Crowdsourcing the Tile Decisions

We've been hemming and hawing over the tile decisions.  We've purchased four boxes of white subway tile and some mastic, along with a tile cutter and a notched trowel, and ...

They are still sitting in the corner of our kitchen. 

To be fair, we've had a couple of insanely busy weekends, with nary a moment to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee, much less start tiling backsplashes.  The last thing either of us wants to do when we get home from work on, say, a Tuesday, is start a DIY home improvement project that neither of us has any idea about.  Yes, I'm sure it's pretty easy once you get going, but it's the "getting going" part that has us a little wary.  Drew has further declared that he wants to tile with "someone who can actually help" instead of his increasingly off-balance wife.  I told him I could still climb on counters and he told me I was crazy.  Harumpf.  So if you are "someone who can actually help" in the Greater Boston area, I will ply you with all the beer and pizza you can handle (or with whatever food/beverage combo your heart desires) to come help Drew tile our kitchen.  Also everlasting gratitude.  Bonus points if you have ever tiled a wall before.  

Anyway. 

The final reason we haven't started tiling yet is that we're not entirely sure what sort of aesthetic we're going for, particularly on the large wall behind the sink.  To refresh your memory, the space will be tiled to some degree and there will be open shelving along the length of the wall.  We're thinking nicely stained/polyurethaned wood with wrought iron brackets for the open shelving but haven't decided whether we want two shelves or three.  

This photo is pre-countertops and sink, but you get the idea.  There is also some funny business to deal with on the left:

Notice the trim piece that sticks out and that weird box.  Also how the ceiling is super crooked where it meets the wall.  (Some of that is uneven paint, but not all of it.)

Do we tile all the way to the ceiling and shave tiles as necessary to get a good fit?  Do we stop several inches short?  If so, do we finish with offset tiles or do we use border pieces?  How do we butt the tiles up against the door frame?  Border or not?  If the tile extends above the door frame, how do we deal with that?  The only tile-placement decision I've made for certain is that the tiles in the corner by the sink will just smash up against that wall - half tile, whole tile, partial tile, whatever - they'll just be right in the corner with no border or anything.  

And then there are the grout decisions.  White grout?  Dark grout?  Medium grout?  We have black grout on hand from when we regrouted the bathroom but I'm not opposed to white or gray either.  

So, in the spirit of the modern age, I've decided to ask YOU (whoever you are) what you think we should do.  I've assembled the photos below courtesy of Apartment Therapy's helpful and timely article, "10 Inspiring Uses of Subway Tile in the Kitchen."  They really capture the range of options.

Here's your assignment:  After you've put your creative minds to work, please help us make some decisions!  Leave your comments ON THE BLOG (not on Facebook, s'il vous plait) and we will sort through all the pearls of wisdom and make some choices.  To recap, we are wondering: 

1. What color grout to use

2. How high the tiles should go behind the open shelving

3. How to deal with the edging near the door and above the door

4. Whether to cap off the highest row of tile with a border or leave it plain

White grout, tile ends at the ceiling, no border on the top or edge

This is NOT subway tile, but whatever.  Darker grout and what looks like a quarter round border at the top.
Also notice their left edge is totally unfinished.

Darker grout, no top border, tile ends several inches below the ceiling.
Also, these brackets have the aesthetic we're after for the open shelving.

Darker grout, ends with a border at the top, butts right up against the window frame with no border.

Ends below open shelving, no border at the top, slightly darker grout,
wraps around to the adjacent wall (where I don't see a border, but I could be wrong).

I'm also not sure if I would call this subway tile, but it's still cool.
Lighter grout (though maybe not white?) and no borders anywhere.  

No borders, darker grout, ends above one shelf and below the other.
Also, these people have a real thing for eggs and egg cups.  And carbs.

White grout, tile everywhere, no borders.

I can't really tell whether the tile ends at the beam with a border or whether the beam goes over the tile, but these people also have a trim piece that sticks out. 

Border at the top, darker grout, no borders on the sides.
Also, this is the tone of wood shelving we're thinking about. 

So there you have it.  Please help us!

