I want to hug my fridge

Hey hey! How was your weekend? We had a wonderful time in southern Indiana in a cabin with my family – we had such a blast!! Indiana in the fall is my very favorite place to be! Well, it’s my favorite place to be any time of the year, but you get it. :)

Well, it’s been a month since our fridge died on us and caused water damage in the kitchen. We’ve since gotten the island installed and put back together, and a couple of weeks ago we got our new fridge.

And it’s beautiful. I mean it people:

Excuse the plywood. :)

Wait…hold on.

It’s more like this:

For reals. We had to wait two weeks for it, since it was out of stock, but it was worth the wait! I knew I wanted the French-door style refrigerator and it does not disappoint. When we went shopping, there were a ton to choose from, and at first I was looking at the counter-depth versions like we had before.

But then I saw this one. Hearts were fluttering out of it, even in the store. ;)

(Duh. I thought I had mentioned the brand! It’s a Kenmore Elite – you can find out the deets here.)

The basic measurements of this one are the same – but the space inside can’t be beat. It’s got 31 cubic feet of space inside. That means 31 cubic feet of AWESOMENESS:

And when you open the doors, there’s singing. I can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from, but it happens.

Wait, maybe coming from my head. Whatever.

It’s HUGE. Part of the reason it holds so much is that the ice maker is in the door:

It makes the cutest ice too. Really. Our old ice was long, these are square-shaped. It really doesn’t take much to make me happy.

It’s got the basics:

And some fun stuff like extra deep door storage:

The bottom drawer inside is my very favorite thing. It’s wide and huge and it is great for flat, wide stuff. And you can open one of the doors or both – which I think is brilliant. So often we’re just grabbing milk or whatever, and I like that we can still just open one door if needed.

The only difference in size is that it isn’t counter-depth, which means it comes out further than the counter. It sticks out about four more inches than the old fridge. We kept the old fridge in place and moved it out for a few days to make sure we wouldn’t mind it.

We didn’t. :)

And we have the same issue with this one that we had with the old one – the right door doesn’t open all the way:

There’s nothing we can do about that, so I’m not bothered by it. (We’re used to it anyway.) And actually, because this fridge sticks out a bit further than the old one, the door opens more than before.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that ALL of the drawers (even the long bottom one) still pull out completely, even when the doors don’t. SMART.

Our old fridge was a side by side, and it always drove me crazy. I felt like the older refrigerator we had long ago (like, eight years ago) was more spacious. We couldn’t fit much at all in our freezer in the old one, and it especially bugged me that we couldn’t buy frozen pizzas.

I know, my life is rough. ;)

But what really sold me on this one were the THREE drawers in the freezer:

Most French-door styles have two freezer drawers and this extra one totally sold me. Now our meat has it’s own drawer. Love that! And the meat is happy too. I’m guessing. ;)

You’ll notice the freezer and fridge aren’t full – it’s because we’re slowly refilling it all. I had no idea how much food we had in our fridge (that went bad) and how much it would cost to replace it all. It’s crazy! The insurance company will cover some of it, but not all, from what I understand.

The insurance claim did not cover the new refrigerator, which is about the only thing they aren’t covering.

Many of you have asked how I keep our stainless so clean, and I’ve tried just about everything. The best I’ve found is my Shaklee basic cleaner:

It’s all I use on the fridge anymore!

So far the only thing that has slightly bothered me about this new style is that there’s not much room for all that stuff we used to keep in the door – you have to keep it out in the open part of the fridge. This isn’t a big deal because there’s SO much space, but I like having that separate spot for all that little stuff. It’s the organizer in me. ;)

But it’s not a big deal all, at least to me. Overall, I’m LOVING it so far.

And I think we’ll finally see some progress on our floors this week – I’m meeting with the flooring guy to work on stains tomorrow. We’re going the finished on-site route, for reasons I’ll explain soon!

So, do you have this new style? Love your side by side? Traditional freezer on top? (I liked it more than the side by side!) It makes me wonder what they’ll come up with next – but I think this is the best design yet!

