One room at a time...First up...The Kitchen!!!

Since I've been slacking so much on the blog I thought it would be nice to do a post...one room at a time.  This one-the best room of the house-the kitchen!!!

Our Kitchen

For those that are building with Ryan...here's a recap of our kitchen selections...
-Cabinets- Rushmore Painted Maple Butterscotch Glaze
-Countertop- Antique Mascarello Formica 180fx (with contoured edge included)
-Flooring- Armstrong Sedona Cherry Laminate
-Gourmet Island
-Morning room
-42in cabinets
-Stainless Steel Appliances

Things we did on our own
-Wall Color- Olympic in Sea Sprite
-Cabinet Pulls/Knobs-Allen & Roth Marisa
-Faucet-Moen Lindley
-Fridge-Samsung 29cu. stainless steel french-door


Now for pics!!! (Click to Enlarge)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This chalkboard we just finished up this weekend.  I'll be using it for the weekly menu/grocery list.

The bottom/middle pane will have photos soon!

 

 

 

 

 

Moen Lindley Pull-down faucet and soap dispenser-Looooove this! 

So glad we did this on our own and didn't do the upgrade offered through RH.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gourmet Island with Allen &Roth Marisa Hardware

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kitchen looking towards the powder room and hallway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Family Room looking toward the kitchen

 

 

 

 

 

Close-up of the Armstrong Sedona Cherry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the dining room looking toward the pantry and kitchen

 

 

 

Next Post: Morning Room!

40 days and all I get are a few crappy sneak peaks?!!!

Yep, Sorry!  We've been MIA for quite a while.  With moving, and starting homeschooling; we haven't had much time for blogging...imagine that!  So here's a quick update and some quick "sneak peak" pics with more to come soon!

The Big Day-Aug.10th went great.  Settlement was smooth and quick-a few (ok more than a few!) signatures and Tada!  We bought a house!  We (unlike other bloggers) had an awesome experience with NVR mortgage.  We honestly didn't have a single problem and everything with the loan went smooth.  We went straight from signing papers to do our walk-through.  We were slightly disappointed that our landscaping and grass was not in as we had been told it would be.  There also was someone working on the flooring when we first got there (I guess PM noticed some damaged boards).  But all and all everything went well.  We got keys at 4pm.

Aug10-17 was work,work, work!  Dan took off the whole week and we (along with our Dad's and some friends) spent time painting, painting, and painting!  We also installed ceiling fans, cabinet knobs, curtain rods, and all the little things that need done before moving.  A big thanks to Dan's mom for all the help with the kids and our Dad's and friends for all their help working!

Aug 18 was move-in and it went fairly well.  Almost everyone that was supposed to help us canceled the day before so that was pretty stressful.  The majority of the moving was done by Dan, my Dad, and our friend Ali...can you imagine?!  Later that day, my uncle and a couple of his friends came to help and things went a lot quicker after that.

After moving in, things have been great!  We LOVE it here!  Beautiful area, wonderful people, and so much space.  We have had a lot of fun decorating and choosing things for the house.  Still a ton to do of course but we can park 1 car in the garage and once we install the garage storage stuff-the other car will fit too!  The basement is another story:/  The subdivision is wonderful.  We've been invited to many "events" and "parties" and it seems like there is always something to do!

The bad things so far...the big one was upon closing we had what looked like a clog in our master shower.  Water was backed up and drywall debri was in the drain.  We called the PM and were told that the little cap to protect the drain during building probably wasn't removed.  He told Dan how to do it but when Dan tried it was stuck and the little pull tab broke off and the gasket type thing came with it.  Next thing we knew we had water coming out the recessed lights in the kitchen!  Thankfully my Dad knew what to do and stopped it.  Then someone came to fix it and all was fine.

Another thing-we had tons of tacks sticking out of the carpet along the seams.  Connor even hurt his foot shortly after moving in.  But another PM to the rescue!  He came and hammered down every single tack for us.

Other than that we've still just been waiting on our landscaping.  It's been delayed over and over and the rain has delayed it some too.  The PM told us this week that if the landscaper didn't come by next week he'd hire someone else.  Hopefully it's done soon.

All and all we're super happy and loving it here!  Now for a few pics and hopefully I'll post more this week!

Our house:)-hopefully I'll have an updated pic with landscaping soon!