An Ode to Our Kitchen Sink

Okay, so it's not an ode.  Senior English was a long time ago and I'm a terrible poet.  But, if I were a better poet, I would totally write lots of flowery poetry about our new kitchen sink.  Instead, I will write a list.  I'm very good at lists - just ask Drew.

Four Things I Love About Our New Sink: 

1.  It's 9-10 inches deep.  Our previous sink was 7-8 inches deep and I was forever getting water all over the place trying to wash the cutting board or the pasta pot.

2.  It is flat on the bottom.  The previous sink was sloped from the sides to the drains, so anything you tried to place in sink slid into the drain.  And sometimes shattered into the garbage disposal.

3.  We bought one of those suction cup sponge holder thingies to hold the sponge so it's not making puddles on the counter when Drew forgets to squeeze it out.  That's not really the "sink," exactly, but it's in the sink, so it counts.

4.  It's mounted under the counter and is not dropped in on top of the countertop material, making it easy to wipe crumbs straight into the sink.  Drew is the crumb-making master of the universe, so this is an important feature for my sanity and/or our marital bliss.

Although the sink is quite a star, there's another act in town that might steal the spotlight:

The faucet!  It's by Moen (you'll have to imagine the umlaut) and it's glorious.

Things I love about the faucet: 

1. It's tall, making it a snap to wash cutting boards and pasta pots (and hopefully our daughter-in-progress) without flooding the counter.

2.  It has a rockin' "spray" function (pictured above).

3.  If you pull on the head of the faucet, a really long hose comes out and you can spray everything.  There is no pressure loss when you are using the hose and it smoothly retracts back into the neck of the faucet when you're done.

4.  It's made of some kind of fingerprint-free material.  There are no water spots or fingerprints on it after a week of use - we'll see if it lasts, but so far I'm super impressed.

5.  It came with a soap pump that we put dish soap into.  One less bottle cluttering the counter!  (Sidenote: Our old sink had this function too, but the nozzle was so grimy, we never bothered to use it.  However, while we were setting up the new soap pump, Drew had an epiphany.  The mysterious blue bottle is the dish soap from the old sink!  The demolition guys took it out before they dismantled the sink and saved for us (reason unknown).  Mystery solved.)

There was nothing I liked about our previous faucet.  The faucet itself was this squat little thing that didn't swivel very well, making it difficult to wash tall things.  The sprayer was not attached to the faucet and was a cheap plastic model that had a really wimpy spray and a really short hose.  You couldn't even spray down the sides of the sink properly.  Somehow though, we were always battling countertop flooding.  Never did figure that one out.  Finally, there were fingerprints and water spots everywhere, all the time, no matter how hard I tried to fight it.

The garbage disposal and the dishwasher also work now, which is great.  Even though I would wash all the dishes in the world in our fancy new sink, I'm a huge fan of our dishwasher too.  And that garbage disposal.  I just don't know what I'd do without a garbage disposal.

So there you have it.  Our remaining projects in the kitchen are as follows: 
- Tile backsplash near stove
- Tile wall above sink
- Grout everything
- Install open shelving
- Replace horrible overhead light
- Touch up trim, including spots that have been recently replaced.

We're getting there!  Until we do the rest of the stuff on the list though, we're ecstatic to be able to cook and clean in our kitchen like normal people.  We'll be having people over for dinner again in no time!

It's like Christmas!

The countertop installation crew came yesterday and stayed for a mere 45 minutes, but not before installing three lovely slabs of Azul Platino granite in our kitchen.

They placed the first slab to the right of the sink.  The countertop extends to the edge of the wall, which isn't quite as far from the cabinet as it looks - that blue tape is stuck to the cabinet, not the wall.  We also got a slab for the far side of the sink - don't worry.

The largest slab is in the sink area.  In our old apartment, we had granite countertops (which we loved) but there was a pesky seam that got crud caught in it ALL. THE. TIME. It was super gross and there was no amount of scrubbing that would make it truly clean.  No more of that, folks.  We're totally seamless now.

