My Drew...

Stayed up until 3 AM this morning painting the gloss accent on the trim.

He's half man... Half amazing. It looks so great. With the morning light I think we capture the truest color of the walls. We haven't finished the ceiling because we decided we need to add one more can light to avoid a dark spot in the corner of the room. And accent art lights to highlight the glass tile. It's now a functional kitchen! Hooray!!

Thankful for a Sink!

Our faucet and sink are installed. I think the industrial sink was our best choice. I absolutely love how it looks. The way it functions with this sink... Phenomenal! It can reach every nook of the sink. And this sink is enormous!

The kitchen is really coming together. Just in time. I was starting to go a little crazy with no where to move. Seeing it all come together with more then double the amount of walking room and countertop space, makes it all so very worth it!

And the walls... Consider them done! New drywall, mud and sand, mud and sand, spackled, primed and two coats of paint later... Done!

The beam has been Puttied and caulked and we have painted the inside of the trim the flat white.

Now we just need to paint the glossy trim!

The paint turned out perfect. This for sure is my favorite color. Cleo contrasts the color well.

Tile and Storage...

You're probably sick of seeing progress shots... Not much I can help you with there!

We went completely overboard with trim on the vent beam. I'm crazy about it! Can there really be too much trim?? I say NO!

Here's how the beam looks tonight. Puttied and primed waiting to be caulked, spackeled and painted! Like I said before the inside of the panels will be a flat white and the trim will be a semi gloss white. Overkill again? Maybe! Worth it? Totally!

The underbelly of the beast! Look how good the post looks! With our little trim piece waiting to be stained.

The process of grouting. I won't lie I kind of had a pit in my stomach when we started grouting. I still wasn't sure about the white grout. I was scared it would show all of our mistakes, and errors in the tile sheets themselves.

Drew taught me you apply the grout, which should be a toothpaste consistency, in 45 degree angle swipes. Good to know.

I. LOVE. IT!!!!

The mistakes are so minor, and the grout actually minimized their appearance! And I think the white grout really highlight the pretty individual tiles. Whereas I think a matching tan grout would have made it look like a giant blob. No detail.

Those lines look pretty straight if you ask me.

Anyway... The whole process of remodeling the kitchen was to give us more space. That we accomplished. Now the trick is with more space, how to maximize our space to get the most storage. To really utilize all of our work.

I need need need these corner cabinet pull and slide cabinet shelves. The pull out and twist. And the far corner can slide to the opening. Only problem is the only place I can find them is Europe. Where they really know how to use small spaces.

Another idea I found was stair storage. Used all the time in Europe. Genius!

This is what we are putting in one of out cupboards. I hate seeing a trash can and it's nice to know the pooches can't get into the trash.

This is what we are doing with our sink legs. I'm so excited! A hidden spice rack! I love finding different ideas for storage. So many creative things to do!

Trim

We are trimming the kitchen out. Oh my goodness it is looking beautiful.

Here is our window and crown moulding. Drew did a fabulous job!

Here is our vent we hid with wood crown moulding and trim. I love the detail on it. We want to put quarter round on the inside of all the squares. We will paint the beam white with the base a flat or semi gloss and the trim with a higher sheen. To really make it all pop.

Here is the bottom post all trimmed out and ready to go.

Drew has spent a lot of time on adding little details to our kitchen. And I think it will really pay off. Here is some trim he routed from a strip of wood. While the rest of the post will be white we are going to stain this routed trim piece.

I am going to go ahead and take credit for this idea. I hate cut tile. I swear it never turns out straight. So we just tiled right up to the ceiling and put the crown moulding right on top. And it is a perfectly straight line. Drew was just extra careful in making sure the nails were shot in the 1/8 gap between tiles. Perfection!

Here is my dry run for grout colors. Drew bought some 'bright white 'non sanded' grout and here's how it looks. I love it, but I might have to try a less stark contrast. To hide the discrepancies in the tile. And that's where we are today.

Paint!

I'm stuck.... Paint has me stumped! We had the paint all picked out and then we found the tile. And the paint is just not working.

The green and creme were the colors we wanted to work. They just ended up looking like a country ranch. I hated it.

Then we sampled some silver sage. Blah, looks awful. So we tried the green from our room.

Which is the one on the left. I think I love it!

This is the first time I have been completely stumped for paint color. Hmm...

So Long and Farewell

We live in a house that is dwarfed by two huge Evergreen trees. In fact our neighborhood was apparently infested with these trees. Everyone has a story to tell about the enormous trees that they removed from their yard. Well this is our story.

I forgot to take pictures of our house with the trees infront. So google maps came to my aid. Above is a satellite view of our house. The road infront during the winter was always just ice because the road rarely saw sun.

Our house is in their somewhere.

Don't mind the construction debry on our back patio. You can't miss the trees towering over the house.

One of the beasts.

We have been getting bids on tree removal and some places have been outrageous. We got a bid from Discount Tree Removal and they gave us a great deal. They infact just showed up on our front porch one day ready to work. No appointment needed! Haha

Can you see how itty bitty our house looks underneath those trees?

One tree down.

And voilà. A house emerges! It doesn't even look like the same house. It's going to look so amazing when we get the lawn all put back together. You can finally see all of Drew's handy work.

...Inspiration...

So we are about to paint our house. And as usual I like to scoure the world for examples. We go on drives, walks, cruise the Internet, look at blogs, buy magazines! I obsess! But I thought I would show you some of the ideas I like for the house. I am terrible at siting, so please please let me know if you know where the picture is from so I can give them credit.

Here are some shingles we really liked. Some people like them jagged and wavy, it reminds me of ToonTown in Disneyland. So we did ours in even horizontal lines like this.

And I am still not over my yellow kick! And I think a green house with a yellow door sounds amazing!

So here are some of my yellow doors...

This one is my favorite, the pale yellow is what I am leaning towards.

Who wouldn't want to visit someone with a yellow door. It just radiates happiness.

I thought about gray for the house color. But just for a moment. I think a green door on a gray house is beautiful.

A yellow door, but the shingles were too even for me. There is a fine line with shingles.

I love it, they painted the trim around the door yellow too. I think it looks good here, but I like doors that are trimmed out in a color. To make the door pop more.

This is how we were thinking about doing our posts, but I don't love this style, it's a little too busy for me. I think it is very well done in this picture.

I take back what I said before, this one is my very favorite. The color yellow, the shingles, the color of the house. Or green is a little more green and less gray. This picture captures everything I want and love!

Portico Update

Drew put the finishing touches on the trim for the portico. And it looks better then I could have ever imagined!

He put a belly band on the bottom of the portico, and individually cut the shingles for a more authentic look.

As Drew was ripping off the aluminum siding, we found some very nice wood trim that was original to the portico. It worked perfect for the moulding around the shingles.

This is our test patch for the paint color for the house. We got the paint sample from one of the families I work for. It is the color of the house they used to live in! I think it will be just perfect!