 

 

 

 

 

The homeschooling/craft room

 

 

 

 

 

 

Window seat in the computer room (the bottom cushion is being changed once I find one I like!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Downstairs Powder Room

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kitchen-above cabinets shot

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Room

 

 

 

 

 

 

Master Bedroom

Tomorrow's the day!!!!

At 8:30am we sign papers with NVR.  10:00am is our final walk-through.  And by 4:00pm we should have keys!!!!  We'll be at the house every day this week painting, installing lights and cabinet knobs, and slowly bringing over boxes.  The 18th is the big move-in!!  I still can't believe it's really happening!

Some decorating pictures as we await the final countdown!

Since we are getting so close to move-in day, I thought I'd do a post on stuff we bought or are using to decorate!  So here are some pictures:)

Hunter Regalia 60in ceiling fan (Lowe's)-for the family room.  Love the lighter almost distressed looking blades.  I think this will look great with the antique white cabinets and Sedona cherry flooring of the kitchen.  The 60in size will be great for circulating air around the whole great room.

Harbor Breeze 52in Crosswinds Oil-Rubbed Bronze (Lowe's)-for the master bedroom.  This is a great affordable fan!  Only $89 and comes with a remote!  I think the cherry blades will help pull together the cherry cabinets in the master-bath and the burgundy sheets in our bedding.

White Entryway Bench with baskets (Target)-for the office (living room per floorplan).  This room has a great double window and I wanted to do some sort of faux window seat.  This bench should be the perfect size and I'll be shopping for some nice pillows to go on top. 

Linon Storage Bench (also Target)-for the mudroom.  I plan to get a cushion and pillows for this as well.  The seat opens and we'll keep containers for shoes and mittens/gloves/etc in the winter.  This bench is a possibly perfect/possibly bad idea size.  It's literally within an inch of our width of the wall measurements.  I think the widest part is the arms though and we'll have a little more space there because I measured the wall down at the floor baseboards.  We're hoping the size will give a nice-built-in feel but depending on how accurate the manufacturer's measurments are; it could end up slightly too big.

We also got this awesome soap foamer (amazon) for the kitchen.  We'll be decorating a little with mason-jars and have been looking for a nice foaming soap dispenser so this was perfect!  We use Dr.Bronner's soap so foamers are a must and a lot of the pretty dispensers are not foaming.  We were pretty excited to find this!

And the projects of the week....

Our $17 china cabinet is coming together nicely. This will be used in the craft/school room (dining room per floorplan). We just need to finish up the lavendar back and a little more distressing.  The pulls and wire grating are now oil-rubbed bronze.

A close-up shot to show the distressing.

The table for the morning room-this was another great Seconds City find.  We have been looking for a nice older table with character.  We wanted something fairly large that would seat at least 8.  This table gets huge- it has 3 large leaves.  I can't remember the exact measurements but I think it gets to around 9 ft.  It was pretty ugly when we got it but we loved the character in the table legs and it came with 8 chairs.   The table looks really nice now that's it's a creamy white color similar to our cabinets. We'll be glazing or distressing the legs and doing the poly coat next.

The chairs have a lot of detail and were perfect for the look we are going for.  We are keeping the natural wood color.  I'm hoping to salvage the cushions (they're are a few spots on them) but if we can't we'll reupholster them.

Some other awesome furniture items (courtesy of my awesome in-laws!).....

This gorgeous china-cabinet!!!  I've loved this forever and I'm so excited to incorporate it in our house!  This will be in the morning room.

 

This awesome antique pie-display case!  I haven't decided what we'll do with this yet but I love the story behind it!  How fun to have something that was used to display pies!  And the top drawer was where they stored the money!  So cool!

And last but not least...paint colors!

These might be paint-matches to these colors because we haven't decided on the brand for sure.

Chocolate Froth for the hallways and foyer

Weeping Willow for the office and craft room

Sea Sprite for the rest of the walls in morning room/kitchen/family room

Blue Bayberry for the accent walls in the morning room and family room

Oyster Bisque for the upper half of laundry room, bottom half will be white beadboard

Barefoot Beach for master bedroom (this one might change if it's too close to the carpet color)

Lake County for the master bath

In 2 days we'll have keys!!!!!!

