An hour-long immersive experience into other versions of me

     A few weeks ago my kids received an invitation to a sleepover with their cousins that was planned only days before the gathering, rather than weeks before, as is usually our custom. Normally we coordinate sleepovers when one of us parents has need for child supervision, or we want to make the most of our long Christmas breaks, or it's one of the children's birthdays and they want to celebrate together. This time it was just a tack-on to a cookout, and thus I was gifted the next day and a half without plans, obligations or expectations.

    The planner in me usually finds these short-notice opportunities kind of paralyzing, and I don't think I'm alone in that. We're all overtired and overworked, and the urge to crash or binge is certainly there. For me, I had recently started rewatching "The Man in the High Castle," a show I had been thinking a lot about during these wild political times we're living in, and I could have easily spent hours with the house to myself, undisturbed except for the occasional cat seeking some attention, but I knew that this scenario would have no long-term restoration to it. 

    Instead, on my first full day I decided to visit a friend who had recently had a baby and lived 70 minutes away (which feels like half a day away when you try to take two not-on-board-with-the-plan kids with you). I texted her that Monday morning to feel her out about a visit and received a very hearty welcome to come on down. I took my time getting ready, stopped to pick us up Panera lunch and some flowers for her, and enjoyed listening to a podcast during each drive--something I rarely have time to do. We had a great time catching up, I held the sleeping baby for almost two hours, and I tricked her three-year-old into cleaning up his toys by asking how many items he could grab at a time if he scooped up with both hands together (a bonus gift to mama!). When I got home, I made pasta carbonara with things we had in house for Josh and I, and even got to watch an episode or two of High Castle, without having let it dominate my day. 

    The Tuesday, however, only granted me a half day as I wanted to get the kids home before a hint of rush-hour traffic began, and Josh had already promised to take them to see "How to Train Your Dragon" in 3D in the late afternoon. What could I do for a few hours that would still feel exciting? What would childless Carrie of yesteryear do on a non-working Tuesday morning? And it came to me: go to IKEA. 

    Did I need something at IKEA, you may be wondering? Was there some little aspect of the remodel that was unfinished, or some need of organization or furniture that we still lacked?

    No. The remodel has been over and done with since January. In March, I refinished a buffet Josh and I had gotten at a barn sale and that got moved into the dining room where it now holds my terrariums (that will be a separate post in the future), and that was the last piece of the furniture plan for the renovated spaces. I needed nothing, not even a new vegetable peeler, which I use as an excuse to visit IKEA every couple of years (they're like $3, comfortable to hold and stay really sharp!). But walking through IKEA, studying the ever-changing rooms and fascinating little details is just one of the most relaxing things that I enjoy doing. 

    Let us look at this living room, for example. This was one of the first rooms to greet me on this gloomy Tuesday. Look at those green walls! I don't know what your screen looks like, but my screen is making them look a little more yellowy than they were. They were a great shade of green (more like that color by the window). The beige sofa and white tables would look so boring in a white-walled room (I know, I'm guilty of having Alabaster white walls throughout the first floor, but that's because I wanted my brand new walls to have that super-fresh look and let the woods and countertops shine). The bold green--not overbearing, but in no way wimpy or just dipping the toe into color with a pastel--really makes this room come alive. And IKEA has such a way with lighting. The track lighting on the shelf on the back wall, the string lights at the desk area, the pottery-shaped rattan lamp hanging over the couch--I just want to curl up there and watch my next High Castle! Just kidding. If this were my home, a room this big would probably be open concept and flow right into the kitchen. I like a snugger area for a tv. This room would be good for ... a book club. Little canapes would be on a tiered platter on the island, my glass salad plates (from IKEA!) next to them with a stack of cocktail napkins, a few extra chairs brought in from the dining room, and this is where we would discuss That Hideous Strength, the next book I'm planning to read because I saw a post that said it was as if C.S. Lewis had written it 80 years ago to warn us about AI before any such thing was fathomable. (If you want to read it too, let me know and we really CAN have a book club on it!) Before we move on to the next area, a quick close up from one more detail in this room: 

    The living room had a little drop zone and coat hooks, and a little sign that pointed out that many Maryland homes don't have an entryway closet (or foyers that are generally useful at all), and thus encouraged other ways to help keep these areas more tidy and useful. 

    The next room I wanted to linger in was this little kitchen. This kitchen is kind of narrow, and realistically, probably does not have enough storage (it reminds me of vacation houses with beautiful kitchens, but when you open the cabinets, they're all full of plates, glasses, pans, small appliances and a tiny cabinet of spices, oils and sugar, but there's absolutely nowhere to put all the food that you've brought with to, you know, cook and eat). But the against-the-wall pot rack makes the cutting board and stainless steel pans a work of art. The black DRAWERS (not cabinets with doors!) don't feel too dark because of this super light, almost-pickled flooring, as well as the armed light over the work zone in the foreground, the pendants over the sink and table, and directional lighting over the fridge area. A lot of time when people think about IKEA, they think super modern or stark, but this kitchen feels so homey to me. And look at the cabinets used as bench seating against the wall for the breakfast nook--genius! I'm sure that top probably flips up so they can pull out their serving plates or small appliances when they're needed. The narrow dimensions of this kitchen and lack of windows on the sidewalls made me think of a rowhome, which is perfect for a Baltimore-market. What would a Carrie who lived here do in this space? This Carrie probably works fulltime and entertains less often, and when she does, she's probably trying to scoot everyone out of the kitchen so she has room to work (or staying up until midnight the day before to get all the prep work done in advance!), but on the daily basis, this is a great place to eat breakfast in the morning, pack a work lunch the night before, and walk a few blocks with Josh to our favorite restaurant at least once a week because we live in a wonderful, walkable city neighborhood.

    I took pictures of a lot of the kitchens. I think you would get bored if I shared every fantasy I had in each one of them, so I will share just one more.

