Kitchen Selection.......check!!!

 Kitchen cabinets have been selected! Whew, so relieved we have the decision made! We met with our builder today and finalized the selection, we still need to meet with the kitchen designer and finalize the order which we will do next week, but I am so glad to have the decision made! And made with absolutely no time to spare! We will really be pushing our deadline to finish, but Shane and I really aren't super concerned about it, and I certainly have peace about it and trusting God!

We ended up selecting the cabinets I initially had quoted and loved! No other place could compare in terms of price and quality of paint finish. Our builder did increase our cabinet budget $2000 when he learned just how pricy painted cabinets were...yes, it is crazy, but painted cabinets are quite a bit more expensive then stained! So without further ado, here is what I selected (and I will say 'I', because if Shane had any say, he would have chosen quarter sawn oak, but he generously conceded all kitchen selections to me because let me assure you I do 100% of the cooking and it really doesn't matter to him what the kitchen looks like, besides, its not like I am going to go design his 'workshop'! Totally love my husband!!!) Okay, back to revealing my selection:

Shiloh Inset Shaker Style Maple Cabinets with 5 piece drawers in the color Polar. Its a nice warm white, without looking creamy. We will be matching all the trim work to this color.

 Now, I need to make my counter top selection. I stopped in at a locally owned counter top place to see what they offered in quartz, which was about every quartz manufacturer and every color they offer! I selected 5 that ranged in prices and had to send a bid to my builder, who said any would be in budget. Here are the two I am leaning towards...

Seleno on the left and Sechura Mocha on the right

Seleno quartz...it grabbed my attention, but I first dismissed it because I knew it was on the pricy end of quartz. I feel like it carries a similar look to some granite, but the pattern is consistent (which the craziness of granite has been my drawback) plus it has the dark brown specks that I have been searching for in all the slabs of granite we looked at to try and tie in my back splash.

Close up of the Sechura Mocha, it immediately caught my eye, its made up of beautiful browns with flecks of mirror that just make it sparkle! My fear is it is too dark to do all over with also doing my brown glass tile for back splash, so considering maybe just doing the island in it, or switching to white glass tile for back splash...what do you think?

 The two colors go really well together, but I had never considered doing two different colors for the perimeter of the kitchen and island, mainly because it kinda goes 'against my grain' in needing things uniform. But the idea is slowly growing on me.

More Selections Crossed Off Our List...

 Ahh, what a crazy week! The girls and I have been traveling and at my moms house for 5 days, there was a freak spring snowstorm, had the home schooling conference to attend, and had the honor of hosting my brother, sister-in-law and my mom stay with us, as my brother has been on this end of the state seeing doctors while dealing with some health issues. We also managed to squeeze in a meeting with our builder where we made some major selections and chip away at figuring out our kitchen cabinets! We also spent the day in Omaha today looking for carpet and tile, which my husband thought I did very well making selections in a timely manner :)....so here is a recap with pictures in random order!

Emma and Bree did awesome today during all our shopping...they always found 'something' to do!

Quartz option for countertops...I have had a hard time picking out granite because I don't like the non-consistent pattern designs so we are looking at quartz as another option.

Another quartz option...don't love either options, but like them.

Pretty sure I found some carpet! This we would use in the living room and up the stairs.

Trying to decide between one of the bottom 2 colors for the bedrooms (top color is living room carpet again).

My, oh my did I found a rug I like for the dining room! That is our wood sample with it, don't you just LOVE?!?!

Another picture but with what the color of our trim would look like with it! I did not buy the rug today (even tho the hubby said I could) but I think I need a bigger size, so will wait until we can measure out the actual space for where the rug will go.

Pretty much fell in love with some slate too...pictures do not give it justice, it is beautiful! We would use it for our fireplace hearth.

Glass tile for fireplace surround, its called 'Brandy'. It is a beautiful color, but hard to tell actual color from this picture. We will use the 2X4 subway size.

 

 

 

Here is what I want for the mantel!

 

Made our selection on shingles...'Rustic Slate'

Made our selection on stone for the exterior of the house 'Tennessee Ledgestone'. Here is a picture of the sample board in the small stack.

Stone picture from of the wall display at the play we picked it out at. We are getting this size of stone and it will be grouted like in the picture versus being dry stacked.

Front Door Selection, Rift Cut Oak but will have the craftsman shelf and stained a dark color.

