More photos of the kitchen

The contractors are finished with the first week of work on the kitchen. So far, they've gutted the walls, ripped out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, re-done most of the electric, ripped up the layers upon layers of flooring, replaced the kitchen window, and put up drywall. Not too shabby for 5-days work.

In the meantime, we're living exclusively upstairs. But hopefully by next weekend, we'll be able to start cleaning up and moving back to the 1st floor.

Here's our upstairs "kitchen":


And here's our upstairs "dishwasher":


And here's how things are coming along downstairs:

Gutted kitchen walls...


Dining room wall removed...


New box window...


Drywall installed...


New inset lights in the ceiling...



Next week, the contractors will put the finishing touches on the wall and install our new tile floors. At the same time, we're also having our stairs and upstairs hallway re-sanded. After that, we might actually be able to move back downstairs. Hooray!

Something else ending this week...

In addition to marking the end of our kitchen, this week we're also marking the end of Ariella's second trimester.



At this point, the baby weighs almost two pounds, which (according to our weekly BabyCenter e-mails) means she's about the size of an "English Hothouse Cucumber". So you can add another "end" to this week: this is the last time you'll even hear our child compared to a European vegetable that's named after a brothel. Thank goodness.

Demolition Day!

If you've never been to see our house in person and you've been reading our blog, you may have wondered: "Why are there no pictures of the kitchen?". Well, lets just say the kitchen wasn't exactly one of the house's finest selling points.

In September we started planning, re-planning, and re-re-planning our kitchen renovation. A few weeks ago, Ariella cooked up a month's worth of food to store in our basement fridge.



Yesterday, we moved all the pots, pans and plates to the basement, took down our curtains, put a tarp over the sofa, and set up house entirely on our 2nd floor. And today (after nearly 10 months of living without a dishwasher) our contractor finally started demolition.

After one day, what was once an ugly kitchen is now... well... a really ugly kitchen. But by March, it'll be our dream kitchen. Here are some photos from day one.

Corner cabinets before:



Corner cabinets after:



View from the dining room before:



View from the dining room after:



View from the kitchen before:



View from the kitchen after:

Two big projects we're working on

At the moment, we've got two big projects that we've been working on for a while. The first, of course, is our addition to the family. Ariella is 22 weeks along, and looking more and more like an expectant mom each week.



Just before Christmas, we had our ultrasound and found out that we're having a girl! Here's a sneak peak...



The other project that's been in the works almost as long as the baby is our new kitchen.

We've been working with our contractor for several months, and have finalized our design, picked out our cabinets, and ordered the granite for our counter tops.

We chose a cherry wood with chesnut ebony glaze for our cabinets. When Andy's parents redecorated the kitchen in their Victorian in Putnam, they saved all the crystal knobs. Almost 20 years, later, we're going to use them in our Victorian.



Since we picked dark wood for the cabinets, we chose a light-colored granite for the counter tops.



If all goes well, our contractor will start ripping out the kitchen in the beginning of February. Our cabinets are supposed to arrive mid-February, which means the entire kitchen could be finished by early March.

Our First Christmas

We had a great First Christmas in our new house. Lindsay and Jenny came Christmas Eve. And Andy's family came down Christmas day. Just a couple photos of our Christmas decorations.



It seems like the Christmas gifts took over the area. Just wait for years to come!



We hung stockings for Andy and I. And also, for Lindsay and Jenny.

The Dining Room Saga

Well, let's say that the Dining Room has evolved over the past few months. We started with the "oh so familar" pink walls & pink carpet.



We, of course, wanted to remove ALL pink as soon as possible. So, we ripped up the carpet and primed the walls ASAP.


We decided to do a chair rail in the dining room and continue the tan color from the living room into the dinning room.



Out first color choice for the bottom.... A greenish blue color. We wanted a green and were trying to choose something that would work well with the blue in the living room.






The results? I liked the color, it looked nice standing in the living room towards the dining room. Andy thought that when you were in the room, it looked to teal.



So, we decided to live with it for awhile and see if it grew on us.



But Andy decided we needed to change it.



So, we declared a Do-Over!



The new color on the bottom? A deep deep blue color. We decided to go with an over saturated version of what we picked for the living room.



Inspired by the painters tape comercial where a very nice looking couple, who also looked remarkable neat after painting, had painted stripes on the walls. After seeing the comercial a thousand times, we decided to try it out on our room.



It probably took us more time to measure out and make sure our stripes would be evenly spaced and tape it all off than, it did to actually paint the stripes!



Also, in tying in the living room to the dining room, we decided to make the stripes the gold color we used on the beam and accents on the steps.





The first big reveal, if our stripes were going to be straight. I was really worried that the paint was going to sneak under the tape or when we pulled the tape off that it would take some of the paint with it. But fortantly, neither of those things happened!



We still need to hang the actual chair rail, and get some nice curtains. But it is getting there!





Our Finished room, as of now. Who know what we will decide to do next!

Guest Bedroom

It has been our goal for the last 2 weekends to paint the guest room. Let's just say we have gotten good at finding other things to do instead!



We are taped and ready to go. Barely motivated to paint primer, that almost looks the same as the pale blue walls.



The ever so exciting "Trading Spaces" moment! Brown that Andy says looks like Mister Softee Chocoate! Or I said, Teddy Bear Brown. But the can called is Woodacres.






Half way there. Keep going. Andy took a nap between coats! I would not of wanted to get up and paint more after napping, but Andy did.



The finished product.



We wanted the brown to go with the quilt that Andy's mom had made us when we were living in the Condo. I plan on painting my old dresser and side table a high gloss white to go with the room.