Continuation of yesterdays blog about the kitchen….

DH and BF spent the day at the house working on the floors – mainly taking the staples that were put into the hardwood floors when the carpet was installed. This entailed crawling on the floor with vice grips and pulling each individual staple out of the floor by hand and I guess there were a lot of staples. They also pulled the last of the carpet from upstairs up and found more pee stains and damage on the floors. To say the least I am meeting with a flooring company about getting it redone professionally because of the time constraints we are now in. We don’t have the time to do it ourselves… so hopefully the price is reasonable otherwise we are going to have to find somewhere because we can’t paint the walls and put new trim down until the floors are done. Now for the kitchen part – they spent a good part yesterday attempting to take up the sticky tiles from the floor and its not going well. These aren’t your inexpensive tiles they are the really heavy duty ones. I am sure they will figure it out and its probably better anyways since we have people coming tomorrow to work in the kitchen. So, if anyone has any tips – please let us know and respond below.

Now – for more fun things… our Countertops!

When we found our tiles for the floor we lucked out and found the most perfect quartz that matched perfectly to the floor tiles. We then asked for a quote – it took weeks before we got a quote back, in fact about 4 weeks. It was a bit annoying but when we did we received a shock. After weeks of dreaming about this countertop – which was a highend quartz but we found it online for about $60/sq foot. So, when the gentleman called and told me that our 46 sq/ft of countertop would cost us, installed, over $6200. I was speechless… doing the math that was $135/sq foot. Way too expensive for our budget, in fact that would of been our entire budget and twice what we were finding online. He then tried to sell me on getting a granite countertop… yeah not going to happen. And this was the first person I have ever heard tell me that granite was cheaper then quartz, I guess if you are charging $135/sq foot it is.

Anyone who has talked renovation with me knows that I can’t stand granite. I think its overrated, major upkeep and many of them are a kinda ugh. Its too busy for me, there are some that are night but everyone uses it. We saw a lot of granite out there when were looking at homes with bad cabinets. Most was installed wrong, not sealed correctly, etc… So time to find another countertop. After speaking to some more knowledgeable countertop sales people we found out that our cabinets – while sturdy and well made – would not be strong enough for a quartz countertop.  But this was the countertop we were going to get…

We looked at the recycled paper countertops, which we found one place locally and they priced it higher then granite… again out of our price range. I found it online where we could buy a giant slab and install it ourselves -which was a possibility because come on kinda cool having paper countertops. BUT when they deliver it you have to take it off the truck and the delivery men can not help you. This would work since I would most likely be at home alone when it came in and while I like to think I am pretty capable at a lot of things – lifting a several hundred pound 60″ x 12′ slab of countertop by myself… yeah not going to happen. So, we looked around and settled on an acrylic countertop from Lowe’s.  Heading in the people were helpful but we couldn’t find a sample of the color I wanted to look at but wandering around we came across a display the countertop. We put the tiles up next to it and cabinets and it was beautiful. We sat down with the woman and pricing out the LG Hi-Mac Countertop installed with an integrated acrylic sink (which we upgrade from the free one for like an additional $125 – half of the cost of the sinks we were looking at) – we came out in the end with a price that was 60% less then the quartz. And its pretty…

Now Cabinets!

No fun stories here just the basic story of we aren’t buying new ones. The ones we got are well made and to save the money we are just going to resurface them and paint them white instead of having the honey-oak that they are now. I personally can’t stand honey-oak… it reminds me of apartments and the 80’s when it was used for everything. I have no samples to post about what they will look like. We are in discussions of possibly just buying new doors but that is going to take a trip to some local discount cabinet stores. So, there may be more on this end. Now, I made the mistake to purchase the cabinet knobs I wanted but depending on what we are going to do with the doors – they may not work because its hard to see if they will look right. I was only able to get 28 at the store the other day and about 7 short… I just have to make sure I can get more but also I may take them back and buy something else that is cheaper to help with the budget, which is getting up there.

Walls

We have the dry wall guys coming tomorrow to replace that crapastic texture on the walls and fix some bad  patch work they had done with the bar area. And after getting it priced out – they are willing to patch up the backsplash area for a decent price. Tonight we head over to take the top cabinets down and take the backsplash off in large sections. Its worth the labor to do it with the right price.As for the paint color – still no clue. I need to hit Lowe’s with some paint samples to see what will match the countertops. Most likely a very very very light green that will go into the kitchen and the dining area.

Gas Line

DH and I can’t stand electric stove tops, so tomorrow we are getting a gas line installed into the kitchen. Once again bringing someone in to do it but like many other things – time is worth the money. Unfortunately we won’t be able to afford a new stove right away but we are ready for when we do get one… which won’t be far out just want to take our time shopping.

Thats about it for today… I will post more pics as the renovation progresses… this is very exciting and fun but because of some options we have made we have had to forgo certain things such as renovating our bathroo0m. But with the bathroom we decided to wait because we want to do a full overhaul on that as well and get rid of the 3 different tiles that are in there and streamline in into something we like better. Its workable for now so we are good.

Laterz… the LO has woken from his nap and we need to go to the store to buy some supplies!