Home ImPAINment

Good grief! I am on a home improvement marathon! This past week has been crazy for me. We ordered our new kitchen cabinets last weekend and hope to get them in about two weeks. We've picked out our counter tops and know what we want to do for our back splash. I had no idea there were so many different choices and finishes and materials... It's very, very overwhelming. I think we made some really nice decisions, even though we've gotten some mixed reactions from the peanut gallery. I don't know why people can't just smile and nod and tell you they are happy for you. We got at least two, "you picked that to go with that?" and at least one, "you should've went with..." Very frustrating especially when you've agonized over the decision in the first place. I just can't wait to see it all in real life instead of in a catalog or on some 4"x4" sample.

We're getting Silestone counter tops which are made out of crushed quartz. The counter top comes in one big slab like granite so once we have our cabinets in, the installers will come and measure for our counter tops and then cut a piece to fit. They will also install our new under mount kitchen sink and drill holes for our new faucet. So we had to go out and find a sink and faucet so the installers will be able to fit them for us. Bright and early Saturday morning Joe and I headed out to Lowe's. We didn't find a sink or a faucet we liked but we did find something else.

Let me just say that home improvement can snowball very quickly. Also, watching HGTV when you're in a redecorating "state of mind" is not a good idea. They make everything look quick and easy and awesome. It's not so awesome when you've got your house torn apart and don't have the right parts to put it all back together. While we were at Lowe's we made a little impulse purchase. We were thinking about how nice our kitchen will look when it's done and started talking about all the other projects we'd like to do and how great those would look. I think we were high off the smell of lumber or something. We decided that we wanted to replace the vanity in our guest bathroom. The one we had was functional it was just ugly. 1980's white, crappy cabinet with an ugly, white marble top. Blech. So we found a really nice looking new vanity with a granite top and a really pretty faucet and started adding things up and realized that it was in the budget. So, we brought it home. We also brought home a new kitchen sink, kitchen faucet, and over-the-stove microwave from Home Depot. My check book has a band-aid on it from the beating it took.

As we normally do when we're doing any kind of home improvement project, we called my dad. Kind of to give him a head's up that we might need his help if something were to go awry and partly to get any tips or advice he might be able to offer. My dad is very knowledgeable about construction and we value his help tremendously and are really glad that we can call him when we need assistance. With that said, the man can be a humongous pain in the ass. I think my dad learned construction from the Mr. Miyagi of construction workers. I know he always does things the "right way" but good lord it takes FOR-ever. We called him when we got home with all our new purchases and told him what we were planning and asked if he had any tips or pointers for us. We answered some of his basic questions and he told us he thought we'd be ok installing our new bathroom vanity. About a half hour passes and we get a knock on our door. It's dad, there to see "what we're getting ourselves into". He poked around a little, looked at the stuff we bought, told Joe how to do some stuff and again gave his approval to do our project. Then he started in on the kitchen.

My dad is going to install our kitchen cabinets for us. Again, we're tremendously grateful for his help. But, we got in the kitchen and started talking about what cabinets were coming in and what we wanted to do. Keep in mind we don't have a huge budget for this kitchen. My dad wants to rip out the drywall and the ceiling and re-wire stuff and knock out walls and put in a new ceiling... My head was spinning. I told him that we can't turn our little kitchen renovation into a $50,000 remodel job. He gets all pissy and tells me that we should've thought about that before jumping in to a project before we knew what we were getting into and that we have to do it "right". I wanted to scream. We've been wanting to re-do our kitchen for 4 years but my dad is the one who encouraged us to really do it. He said our kitchen would be a piece of cake, should only cost about $5,000, blah, blah, blah. Now he's throwing out all that other bull shit. UGH!!! It's so damn frustrating.

Anyway, he left and we got down to business of putting in our new vanity. It looks fantastic and we were able to do the whole thing ourselves. High fives all around for Joe's hard work. Low fives for my supervision skills. I started a new album here on the blog. It's my renovation album and the link is below the family album link. So far I only have bathroom pictures on there but I will soon be posting kitchen pictures so that you can all keep up with our progress. I've also been kicking around the idea of redecorating my living room and family room. Again, HGTV and all of it's amazing decorating shows are a very bad influence on me. I'm really just doing new pillows and curtains but I'm not having very much luck. I shopped a lot today and bought a bunch of new stuff but now, seeing it in my actual house, I'm probably going to take most of it back. I wish I could carry my couch around with me to match stuff up. Oh well, I'll keep trying. Wish me home decorating luck!