 

P.S. I need to get my fall mantel going, because our first fall linky party is this Tuesday over at Layla’s place! Get your fireplaces and mantels ready!!

A beadboard island…again!

Well helloooo! Thanks for all the thoughts on the flooring – it’s helped a LOT. I’ll keep you updated on our progress. (Which I hope happens soon!)

Last week we saw some progress of another kind – we got our kitchen island reinstalled and I was so happy to have it back!

The guys doing the work had to pull off all of the beadboard and the corbels in order to get the island up and moved (into my office, which is why progress has stalled in there). But they came back with all the supplies, ready to rebuild the whole thing!

I felt bad, cause usually when they go back to a house to reinstall and island, they reinstall an island and move on. At our house, they had to redo all the “extras” I had done. ;)

I was pretty good – I didn’t hover. (Ahem. Too much.) And they did a great job! The guys bought a different kind of beadboard:

And I actually quite like it! I’ve never seen this one before, but the “board” and “bead” parts are both wider. I like that it’s now a little different than the beadboard backsplash.

They also fixed a couple things that had bugged me about my installation. I didn’t leave enough of an overhang with the butcher block on the cabinet side when I installed it, so I had them move it out a bit:

It always bugged me before -- it’s the little things! (That drive me crazy and then make me happy.)

And when I installed the beadboard around the island I cut out around the outlet, instead of installing the outlet cover over the boards, like I did with the backsplash. So they fixed that for me too:

The whole island needs a light sanding and another coat of paint, but I’m waiting till the flooring is done before I do that.

There was a little mishap with a ring of black paint on the butcher block countertop, but it was a small price to pay after all the hard work they did. And it was time for me to apply another coat of Tung oil on the counter anyway.

Many of you have asked how the butcher block has held up and I must say – I LOVE IT. At first I was obsessed with keeping it perfect, but I’ve long since realized perfect is impossible and wear and tear shows character. (If you keep saying that to yourself it finally sinks in. Realize it or go crazy I say.)

I hope I feel that way about the floors years from now. ;)

There’s a few small scratches here and there, but they aren’t bad at all – overall it still looks beautiful! We leave cups and and liquid on it all the time, and it holds up GREAT.

To take care of the black paint, I had to sand it down a bit:

I went after a few other minor scratches while I was at it. Then I just wiped it down and covered it with another coat of Tung oil:

You can see how it brings the wood to life – the oil is applied on the left of the wood below:

It needs to dry for about 12 hours, and then after a sanding with steel wool, you can do another coat. I only did one for now, but the first time I did it (a year ago), I think I did three coats.

It still looks fantastic!:

And now things are getting back to normal in the kitchen. We even got the new fridge yesterday – no more walking to the garage for a piece of cheese! YAHOO! :)

Now the plywood on the floors seems so much more manageable:

   

The island houses our trash compactor, so it’s so nice to have that back too. And the island is the hub of our kitchen – I couldn’t believe how much I missed it!

We celebrated it’s return by making cupcakes:

They were Halloween cupcakes, I admit it. ;)

One baby step at a time…we’re getting the kitchen back! Just in time to tear out all the floors! Ah well…I am not complaining!!

Overall I’m thrilled with my butcher block counters -- they aren’t nearly as much upkeep as I thought they would be. It’s all about treating them after they are installed and knowing they won’t stay perfect!

I’m so letting go of perfect. :)

September Before and After: A New Light

Well HEY! Hope you had a great weekend! We did a lot of bumming around and being productive – a little of both extremes. :)

Tonight’s before and after is brought to you by the continued science fair that is our kitchen. I showed you the mess the water damage has created, and last Friday, the madness continued.

We had noticed a few weeks ago that the framing around our back door was rotting away. We thought it would be a quick fix, and our handyman did too. That is until he started removing trim and found massive amounts of water damage – separate from the mess in the rest of the kitchen:

That’s a hole in our kitchen floor. For a brief moment in time we had a fabulous source of natural light in the basement. ;) I try to look at the bright side.

I told him to just tear out the floors cause they were going anyway -- thank GOODNESS we discovered this before replacing the floors!! (And no, there’s still no movement on that – hopefully this week.)

