We Have Cabinets!!!

I know it's not ,cool or hip, but I am truly excited about kitchen cabinets. In fact, since we have started building the house I have found my self getting giddy over everything from a hole, to bricks, to tiles and now cabinets.

We had a great surprise Saturday afternoon when we passed by the house. The cabinets that had been delayed and delayed were finally being installed. Our installer, a super nice guy from Victoriaville, was amazing. He installed almost all the cabinets by himself and took the time to check our preferences, measure our wine fridge to make it fit better, and just really make us feel good about his work. Its awesome to see everything together and finaly know we made good choices...

I spent most of my Sunday at the house measuring windows and showing my dad around the property. He took some awesome pictures, they are below:

Our furniture

JF and I went furniture shopping. We decided to take a chance and order our furniture before we actually moved in. Many people suggested we wait to see how we felt about the house, but neither of us relished the idea of living with a couch or a table for a long period of time. We both want to enjoy our home fairly quickly and the furniture we were looking at required up to 6 weeks to deliver. Living without seating for over a month seems just wrong.

IFurniture shopping with JF was fun but confusing, from the beginning he said he wanted modern or contemporary furniture, when in fact, it turned out he really meant dark furniture. became suspicious of this when he pointed out this type of table. Luckily, he actually likes contemporary though, cause or else it would have been more difficult.

We got a great deal on some chairs at the Maison Corbeil liquidation center. They are beautiful chocolate brown leather chairs and when you sit in them, it feels like your getting a nice warm hug.

The sofa will actually be white... or light grey; I am still trying to decide. We chose thick velvety corduroy (the same as the pillow on the chair), but we are a bit worried about that choice. I know it will look awesome against a dark chocolate of turquoise wall, but I’m afraid, at least slightly. The picture is of the sofa in leather.


The dining room table is very sleak. It’s made of ash and we will be getting it in Moka to match our kitchen cabinets. It’s designed and made right here in Quebec by Poitras.We are taking the table, but we chose white leather chairs to contrast the dark table. They were both cheaper and in my opinion look better. The buffet will have to wait for now.

Counting down the last weeks.

We have Tiles!!!

JF and I had a great surprised when we passed by the house this weekend. They had begun the painting and the tiling was almost finished. All the floor tiling seems complete and only the grout on the bathtub and in the shower is left to finish.

I was initially worried about the bathroom. We had decided to stick with standard choices for the tiles to avoid some insane costs, but the bathroom tiles that were available were a bit limited, I was afraid they may look cheese because they were in fact, just simple gray tiles. In my opinion though, the bathroom looks awesome and definitely not cheesy. Once in their environment and with the light, I find it almost looks like slate.

The tiles on the first floor also look awesome. Here is a picture of our main floor powder room. These are the same tiles as the entrance, the kitchen and in front of teh fireplace

I’m so excited they started the finishing. The cabinetry should be in by the end of august, and I am assuming the hard wood floors and carpets will be in before that.

I can’t wait to see the final product and of course I can't wait to finally move in. Hopefully everything turns out as well as the tiles. I am keeping my fingers crossed but so far so good.

Buying new appliances - the decision

So after all the advice I gave in the previous post, we ended up following none of it. Well not all of it. We knew we wanted some decent quality a fridge that was big enough for family growth and some added features for convenience. We ended up going with Jenn-Air appliances because (and yes this is not the most scientific reason) but the handles of the Jenn-Air Eurostyle appliances match our cabinet hardware.I hope that matching the handles was a good idea... humm...

The Fridge

We did end up with some of the features I criticized including a water distributor and an ice-maker, however, after doing some research we found out that a water dispensor is environmentally friendly because it avoids having to run your tap water while you wait for it to cool down.

http://www.jennair.ca/productdetails.aspx?id=60

The Stove

This was my little luxury, it has both a warming burner and a warming drawer, not to mention it has a convection oven

http://www.jennair.ca/productdetails.aspx?id=640

The Dishwasher

This was JF's luxury, which is odd considering he doesn't like to use our current dishwasher. It has a stainless steel interior, has a soil sensor, and delayed start.

http://www.jennair.ca/productdetails.aspx?id=89

Interior choices

These are the tiles and the cabinet colour selection for our bathroom, we will not be using the smallest tiles. The big ones will be on the floor, the medium ones on the bath and shower

OK, so the time came to meet with the designer and make the choices for the interior of the home. This was a major point of stress for me and I found the idea of it fairly overwelming. So I dragged JF on many excusions to try and figure out what we liked.

We went to many a furniture store and looked at many photos on the internet to try and decide what style we wanted and so on. We also spent some time at the model house looking at all the samples to try and get ready. I like to mull over decisions for a while so this made me rest a bit easier.

In the end the day went really well and it was not as hard as I thought. The designer, Julie, was helpful at telling us where we should put the lighting fixtures and as for plugs, well we had so many in each room, that it was not really a big deal. With 1 to 2 plugs on each wall, I'm pretty sure we won't miss any.

This is our kitchen selection, can you seen why we fell in love with the marble

We did screw up a bit with the counter choice. The granite counter top we chose turns out to be marble. We had asked the designer because after years of being quizzed by my dad about igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rock, the slab did not look like granite, but she insisted it was granite. Chances are we will need to change it because apparently marble sucks as a countertop, but we will call the designer on Monday to check.

Let us know what you think

Pam

Our exterior choices

Hummm, well we haven’t been that good with the blog, but hopefully as things move on we will get better.

We have already chosen our exterior for the house. We went with “Boston brick”, they are dark brownish red bricks that mix multiple tints within them giving the house a spotted look. Our doors and windows will be black and the aluminium siding with is a light almond tint, a beige that is more grey then yellow.

The whole process took less than a half hour and hubby and I got along wonderfully, which is hopefully a good sign. We disagreed slightly on the roof, he wanted black, I wanted brown, but we compromised on a more grey toned roof.

Now off shopping for furniture and interior ideas… the interior choices are coming up in a few days.