Countertops Part II

I went to work on Monday, 8 hours later I came home. And oh, what a difference those 8 hours made!

This is what it looked like when I left...

And when I got home! THE COUNTERTOPS ARE IN! They look ah-mazing!

And another view of my morning kitchen. 

And my evening kitchen. She got all dolled up just for me! Please excuse that ugly yellow glue line that I plan to cover with pretty subway tile.

Its like a green egg. 

I must admit, walking in and seeing all this pretty white did make me momentarily question my tuxedo kitchen. But alas, I'm equally obsessed with the slate blue/marble combination so will forge on with my original plan!

It was just so green and well green. Not really my style. 

I'm so glad MLW and I were able to get these particular slabs! They were the last 3 of this lot of marble, so we feel super lucky. All the other options where very grey, whereas this one has a nice white background.

 The little side next to the stove looks perfect as well. There are 3 scratches in this piece that were already there, but they don't bother me one bit. There will only be more with good use. : D

I will have to call William out again to help fix up a few places where removing the backsplash took down the drywall, but that is what handymen are for!

           
We will also have to have the sink {p.s. there is a new faucet in store!} put back together once the seams dry in a day or two.

We did a ton of research and a lot of hemming and hawwing, but I am extremely happy with our choice. In the end it was marble. We used a wholesaler, Vitoria International, for the slabs and Universal Marble and Granite did the fabrication and instal. I can't say enough good things about Universal. The removed our nailed in every 6 inches with 4 inch nails, oh and glued down, countertops fo-free. Then they did a fabulous job with the countertop instal. We only have one small seam, which if you look really closely you can see in the last photo. They are simply breathtaking.

Our kitchen looks about twice as large now and has great acoustics! {picture me singing "Let It Go" every time I walk in there} I can't wait to get back on the paint train to get this tuxedo kitchen complete!

Big day guys, big day.
Love,
Betsy

The white side

Another kitchen post. We are getting there slowly but surely. I hired a handyman to come help finish off a few things and he was well worth it! Several items checked off my list in a handful of hours = well worth it. William the handyman was great and if any of you Chuck readers need his number, I'll hook you up! 

So happy to see this little guy. I don't know how William did it, but this is muchhh better than the gaping hole of florescent light that was up there. 

More importantly it let me hang my over the sink light that several of you helped me pick via facebook and instagram! Option 2 was our winner and I'm glad I agreed with most of you. The light came from Cedar and Moss. Check them out, they have several really pretty fixtures  I would love to hang from my ceilings! {or walls }

Here is the view looking straight down with both light fixtures installed. A little hard to see here since the kitchen is so massive, but they look super chic paired together.

 But back to the main focus of this story; the cabinets MLW's granddad built for us! William added some trim at the bottom to finish them off and a spacer so they were a little closer to the stove. {I kept dropping things down there}

My first step was to caulk the insides and any seams so everything would have a smooth finish. Also, trash bags are my floor coverings of choice.

Hey Kilz, I missed you! NOT.

I hate painting with this stuff, but it works. 2 coats of high fume super sticky paint later and I was ready to move on to the uppers. Priming is necessary step. {blerg}

Had to tape off my new pretty vent hood, but then I was able to get to painting the insides . These cabinets were gross!

I know its a little hard to tell, but the  upper shelf is the old color, and the lower the new. See how yellow and nasty the old paint looked? Yuck!

But then came 2 coats of my BM Decorators white, and a little dressing up with hardware!

This did happen though. I measured everything and marked it as I had all the lowers on the opposite side, but as soon as I drilled the hole I knew I'd made a massive mistake. I called MLW in for a second opinion and he looked at it and said "you're going to fix that right?" It honestly looked ridiculous. So I marked the middle of the panel and installed a knob there with much more successes.

Luckily it was an easy fix, with just a little bit of wood filler and more paint. Now all the hardware is ready to rock!