Sorry for the blurriness.  Again with the phone camera...  It's also worth noting that the granite isn't quite as dark as it appears in these photos.  It's pretty uniform, pattern-wise, and has little sparkly bits in it.  It makes a satisfying sound when you put a glass or a pot or something on it and it's my new favorite thing.

The crew also glued the sink to the underside of the countertop.  We went with an undermount sink so that we could sweep the crumbs from the work surface directly into the sink without needing to go up and over the edge of a drop in sink.  We had to do this in the previous iteration of the kitchen, which led to yet more crud that was virtually unscrubbable.  (Favor: Please say "unscrubbable." So fun.)

The installation process was super fast.  The guys hauled in the slabs, heave-ho'd them up onto the cabinets, grunted and groaned and pushed them all into place (perfect fit, btw, even in the tricky little area near the sink), put some caulk in the crack between the counter and the wall, and presumably did something from the underside as well (I missed that part).  They glued the sink in and were off on their merry way.

One funny thing happened.  I was standing in the living room and saw one of the crew members sort of lurking in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen.  I looked up and he asked "can I have some water," and held up a glass.  I said, "Of course! Right in the bathroom" (Isn't that where you keep YOUR drinking water??) before realizing that the thing he was holding up looked suspiciously like one of our stemless wine glasses.  They were sitting on the shelf in the pantry, ripe for the taking, and it made me chuckle that the countertop guy was jonesing for some water in a crystal wineglass.  Also I was hoping that he wouldn't break it.

But then I realized he was holding up a particularly well-shaped water bottle whose top half had been cut off.  Then I laughed out loud and everyone looked at me like I was a lunatic.  Par for the course.

And then Drew cooked dinner on our countertops!  And it was delicious.  And then I washed the dishes in the bathroom FOR THE LAST TIME!  The plumber comes today to hook up the sink, the garbage disposal, and the dishwasher.  Hallelujah, I say.

The strange bottle of blue liquid, which was not in this spot yesterday, has made yet another appearance.  This time it was considerate enough to put down a paper towel.  We'll see whether the plumber takes it away or whether it's our "gift with purchase."  Only time will tell...

That Awkward In-Between Stage

So we've been patiently waiting for our countertops to be made.  We've been cooking on our stove, using our kitchen table as counter space, and washing all of our dishes in the (very small) bathroom sink.  This is the type of delay we expected, but that didn't make it any more fun.  I'm just glad we renovated the bathroom before we did the kitchen - it would have been awful to wash dishes in the previous bathroom sink, looking at those horrid yellow and purple sponge painted walls, and standing on that moldy linoleum.  But I digress.

Before the countertops go in we had to deal with some of the crew's more artistic work.  You'll remember that some two-year-old disguised as an adult wiped their fingers on the wall:

and there was a lot of very rough plaster all over our fancy teal paint:

Drew sanded down all the rough surfaces, spackled a few holes, and primed the plaster:

Then he repainted all the areas that won't be covered in tile.  We're not sure how high we're going to take the tile behind the sink, so we brought the paint down fairly far from the ceiling.  

Ta da! (ish)

Other things we've done during the delay include putting all our stuff in the kitchen cabinets, buying drawer liner at Ikea so we can keep the drawers/shelves in mint condition, and putting the dining room back together.

Ahhh... No more boxes...

Even though some people poo-poohed our decision to do open shelving above the sink instead of closed cabinets, I'm happy to report that we have PLENTY of cabinet space to spare, even with all our stuff back in the cabinets.  That pantry is second to none when it comes to storing a ton of stuff - it's just too bad we couldn't have a pantry *and* a walk-in closet.  Oh well.

Side note: Sorry the quality of these photos is sort of blah.  Our real camera (which isn't too great itself, truth be told) stopped working this week and so these are iPhone specials.

The countertop fellas should be here pretty soon.  I am focusing all my energy on hoping that the granite is perfectly cut, that the sink fits in nicely, and that they will go away lickety split so I can make dinner on my fancy new countertops.  The plumber is set to hook up the sink, garbage disposal, and dishwasher tomorrow, so (FINGERS CROSSED, EVERYONE) our kitchen will be 100% functional as of tomorrow evening!