Next time we go out to the house we'll have keys!!

The last time I was out to the house was Wednesday morning.  Our PM had said our inspection would be Friday or Monday so we figured going out there on Saturday (our last time until closing) it would be pretty much done.  Well, not quite.  It looks like they maybe stopped working Wednesday because not much has changed. It was a little disappointing...ok a lot disappointing...but it will make closing day all that more exciting since things should be a lot different!

When we went out Saturday we were locked out as usual but this time we were REALLY locked out because the sales-rep wasn't in the model home to give us keys.  I think he's late pretty frequently so I'm pretty glad we won't need to go there anymore.  They are supposed to open at 11am and we got there about 11:15 and ended up driving around until 11:45 or so before he came in.  Since we had time to waste we stopped out at the subdivision/golf course's pool to show the kids.  It'll be really  nice to be able to take the kids down here when they get bored during the moving/painting stage.  They are going to start building the club-house in September so I'm looking forward to seeing that too! 

(click to enlarge)

Here are the pictures of the changes since the last time I was at the house...looks like they are going to have a busy week to get it done before our closing/walkthrough on Friday!

Garden tub faucet was installed (it's super wiggly so I think it still needs caulked or tightened)

Showing we still don't have carpet in the family room...

We also have a cabinet door removed so maybe that was damaged.

Front door was painted but the pillars still need done.

Front of the house-the cable box was moved over but we still need the final grading, landscaping, and touch ups.

There are a good amount of things that still need done before closing.  Some chips in cabinets and window molding, the morning room roof still has a slight dip, squeeks in the floor, lights and doorknobs need installed upstairs, kitchen faucet needs installed (it was stolen so the PM had to buy a new one!!!), stove needs installed, broken window needs replaced, carpet needs finished, touch ups and cleaning to be done and I'm hoping they'll be putting in the lazy susan and microwave rack because both are missing.  Fingers crossed that all these things will be finished!!!

We've also been spending some more time shopping.  Wow is there a lot to buy and do when you build new!  We decided on the cabinet knobs/pulls for the bathrooms.  I really suggest getting your own cabinet/pulls.  Ryan charges $200 and installs just basic pulls (you only can choose the finish).  We were able to get a lot nicer pulls/knobs and still came out around $175.  We also bought the ceiling fans, mudroom bench, and window seat for the living room/office and decided most of the paint colors.


  This week we'll be trying to refinish the dining room table and china-cabinet (hopefully!).  Our closing is Friday morning, Final walk-through is right afterward, and then we get our keys.  Saturday-Friday we will spend painting, installing light fixtures/fans, and cabinet knob/pulls and taking boxes over each day.  Saturday the 18th will be the big move in day!!!  We can't wait!!!

Almost our last visit!

I stopped out at the house today.  We have just over a week until we get the keys!  We'll hopefully stop out at the house one more time and after that it's ours!  Here's pictures of the changes I saw today...

 Carpet is in except for the family room

Armstrong Sedona Cherry next to Shaw Initiator (both very dirty!)

The toilet and pedestal sink our now in the downstairs powder room, still waiting on the mirror

 Door handles are in downstairs, upstairs they are in boxes by each door ready to be installed

The family room has carpet pad down.

 I'm looking forward to seeing this carpet because it's the only room we upgraded padding/carpet.

The dishwasher is in.

The carpet is installed upstairs as well.

The playroom now with carpet.  They still haven't installed lights in here or the kids bedrooms.

The master-bathroom glass shower-encloser and garden tub are now installed.

Love it!  So glad we decided to do this upgrade!

My only concern is we don't have an access panel.  In the model it was on the front of the tub, since ours was tiled I assumed it would be in the master-closet like some other blogs have had but it's not there either....not sure how we will access the plumbing if needed.

Running water (kind of, it was probably just turned on because it was sputtering!)

The door stoppers were all out in the kitchen so they probably will be installed soon.

Looking from the kitchen to the front door-can't wait until the flooring is all uncovered!

Looking from the front door to the back of the house, stairs are to the left.

Last on the list-finish the carpet and door handles, install stove and kitchen faucet, install the powder room mirror, paint the front door and pillars, fixing up mistakes and the broken windows, and final grading and landscaping.  Our PM said our final inspection will be this Friday or next Monday.  We get our keys next Friday!