After our delays we’re back to work. We made several trips to the tile store trying to find a tile that we liked in the bathroom. I actually “won” this round as hubby kept going more toward the white family (but that was what the original tile we bought was). He didn’t want color cuz he thought the room needed white to lighten it up since we used a darker blue in the small room. I persisted and we took home two tiles that were a bit darker to at least see how they looked, and guess what!? Yep…. they both looked great!

We also decided how the other bathroom will be done (designed around not having the cat box in the bath tub anymore). It’s getting a bit more of a makeover with shallower cabinets since the room is so small. Now we need to pick out wall color and floor tile. We picked up the cabinets and sink this past weekend and I’m excited to get it started… but we do need to get our bathroom finished first. We’re also not sure what the walls look like behind the current cabinets and at least one section of the wall will be seen that now isn’t…. so if the wall isn’t textured like the rest of the room we’ll be picking out tile for that section of the wall (which isn’t too bad of an idea since that’s where the cat box will be). Once that bathroom is done we can FINALLY put down the flooring in the rest of the house…. WOOT! It’s only been stacked in the living room for how long now?

We’re in another holding pattern. We finally got our bathroom door and I love it! It needs to be painted but I’m a little concerned about painting while it’s so humid… the little painting we have done recently (base boards, crown moldings) doesn’t seem to want to cure very quickly. Here it is right now (it still has the protective plastic on the glass until we paint it):

The glass isn’t quite as frosted as much as we wanted so we’ll probably add some extra to it… but overall i’m very pleased (and can’t wait to see it painted!)

We decided we wanted to change the the vanity top in the bathroom. I didn’t want anything too expensive but a bit more current. We found a marble top with attached sink that looks really nice. The only problem is that now the tile that we loved looks horrible! It’s totally the wrong style and wrong color to look good in the bathroom…. so now we’re back in a holding pattern until we find something at a reasonable price that we like… Guess it’s a good thing we didn’t get the tile put in after all….

We’re still in a holding pattern of sorts….. We’ve been working on the little things I mentioned in my last post…. plus I had to spend some time seriously getting into computer research. My computer had been acting up for a while so I knew it wouldn’t be long before it died… I had done some researching and looking… I found a computer that I loved (but not the price, so much)…. I figured I watch and wait for it to be on sale… No such luck…. One day last week i turned my computer on in the morning and it immediately shut off… and smelled like electric burning… Uh Oh! I continued to look into computers (including looking at D(h)ells!!!) Ultimately I had decided on a Toshiba that was a step down from the computer I really wanted…. We headed out to Best Buy and they had an HP on clearance!? It was regularly $799, selling for $531. It also already had their optimizing thing done to it as well as adding webroot for 6 months. (and of course their “ask an agent scam *rolls eyes*) The only thing about it that I’m not crazy about is the case itself… but hubby reminded me that I could buy a skin for it! The first thing I did was use my iPhone to look up reviews on it… they were almost all good…. and the couple that weren’t were for silly reasons…. Soooooo… instead of the $676 one that i really wanted or even the $499 one I was going to settle for…. I got the $531 one that was a great deal! WOOT! It’s an Intel Core 2 processor, 15.6″ LED screen, 6 cell battery, 500GB 7200 RPM harddrive, 6GB DDR3 RAM, Altec Lansing sound… Oh…. and it’s a laptop! Yep…. I gave up my desktop for a laptop! for a while now I’ve been thinking about it so I could be more mobile in the house rather than tied to the computer room…. (and yes…. I looked at Mac Books… but didn’t want to spend that much money on a computer right now with all the stuff we’re doing to the house and still need to so and still plan to do!)

Speaking of the house… we’re still in our holding pattern. We got our paint for the bathroom cabinet and the new door whenever it finally comes in! I love the color! Lowe’s did a great job at color matching the shelf, which is the same wood as the bed and dressers we’re going to get! The closet door is in and I LOVE it! I just want to move back into out bathroom already!!!!! Although at this point I’m kind of used to using the other bathroom and have pretty much moved all my stuff into there! We’ve picked out the new vanity for the other bathroom that will allow us to put the catbox next to it rather than in the tub! YAY! (But of course we can’t even think about starting that room til the other bathroom is useable again!