The folks who built our deck made it too high – so for six years the water has been flowing into the door frame every time it rained. That eventually ate away at the trim, the subfloor and the threshold.

Anyhoo, our awesome handyman worked from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and got it fixed up and did a few little changes that will keep this from happening again. LOVE HIM.

So…there’s been a little change I’ve been wanting to make to the kitchen for a while now, and this weekend I decided to do it. Because I needed to do something to the space that would make me feel in control again.

Or maybe I just wanted a pretty new light. Who knows. ;)

Recently something has been bugging me about light over the kitchen table:

I love it! But it felt too light…I don’t know, just not substantial enough. Once I realized what it was that was buggin’ me, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I just wanted something that was a bit more dramatic to fill that “space” in the room.

Enter the Portfolio light from Lowes:

I think it was $140? It was LUUURVE at first sight. I think I gasped just a bit when I saw it in the store, cause I knew it would look so good over our table.

I installed it the other night (with very little daylight to spare – I forget the sun sets so much earlier already!) and I couldn’t be happier with it:

It adds a little contemporary flare to the space:

I love it combined with our antique claw foot table. :)

I think what I love most is that it sends all of the light down to the table – it is SO much brighter under there now:

And of course I have it on a dimmer switch so it looks fab down low or up high. I love it!!

I thought about spraying it black for about two hot seconds, but I think we have enough black going on. (And at night it looks black anyway.) I’m working on some ways to bring some more color into this side of the kitchen, but for now, I love how this has changed it up a bit:

And look how calm our kitchen looks from this side (although you can see where I covered the torn out flooring by the door with the rug).

This side tells the real story of the past week:

This is what happens when your pile spot (your island) is in the office. ;)

So here’s my before and after for this month –- the previous chandelier on the left, the new pendant on the right:

Typically your fixture should hang about 28 to 32 inches above your table and I always end up cutting my wires too short when I install. ALWAYS.  This one hangs 32 above the table, which I’m now happy about because any lower would have been directly in the eye line (for me anyway). As it is we can see under it well.

I found an old photo of the light after I installed it last year and it’s fun to see the changes since then:

Including the addition of a cute (rascally) dog. ;) And the removal of a floor. Gah.

So let’s see your projects! Link them UP!

I’d appreciate it GREATLY if you could link back to this post or at least my blog in your post. You can use this button if you’d like:

Our Visitor, Murphy

Some mornings I wake up and have NO clue what I’m going to blog about that night. I rarely schedule posts ahead – I’m a fly by the seat of my pants kind of blogger.

This morning I was thinking of the projects I could complete to blog about, and was trying to figure out what I’d have the time to finish up.

Well…I got some blog material. Just not the kind I wanted. ;)

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve heard some of the goings on around here over the past few days. It started Saturday morning when we woke up to a puddle of water in front of the refrigerator.

Turns out the computer on the fridge had died, so everything inside (including a huge ice bucket) had melted, and then spilled out onto our floor. AWESOME, letmetellyou.

Long story short, the repair guy couldn’t fix the fridge with the parts he had, but he did fix the one in the garage that had been broken for months (we got it free from friends, so it was worth fixing, considering we had NOTHING otherwise).

Because we’ve had so many issues with our kitchen refrigerator (GE Profile) we decided to purchase a new one. I was annoyed and upset, but after a while was a little excited to get a new fridge, I’m not gonna lie. :)

But then we noticed the floors…the laminate was bubbling and buckling and all those bad “B” words you don’t want to use to describe flooring. ;)

Our insurance company sent someone out today to see how bad it was, and within a few hours of him arriving, this:

Had turned into this:

(Different angle, bear with me.)

Needless to say…it was bad. :)

We have no idea how long the water sat on the floors – we figure at least six hours. Because our laminate is “floating” – not glued or nailed down, the water traveled under the floors throughout half of the kitchen.

It also reached the basement, but luckily we got to it before it got too bad. They had to cut a huge section of the floors out – the laminate, underlayment, original vinyl floors and plywood under that all had to be pulled out.

