More of the main floor....

Happy Saturday! I don't know about you but why is it that on weekdays I can barely pull myself out of bed at 7 and probably capable of sleeping in until 9 but then the weekend rolls around and I am up at the crack of dawn. Its 8am right now and have already been up for 2 hours. I have already watched back to back episodes Timber Kings. I decided I had watched enough of watching log home construction in the BC interior and after a quick caffeine fix I decided to to spend time on this blog.

I want to share bit of a side by side comparison of shots that were taken when we originally walked through the house, during the renos and post reno. Here is a view of the main entrance looking into the foyer and kitchen from the dining room/living room area.

As you can probably tell by the faux fur cushion and the blanket on top of our basket, I love faux fur pretty much anything :-) I love adding texture to a room, it makes it seem a little more cozier. And here is a shot below from somewhat the same place, maybe a few steps back. That wall straight ahead is no longer there along with pretty much everything else. Hmmm, speaking of faux...

For vanity reasons here is a shot of my Ghost chair which I coveted for a very long time. I need to give it a shout out. I knew it would fit somewhere in the house but I couldn't decide where I would put it. I realize one day that the space next to our front door needed a spot where you could sit down and put on/take your shoes. It's nice because it also doesn't seem like it's taking up space either. It was a great find at Structube. We also fell in love when we saw this art by Sara Caracristi that we found at a local gallery. I love the perceptive that she takes with her art but also how it feels playful and not too serious. And speaking of faux fur, I also like real fur.... a lot.  I know it's not for everyone but hey it keeps me nice and toasty on the minus 26-35 days. I picked up these seal boots on a recent trip back to Newfoundland and they are uber comfortable, incredibly warm and the bonus feature? No salt stains...that goes a long way in my books. Nothing worse than pouring vinegar on shoes to remove salt stains and then you smell like fish and chips rest of the day.

Ok, I digress. Back to the matters at hand. Here is a shot from the living room looking into the foyer and kitchen.

Same shot from same location. There was a wall AND kitchen that we had removed.

Another angle from the same spot. Our cat manages to get in most of the shots but I guess it's not hard when you are as large as she is :-)

Ok, so I thought this post would be on the shorter side today but I rambled a bit.  Hope you enjoyed!  We will back soon again with more. Not quite sure with yet but maybe the exterior...see you soon!

Some new additions

We have continued to make additions/purchases to the kitchen so that once we are ready to go (i.e. cabinet and countertop installation) we will have all pieces sourced.  Since the last post we have purchased a 30" 16 gauge undermount sink.  The 16 guage means the thickness of the metal (our current one is 20 gauge) and the less likely it is to dent or make noise when dishes and pots bang around.  You can read more about what the guage number means here. 

We also decided to go with a single bowl instead of the double bowl.  First of all, most/all of our dishes go into the dishwasher right away and any larger pots and pans are then washed in the sink.  The problem is that in the double bowl scenario there is never enough room to jam the dish into sink and to get it under the faucet or get it completely soaked is next to impossible. We figure that it would be a lot easier cleaning pots and pans in a single than a double.  We also like the design of it too :-) 

We also picked up a range hood that is pictured below.  The company is Soreli and I haven't been able to locate their web site.  They are supossedly Canadian with operations based out of B.C. I haven't been able to find much more info on them.

Our design plan is to build a wall of tile right behind it (instead of cabinets) that would (hopefully) look something like this:

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Of course our cabinets and backsplash aren't similar in color but the idea is the same, running the backsplash right up the wall to the ceiling.  It may cost a little more for the tile but it will definitely be worth it.  As we are selecting darker cabinets it will definitely help with keeping the kitchen looking bright and open.

Seems like we have a lot of the missing pieces taken care of - we will be taken bit of a break for a couple of weeks so it will be nice to get our mind off things and then it will be back into the tick of it!

Kitchen Progress?

We have definitely been making strides with our kitchen in the past week, with multiple trips to Home Depot/Rona and Lowe's to source materials.  We have also been really heavily on online shopping as well.  Being close to the NY border it makes it easy to drive and pick up items without having to pay the hefty international shipping fees.

We have now started picking out faucets and we seem to be leaning towards one like this:

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We definitely don't want to go cheap here as we will be using this thing A LOT and the the last thing we want is for it to break or just be completely flimsy.  we are still on the hunt for one of these bad boys.  I just love the way they look!

We would also love to have a pot filler next to the stove but as the stove will be against the exterior wall (as you remember from our layout :-) code does not permit us to have pipes running through an exterior wall....bummer. 

Determined to have a pot filler, we thought, why dont we have it in the counter and have it run through the cabinet?  This way we don't have to worry about freezing pipes and looks like we can do that so we are totally pumped.  It will probably be used twice a year but love the aesthetics of pot fillers, just seems like such a nice addition to a kitchen.  Here is the one that we found from Danze

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Love this thing!  Definitely will be nice to have to fill up a pot at the sink and jiggle it all the way back to the stove with water sloshing around everywhere and around anyone else in the kitchen. It will definitely make cooking a lot easier.

We also bought a new front loading washer and dryer yesterday (did I mention they are front loading?  - woot!).  They are now stored in the garage so pics can come later.

Happy with the progress we are making.  As we are leaving in less than a week and a half to go to Italy...another woot...we really need/have to get our ducks in a row for move-in.  This week e also look to purchase our range hood.  So far we are keeping our purchases under budget so that is definitely a nice relief when ho knows what kind of suprises can be creeping around the corners with renos.