We're Cooking!

Excuse the brief blogging hiatus.  I've been too busy COOKING in my KITCHEN with my STOVE.

Yes, that is a pasta pot.  Yes, there is pasta cooking away in there.  Yes, we were totally overzealous with our first home-cooked meal after ten nights of eating raw things and takeout and forgot that we still had to wash the dishes in the bathtub.  

Whatever.  It was delicious.  Other notable things about the above photo: 

1.  The microwave is also properly installed and works like a charm.  The color of the microwave is ever so slightly less white than the cabinets, which makes me cringe, but it is what it is.  It's not worth $350 for a new over-the-range microwave right now.  Our plan is to replace the appliances as they go kaput and/or in advance of selling our house down the road.  People keep saying "don't make things nice to sell the house, make things nice for yourselves."  In general, I agree with this philosophy (as evidence, please refer to the current kitchen renovation project).  Because the appliances still work like a charm, however, they are doing what they need to do and I'm fine with them as is.  I'll get over the ugly. 

2.  We have clearly had a visit from the electrician.  The microwave and stove work, the outlets are in the wall, and the under-cabinet lighting is installed.  We decided to go with xenon lights because they have a nice natural-ish light quality to them but don't burn your brain like LEDs.  Also, XENON sounds like a superhero and we could all use more superhero stuff in our lives. 

3.  We now have drawer pulls!  My weekend to-do list includes dustbuster-ing the insides of all the cabinets and drawers, wiping them down, and putting all my kitchen stuff away.  Our guest room (which is currently full of kitchen stuff) will be a guest room again by the end of the weekend!  Our dining room which has been hosting many, many cardboard boxes for quite some time, will be mostly a dining room by the end of the weekend as well.  There are still some boxes left but not so many that we can't put the table back in it's proper home.  

More evidence that the electrician has paid us a visit -
garbage disposal switch on the right and outlet on the left.
The bottom of the dishwasher is still very ... exposed ...

There are still a few more odd things about the kitchen:

This blue bottle (with no cap on it) has been in the kitchen since the day the crew arrived.  I have no idea what it is.  Windex?  Poison?  Blue gatorade?  Could be anything.  

Someone wiped their dirty man fingers on my wall.  

And the last, most annoying thing is that all the electrical outlets and switch plates are off-white.  This wouldn't be a problem if we weren't going to tile the wall with white subway tile.   

Le sigh.  If the electrician is going to come back, I think I will have him switch the visible stuff out for white outlets and switch plates.  If not, I'll either live with it or we will put on our rubber shoes and hold our breath and switch them out ourselves.  

There are also no countertops.  And no sink.  And no backsplash tile.  And the walls need repainting.  And the floor needs major steam cleaning.  But we're trying not to think about that and just gaze lovingly at our working stove, microwave, and superhero under-cabinet lighting.  

Aahhh...

The Honeymoon Is Over

I haven't posted in a few days because there has been nothing to report except general frustration.  After an initial spurt of work on Monday and Tuesday of last week (demolition! electrical! plumbing! cabinet installation!) and half a day of work on Wednesday, no one showed up on Thursday or Friday.  Tony put everyone on other jobs, which apparently were more disastrous and attention-grabbing than ours, and that was that.

I know this is what contractors do.  I know I shouldn't take it personally.  BUT.  When we scheduled this work a month ago, I told Tony that we wanted to make sure as much work as possible got completed during Drew's spring break week so he could be available for answering questions and letting people in.  Tony agreed.  So much for that plan.

I sent Tony a strongly worded email yesterday, which simultaneously praised the crew for their fine workmanship so far and told Tony to arrange their schedules so our kitchen is complete in a reasonable timeframe pleaseandthankyou.  He called Drew for a man-to-man discussion later in the day (why didn't he call me? I have a guess...).  Tony didn't really say anything helpful to Drew.  It was a mighty fine strongly worded email and I'm pretty bummed that it didn't have any effect at all.

