Kitchen Suspense!

Top of the morning to y'all! 

All the chaos in the Morgan household should be settling down soon enough. We're putting in all the new appliances this morning and will be finishing up the flooring by the end of the week...hopefully. It's pretty crazy how long all of this work takes. Also, you find little things wrong here and there that need to be fixed otherwise it's a like a giant domino effect of things that go wrong/look wrong.

ie. The designer had drawn out the wall where our farm sink sits. One of the upper cabinets stuck out 4" too far beyond the countertops. We didn't realize this until the countertops were put in yesterday. Although it wasn't a HUGE deal (and I'm sure most people would hardly even notice on first look)---Daniel and I have spent too much time and money on this kitchen that it wouldn't be right to let that slide. So, instead, we're getting a whole new upper cabinet for that part of the wall today to be replaced. 

 I can't even imagine trying to remodel with two full time jobs. (Thank goodness I have the flexibility to work from home and to oversee all the details.) 

Not having had a kitchen for the past 3 weeks now has been a nightmare since I usually cook most of our dinners. (I've never eaten out this much in MY LIFE, and I cannot wait to have a home cooked meal.) Daniel and I were discussing the other night--- for once in my life, I've seen food as a necessity, a means to an end, an obnoxious task of figuring out where to get dinner each night. 

Oy vey! 

I'm sure once everything's back in place---my inner foodie will be released full force! Plus, Daniel got me a sweet food scale for my birthday that I have yet to break open. (Can't wait to bake with it!) 

We're also getting new area rugs since all of the downstairs carpet is being ripped to shreds and being replaced with porcelain tile that looks like hardwood. This stuff is LEGIT, people. Daniel and I had looked into quite a few flooring options when we first started. Our options:

-Real hardwood (My first option, but I'm terrified of maintenance)

-Engineered hardwood (So much of the engineered hardwood looks so real now, it most likely would've been the way to go until we landed on our final decision) 

-Laminate (Daniel was pushing this pretty hard to save on cost, but I HATE the way cheap laminate looks and sounds. Even some of the better made laminate still looks super fake to me, and I know I would've hated it in the long run.) 

So porcelain tile that resembles hardwood it is! We ended up choosing this option primarily because I didn't want to spend my life worrying about scratches on our floors with our beast of a dog. I ordered about 800 sq ft of this magic flooring from: 

http://www.bedrosians.com/ 

A dear friend of mine owns this giant chain of tile & stone stores, and I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the materials that we ended up ordering! In fact, I hadn't even seen the tile we ended up purchasing beforehand. I trusted my friend on her better judgment and went ahead and ordered! (In hindsight, I probably should have at least taken a look in person, but I just wanted to get it over with---2 weeks in. Thankfully, it looks AMAZING and we couldn't have chosen a better flooring option!) 

The last thing to do is to put in our backsplash which will probably be done by this weekend, grouted by Monday. So, unfortunately for you, you'll have to wait until early next week for final before and after photos of our kitchen. With that, though, I'll leave you with my favorite picture of all from all this construction.

(A little history: our home was built in the 80's and came complete with a "NuTone" radio/intercom system. As ghetto as it looked, it actually still worked after all these years! During the first day of demo, I came home to find this message left from our contractor.)

Something on the lines of--what the heck, mate?

Hahaha

And with that, I hope y'all have a wonderful week and we can't to show you the grand finale of this remodel! 

Kitchen Remodel-Part Four

First things first----everyone check out www.VantisHomes.com !

I just launched the website after weeks of building, exceptional aerial photography and a lot of anxiety on Daniel's part! Vantis is one of the last residential developments in Aliso Viejo that overlooks all of Orange County, where I've been investing a lot of marketing towards, and hopefully will have a couple of new listings in here soon.

Also, over the weekend just happened to be my 28th birthday. Oof, that sounds old. It's my high school's 10 year reunion which is just a giant reminder of how time has flown and I'm pretty much a g-ma. (Probably doesn't help that I went to bed at 9 PM last night, slept for 10 hours, and I still feel exhausted after so much shut eye. OHHHH, my youthful days are officially over and non existent.)

Daniel, aka the best husband in the universe, tried to throw me a surprise birthday party for the second year in a row. AND---for the second year in a row, the party was no longer a surprise by the time it actually happened. (Last year's excuse was he lost our dog a few hours before the party began, and instead of being surprised---we were in a frenzy trying to run to Kinkos to print LOST PUPPY posters all around his neighborhood.)

This year, I started off the first 9 hours of my birthday working, showing property, ya know..slaving away. Daniel had planned for the surprise to start at 6 pm, so when I called him to let him know that I had scheduled another appointment to meet with a client at 6 pm and we'd have to push our dinner plans for later---I was met with a, "Well, ya can't. I hate doing this to two years in a row, but I had a surprise party planned for you at the Wahlers."

Le sigh.

The Wahlers are our dear friends who live around the corner from us, and were so generous to host a surprise birthday party for me since our lives have been consumed with this kitchen remodel. So although there was no longer a surprise involved, I was thrilled to be able to spend time with some close friends and had an amazzzzzing 28th birthday, nonetheless. Daniel had everyone bring a bottle of wine where we brown paper bagged them all and had a 'blind wine tasting'. (All bottles had to be under $10, so it was a battle of who had the tastiest, crappy wine. Haha.) Once again, husband of the year goes to Daniel.

Our bestie, Drew, brought an awesome cheese and meats plate. I LOVE CHEEEESE!

My sweet friend, Lynnia, made these delish apps!

A special thank you to all my gorgeous friends for celebrating with me and for making time for a very un-special birthday year!!! (Also, a super thanks to Alissa and Cassie for driving all the way over and for Amy, my favorite, for celebrating with me two days in a row---she took me to "Ritter's" a cajun restaurant for some tomato gumbo and fresh oysters, then to Mitsuwa for mochi-donuts afterwards. I LOVE YOU!)

Okay, now onto the gritty.

Our house is a giant dust ball of a home, and its impossible to get just about anywhere without running into anything. It's unmanageable, and I'm usually pretty clean...so having this mess everywhere is making my skin crawl.

Ew.


So far, we have managed to demo the kitchen, re-plumb the electrical and water (to help with the rerouting of our fridge and stove), replaced the drywall, textured and sandblasted the walls and now onto some cabinets! The countertop person is coming on Wednesday to draw the templates for the countertops which will be delivered by mid July. We've decided to move forward with switching out with new flooring sooner than later, and are currently gathering quotes for those now, so we'll keep you in the loop what we end up deciding on.

Here are some photos with updates!

Voila! Our next post probably won't be until all the cabinetry is finished and countertops are in mid July to keep the kitchen finale, a super surprise.

Love you all, ciao.