    I thought this was another great example showing that IKEA design is not cold or sterile. I'm not a white cabinet person, but my golly it looks so clean and refreshing in here. That island is a piece of furniture that can be moved and still configurated with storage on one side and seating on the other. Those giant pendants over it--what a lovely shade of mallard green. And the wall behind the seating area, I love how they mixed frames with family pictures with the decorative plates. For a while, before I found the giant tree path painting that we have behind our island, I had been collecting vintage bundt pans--the old aluminum ones that come in different colors--and thought they could make a really neat three dimensional display of art, but they seemed a little too country for me, and I worried people would bump into them, considering they can be up to 5 inches deep. And as for hanging dishes, it does seem kind of silly if the dishes (or bundt pans) have no particular meaning to you, but if they were family heirlooms, or all had a variation of a rose pattern and you grow roses and are obsessed with them, then it would be really cool. I again love these rattan lamps over the dining table, they're so beachy! Yes, this would be Lewes, Delaware Carrie's kitchen and dining room! This is the back of the cottage, where the sun doesn't beat down so hot, and the front living room has a big white-slipcovered couch that I wash every other week because it gets sandy and dirty. We have big tropical plants indoors and a stack of magazines in a basket under the side table, and I grab a new one on my way to the beach, which I ride my Vespa to, every morning from 8:30 to 11, before it gets too crowded. My Vespa is iridescent medium blue, like a bowling ball, and everyone knows it is mine because it has a umbrella attachment welded to it so I don't fry on my way back home or when I ride it around town in the afternoon. (I do not drive so fast or aggressively on my Vespa). Moving on...

    This was my favorite of the bedrooms. First, I love the bold artwork behind the bed. Well, maybe not THIS artwork, but the idea of a very large painting. We have a kind of large painting of clouds behind our bed, that I wish was bigger, but you get what you can find. Next major love in this room--the reading nook! It looks so cozy! Frankly, they could use more books and less baskets on those shelves, but if this were my home, I could put whatever I want on those shelves. We have a GIGANTIC bedroom because it covers the whole two car garage, plus the walk-in closet and master bath which are over the office downstairs, but the room has four interior doors and a big French door that goes out to our balcony (which was a MAJOR selling point to this house!), plus three windows that let in so much amazing natural light, but all those doors and windows mean there are no corners available, and the one long stretch is needed for the bed and bedside tables, and the other has a long, low dresser. I did find this really awesome doored-bookshelf for $35 at an antique mall that seemed like it was going out of business, so we do have books in the bedroom, but they don't envelope you in and force you to sit down and start reading. I think the moody walls and curtains make this room magnetic for resting and reading as well. I did a dark, peacock blue paint in our master bedroom for the last few years we were at our old house, but with the new house, my mantra for color choices was "light and airy." I'm sure at one point I will swing back to a darker color again, or maybe something in between. So what Carrie lives in this house? Empty nester Carrie. That's when we'll also be taking over the adjoining guest room to make it a BIGGER walk-in closet/dressing room/my personal office? Or maybe we WILL just make it the adjoining reading room, even better than this room because the night owl or can't sleep one can just slip next door and read with ample lighting while the other slumbers along undisturbed. (Guests will still be welcome, but the boys' rooms will be cleaned out and converted to guest rooms. Don't tell Rye!) (Sidenote: Knox said when he grows up, HE is taking over our giant bedroom, and then the wall between his room and Rye's room will come down to make one big but narrow bedroom for Josh and I to share, and that Rye will get the smaller guest bedroom. He likes watching HGTV shows with me, and I believe him when he says he would do it. Note to self: do NOT give Knox power of attorney.)

    Anyway, I spent exactly an hour daydreaming through IKEA, thinking of all the "Sliding Doors" versions of myself that may have been, and I even got two flower pots for $13. When the kids arrived in the IKEA parking lot for the transfer back to me, Rye quickly asked, "We don't have to go into IKEA, do we?" Nope, I answered, I was all done. And their super-tired, post-sleepover souls remained quiet the whole drive home, while I thought more about my Vespa. 

You don't have to buy anything at IKEA, but you can. 

    

Done, done-done, done, DONE!

The final piece of the kitchen! 

   

  I can't believe I haven't posted since early September! It's not that I got lazy, but we were kind of in a completion freeze for a while--work was going on, but nothing was getting finished. Since late August, the majority of the kitchen was done, all but the shelves behind the oven wall, and that last piece of the puzzle took a lot longer to finish than we had expected.

    Cabinet companies do make floating shelves in the exact woods and stains as the cabinets, but they are made in one thickness, and set lengths, and I wanted my shelves to be just 1.5" thick and run from the wall to the refrigerator cabinet, which was an 8'9" stretch. Our carpenter friend told us about a great planing mill in Washington County that did custom jobs for very reasonable prices. Josh called and ordered the four shelves that we needed, and was going to order two sections of custom-sized butcher block to be used as a T-shaped desk in the office. However, the mill said they could do a glue-lam desktop (wider boards than skinny boards used for butcher block) for the same price, so we decided to go with that option. The craftsman warned us it would take about 6 weeks to source the lumber for these long pieces, but considering the great price, we were ready to accept the wait. 

    Meanwhile, the office cabinets were installed in September, but there was an issue: the open-shelf cabinet that was meant to sit on the desk countertop came in a little low because the room's ceiling had not been as level as we had expected. This meant that our desktop would be at 28" from the floor instead of the standard 30" for a tabletop. We could have lived with it (and frankly, in my shortness, it would have felt very comfortable for me to type at!), but it was low enough that it would have been noticeable, especially with the really dark navy blue cabinets taking up so much space at the top 1/3 of the room. So we contacted the cabinet orderer and she ordered us a different cabinet that would be 3" shorter, and we figured we would make up the difference with trim. So that was another slight delay, plus, even after the replacement cabinet came in, the installer didn't want to come back until we had the desktop ready as well. 

A desktop that is below my hip 
height is too low.

   

    At the end of October, our friend helped install the backsplash tiles. Josh and I spent the night before opening all of the tile boxes and laying out the pattern on the floor. There were only about 6 tiles that had this beautiful, golden sandy hue--even though they were also marble from the same company--and we wanted to make sure they got spaced out. The tiling went great, and the light gray grout finished it off perfectly. I'm posting a picture of the backsplash and counter together, but the photo does not do it justice. I think it makes the tile look more blue than it is in person.

I know it looks like it clashes here,
but it looks dreamy in person. 

    In early November, the shelves and desk top were ready, so Josh rented a U-Haul and picked them up. He said the mill was incredibly cool, and I was a little sad I didn't go, but it was a homeschool day and I had duties to perform. The wood looked very different than I had expected, I guess because I was so used to seeing stained wood that having this raw wood in the house felt very different. The wood was EXTREMELY heavy, so once Josh and I got it in the house, it was sticking in the spot we set it--in the dining room corner, even though it blocked part of the path into the foyer. Thankfully, we still have a bunch of cones from Rye's "cone phase," and they sincerely did come in handy. 