And last but not least, we made our selection for interior doors...5 panel oak! This was an added cost, 5 panel white or popular solid core doors were in our budget, but it was an extra $500.00 for Oak. Shane really wanted the doors, I had a hard time deciding between white and dark oak, but let the hubby have the final say! We will stain them a chocolate brown color to go with our oak wood floor. I think over the years the dark wood will wear somewhat better. The doors from our old house were solid wood and over 100 years old and never been redone and were beautiful! They were also 5 panel too, but were raised panel, we are going flat panel for the new house. But we really wanted to bring the character of our old house into this new one, as our trim will be the same too.

Here is a picture of the doors and trim in our old house!

We received some more quotes back for our kitchen cabinets (which were extremely high), and waiting on one more company to provide a quote. Who ever would have thought finding cabinets would be such a challenge...I know exactly what I want! We need to make a decision this week in order to meet the time line, so praying  God will reveal the answer soon, and that it doesn't include going over budget! The challenge has been that the companies that are less expensive won't paint a custom color but don't offer a warm white (either a blue/cold white or a very yellow/ivory white), and the ones that will do a custom color are way high or what to charge an 18% upcharge to pick a custom color.

The agenda for the house this week is to get the basement dried out so they can pour the basement floor. The stone mason also wants to get started and siding is suppose to start going on. It will be the hardiplank siding and we will then need to finalize exterior paint colors!

Well, thats all for now!

Framing Complete and Windows go in...

 The framing is all done and we have windows! Each day the house looks more and more like a home! The windows are actually the wrong style, they have 'cottage' style bars at the top and they should be 'prairie' style. The window place sent the wrong ones, but are sending out replacements for the top part of the window. We originally were going to go with the 'cottage' style but at the last minute changed our minds and I am soooo glad we did, because I am not at all crazy about the 'cottage' style seeing it now in person.

Front porch framed!

Emma and Bree's walk-in closet

Upstairs hallway

Emma and Bree's room

Upstairs bathroom

Emma and Bree playing. This is the back door, they love going up and down the board ramp, and also playing in the mud puddles in the back yard.

I am still waiting on one last kitchen quote, and praying it is the answer because we are running out of time! I have so many decisions to make that are determined by the kitchen...it was the very first thing I wanted decided back in January! This coming week we are also need to submit our choices for shingles, stone and doors. Exterior doors are already decided on, but we are deciding between 5 panel white doors that are in budget, or go with 5 panel oak doors that are $500 over budget. (I think its gonna be the oak!)

The girls and I are heading to my mom's for 5 days...I will be anxious to get back and see what all was done on the house!

Stairway to...

 ...the upstairs! The girls and I were so excited to drive by the house this afternoon and see that there were stairs built!!! We couldn't wait til 5pm to hit and the building crew gone so we could go see! Technically, I can go in anytime, but its not much fun for the girls when there are people working cuz then they do not get to run around and we don't stay as long. Plus, if we wait til after 5pm, there is a good chance daddy meets us at the house...and one lucky little girl gets to ride home in daddy's car (there is only one carseat in his car)! Seriously tho, you would think we told the girls we were going to disneyland at how excited they get to ride in Shane's 1994 Toyota Camry! HA!

Anyway, back to the house...we have stairs! It was so neat to see Emma climb the stairs for the first time ever! She was scared at first and didn't want to go up, but once I did, she wasn't too far behind! Bree fell asleep on the way over, so I let her nap for awhile in the car.

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Emma heading up the stairs for the very first time!

This area will be what is turned into the 'fun, secret room'!

Bree is awake and embarking on her first trip up the stairs!

So, so excited about the upstairs! Probably more so than any other part of the house! This is where my kids are going to grow up! The windows are 6ft wide by 5ft high and let in so much light and the rooms are HUGE! I love the slanted ceilings!

This picture is fuzzy, but you can still see the look on Bree's face when she first saw the upstairs!

The girls looking out their bedroom window!

Wow, the windows look huge compared to Emma!

In other updates, we are still trying to figure out kitchen cabinets. And also trying to decide on interior doors. Options are white 5 panel, poplar 5 panel stained dark, or 3 panel oak stained dark. Our top choice is 5 panel oak stained dark, but they are $500 over budget. Shane took off last Friday afternoon and we looked at stone (pretty sure we have decided on 'Tennessee Ledgestone') and did an extensive search for granite for our countertops. We did not find any that I really liked...I really don't think I am a 'granite' kind of girl! ha! I just don't like the the crazyness of the stone and the colors haven't been right. So I guess we will see what happens!

Well, that is all for now!