So for the next few days, we have four blowers and an industrial dehumidifier in our kitchen, and three blowers and a dehumidifier in the basement:

I was doing OK with everything, considering, until they had to move the kitchen island.

My lovely beadboard island had to be taken apart so they could move it. It’s now sitting in the office:

And I was actually making progress on that office. ;) I had hoped to finish painting it today.

HAR. That so didn’t happen. :)

Because they had to remove the island, they took the trash compactor out too – it’s now in the garage. So this is our trash can for the next week, two weeks…month?:

We have no idea what the timeline will be. Because our flooring goes throughout the kitchen and family room, it’s ALL going to have to be pulled up and replaced.

For now, we will be living upstairs for the next few days. You can’t hear much over the blowers. :)

Our trash can is a chair and our refrigerator is in the garage (opposite side of the house from the kitchen, of course). Good thing I’m not a cook!!

That’s a joke Dad. ;) (Kind of.)

I’m not good at having our house turned upside down – messes and toys I’m OK with. But this…this is going to give me hives and I’m well aware of that. I’m trying to fight them off by at least cleaning up the kitchen. It’s been a disaster all day, so I tried cleaning tonight:

It’s just a MESS. And the blowers send all the dust back onto the surfaces all over again, so I’m not sure why I’m even trying…but I’ll keep doing so. I must. :)

Tomorrow the insurance adjuster comes out to check it all out and we’re hoping for good news. We’ve never had to file any claims on our house, so we’re kind of learning as we go.

This has been an eventful summer around here – first the back door disaster, then we had some siding fall off in a storm, then we realized a couple weeks ago that our back door frame is rotting away (like, crumbling) and needs to be replaced and now we need a new fridge, new flooring and let’s not forget a whole fridge full of food. (Of course I had gone grocery shopping just two days before.)

We’re rolling with it though, and I’m reminded again how thankful I am that we are all safe, happy and healthy. That’s all that matters to me, and I am certainly counting my blessings tonight, even while the hives form. ;)

Soooo…Murphy has been hanging out around here fo sho and we need to kick him to the curb. He’s been sleeping on the couch waaaay too long. Gots to pack his bags and GO. He doesn’t have to go home but he can’t stay here. ;)

Any recommendations on flooring? We’re looking into engineered wood this time. Seems to be a good in between option – better than laminate but not as expensive as hardwoods. Because our kitchen and family room is one big space, we won’t break it up with two different types of flooring (like tile and hardwoods). If the kitchen was a separate room I would use tile for sure.

The guy overseeing all of the clean up said they have special mats that soak up any water damage from engineered flooring now, if it’s caught early. (Crossing my fingers and toes we’ll never have to find out how that works!!) Any thoughts? Anyone have them and like them?

That was my exciting weekend…how was yours? ;)

A Progress Report

I tell you what…anymore, if it’s summer my name is Worthless. It’s something that’s occurred over the past couple of years. Last summer and this summer, I might as well be a lump of mashed potatoes. With some butter on top. Ohhhh…and some sour cream! With bacon.

Yummmm. Mashed potatoes…

Anyway. I’m extremely inactive. It’s the heat I’m sure. And that my kiddo is home from school. And that hubby is home from school (but at least he works in the basement and is productive). Whatever it is, I feel like I lose my mojo.

I was in our powder room today, looking around at the holes in the walls (that I still haven’t patched after months), and I was reminded of my list of goals I had for this year that I told you about here.

Let’s go through the list, shall we?

First up, the kitchen redo that I started over a year ago. Or was it two years ago? I honestly have no idea. Really. No idea.

I told you I wanted install glass fronts in the cabinets. Still haven’t done that. I’m utterly frozen in fear at the thought of it. I mean, what if I don’t like it? What if they mess it up? (No way I’m DIYing that one.)

If we had painted cabs I wouldn’t be as worried about it, but if one of these gets messed up, we’re pretty much out of luck. I’m frozen people. :)

One thing I did get done – hanging the crown molding:

 

I still haven’t even painted that. ;) Oh yeah, I did paint the back door, so that’s something too. And we all know what a science fair that was, so I get, like, triple points for that.