Rye's old cones coming in handy.
Having them there for a month was not fun.

    Our carpenter friend was going to install the shelves, which would hang from brass L brackets that were spaced to go into studs behind the walls. It was not an easy job, with trying to accommodate the ever-so-slight warping in the wood (that happens), holding these incredibly heavy boards up to get them level, and spacing out four brackets per shelf--all level--and in their studs. Plus, we decided he would router out the spacing of the brackets into the wood, that way the shelves sat absolutely flat against the wall and the bottom of the bracket would be nestled into the shelf. It was a big project, and didn't happen until the first week of December. 

The custom wood shelves when they were installed.

   

 Then, a few days later, Josh and our friend Tom, who used to be part of a table-making business in New York, installed the desktop in the office! Tom was the one who told Josh it was totally possible to (safely and securely) install the desktop themselves, and in fact, had told Josh exactly what to tell the planing mill about how to have the two pieces of the desk pre-cut with these +-shaped gaps that would allow special affixing onsite--stuff that we had no clue about. Josh's big concern was that he only wanted two legs under the desk--at the farthest point out of the T-base, thus maximizing legroom under the desktop. Tom helped Josh also figure out how to support the T with nearly-flat steel brackets to give it extra (but still invisible) support. It turned out great! In hindsight, we could have ordered a bigger piece to come out in the base of the T (it is 30" by 30"), but since that's just kind of a bonus space anyway, I'd rather have it too small than too big. 

Josh and Tom admire their handiwork.

    The shelves and the desk were up, but both needed to be finished. We took the shelves down and put them in garage and I used the same stain on them as we used on the floor threshold pieces and door to the office: Rustic Beige. I lightly stained them--I was the primary stainer of wood trim in the George Street house--and then did 3 coats of water-based poly on them. Even with the cold temperatures in the garage, they turned out great (no drips!) and we got them back up shortly before Christmas! The desktop was installed in its raw state, so then I had to poly it in place. Unfortunately, the first coat did not go well--you could see too many of my brush start and stop marks. Josh sanded it down and I tried again, but we hadn't sanded far enough down, so the second coat didn't look good either. Josh borrowed an orbital sander from Tom to help him get more of the surface off with less effort. We also stopped by Baltimore Floorworks, where we had gotten the poly (and floor thresholds) from, and the owner asked more about the project before he gave advice: a 10-foot stretch is too long to be dipping a brush into a cup, it will start to dry too quickly before you get from one end to the other, which is why we didn't have time to correct brush end marks. He gave us a square foam pad that was three times as big as what I had been using, and told me to pour the poly directly on the desk and then smooth it out, almost like frosting on a cake. I tarped the floor and gave it a try, and our third "first coat" turned out great! I did three more coats (the perfect amount of overkill, as I told Josh), and the desk was finally done! Then the cabinet installer came back in January and installed the last cabinet between the desk and the high cabinets and the trim to finish it all off.

    The project was not 100% complete for Christmas, which we hosted, but it looked complete, and that was more than enough! 

The kitchen in use: my dad and I co-carving the Christmas meats!

    So that is the renovation--it took 7 months from start to finish, but it already feels like this is the way it always was. We had an elderly neighbor over who knew the former owners and had been inside many times, and his comment was, "this looks like the way it was always meant to be." Which really meant something coming from him, because he lives in the same exact house model as we do! 

    It feels great to be able to use all the spaces of the first floor--the bigger kitchen, the bigger dining room, the new office, and the better-entranced great room--and to get back to having people over for dinner--something we greatly missed during the renovation season! We're chipping away at our backlog of guests we have wanted to have over ... hope to have you over soon!

    Last note: this will not be the last post about the house. We also got new dining room furniture, but that is still a work in progress, so that will be posted another time :)  

    Also, if anyone else is considering a kitchen remodel, I would love to discuss ideas with you! I LOVE this stuff! 

*Nearly finished* the kitchen remodel

    I can't believe almost a month has gone by since my last post! Phase 1 of the remodel wrapped up days before we were leaving for vacation so we uncovered the floors to appreciate them the day before we left, and I am so glad we did, because when we got home, seeing it all with fresh eyes, it was stunning. 

Ta-da! The nearly finished kitchen!

   What's left that wasn't in Phase 1? The focal wall behind the range! Our plan is to do a tile backsplash up to 20" from the countertop, and have the tile end in a giant, full-length wooden shelf supported with brass L-brackets, then about 12-14" of space, and another full-length shelf. This is why the sconce lights are mounted so high. My goal for the shelves is to have some functional things on the first shelf like drinking glasses and salt and pepper grinders and measuring cups, etc., and then framed artwork and plants and collected pieces that I just want to display on the higher shelf, which are being lighted by the "stage lights," as Rye calls them. 

I know, it looks silly for now, but when it's done, it will be very cool.

   While the countertop is gorgeous and the pendant lights are style points, it's the personal pieces on this wall that are really going to make the room complete and homey--the room where new guests will enter and think "this is SO Josh and Carrie!" 

   Back to the backsplash. During the last week of work for Phase 1, I took the kids on a scouting out trip for tile to Floor & Decor in Parkville (though one should be opening in Owings Mills later this month). I LOVED the store! So many tiles, on displays and in stock, right in boxes right in front of you (that I could even reach!) so you could peek inside and see what they really look like. I took pictures of about 6 different tiles before my kids had had enough and wanted to go home, but I knew Josh would love it, so I figured we'd be back. And then the week after vacation, the four of us went back (taking gaming systems for the kids and sticking them on a bench in a patio scene) while Josh and I finished looking at the tile aisles (that's fun to say). We agreed on one pretty soon--a 4" by 16" honed marble with hints of dark blue, gray, and a few sandy-colored ones. 

"Aleutian Isles" Honed Marble

   We pored through the boxes, choosing our favorites and re-boxing them in groups of 10 (until a super nice employee told us we aren't really allowed to do that but that she was going to walk in the other direction and mind her own business), and we went home with 45 tiles, more than a little more than we theoretically need (because you never know if they'll crack badly when you make cuts), but you can return them too so it didn't seem like a big deal. We brought them home and compared them to the countertops, and while they aren't matchy-matchy, they don't feel like they are competing with each other, nor is either taking the back seat to the other. But we'll see how it looks when they're actually up there! 

