Belly Up

We have a bar! Well, we have the beginnings of a bar. Our contractor finished framing out what will eventually be the bar between the kitchen and living room/dining room area.

It also seems to be a great viewing area for Henry the cat. Here's one more with the cat and his happy homeowner, Roberto.

There are more kitchen happenings slated for this week and next: the electrician is finishing up more work and the plumber is going to get started on his. Then we need to get inspected. If all that goes well, we can start drywalling. 

A lot of people ask me when we'll be finished, but I'm not really sure at this point. I'm hoping maybe mid-July or the end of July (it may all depend on when we can get an appointment for the cabinet installation). And that doesn't include finishing touches like the backsplash/painting/pendant lights, etc. Right now we're just taking things as they come and dreaming of future cocktails at our bar...

Getting It On

Work has finally started on our kitchen. Well, at least on the wall we're taking out. Yes, the wall is finally gone. Oh, Mr. Wall, we knew you well--you were the backdrop for our TV and some of our lovely built-in bookcases. You turned out to be a real pain in the butt (being load bearing and all) but we gotcha out. Well, our contractor finally got you out. But enough opining.

Yesterday morning, the kitchen area still looked like this:

Then when we came home, it looked like this:

(All those vertical beams are the temporary supports holding up the ceiling until the headers are put in.)

So the wall went bye-bye and those white built-ins on the corner were removed (and moved out into the carport).

I was super excited to pull up and see the built-ins in the carport. I had really hoped we could save them and move them to another wall, but wasn't sure if we could get them off the wall without damaging them. But our contractor was able to get the unit out in one piece. Very cool.

So we're making progress. It feels pretty good. Soon it will be hard to remember how that area once looked:

Getting Organizized

One of my goals for 2011 is to organize our living spaces a little better. Once our kitchen is finished, we'll take the opportunity to pare down the clutter that ends up in kitchen junk drawers and make use of all the wonderful interior drawer/cabinet organizers we purchased with our cabinets.

In the meantime, though, I thought I'd take on a smaller (and more affordable) organizing project--the linen closet. We usually try keep our closets fairly tidy but we let the linen closet go a little bit. You know, shoving things in there every which way and letting bulkier things like pillows and comforters kind of take over the space. So I took everything out, wiped down the shelves, and tried to refold towels/sheets in a more tidy way. I also took out those bulkier things and moved them into the hall closet and into this fabulous little storage bench from Overstock:

I put our throws and blankets in the bench and placed it under a window in our master bedroom. That way, we have easy access to extra blankets (in the few months we really need them in Florida) and a lot of space was freed up in the linen closet:

The bench listed on Overstock for $96.99. I used a promotional coupon and saved $6.79. So it came out to $93.15. Not bad for a small multifunctional piece of furniture (it's also a good place to sit and put our shoes on or place a bad or purse)

Another thing that helped the linen closet a little more streamlined were baskets. Yes, just a few baskets made a big difference. First, I moved out all the TP and paper towel that was haphazardly place in the hall closet (we always had to move aside the coats to get to it):

 

Then I placed it in an Ikea BRANAS basket ($12.99) and moved it over to the linen closet:

I also put all the small towels (dish rags and towels/microfiber cloths) into these baskets that I snagged from Target ($14.99 for the pair):

So, there you go, a bit more functional:

Let's Get This Thing Going

Ok, so we finally got estimates from the contractors we've been talking to (based on the plans that the structural engineer drew up). They actually came in at about what we were expecting, so we're moving forward with this thing. We're meeting tomorrow night with the contractor we decided to work with to sign paperwork for the permits. Alright. And hopefully next week we'll actually see some work going on in the kitchen.

We officially lost an entire month of work--all of May--waiting to hear back about engineering plans/estimates (except for some rough electrical work the electrician was able to get in). I'd like to say that we would have done something differently from the get-go to avoid the lost time, but I'm not really sure what that would have been. I guess we could have gotten more opinions about The Wall before we started demoing, but, hey, sometimes you can't tell about these things until you open up walls anyway. We probably would have waited just as long on engineering plans/estimates, etc. True, we may have been able to plan for some things a little better (like being without a kitchen this long) but what can you do...

The only thing I can say is to anticipate delays and more delays if you're coordinating a project like this yourself (and, hey, even if you're hiring someone professional to coordinate it). Try to keep positive, though, because it will most likely work out in the end--even if your wallet doesn't agree.

Sans Kitchen: Week 3

I was doing pretty well for the first two weeks of life without our kitchen. I was eager to come up with new, easy clean-up meals for us and enjoyed eating dinners at night out on our porch. I didn't even mind doing dishes in the bathroom:

Crockpot in the bathtub. Yum.

 But I've been in a grouchier mood about it this week. Kind of like this:

I think it's partly because we're coming up on losing an entire month trying to figure out our wall situation and because all of our cabinets and appliances got delivered this week (which equals boxes all over the house, nowhere to put them, and Jen going crazy over all-this-stuff-in-the-middle-of-the-living-room-that-I-can't-put-anywhere!) If we had an enclosed garage, we might have been able to stick them out there, but we have an open carport.

We've also been storing things we had to move out of the living room/dining room area (glassware, our dining room chairs, picture frames, etc.) in the back rooms, so it's kind of been hard to organize or do any projects in those rooms (like our office redo which, I'm still going to try to get done by the end of the summer--maybe). 

Well, the structural engineer did indeed finish up our plans this week and I've sent them to the contractors we've been talking to. Hopefully we'll get some estimates this week and see if we can get this show on the road...

Crowded Out

Our cabinets and appliances got delivered yesterday—very exciting! Not so exciting is the fact that it will probably be a while before we can install anything—we're still waiting for the plans to be drawn up for our wall removal. We went ahead and got them delivered, though, 'cause the distribution center where they were being held was going to start charging us holding costs. We made some room for them but, uh, it's feeling a bit crowded in the dining room:

Luckily the cabinets are flat-packed so they're easy to stack.

We're planning on selling our old appliances on Craigslist ASAP, so at least there won't be two sets of appliances taking up space. Hopefully we'll know more about the structural plans for our wall sometime this week. And we'll see how long I can go without freaking out over all these boxes in the middle of the house. Robert is taking bets...

Dining Room Mood Board

Aahh, decorating and embellishing is my favorite part of the redo process. I haven't been able to do much hands-on decorating lately but I've found that mood boards are a great way to scratch some of the itch and help me plan out what some of our rooms may look like down the road. Here's one I created for our dining room:

 

I used the Jonathan Adler room I was wooing over as inspiration. 

We already have the sideboard (the angled-leg sideboard from West Elm) and the chairs (the overlapping square chair from West Elm). The chairs are dark brown now but, going along with my goal to make things a little lighter and brighter around here, I'm going to attempt to paint them white.

I'm planning on buying similar-looking mirrors off Craigslist or eBay and spray painting them white. The screen grab of the painting is from local artist Brandon Mclean's website. I bought one his paintings a few years ago (not this one) but it has a similar retro feel.

Some succulents in vibrant potted plants and graphic blue fabrics (incorporated in a rug or some pillows?) would finish it off.

*A really useful tool for making mood boards is mydeco, by the way. It's come in handy for me...