I discovered the recessed light to hanging light kit at Lowe’s last year, and I still want to find a light to try over the island:

I’m thinking a big lantern, like this:

Or a glass one like this – I’m actually quite obsessed with this lately:

Both are nearly $200, so unless the lighting fairy comes by, I don’t think they’ll happen. I’ve been checking out our local Restore all year for options I could rework and haven’t found anything.

But like everything…it will come eventually. It just takes forever sometimes.

By now I had planned to have the wall behind our bed painted:

And those stripes are still going strong. It would take about an hour for me to just do it…but there they are. Stripes.

I had also hoped to have wainscoting installed throughout the room by now, but the walls are still nekked. Heck, back in January I decided to write an ebook on molding, that I hoped to have mostly done by now.

Gotta do the molding to write about molding. ;)

Speaking of molding – that’s about the only thing I’ve accomplished in the office since January:

OK, a few more things…but not what I had hoped to have done:

The office has taken three years to finish up. Or something like that. Eighteen months…whatever. A LONG TIME.

Remember when I said I was going to paint the chocolate powder room?:

A normal person would just paint the powder room. Not me.

I thought, well if I’m going to paint, I might as well redo it all. I’ll just rip everything off the walls and do something completely different:

That’s how normal people think, right?

The stuff’s been ripped off the walls since April. It doesn’t look too bad from far away, but up close  you see all the goodness:

Since APRIL. :)

I have completed one thing! The ceiling is no longer brown – it’s a beautiful shade of blue/grey:

So at least I’ve got that going for me.

I do this thing where I’ll say “I’ll finish the powder room when I finish the office. But then…I’ll finish the office when I finish the kitchen. But I really want to work on the guest room, but I need to wait till I finish the powder room.”

Aren’t you glad you’re not in my head? ;)

One of the biggest projects I wanted to tackle this year was moving the washer and dryer out of our mud/laundry room:

Because it constantly…I mean ALL. THE. TIME. looks like this:

 

And this:

(Yes, that chalkboard has said the same thing for almost two years. If that tells you anything.)

It drives me NUTS! This is what we see every time we walk in the house – not exactly calming.

I’ve tried to keep it clean. Desperately. It lasts for about 24 hours. There are certain things you learn about yourself and your family that just don’t work. Having our laundry right when you walk in the door is one of those things.

Sooo…I had hoped to move them (up or down) by now. But then I get busy with totally unnecessary projects like book nooks. ;)

No matter that it’s going to take professionals to help move the washer and dryer…so I’m at the mercy of the budget for this one.

The BIGGIE we had hoped to have started by now was the basement:

Our plan after we paid off all of our debt was to start the process of finishing it off. That project has been interrupted by the outdoors, and I’m actually really stinking excited about it.

BIG FAT SMILEY FACE HERE.

It involves some of this:

And a WHOLE lot of this:

So excited I could just pee my pants. :)

This one is not going to be DIY though – which is pretty darn awesome for a change. It’s just beyond our skills so we’re hiring out. They say it will be done before Labor Day, which I believe calls for a HUGE Labor Day party. :)

We decided to move forward with the outdoor project instead of the basement because we know our backyard is an underutilized space – we don’t use it efficiently, for reasons I’ll explain soon. The basement, although unfinished, we use almost daily.

So, outside it is. It will by far be the biggest project we’ve ever done to our house. I’ll show you the process along the way for sure!

So there you go…a progress report on the little progress I’ve made on the to do list for 2012. Encouraging, eh? And yes, I know we have five months left in the year, but fall is coming. That means the holidays come after that (did you know?), so I’ll be pretty obsessed with those two seasons for the next few months.

I am determined to get the office done and the powder room at least started in the next month. And I’m making some minor (inexpensive) changes to the dining room that I’m pretty excited about.

So, when you work on a space, do you just do it or take forever like me? (I call it Decorating ADD.) Tell me, can you walk through your laundry room? What’s the biggest project you’ve undertaken at your house?

And most importantly…do you think there’s any hope for me?

Don’t answer that.

:)