Don't get too excited, this is just our cutting board that I strategically photographed. But, we do have a butcher block piece on order to top this off. The door styling is just a little different than what we could recreated with our DIY shaker doors. So we are going to celebrate the difference and make it a feature in the kitchen. Also having a piece of butcher block will help with food prep and keeping the marble etch and stain free!

I can't wait to show ya'll once the countertop comes in and I finish everything on the uppers.

Love,
Betsy

Countertops Part I

So as ya'll might have guessed by our cabinet painting, we are in full kitchen reno mode. Which means we have been shopping for countertops, and oh, what a process that has been.
I started out online doing a ton of research on various local countertop fabricators and made a short list of a few places to visit. On a random day off, I talked MLW into driving wayyy out into Mount Pleasant because it was a place that sold every kind of surface known to man. I figured it would be a good starting point to get information on absolutely everything. And yes,  I know I could have gone to a big box store {we eventually ended up at Lowe's} but I like to shop local whenever possible.
So we get there, but no one would take us seriously! We got a bunch of "oh honeys." I finally started throwing around the budget we had in mind and got a little more respect, but we both walked out of there with a very bad taste in our mouths. However, the upside was that we were given pamphlets of several local warehouses and with a firm grasp that quartz and corian where out of our range. We have a large kitchen, and a medium sized budget so we knew we would have to make smart choices.

It got significantly more fun once we got the to the warehouses. Hello stone heaven! The first was just okay and by far had the smallest stone selection. The second had way more selection and a very knowledgeable and friendly staff. We even got samples! But the third, ended up having the prettiest colors.

Unedited photo of grey Carrara Slab 

Here are some bullet points on what we learned from the warehouses:
1. People are flocking to marble
2. A pretty white or light colored granite does not {in my opinion} exist
3. Carrara marble is at the lower end of the price spectrum
4. A lot of Carrara has a very dark grey background {The third warehouse had the most Carrara with a "white" background, thus our favorite}
5. Honed marble is the way to go

Unedited photo of a Carrara with a much whiter background 

Unedited photo closeup. So. Pretty.

With this knowledge and a list of different marbles we liked, we turned our attention back towards finding a fabricator. Here is how that went:
-First place, out of a garage and sketcy. We didn't even go in
-Second place, gave a quote on the spot, took all our information, very friendly and focused on building a good client base through word of mouth
-Third place, we took a card and left
-Fourth Place, perhaps doesn't exist anymore since we couldn't find it?

Andes Bianco on the left, Carrara on the right. 

Needless to say, the second place won us over. Better yet, they had contacted all of the warehouses and given us quotes on all of our marble options by the time we returned home. And a bonus, they remove the old countertops for FREE. I couldn't believe my ears and keep asking the nice lady to clarify and even got her to put it in writting. Almost every other place charged between $4-$10 a sq foot to remove. And when you have 68 ish sq feet, that ads up fast.

Another interesting difference between fabricators, they all gave us a different sqaure foot measurements for our kitchen. We got any where fro 48 sq ft to 78 sq ft. I had graphed out a basic layout with measurements that they all used to get these numbers. MLW and my Dad both did the math and got 68 sq ft. Funny thing the 2nd fabricator was the closest with 65 sq ft and she did it quickly. Another check mark in their favor.

Lagoon Countertops from Houzz

But then a monkey wrench was thrown at us. During a weekly {sometimes daily} trip through Lowes I noticed that Silestone "Lagoon" was on sale. 10% off and then another 5% if you use a Lowe's credit card. I had accepted that marble was our choice and was prepared to embrace the character and flaws that come along with it, but now I wasn't so sure. So we went to price them out. An hour later after making friends with the countertop lady, we got the quote. And guess what? It was still over 5k.

Made that decision easy! Carrara marble for the win! So now we are waiting to save up a few more pennies, and then its back to the warehouse to pick our slabs {I'm so excited} I'm not giving out any names of businesses, just in case something heads south, but my gut it is telling me we ended up at the right place.

For now I will leave you with our dream marble "Namibia." Its beautiful, we priced it out, I cried {although it still wasn't as bad as the quartz!}

xoxo
Betsy