   And as for the shelves, we found a planing mill about an hour away that should be able to make them easily and at a good price. We were waiting for the office cabinets to go in first, then we'll call and have the shelves and desktop made at the same time. 

   Enough future talk, I'll pose the question that everyone has been asking--do I love it??? There aren't enough exclamation points in the world to emphasize how much I love it! It's open and airy, fancy yet comfortable, spacious but not unnecessarily so, and is allowing us to flow through the kitchen so much better! Is it perfect? Probably not, but I think we did the best with the floorplan space that we had (compared to having a room that would be a little wider) and if I have to take a few extra steps to walk from the oven to the silverware drawer 10 feet away, I don't care. Little things like that can also be solved with organization. I'll bring some tasting spoons over to the kitchen utensil drawer instead of the silverware drawer only. My tall vinegar bottles don't fit in the pantry drawers or pullout next to the fridge-- but next time I will buy a brand with a shorter bottle, ha! And the island's end shelves that I planned to use for potatoes, onions and maybe spices still look very disorganized, but I'll work on that. Maybe I'll move the spices once the shelves are up, or decide to move the potatoes and onions to the pantry cabinet. Organization is not a one-time thing. Sometimes you find the right place for an item through trial and error. 

I was planning to get matching baskets to use here.

   Another thing I'm not so sure of--the hutch. I bought this beauty at the end of last summer from Facebook Marketplace, and I really wanted to incorporate it into the kitchen design. I had even considered going with a warm brown wood stain to sort of match it, but then went totally different with this light-colored Wicker stain on Maple. We very recently moved the hutch to the kitchen, in the spot we specifically designed for the hutch, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The color really stands out. And compared to the floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinets, it looks miniature! Also, the stain had some rough patches that I tried doing all the easy fixes for (Howard's Restor A Finish is pretty amazing) but now that it's in my brand-new looking kitchen, the imperfections stand out a little too much. I think if I keep it, I will remove the drawers and bottom doors and refinish them fully so my eyes aren't constantly drawn to the imperfections. 

Cat included for scale. 

I love the clean lines, but not sure it fits.

Something I AM loving though is having my dishes in drawers instead of overhead cabinets!

Drawers > cabinet doors > upper cabinets

   I'm still not fully unpacked. We have WAY more coffee mugs than we need and I'm waiting to see how many I will want to put on the shelves, then I will probably be thinning the collection out. I still have a whole box labeled "infrequently used kitchen drawer items" that I don't want to deal with yet (but I did open it to get my cookie scoops out to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!). I had been putting off bringing our vitamin bin up from the basement because I didn't know where to put them in the new kitchen (one of those weird items that you want to keep handy but also don't want to look at), but then we remembered there's a sort of secret cabinet in the island that we hadn't even placed any shelves in yet because we hadn't had a need to. Perfect for vitamins! 

   It still feels a little weird to have people over to show them "how I spent my summer vacation," but then again, it feels so good to have the space available again to do what we love--cook and host! 

   It will probably be at least a month before the shelves are ready, so I will not be updating again for a while, but when it's done, I will!

   Oh, I did post some pictures on the app Houzz on a string about Wicker Maple cabinets, because there really aren't any pictures out there and I was one of a handful of people seeking them back in the spring, and already two people have commented back that they are going with the Wicker Maple after seeing how ours turned out. Yay! So glad I could help them out! 

Floors, paint, countertops and hardware: a major transformation took place!

    Whoa, what a two weeks we had! Immediately following the last post about how the cabinets were getting installed, we had my niece and nephew stay with us for "Cousin Camp" week. My kids and two of my sister-in-law's kids of similar ages go to Creative Arts Camp at LifePoint Church and the cousins stay with us through the week because they live an hour away and it makes the week just that much more special. The cousins had seen the old kitchen ripped out, but they got a taste of what it was like to live out of the kitchen-dining room-living room all-in-one basement for a week. I think they were more ready than usual to go back home by the end of the week! (And I was ready to be done with so many dishes!)

   During Cousin Camp week, the hardwood floors were going in. Starting at the interior kitchen wall, the floor expanded toward the back of the house, then toward the front of the house until it reached the front of the center hall, though not for the last 4 feet of the front of the house because that's where some appliances had been sitting and were getting in the way. The great room was done next, and as of this writing, the office/laundry room and front of the house still need to be finished, but that is on the books for this week. The kids got a kick out of coming home and seeing how much had changed from day to day.

The new wood floors! Most are still covered in
cardboard though, so they weren't harmed during
painting or any of the other work going on.

   Last week, post-Cousin Camp, I came down with a long illness, so I spent most of the week in bed. The flooring was put on hold because the painters were available, and since the painting was holding up the electrician, this became the priority. (It was also MUCH quieter than flooring going in, and my pounding head was grateful!) The decision to hire painters was a bit of a tough one. I completely respect that house painting is a true skill, but I would also give myself a B to B+ as a painter. But considering every single wall had received some level of spackle, and I wanted all of the trim and doors to be switched from the almond color to a pure white, I knew it would take me a few months of weekends to get all that painting done, with many days of kids telling me they are bored and want to do something or go somewhere and I would have had to either disappoint them or be disappointed in my progress. So, when we were recommended a reliable painting company and were told that they could do the job--the entire first floor--in 3 days, we went for it. 

   The crew of 3 men worked from 8 a.m. to 4-5 p.m. for three days, then one guy came by himself on the 4th day just to do the last few little things before he and the rest of the company all took their vacations the next week. The amount of work they got done each day was amazing, and the quality is impeccable. We have these brand new floors that I was agonizing about getting paint on them, but through the week I only saw one big drip, which was removed the next day before I brought it up to them. The new quarter-round trim installed at the edge of the molding and the wood floor needed to be painted, and those lines are so crisp--there is no way I could have achieved that! I am so relieved that it is done!

   So, the colors. The Alabaster looks just as good as I wanted it to. The Upwards in the great room, however, is taking some getting used to. Picking my colors in a rush, I saw this color on the 2- by 3-inch card, associated the color with a pleasant memory, and approved it. But once it started going up on the walls--bordered by the super white new ceiling and the pale gray of existing paint, the color looked a lot bolder than it had on that little card. "It's totally baby boy nursery," Josh said. The new paint kind of glowed against the old paint. 

