Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Painted Cabinets

Ok, after many, many green paint samples, I finally decided to take a cue from the house and paint the kitchen cabinets the same color as the very bottom layer of paint on the redwood trim we've been stripping. Nothing else was right and I just really liked it so I took in a chunk of trim to Kelly Moore and they matched it exactly. It looks great with the floors. We're still putting the cabinets back together, but here're some pictures of what it looks like in the mean time.

Still needs some work!

First thing I put in were my cookbooks! I love them there.

Primed in white.

The whole room was an eerie green.

The sink cabinet doors awaiting green paint.

Makeshift painting station for all the doors.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Working in the Garden

This weekend, as Jose and I worked in the front yard, I was talking to our 10 yr old neighbor and she said "it looks like you guys don't really like to weed much!" Yes, it's true, we have let the front yard get a little out of control. With all the rain and working so much on the inside of the house, we've neglected the outside. But this weekend, we finally finished the new path in the front and Jose worked to remove some of the many, many rocks that plague our yard. Really, I don't know why the previous owners thought it would be such a good idea to put rocks everywhere!! I managed to use some in the path, but we still have a gazillion more! The yards slowly coming along. At least now it looks like we like to weed a little more.

The new pathway and a partially weeded front yard.

Jose "farming" for rocks. That one little patch yielded a whole wheelbarrow!

Another view of the path. The flagstone are scraps I salvaged over the years at my landscaping job in Santa Cruz, the cobbles are from the garden, and the brick was from the rubble pile at my work after an old staircase was taken out at a jobsite.

Kitchen Floors!!

The kitchen floors were finished this weekend!!! Well almost--we were short 4 tiles so there's one spot in the laundry room that's not done. Other than that though, they look amazing. I had really debated whether black and white checkered floors was the right choice all the way up until installation, but now I'm genuinely happy we stuck with it. I love the view of the tile while I'm sitting on the couch in the living room. I can't wait to paint all the walls...it'll look even better!

The floor guy had to "float" the floors before laying the tile to compensate for the sloping.

Our beautiful floors!

I can't believe we're missing only 4 tiles!!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Cabinets!!!

I can't even tell you how excited I am right now. The cabinets got installed today and they're everything I was hoping they'd be. It's amazing how quickly the room transformed from four walls into a kitchen. Agan Cabinetry did a great job. Now we just need some paint, a floor, and some counters and we'll be set! Oh, and appliances, lights, and a faucet, too!

The final product.

That's where the stove will go.

These doors are from my Great Grandma Ilda's kitchen!!

The flour bin. (The fridge goes next to it)

We'll add glass and hardware to the doors after they get painted.


Colors, colors, colors

Picking out colors is making my head hurt, literally! There's waaay too many to choose from. Luckily, I've gotten a bit of help, but it's still so overwhelming. Jose and I took a trip up to Berekely last week to The Craftsman Home, a little botique specializing in arts and crafts furniture and other amazing home stuff, because they were featured in American Bungalow Magazine and I really liked the colors in their store. They actually have a color consultanting business too, but luckily the woman who does it was there and was more than helpful, pulling out paint samples and writing down Benjamin Moore paint names for me to try out. It was a great start, but I wish she would come to our house and tell us exactly what to do in every room! I really want to go all out and choose bold colors, but I'm scared it's going to end up looking dumb. I need to just bite the bullet and do it though, because we really need to get the cabinets painted as soon as they're in. Now I understand why people pay color consultants to do it for them! I think I'm narrowing it down slowly though, and our walls are beginning to look like a rainbow!

So many choices!

The yellow too bright, I don't think we'll use yellow at all anymore.

The photo doesn't do the colors justice, but you get the idea.