Moving Fast Now!

They started framing on our house last Monday. We were shocked at how quickly things changed, once they began. Here are some of the pictures... MONDAY the floor is down Egress window into the future rec room TUESDAY (the walls are starting to go up) WEDNESDAY(the plywood is going up) A view of the back of the house THURSDAY(here is the roof) FRIDAY (it's looking more and more like home! :) Let's not forget our little helper :)

Making Kitchen Changes

As silly as it sounds, we found a refrigerator we love in (fingerprint resistant) stainless, on a clearance sale. This saves us hundreds of dollars while we enjoy an amazing refrigerator. Here it is:

We weren't crazy about the combination of stainless and white, but think stainless and black look good together, so we made the change to black appliances. We also upgraded a couple of our appliances to better meet our needs (they are whirlpool after all, so we might be using them for a long time :). Our appliance combo will look similar to this, which we think looks sharp!

We changed our cabinet color to a slightly warmer "Toffee" color, and are going with a dark countertop to tie it all together. When we eventually do a backsplash (after we move in), we'll do something light to ensure the room is not too dark. Our colors (cabinets, appliance, countertop) should look similar to this:

So, now our kitchen is done and locked in, and we can move on to the next set of decisions. On another note, framing has started. The walls are not yet in, but the subfloor is. Last night we walked on our main level, which was very fun. Will update with pictures soon...

The Heart of the Home

They say the kitchen is the heart of the home. I'm guessing that is why this room has been our favorite to plan. From the very beginning, we made changes to our floor plan (widened the kitchen to change it from a galley set-up to the one you see below) to make it a functional space that we could enjoy cooking and entertaining in. We have already purchased the tile flooring that we will lay ourselves. It's a nice, neutral tan color that will allow us to use fun color in other places. Our kitchen has a breakfast bar that opens to the dining area. We can already picture Grace and Hannah sitting at the breakfast bar having their breakfast while we prepare food or make our coffee. Our builder provided us with a rendering of our kitchen - it should look something like this.

Because we don't have a mudroom in our house (the garage enters directly into the kitchen), we have decided to use the area next to the refrigerator as a drop zone/message center. We will have a space here for our mail, charging zone for our phones/ipods and a space under the counter for bags and backpacks. We will use the wall behind this area for a cork/white board and key hook. Looking online, we found some wonderful ideas that we will take pieces from to make our own. Here are some of our favorites... After putting a lot of thought into our appliances, we decided black would make the room feel too dark for us and stainless would cause too many problems with fingerprints in a house with little ones. The classic white is what we decided to go with. Our standard appliance package is a middle of the road Whirlpool, which we are completely happy with. Cabinets were another challenge as we needed something that would work well with the white appliances and open concept of our home. We both knew right away when we saw them, that the maple cabinets in the color Ginger were the right choice. Ironically, we have a friend who had the same builder for her townhouse, and same color of cabinets in her kitchen. Here is a picture of her space. Ours should look similar, depending on the counter-tops we choose. We're thinking a darker counter-top, but still haven't made that final decision...