First glimpse at the new Upwards color

   But then we noticed the tone really changed with the different angles of light and different exposures throughout the day. In direct sun, it looked gray with a hint of blue.

Direct sun in the afternoon

   On the north facing wall in the afternoon, it looked sort of purply gray. 

Same time of day as above, but doesn't that look crazily different?

   On the west wall, it looks kind of baby blue. It's not what we expected, but I must say overall it is very pleasing (Rye disagrees). It does seem to be more of a bedroom color than a great room color, but we're not changing it now! Plus that room doesn't have any lights in it right now, so we'll get a new side of it with the 3000K LED lightbulbs very soon! Plus furniture and wall hangings and all the other things that make a room feel cozy rather than looking like an empty, colored box. 

Alabaster in the kitchen, Upward finished beyond

   The third major thing that happened last week is that the countertops went in! As I wrote in the post about picking out the slab, Josh and I like a bold piece of granite, and when we finally found this one, my heart was aflutter. We had even used painters tape at the warehouse to determine what part of the slab would look best on the island and where the sink should go, but when the slab got to the fabricators' warehouse, the tape had been removed. The week that the company was coming to measure our cabinets and develop the template for the countertop pieces, I emailed the customer service rep our photo of the taped out layout, and she said that was very helpful and she would go with it! So here is what that picture looked like and the template photo imposed on the slab that we got back from her before the stone was cut:

   It was very close to what Josh and I had designed, so I approved it with no further suggestions or hesitations. Then on Thursday of this week--in the early parts of the Tropical Storm Debby rain--the installers arrived with the countertop pieces loaded on the back of a pickup truck(!). They did a few last minute measurements, then the two men brought the pieces in, one by one: first the little cabinet behind the sink, then the piece to the left of the oven, then the piece to the right of the oven, and finally the island. I don't know how much that 39- by 122-inch slab weighed, but it was painful to watch just two of them pick it up off the wheelie cart and lay it on the island cabinets. I could tell Josh wanted to jump in and help, but it's one of those situations where the professionals know what they're doing and you have to trust it in their hands. They slid the slab a little to the back, then measured the edge. They slid it a little to the right and measured again--bingo! Next came the undermount affixing of the workstation sink, then the drilling through for the main faucet and our RO faucet. (We are sooooo looking forward to getting our water filtration system back up and running!) Josh and I inspected the granite and it seems great, no chips or cracks or fault lines. 

   On Friday night the kids and I had our first meal at the island:

Upon seeing the installed countertops for the first
time, Knox said, "do we get to live here?" Josh ate
with us the next night but I forgot to get a picture.

   I am just as in love with this granite as I was when I first saw it. I was extremely tempted to start moving all our kitchen supplies and food upstairs and into the drawers and cabinets, but considering we only have one working outlet and no running water yet, I held off. Those two things will be taken care of this week and then I'll get my chance to do the big move/organization (even if the floors and trim aren't done in all the rooms yet, haha). 

   One last thing, the knobs and pulls got installed on Friday, and I'm loving them too. This is "champagne bronze," and it's reading almost coppery right now without the overhead lights, but we love copper too, so I think it is beautiful and really compliments the softness of the wood stain. 

"Champagne bronze wishes and caviar dreams"

   In another week, I think the cardboard boxes will be removed, the official lights will be installed, and the kitchen will be totally in use. The last thing hanging out there is to pick the tile to go over the blank wall above the oven and get the shelves that will sit on that wall made. Since that might take another few weeks, I'll post one more time once we move back in and then again when it's totally done. Dishwasher and oven, get ready, I've missed you! 

Starting to look like a kitchen!

    After the walls were smooth, we could get the cabinets installed! Clearly, this is one of the most exciting steps, but it is also a slooooow one. Half a day went into just getting the cabinetry that will surround the fridge just right. The pantry was also a multi-day process. But then came the island, which magically got set in place in less than a day and then officially installed the next day. This was the moment I was sort of holding my breath over--would all the little squares of space on my graph paper add up to enough actual floor space for traversing around both sides of the island???

For the record, 45" of space on the seating side of an island works!

   We brought a barstool up from the basement, set it at a realistic location on the seating-side of the island, and Josh practiced walking behind me when I was hunched forward and when I was sitting leaning back. Great news, it was plenty of space! The next step was checking the sink side of the island. Would the dishwasher door being open allow someone to pass behind it or open the pantry door that it will back up to? We didn't want to get the dishwasher out of the box yet, so we tried using a measuring tape and it seemed good but maybe not great. This led Josh on a tailspin of "maybe we should rethink where you were planning to put plate storage" and a long explanation of why he suddenly, hypothetically, didn't like my designated spot. I bit my tongue and told him we can try my way and if we don't like it, then we can try it somewhere else. This conversation went on for what felt like an hour. Not going to lie: I was way more internally stressed about his suggestion than I wanted to be, but seeing how both sides were still just based on a gut feeling of what would work or not work, it felt like a moot point at this time. We tabled the issue. 

   If you read my earlier post about picking cabinets, you know that I really had a tough time narrowing it down. Well I am happy to say I LOVE the way the cabinet stain turned out! We still don't have the right light bulbs in (except for one) to see the correct color temperature, but whether it's natural light in the day time or the temporary lighting up at night, I LOVE them! The real lights can't be installed until we paint... which means we needed to pick paint colors. 

   I've had other blog posts from our old house about how much thought and time I put into paint selection, but now that we're eight weeks into the renovation, I wasn't willing to take my usual time with this decision. As soon as the first cabinets went in, I went by Sherwin Williams and picked up about 10 shades of white and put them on a large white posterboard so I could have a clean slate to compare them to, rather than the purplish brown of the old paint. I hung this under the one keeper lightbulb in the kitchen. Immediately a few were ruled out as being too gray, too green, too yellow, too peachy (I actually loved the peachy one, but not for a whole first floor). I brought Knox in because he really has a good eye, and he agreed with the ones I had ruled out. I ended up liking SW Creamy, and he preferred SW Downy as his first choice, so we brought Josh in. Well Josh ended up preferring the greenish whites, which was a no-go for me. But then he asked, "what about Alabaster?" Alabaster was one of the two whites we used in the last house during my big 2020 "Say No to Gray" painting campaign, and I had really liked it. The next day I went back to Sherwin Williams, grabbed the sample chip (3 minutes before the store closed--the poor employee was so relieved to see I knew exactly what I was looking for), and when I got home, I put it on the posterboard and instantly made up my mind that I could choose this color again without overthinking it. The last step was me thinking about a light blue I had seen in one of the SW palette books, I think it was "mindful" or "restful" or something like that. The color is SW Upward, and it reminds me of a very faint blue that our George Street apartment had been painted by a previous tenant/friend, a color that made the apartment feel homey instead of bland or corporate. I love blues, and have a tendency to go too bright with my color choices, but this is a case where a gray undertone keeps it from being a baby boy nursery color. I showed the chip to Josh and he instantly liked it too (perhaps subconsciously also remembering our old apartment blue) and we decided to use it in the great room, to make that room feel a little extra special and cozy. 

