Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day and while I know several members of the current armed services (We Love You Jess! Be Safe!) they are all alive and kickin' so by definition they don't qualify to be memorialized. My grandfather Fleming is probably the closest relative that I know that counts. He fought in World War 2 and his name is on a really neat War Memorial in Richmond, UT. If you are ever in that city you should go find it. Because he is buried in Richmond I wont be able to go to his grave so this is as close as I will get today.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

The Sink

When we ordered our counter tops they came with our choice of three sinks. We could choose the 50/50, the 60/40 or the Smart Sink. The 50/50 is just what it sounds like. A sink with 2 even sized tubs. The 60/40 has one tub slightly larger than the other side. We have one right now with a tiny side and a huge side. We don't love it. So the obvious choice would have to be the Smart Sink. Hello, even the name just proves that it is the right choice. The Smart sink is a deep sink with 2 even tubs and a divider that only rises half way up the sink.
Like so:
Now I can put large pots (or maybe someday babies....) into the sink and it wont matter if it fits into one side or the other side. The divider comes up 4.5 inches and so if we wanted to fill the sink with some water to do dishes we still can and if we want to fill the whole thing up and have a pool party in our kitchen we can do that too! It's almost deep enough for a diving board.

We knew we needed an awesome new faucet to go with it, none of my DIY blogs had a homemade faucet craft, so we went and bought one of these:
We were really excited about the pull down sprayer. It was going to be like getting to do lunch duty in elementary school every day! The night before the counter tops were to arrive I had this terrible feeling. I was afraid that the beautiful plantation shutters wouldn't be able to open with the taller arc faucet. We went over to the house to measure and, wouldn't you know it, it was tall enough to be in the way of the shutters. So we got another awesome faucet that has a wand instead of the pull down. Still very nice. No interference from the shutters.


Friday, May 7, 2010

The first big change

I'm so excited about our new home and we have already begun the process of making it our own. We liked this house when we first saw it but there was one thing that we felt like didn't match the rest of the house. The counter tops.

We've been getting some flack for talking about how much we don't like these counter tops. They could be fine. If they were in a different house. The pink color would be better in an adobe house with cactus and sandstone surrounding it. But that wasn't our house. Our house was built in 2004 and it has the standard cream with white trim walls and, as you can see, it has brown and tan flooring. We talked about putting in laminate flooring but decided to wait on that project and we'll see if it happens. It turns out once we removed the pink counters the flooring doesn't look so out of place. We found a killer deal on granite counters and we paid as much as we would have paid for laminate at any of the chain stores.

The color we got is called Venetian Gold. In the words of my uncle/Realtor it took the room from Grandma to Yuppie. I don't know that Yuppie was what we were going for but we got it away from Grandma and that was the hope! Unfortunately I've caught the bug and so even though Brad thinks we're done with the kitchen I think that maybe I've only just begun.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Becoming an addict

I've always loved looking at peoples houses. Buying our home has given me the chance to walk through lots of peoples homes and I loved it. Since the touring portion of the process has ended I have found a new way to continue looking at peoples homes. Blogs. I love looking at Design Blogs. I may have to quit my job so I can sit and look at all the crafty things other people are doing. I don't even have time (or the real talent) to try to make the crafts myself because one blog leads to another and there are so many cool things to look at.
But despite the lack of time and talent I've been trying some of these projects and I'm excited about the outcome. I'm going to keep trying things (I've got to have something to do during the summer vacations) and I'll be sure to keep you all updated, whether you like it or not, on how those projects go. I will also be updating the house with new things that I wont be making myself because there are people who make things, that I like, for a living that are willing to sell said things at stores for people like me to buy.