More about cabinets

The delivery guys from the store where we ordered our cabinets couldn't fit all of them onto the truck at one time, so we got a little more than half of them this Saturday and will get the rest next Saturday morning. If they had sent us all the uppers or all the base cabinets, Ken could've started setting them, but it was a mish-mash of  both types. Still, it's exciting to see a precursor of the finished product after Ken set the base cabinets into their proper places:

Cabinets are here!

Well, some of them. Apparently we ordered so many cabinets that they didn't all fit in the delivery truck. They have to make a second trip sometime in the coming week to get us the rest of our order. This is a gigantic step up from the seven total cabinets I have right now. Here's our current cabinet configuration:

That's all folks. Just those few cabinets, which is why we have a separate free-standing cabinet that serves as our pantry. While our awesome floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinet is not one of the ones that arrived today, here's a gander at a few that did:

Simple and clean lines. We plan to add brushed nickel hardware to match the light fixtures.

Honestly, unpacking these cabinets, with the boys helping throw the packing material into the trash (stopping now and then to pop some bubble wrap), is one of my favorite new memories.

And here are the pictures

We came home from our vacation to find our kitchen looking like this:

Which was a lot better than how we'd left it:

Then Ken applied some primer to both the walls and ceiling and some white paint to the ceiling:

And added some light fixtures:

Ignore that unfinished wall to the right. It will become a "shear wall" and still needs some work to that end.

Then my very talented sister-in-law, Jeanne Murphy Curtis, who is principal of Bella! Design for Living, LLC, created a couple product/color schemes for us to choose from, based on the cabinetry we'd already selected and a paint swatch we'd liked. Here's the scheme we chose:

That piece of wood is a sample of our cabinets (beechwood).

The little sample lying on top of it is the laminate countertop we chose. We'll upgrade to granite or another solid-surface countertop several years down the line, but for now we're going with what's budget conscious.

The glass tile in the back, which I think is so dreamy and makes me want to be at the beach, will be our backsplash.

The big tile at the lower left is our flooring, which looks like slate (the material we'd planned to use) but is actually a porcelain tile made to look like slate. Half the price of slate and comparably durable. This was an awesome find on Jeanne's part.

Lastly, the light green paint just below the cabinet sample, the one called Mystical Sea, will be on the wall surrounding the window over the kitchen sink. That'll be the only portion of the L of cabinets with wall showing since we're going right up to the ceiling with the cabinets. So we'll need very little paint in that color. Here's a closeup:

Finally, the neutral paint swatch on the far right will tie it all together. It's a special paint from Benjamin Moore called Affinity (this color is Jute) that will color match with both cool and warm colors. This way we can put any color we want in our adjacent dining room and not worry about whether it will jibe with the kitchen tones.

We cannot wait to install all the elements in the kitchen, including my newly purchased dishwasher--Happy Mother's Day to me!--and see how it looks when finished. I'll try to be better at blogging, especially now that things are really taking off toward the finish line. Estimate to finished kitchen: 4-6 weeks!

Stay tuned!

Radical changes have occurred! My computer and the camera's card reader are currently on the outs, but soon there will be pictures. In the meantime, enjoy this short update:

While we were on vacation, dry wall guy and tape/spackle guy arrived and created amazing walls and a ceiling in the new kitchen area. Ken then primered the walls and primered and painted the ceiling. He installed light fixtures. He started putting the trim around the windows.

Amazing SIL, who is an interior designer, helped us choose a color palette and materials for the flooring, backsplash, countertop, and walls. We had already chosen the cabinets.

We chose and purchased a dishwasher. (I've never had one so I nerdily read the instruction manual, even though the thing is still in the box.) Paint will be going on the walls shortly. Cabinets are arriving May 21. Lots of things are happening! We're hoping that in roughly a month I will have a usable kitchen and Ken can gut the existing piece o'crap kitchen. Exciting! Rejuvenating! Enthralling!