Sorry…. no completed kitchen/dining area floor pic yet… I want to wait and post one when the baseboards are in, which may happen sooner rather than later… Since our plans with completing our mini-make-over in the master bath are on hold. We ordered new closet doors that were supposed to be in last Friday but since we are in a remote area they only deliver once a week… they missed the truck from L.A. last friday so we’re waiting til this Friday. That’s fine… we deciced to forge ahead with the bathroom since the tile we ordered did come in on time. We also ordered our new bathroom door. We decided rather than just the same old door we wanted something a little different. On one hand it’s a good thing we waited cuz we saved 25%… on the other hand… it won’t we here in the 2 weeks that the guy said. When I got home and really looked at the paperwork…. delivery date is July 24th. UGH!

When we started laying out the tile we realized that if the new door is off by even a 1/2 inch in how it fits… it will mess up the transition from the wood to the tile… soooooo we are in a holding pattern. So we are in a holding pattern and continue to use the other bathroom… Of course all this stalling just pushes out when we can install the wood (that’s been sitting in boxes in my living room for weeks now) since we want the tile in before it goes in…. I’m really tired of living like this!

In the meantime we plan to finish up all the little things that we’ve put off, like baseboards in the dining area… the crown molding in bedroom… and we can even put the faucet, mirror, towel holders in bathroom…

Here’s a little sneak peak of the bathroom light we bought and the paint color that we did on the walls and ceiling.

OK…. so that’s mean… Sorry…. But this is what we’ve been living with since we finally grouted that floor on Sunday. What a nightmare that was! We planned to use the same color grout as the backsplash area. We had mixed a tiny bit of both and looked and looked and looked at it by the floor tile and decided that Latte was perfect. So we picked up a bag of sanded. We get it home and pour it in the bucket and it looked red!?!?! Grouted one tiny section thinking it would change to the backsplash color… Nope! So back to the tile store… UGH! This time we picked up Biscuit. We also checked the colors at Lowe’s but ultimately decided Biscuit was it. Since it’s light (we wanted to blend with the tile rather than accent it.) I need to get it sealed before it gets dirty or stained… YIKES! We have to wait 72 hours for that… so guess what I’ll be doiong after work this evening????

I appears Apple is breaking their own street date on the new iPhone or they are playing a nasty hoax on all the folks that pre-ordered for home delivery…. We all got emails saying that regardless of what our Fedex tracking says… we will receive them the 23rd…. Conservative Happy Dance! WOOT!

I can’t believe my baby girl is 13!! We’ll do something special for Brie today to celebrate her birthday! Hubby will be home working on the “Honey Do” list so she’ll have company all day long!

Ordering iPhone 4 the other day was a nightmare! I expected it to be busy since all of the 3G owners that didn’t upgrade to the 3GS last year were now eligible and would be ordering… plus almost everyone that bought or upgraded to the 3GS last year was elibigle for at least the mid level upgrade pricing. I tried for 12 hours (yes…. 12 hours!) before I finally got ours pre-ordered! Phew! The next test of Apple/AT$T’s servers will be the 24th when the 600,000 of us that ordered on Tuesday… along with however many thousands ordered Wednesday and will stand in line…. Activation may take days rather than hours! YIKES!

And finally, it’s all done (except for the floor and a couple of things that need the floor done first like baseboards, corner edging…).

A shot from the dining area with our new, cute table and the new lights that replaced the fan.

Another angle of the dining area and kitchen. We decided to go with no curtains in the kitchen. There’s really no room for them and we didn’t want a valance.

With the under cabinet lights off.

A close up of the window sill. We decided to use the accent tile.

The dining area from the kitchen and with the lights on. They look very different! We still need curtains but we’re waiting til the living room is done as they either have to match or at least coordinate. So for now it’s just blinds.

