Shopping and New Mexico!

Ok- so we are wrapping up the fifth week of renovation right now. With so much going on, I've started splitting it into two blogs- one on what we did, and one on what the contracts did.

So, for us, this week was all about shopping. Our contractors were able to hook us up with two vendors that offer discounts to contractors and had way better stuff than we could get ourselves.

First up, a place that sells kitchen cabinets made of solid wood (no pressed sawdust to be found!). After a brief email exchange with our preferred layout, she gave us a mockup of the design and a great price. Including delivery, it was about $300 more than Ikea would have been. We figured that avoiding the hassle of going to the store to pick them up, bringing them home, and putting them together was all worth at least that much. And with better quality, it was hard to say no.

 

our new cabinets- in white

 

kitchen design- looking towards the back of the house

kitchen design- looking to the right

 

 

Then they put us in touch with a tile store that is a distributor for the area. I assumed they would be ridiculously expensive, as other specialty tile stores often are, but they had prices that were lower than any other of the options we'd been looking at. After pulling some of the many samples together and a quick convo with our lady, we picked all of our tile and countertops. Afterwards we swung by the Tile Shop and Lowes to compare, but they didn't have anything as nice for even close to the price. Plus, our guys will deliver. I have no idea how we would get this much tile back to the house in our car, so delivery is pretty important.

 

wood-look tile for the main floor

the kitchen counter on top of the bathroom floor tile, a light grey linen

more kitchen counter- looks like marble, but it's solid surface

kitchen backsplash- grey marble with some stainless steel and glass

 

 

And then, just as things were starting to come together, I skipped out of town for a work trip to New Mexico.

 



atop the mesa at the Acoma Pueblo

a kokopeli hieroglyph

an awesome stormy sunset

 

a new addition to the house- a seed pot from the pueblo- still needs a spot to go.

 

 

So- now I'm back and getting back to normal. It was a great trip, and I learned a lot. Best of all, I avoided most of the chaos of the house this week and got to enjoy a clean, air conditioned hotel room, while R was stuck corralling the cat monsters and dealing with the mess.

 

Most Annoying Thing So Far:

Acknowledging that I wasn't present for most of this week so I don't really get a vote, I still think the most difficult part of living through the renovation this week was the lack of access to the back yard. Last week the contractors began to demolish the pantry, and had to board up the back door for security. That meant that we couldn't use the back door to get into the back yard or to the garage. Why is that a big deal? Well, we have to use our car occasionally. The only way to get to it now, is through the front door, walking all the way around the block to the alley behind the house. That means we hauled all of our dirty laundry outside, bumping into neighbors, when we needed to go do laundry, my suitcase coming and going to the airport, groceries, etc. Pain in the butt. It also means I haven't been able to water any of the plants in my beautiful back yard, so this heat wave is probably going to kill something. Which sucks.  

 

Update on the contractors' progress coming shortly...