   So now the cabinets are in place but not all the doors are on. The countertop company came and measured the actual space and is working on the templates, which I was promised I would get to see mocked up on a photo of the granite slab before it is cut, and I believe the turnaround on the granite fabrication process is about a week. That means I potentially *could* have a functioning kitchen in a week to week and a half!!! I feel like I've been pretty patient throughout this process (praise God, I really have been content through these two months of living in the basement, and patience does not come naturally to me!), but seeing my kitchen finally LOOK like a kitchen, I'm getting itchy to have it finished! Not that I want to rush the end, because I know these last steps are all the ones you're going to be looking at and you don't want mistakes. It's just I now linger in the kitchen, looking out that new slider, and want to put my seltzer can on a counter but have to settle for putting it in the top drawer of an open-face cabinet. I cooked a big batch of meat on the grill and brought it inside, wanting to set it down on the island to cool before I put it in the fridge, but had to put it on a trivet on the floor instead. It was quite comical. 

   It's all coming together, and it will be finished when it's finished, and I will enjoy it in all it's fullness then!

   In the meantime, here's the nearly-finished pantry 😍

I swooned the first time I saw this installed.                 
When I look at it, The Cure song "Friday, I'm in Love"
plays in my head.                                                           

Smooth sailing with smooth ceilings

   The part of the renovation that we were least looking forward to (living through) was drywall. Josh has many childhood memories of his dad spackling and sanding, spackling and sanding, and the mess it made and the irritation it brought to the family. But if you're going to move walls, there will be new drywall, and new seams to be spackled, and you must accept that there will be drywall dust. 

   Drywall dust was already lightly covering the first floor, but the biggest storm of dust was sure to make the early dust feel like a joke: we decided to un-popcorn the ceilings. And not just in the kitchen, where we were going to have to patch the ceilings pretty significantly anyway, but the whole first floor. Why would we put ourselves through this potential blizzard of dust while living in the house? Because it was now or never, and having just the kitchen have smooth ceilings would make the other areas feel shabby and probably make us regret that we hadn't done it. So we went for it!

The old ceiling texture and some the first swipes 
of smoothing out the ceilings.                              

   Thankfully, we had a recommendation for a professional drywaller, Richard, who told us he could get the job done in five days with minimal dust, thanks to his vacuum sander and 50 years of experience. We thought this was a little boastful, but really liked that he had so much experience (and reminded me of my uncles) and arranged to use him. 

   Rye let us know from the early planning stages of the renovation that he is allergic to drywall dust and did not want to be here for the drywall stage. Getting the kids out of the house so they wouldn't be tracking first-floor dust to the other two levels was a great idea, and much thanks to their grandparents and my sister-in-law, we arranged for them to visit family for four nights/five days. 

   We prepared the house by stapling a tarp to block off the steps to the second floor and taping around the entrance to the basement and resolving not to use that door for the week, but instead to use the outside door to enter the basement. So this means when we got up in the morning and went downstairs to get a cup of coffee (before Richard and his helper got here at 7:30 a.m.), we had to go down the second floor stairs, through the tarp, out to the garage to get the creamer, out the front door, around the back of the house, and in the basement's back door to the coffee maker. At night, this meant carrying a high-powered flashlight with us as we went out the back, around the side yard, up the deck steps and into the kitchen where we had left a single lightbulb glowing. It felt silly and funny, and like one of those short memory bursts you think you'll never forget because it is so unusual and so ordinary at the same time. 

   The other major downside for the week was the inability to run the air conditioning. Not that Richard was restricting us from using the air conditioning, but all that dust would have gotten sucked up and spit out throughout the house, making it ten times worse. I thought I would be able to convince Josh to let us use it on the days that weren't major sanding days, but he felt pretty strongly about protecting our already-not-so-great HVAC system. So during that week of mid-90s temperatures in mid-July, we lived in a warm and humid basement by day and had all our windows and balcony door open with high-powered fans blowing some circulation in at night. It was unpleasant for sure, but not disgusting. One evening around 8:30, Josh asked me for a walk and I made a face that said, "are you crazy?!?" His response was, "you're not going to feel any hotter than you do now," which turned out to be true, because when the sun goes down and you're in the park there's a nice, cool humidity and a dusky pink sky that really is very refreshing. 

   Richard truly was amazing. He finished by 2 p.m. every day, and finished on Thursday instead of Friday. He would chat a little but also let you (COUGH *Josh*) know it was time to get to work. The day when he sanded the popcorn ceilings was not any dustier than any other day--I only noticed they had been done because I looked up! 

Smooth ceilings everywhere!

   Getting the drywall and ceilings done gave me a total boost of energy toward the project, and made me a little antsy to see the next big stages take place: priming/painting walls, cabinet installation, and eventually, countertops! Popcorn detail is less than a quarter of an inch in depth, and yet our ceilings now feel 4" taller, and all that white makes the house look so crisp. Totally worth a week of sweltering heat and more dust/mess on the floors that are going to be replaced!

The left side is what the floors looked like when Richard
was done, and then how they looked after I wiped them 
down with a wet rag so I could walk barefoot again.       

 

A month and a half of progress in the kitchen

    I can't believe a month and a half of work has already gone by! We moved our first-floor furniture to the basement and upstairs in early June and then demo began. Not wild and crazy demo with a pack of contractors in matching shirts and crow bars like they do on HGTV, but really just removing parts bit by bit as the old was in the way and needed to make room for the new. The carpet with gross stains in the dining room is STILL in place, with about a dozen new stains, but it won't come out until the popcorn ceiling above is ground down and smoothed over. 

