes to sort through and rebox items, I unearthed a lot of things long forgotten.  It's not easy.  I had to face a lot of my failures that were represented inside of those boxes.  It wasn't easy work, and I know that I have to part with a lot of sentimental things if I want to make my life a lot more organized and simple.  How do you part with things that mean a lot to you?  The mold forced me to do some of it, but there are things that I know I should toss that I simply reboxed.  For me this will take courage.  I know they are just things, and I should just take a darn picture of it, toss it in a trash or recycle bin and get on with life.  I'm way too sentimental!

This week was a one-two punch of disappointments commencing with the stupid garage leak (you would think someone would seal a building if this happens regularly) and ending with bad news from someone we trusted.  We spent 3 hours with an electrician that we really liked a month ago in a meeting that Jeff had to take a day off of work for, and we've been hounding him to give us an estimate since.  The work must begin with the electrical system, so all of the other work hinges on this getting done.  Well, genius electrician sends Jeff an email on Friday stating that he's been "racking his brain" trying to come up with a figure and he doesn't feel comfortable doing the job because he is incapable of arriving at a figure, the of the age of the home and blah blah blah.  What an incompetent piece of work!  And how callow--you send an email?  How about facing your problems like a man and actually picking up the phone?  You could've told us this a MONTH ago before we spent another month in rent and before we tell all the other workers when we need them.  This jerk really wasted our time.  Seriously, there are people holding us up in every direction, and it ain't me and it ain't Jeff.  I'm just tired of this.  So tired.  If I ever see that guy out in public I hope he is wearing a cup.

:-( :-( :-( Water Damage!

Just before bed we discovered some sort of water leak in the garage where we are storing our boxed belongings and furniture until we move.  We don't know where the leak is.  Most of our things are in there and today was about 98 degrees--so they are covered in mold:-(.  I am so very upset right now.  I don't know what, if anything, can be salvaged.  A lot of our clothing is in there too as well as housewares.  And furniture.  Some of my favorite things may have to be thrown away.  This is heartbreaking.  I can't even reach the landlord until morning.  I confided how upset I was to a friend who was so cavalier about what we're dealing with who had the nerve to say flatly to me, "Well there's nothing you can do about it."  Uh, how about a little empathy?  Seriously, I don't ask for much in this world.  Could you muster just a smidge maybe for all the times I have held you up when you were in a bad way?  Why am I always better to others than they are to me?

It's been such a tough week for me and it's only Tuesday.  I'm dealing with the death of a friend, conflict with a family member, liars in home businesses, a herniated disc flare-up, and now this.  I don't want to let these things get the best of me, but I fear that they are.  
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OK, so after some sleep and calm I can put things into perspective. I keep thinking about all of the people in Joplin suffering through unthinkable things. In light of that my own situation is very small and insignificant. My heart goes out to them and I wish them the best as the town heals.