You can really see the ceiling in this pic as well as the new crown mouldings. I like the lights when they are off!

HERE’s the link the the Flikr set where all the pics are in case you want to see them all at once or larger versions.

We picked up the tile yesterday and plan to put it in this weekend. Then we get to finish up the master bedroom and bath.

And now for the disaster we were living in for a while….

We (hubby) took off the tile coounter top and backsplash.

After that we painted the walls. In the kitchen we painted the dropped ceiling the same color as the walls as I thought it would be cozier (and no need to worry about straight lines at the ceiling!) This is just an interim redo to last a few years. Our cupboards are structurally in good shape so we removed the cabinet doors and primed and painted them and the cabinets. You can also see in the pic that a lot of our cabinet stuff lived on the counter, covered in plastic for a while. Fun…. NOT!

And here’s the cabinets painted.

In the next pic you can see that in the rest of the open area (dining area, living room and hallway) we used a lighter shade on the ceiling. This is our mess when I was painting the living room. (I didn’t have to worry about getting paint on the floor as there’s nothing there but the concrete slab!)

Again… since this is just an interim makeover… we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a granite or soapstone or other countertop so we went with tile that we (hubby) could do ourselves. However we chose something that was more stonelike and went with the smalled grout lines we could. You also see my sink light in this pic which played a big part in picking colors… it was love at first sight and the first thing we bought for the kitchen… before paint, before tile, before anything else! You can also see we decided to mix finishes. I looked and looked and ultimately it came down to personal style and making sure to tie in the “odd” finish. We did that in the dining area (you’ll see in the finished pics.) I didn’t like the brushed nickel light hangy thing with the lamp shade and didn’t want to go oil rubbed bronze on the cabinets.

The evolution of the sink (aka the most expensive part of the whole makeover).

The one thing I’m not happy about is that the sink is set in rather than undermount. But we spent a LOT of time looking for a solution to undermounting the sink under the tile we wanted (to include trying to find another tile we liked even 1/2 as much.) We had actually ordered a lighter sink that was back ordered for about 6 weeks… so I got online and found this chocolate brown one that was even better! We also looked at less expensive faucets but once I’d seen the Touch 2 O faucet from delta I was hooked… Again… I tried to want to get the other one we intended to get… but style won over budget! I love how it also includes the soap dispenser! (And the fact that the builder didn’t center the light is now really noticeable but I’ve gotten used to it. *sigh*)

And a little closer look.

Something we never had before, and I use constantly now: Under cabinet lighting! They are flourescent and energy star.

Choosing a backsplash took forever. Finally we found the accent tile we wanted to use, then it was just about finding a tile to go with that. LOTS of visits to the tile stores. Here we have the first row of the main tile and we’re playing around with the accent tile.

And here’s behind the stove after a couple of re-dos.

And a little video of our very, very cool faucet.

The laundry room makeover spilled into the kitchen (which spilled over into the living room, which spilled over into the master bedroom, which spilled over to the master bath……) Above is the old, outdated “Before” we were dealing with.

The dining area before (I don’t know why I took it without the table?)

The kitchen is done! (Well except for the floor.) I have pictures but I need to find time and figure out where I’m going to post them. I think I need to make a new Flickr account cuz the one I made for the blog is full and I don’t want to pay for it.

Our plan was to put laminate wood down in the kitchen, dining area, living room, hall, and master bedroom. We ordered it and now we’re just waiting for it to be delivered. However I’ve been a bit worried about laminate and where to put Brie’s water bowl (which is always flooded underneath and with a trail of water cuz she walks away and drools. I’m also worried about those occasional accidents that you want to clean with more than just a damp cloth. Soooooo on Sunday hubby brought a tile back in that we had picked up as a sample at the tile store and put it down in the kitchen. It looks so good! So now we’re thinking we’ll do tile in the kitchen dining area, wood laminate in the living room and hall… and we’re still undecided about the bedroom…. either the wood laminate or maybe carpet…. If we do carpet it will be the only room with it as the other two rooms have tile already.