If anyone has interest in some of the detail selections, I thought I would post some over the course of this project. We have been spending months deliberating, discussing, weighing the pros and cons, sometimes arguing and throwing up our hands in surrender until we come back to discuss AGAIN on various minute details (case in point: the doorbell) that normal people would not pay attention to but when you have a marriage with two detail-oriented people... Let's just say it leads to lots of TALKING. And expressing your FEELINGS. And someone punch me in the throat now.
The Kitchen.
Otherwise known as Andrew's Man Cave. Although he is getting a few of those in this house, so maybe this is more like his First Love? No pressure, but our last kitchen won a GHBA award so the bar has been set, and we want to do it right. This will be the heart of our house, it's where we always end up hanging out, so it's got to be inviting, comfortable and fun to cook in. Did I mention, easy to clean? That too, as I am not the cook, I end up doing the dishes most nights. I need cleaning to be as short a process as possible.
Counter tops - White carrera marble for kitchen counters, stainless steel for island, butcher block for the adjacent butler pantry.
Inspiration from Houzz.com (thank you Gem for cluing me into that little black hole prior to starting this process again). All of these kitchens are WAAAY fancier than we could imagine but it's nice to dream. And let's be clear here: I am not very creative of my own accord but I can mimic decently when given pictures.
Cabinets - These will be stained very dark brown/espresso color (like the first picture) except the island lower cabinets which will be painted white (like the second photo). I am succumbing to the trend of dual color cabinets.
Tile - Last time we went very colorful with the tile backsplash in the kitchen, so of course we would do a complete 180 and make the backsplash in this house all white in a variation of a diagonal pattern we found at a local restaurant that we enjoy (on the back wall waaaaay in the back at the top). Bonus: Doing white tile is cheaper with a minimal increase for the funky layout labor.
The floor will be a gray 12"x24" tile that I don't have photos of because I am still somewhat grieving the loss of the volcanic tile. It would be disrespectful to post pictures like that during this period of mourning.
Appliances - This is one of things things that provokes talking about your FEELINGS a lot between Andrew and I. He started out in love with the French door ovens made by Blue Star and wanted to have the venthood and range top to match. And then we saw the Blue Star double French door ovens price tag and my eyeballs fell out.
It makes Viking look like Walmart. I mean, I'm a total sucker for being able to custom color your appliances, but even my ridiculousness has boundaries.
In addition, the Blue Star range top is quite probably the hardest thing to clean ever. The sales guy who was showing us why chefs love it even made mention of how chefs don't care how hard it is to clean because of its amazingness in cooking as, you know, they don't have to clean it. They have staff for that. Well THIS staff says that's the nail in the coffin for Blue Star.
We ended up going with the Thermador packages which seems like a good compromise of affordable and user-friendly. I hope that oven makes a killer batch of cookies. They also have a promotion going for a free dishwasher with the package. Hashtag-hitting-my-sweet-spot.
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