   We've gone through two major renovations before, so we know there are work weeks with behind-the-scene things that go slowly and weeks with really visible stuff that makes the transformation feel like it's flying by. We've had a little bit of both so far, to the point that the kids are starting to ask, "Is it almost over?" The foundation for the future kitchen is completely laid, but drywall patching and repair is just starting now, so I'm guessing we're at the one-third done point. 

First floor transformation

Looking in from the great room to the main house

   Because the kitchen is now at ground zero level, my refrigerator and oven are sitting in the dining room, just waiting. We're utilizing the "bonus fridge" in the garage, and a combination of hot plate, toaster oven, Instant Pot, griddle and grill for cooking. Cooking (and choosing WHAT to cook) has been a little challenging but not bad. In the beginning I was doing grilled foil packets, like sausage and peppers, chicken caprese, even a gnocchi and corn packet with a white wine sauce that would have probably have been really good if I hadn't run out of propane in the middle of cooking it. We've had a lot of burgers. We've had some quesadillas using the indoor griddle. We tend to order pizza once a week. We're eating more salad than usual as our side though, so that's a good thing! I've learned that I can't run another appliance with the microwave or hot plate at the same time in our basement. I've learned that our new microwave is super powerful and not to use the automatic reheat button because the kids will have to wait 10 minutes for their food to cool down. I've learned to shop light at the grocery store and plan just three days out at a time because we don't have that much fridge space, and then the kids are forced to eat leftovers because it's all we have (win/win!). There are extra steps to food prep (figuratively and literally, as I have to go upstairs to the garage fridge at least dozen times a day), but it hasn't been bad. 

   Our basement also has a utility sink, which has made doing dishes a breeze (not a cool, refreshing breeze, more like a hot and humid breeze that is still better than no movement at all). The kids do their own dishes half the time (depending on whether we're there and catch them before they slip away). Knox told a friend's mom that he's getting over his "spongeaphobia." We have only used paper plates once so far, when we had family over for an impromptu dinner and got takeout pizza and the restaurant threw the plates in as a courtesy! 

   Living in the basement with all that extra furniture hasn't been that weird either. We have a large TV area with two full-size couches and a love seat and the great room's entertainment center; the kids' cubbies toy storage got moved around and greatly reduced to what they actually still play with (sort of); and the dining room table became the temporary countertop holding our daily-used appliances. The breakfast table, which was Josh's grandmother's kitchen table, sits against a wall and seats three, and we pull it away from the wall when all four of us are home want to sit together for a meal or a board game. We also have full walkout French doors with a picnic table on the patio and our glass table and chair set on the deck above. The kids usually fight us on eating outside because of the occasional (but non-confrontational) wasp that comes by, but Josh and I use these outdoor areas as much as we can.

Temporary kitchen in basement

   I would say the hardest part is getting used to all the noise. The cats are similarly pretty terrified of construction sounds (I hate the Sawzall, too, Sweetie Pie!) so we take them upstairs to the master bedroom before work begins each day. Most of their days are spent sleeping under my bed, unless the windows are open, in which case they sleep on the coffee table by the front window. The bonus for the cats though is that we are in the basement with them in the afternoons and evenings when work is done, and they love it. You know, in their cat way, where they don't really interact more with us but they look 20 percent happier even though they are just sleeping. 

   A cousin who went through a kitchen remodel a few years ago asked if I was getting decision fatigue, but since I took my time with the kitchen and dining room decisions over a period of about six months, there haven't been too many decisions to be made. And when there is something I don't care about, like where to reposition a floor vent for the HVAC, I let them know I don't care and to do what they think is best. Now that we've designated the area that is going to be the office, we've started making decisions about what the desk and cabinet space will be like, and we are making these decisions faster and perhaps with less hand-wringing, but that's kind of refreshing. 

Future office being carved out of the breakfast nook!

   The timing has felt so easy and right, that I don't feel like the project is moving too fast or too slow. God's timing has been such a gift: the out-of-stock floor we had our hearts set on came back in stock on a night I happened to be looking at Home Depot's website for something else; the floors were delivered on a day I was home and had cleaned the garage out early even though we had put the delivery date on hold; the day we wanted to put in the sliding door was sunny and breezy and the perfect day to have windows open and a gaping hole in our wall. There have been little hold-ups here and there, but I am full of praises and not complaints! Living in our temporary all-in-one basement has been easier than the packing up and moving stage, so let that be an encouragement to you if you have a renovation project you have wanted to do but were too worried about the mess and complications of living through a renovation! 

   

From the Kitchen File: Picking out the little things

     My last post was about choosing the three major finishes of a kitchen: cabinets, countertops and floors. It was a big relief to have those settled, but there were still other choices to be made. 

    One major factor in setting the feel of a kitchen is lighting. Our house is an early 90s house and the lighting situation was pretty dim (pun intended). The kitchen had a ceiling fan with 4 lights that looked original to the house, and the last owners had updated the breakfast nook and dining room with two insufficient pendant lights. The great room had another 90s ceiling fan, and the front living room had nothing, though I believe the former owners had swagged a light over to the center of the ceiling, but they took it with them. It just feels really dark for a house that has a good amount of windows. Also, the ceiling is textured, not with the popcorn/cottage cheese look, but a sort of fireworks-like pattern that I didn't mind too much but drives Josh crazy. So, since recessed lights are going in and will be making a lot of holes in the ceiling, and the portion of the ceiling where the wall is coming down has to be patched in anyway, we're getting all the ceilings on the first floor smoothed. The new lights and a smooth surface are going to make a BIG difference in the feel of these spaces.

    Choosing decorative lighting is hard (if you are picky). Much like hardwood floors, stores carry a pretty small sample of hardwired lights in the store, but if you get on the internet, there are ENDLESS choices and styles. And if you are like me, you will find something you really like, only to find out that a single pendant is $775, which is outrageous, and your plan calls for four pendants. 

Not kidding--this 9.5"-wide pendant cost $775!

We have a 10-foot island, and most kitchen experts would recommend then having two very large pendants or three medium-sized pendants over that length. That works great if you have tall ceilings, but we're working with regular old 8-foot ceilings, so while I'm drawn to those giant woven-basket style pendants, in our house they would be ridiculously oversized, blocking views and bumping foreheads. 

Interesting light fixtures. Kind of a weird kitchen.

