Sunday, February 26, 2012

Kitchen Before and After

In other news around here, we decided to do a small renovation to our kitchen. It was fine before, but oh so nice now!! We had possibly the cheapest cabinets ever with shiny laminate on them. It showed every finger print and is impossible to look clean for longer than 5 minutes. The counter top was a light blue/grey laminate, it just looked dated. Over the years that we have lived here we have replaced the fridge and dishwasher. We had moved our microwave to a counter behind our kitchen, which wasn't convenient because we then had a cord going across a doorway to get to a plug to actually use it. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, but we microwave bottles probably 5-6 times a day. Well, our tax return came in and somehow Dan decided it was go time to upgrade!!

Here are some before pictures:


Also, the painted area behind the stove was terrible looking. I had taken a magic eraser to it to clean off grease from cooking. I have disliked the pendant lights since we moved into the house. But, they worked. There used to be 3, one broke so we've lived with 2 for a while now. The pendant on the right stopped working recently, so now we are down to one.

We tore down all the upper cabinets and replaced them with something similar from Ikea. Since we decided not to replace the lower cabinets we didn't want two very different door styles. Here is Dan surveying his removal skills.

Dan is installing new upper cabinets.

My Dad came over on the weekend to help us with the electrical work for the new microwave!! It is so nice to know people who can do these things for us, rather than having to hire someone.

Yay, new microwave!!

We had a new granite tile counter installed as well as a tile back splash. We decided to go with mini-slab granite tiles, they are 26" deep and 18" wide. I was going to do a nice white subway tile back splash with a glass tile accent. But, I was obsessing with these penny round tiles. I love them! Dan told me to go with the penny rounds and I'm happy that I listened to him. We also got a new faucet (our 3rd in 5 years!) and new sink. We are planning to paint the lower cabinets and replace the handles to match the round pulls on the uppers and the bin pull on the top drawer (pictured below). I still need to choose a new pendant light and I need to finish replacing the faceplates on the outlets.




If you are reading this and you live in the Portland area we can recommend a great guy to install tile for you...

Excuse us, we've been sick

Please excuse our absence, we have been sick over here. I never got around to Holly's 7 month post because it feels like we have been sick for about a month! Both Elliott and Holly have been trading a cold back and forth. They have both had a terrible hacking cough. Which has meant too many nights with poor sleep from the kids. Thankfully, we have turned a corner and everyone is staring to sleep better and is more healthy.

Holly is 7 months old, going on 8 very shortly. We weighed her at just after 7 months and she was 15 lbs. Recently though I got her at 16 lbs! She is finally gaining some weight and has a few more rolls to prove it. Holly isn't crawling on her hands and knees just yet, though she is experimenting with it. We often see her up on her hands and knees, rocking around. Then she will fall to her tummy and army crawl to whatever has caught her eye. She isn't content to just sit and play with toys I place in front of her anymore. She wants to be doing whatever Elliott is doing...which causes some drama from Elliott.

Teething is in full swing around here. She particularly loves the wii-mote.


I'm so please to report that Elliott has gone an entire month without sucking his thumb!! Dan and I are really proud of him. This also means he is much less attached to his blanket. He is still doing swimming lessons, but we haven't had a ton of progress. He went under one day - for about 5 seconds - and now he is really nervous at lessons. I need to take him more often to open swim to show him that it isn't scary. Elliott tends to be pretty cautious about new things. It took him a long time to feel comfortable getting on Amy's trampoline, he would cry if I tried. Finally one day he decided it was alright and now he's happy to jump with the boys. I think he will be the same with swimming.

Elliott is WAY too into Mario (from Nintendo). It has become a major obsession. We have to play Mario all the time - mostly outside of the Wii (meaning role playing because I won't let him play video games all the time). His boy cousins are in the same obsessive phase right now. Dan showed him the Mario TV show from the 80's (remember that?) and he loves it.

Here are pictures taken from this past month:




Valentines Day:

(yes, that is a heart on Holly's bum)


We stayed late playing at Aunt Sarah's house one night. Elliott went home in Grace's old PJ's. He didn't want to take them off the next day.