    I decided to go for four small-but-not-mini pendants (9 to 10 inches wide) because then I can have one centered over the sink. Having one a foot off-center from the sink would bother me, and the point IS for them to be functional, not just decorative, and I'm starting from scratch with light placement so I can make symmetry and centeredness happen. I have been looking at pendant lights since December and now pretty much all of my Facebook ads are for lighting, which I appreciate because they really would see what vein I was going in and show me more similar things. But before I chose my pendant lights though, I stumbled across these pretty cool gallery lights at the incredibly affordable price (comparatively) of $99 for the large and $69 for the small at World Market. 

Gallery lights are meant to light up a picture directly below them. 

    I'm not sure if I saw gallery lights being used in a kitchen while I was doing my kitchen research of if it started when I was looking at built-in offices, but once I decided I want to go with some open shelving over the stove wall, the idea of gallery lights over the top shelf (to highlight art and plants and collective pieces) got me excited. I showed them to Josh and he was thinking about it, and then by the time I was ready to order them that weekend, World Market was quickly selling out. I thought I was going to get one large delivered from the website and two larges and one small at the store in Rockville because the internet had sold out. But they had oversold at the store and my order was canceled, so I started searching World Market locations all over the East Coast (and Knoxville, TN where a favorite cousin lives!) and a store in White Marsh that hadn't even opened yet, and it looked like I was out of luck. But then three days later, I checked the website again and the three I needed from Rockville were suddenly available (perhaps someone else had never picked up their order?) so I reordered them and took the kids to Rockville two days later to pick them up. I am very excited about them and hope they will look as awesome lit up as I am picturing them in my head! 

Gallery light from a 
customer's review.   

    Back to pendants. I revisited the question of what is the theme of my house--and the answer is "comfortable retreat." If I'm using a cool toned-sort of neutral wood for the cabinets and what I would call a kind of glam granite countertop, and I have these barstools that remind me of a comfortable clubhouse sort of look, then what sort of light fits, or as they say in The Big Lebowski, "really ties the room together?" I wanted something kind of vintage, so I ordered these two first:

The beachy light fixture. It was actually ice blue, not crisp white. 

The mercury glass light.

    The mercury glass light in person was not nearly as cool as the website. The paint was layered on too many times and it just looked dirty (I washed the glass to confirm that it wasn't just dirty). I was even able to hook it up to a plug-in pendant wire I had and see what it looked like lit, and I kept trying to like it but just didn't. The white one was actually sort of ice blue with hand-applied brown stripes that looked like they would match our wood tones well. I thought it had a sort of beachy vibe without being too beachy, but Josh didn't think it fit with the glam-factor of the countertops, and I agreed. I did more searching for pendants and showed four to Josh, and we decided to order two and see how we liked those:

The champagne parasol light fixture

The lotus light fixture

    We actually liked both, but considering the low ceilings and that the pendants would be hung kind of high, we didn't think you would get to see/appreciate the texture on the top of the lotus flower one very well, and while the parasol one wasn't magical, it felt like a solid, non-show-stealing selection that looked vintage, clean and had brass accents that would work with the gallery lights. Plus they were a steal at $63 on Amazon. Take that, ridiculous $775 pendant! 

    That leaves the chandelier for the dining room. I don't know why so many chandeliers are circular when most tables are rectangular. Our table is six feet long without a leaf, but we normally have a leaf in, making it seven feet long. A 24-inch diameter circle doesn't do much for the ends of the table. I kept searching rectangular chandeliers, but most of these are a "caged" style, where it literally looks like you are locking up your lights in a cage. (I know this sounds ridiculous; I am reminded of the Maggie Gyllenhaal in the movie Away We Go where she is a mother who refuses to use a stroller because "I love my babies, why would I want to PUSH them away from me?" That cracks me up every time I think of it.) Caged chandeliers are just not a look I like. 

      This looks like you are telling light bulbs to stay in their place.                              

    I did find this one that is linear and kind of Nordic, a style I like but don't really want to embody in this house, and I liked that it was 51" long but it also feels a little stark to me. 

Swedish, but not IKEAish.

    A lot of round chandeliers are either modern or too traditional, so I also started looking at boho styles. I've ordered this one, which Josh was not very pleased with the look of it on the internet but we'll see when we get it in person:

This sold out on three different websites at the same time. 
I'm hoping it lives up to its hype. 

    And I also like this one, but it's sort of small, I think I would want to get two of them and hang them over the table:

I call this one the "rattan asterisk."

Besides lighting, another decision was the kitchen sink. Our kitchen had a large stainless steel sink in a 36-inch cabinet. However, it was a divided sink, with a lot of wasted space between the two chambers, and it was quite shallow. I could fit most pots in it, but not my baking half sheets (let alone my full sheet, which spanned across both basins!), and we were always spilling water on the floor. Josh always says doing the dishes is his only contribution to the kitchen, so he was quite interested in what sink we would get. (Side note: while most of the kitchen design was to my specifications, I did let him have the win when it comes to putting the sink in the island even though I don't like this plan because then all your drying dishes are taking up island space and I hate having to dry things with a towel because evaporation is a thing that requires no human effort. Josh likes the sink in the island because then he can talk to people while doing dishes. So we compromised, and I'm putting the sink in the island and I will leave dishes for him to do while I sit in the bar stools and watch. If anyone wants to get us a housewarming gift, buy us dish towels that actually absorb water, because we will be needing them!) When we were at the kitchen supply store, a gigantic Kraus workstation sink caught our eye, and the staff said people love them. This is a very rectangular sink with a ledge on the long sides that perfectly holds a cutting board, a foldable drying mat, you can get a basket strainer that fits, and probably even more I don't know about yet. I quickly made note of the model they recommended, saved it on our Amazon list, then had second thoughts about it when the price went up in the spring and researched other brands and read reviews for all the companies, got nervous because there are negative reviews for EVERY brand, then saw the Kraus sink went back down in price and decided to get it. Even better, there was one on Amazon that was "used like new" for 35% off. I don't usually buy "used" things on Amazon, but it seemed pretty clear to me that this was a sink that had been opened and returned without being used, so we bought it! We opened it up and it looks fine except a little bit of not-straightness in the undermount part of the metal, which seems like it will be fine. So that decision is done!

Behold, the super functional workstation sink.

    We still need to pick out a faucet, but that feels like less of a big deal. People keep asking what type of metal our cabinet pulls will be and I'm thinking champagne bronze but I want to see the cabinets first. And I won't have to wait for much longer, they are coming in next week!