Yesterday, John came in to install the remaining two upper cabinets and put knobs on all the doors.  Today, the countertop folks are doing a template for the granite counters.  I had to take the morning off work to let them in and answer questions, which is the exact reason that we asked for all this to get completed last week.

We were supposed to get our stove back today too and our very friendly plumber came by to hook it up this morning.  He couldn't hook up the stove, however, because the microwave wasn't in above the range.  Apparently there has to be "something metal" above the stove because the cabinets are "combustible."  I'm going to gloss right over the part where the cabinets are combustible because, although I know they won't burst into flames spontaneously, that's what it sounds like.

Combustible cabinets. With knobs!

All that's changed here are the knobs.  And the dishwasher, which seems to have
fewer parts than before.  Curiouser and curiouser...

The electrician is at a job in Bourne (way down on the Cape) for the next two days and can't come back until Thursday to put the microwave in.  This means we won't have a stove (or a microwave, for that matter) until Thursday or Friday, but the plumber did say he would try to get the stove back in working order before the weekend.  I begged him to try very hard so that I don't have to eat takeout/packaged salads/pre-cooked chicken any longer.  He agreed that sounded like a pretty rough situation and reiterated his promise to try to make it before the weekend.  The plumber seems like a decent guy and I think the pregnant-woman-begging-for-a-stove thing made an impression on him.  Let's all hope together that it did.

So that's where we are.  Sort of pissed and still eating creatively.  I'll have more to report on Thursday - until then, please eat some home-cooked food on my behalf!

This (Crooked) Old House, a.k.a. Why We're Glad We Hired the Pros

Today John the Jobsite Manager returned and, all by himself, hung most of the cabinets before noon.  It wasn't quite as simple as it sounds (although that doesn't sound even close to simple to me...) because our floor is crooked.  Apparently, there is a FOUR INCH difference between one side of the stove wall to the next, and everything was pretty topsy-turvy for awhile.  But look! 

John the Jobsite Manager to the rescue!  You can't even tell.  Totally level.  We thought we were hiring professional installation guys because we wanted to be careful with our fancy schmancy cabinets and didn't want them falling off the walls.  Now we know that we hired the pros because even nice cabinets need a lot of help to look good in an old, crooked house like ours.  

The dishwasher and stove are in place but not functional, which meant we went out to eat tonight (SCORE!) because we used up our only no-cook/few dishes dinner idea last night.  The white skim coat/teal walls thing is also starting to grow on me - it sort of looks like clouds in a sky, no?  Hmm....

Tomorrow John will be back to finish hanging the upper cabinets and to ... do more stuff.  If he did all of this before noon today (including fixing the crookedness) I think he'll be here for twenty minutes if all he has to do is hang the two remaining upper cabinets.  I'm sure there's plenty left for him to do.  

In other news, we hit a little bump in the road with the countertop folks.  Apparently everyone is installing their kitchen cabinets this week and the guys who go around and make templates for the granite countertops are quite busy.  They can't fit us in until NEXT WEDNESDAY, which is not so long, but then you have to factor in the making-the-countertop and installing-the-countertop parts of the process.  This leaves us without countertops until, I don't know, our child goes to kindergarten or something.  That's not true, I realize, but it's a pretty long process.  Bummer.  So apparently Tony P. is going to "sit on" the countertop guys and see if they'll come over sooner.  I think he might have more success if he offered them cake or something but if sitting on them does the trick, who am I to interfere?  

Wall Repair + Hauling

There were two main parts to today's work - wall repair and hauling away all the junk from the old kitchen.  After a lovely Patriot's Day off from work, I had to return to the office today while Drew stayed home to write his dissertation and hang out with the workers.  He apparently learned some pretty key lessons involving doing your morning business (ahem) before the workers arrive instead of doing it while they are five feet away.  I was just glad I was dressed when they arrived.  It's the small things, folks.

First, wall repair.  The crew made the previously large holes in our kitchen walls even bigger (no documentary evidence exists of this frightening time in our kitchen's day).  Then they got to work putting up new wallboard (or whatever you call it) and skim coating the whole mess.  Although we'll have to re-paint most everything in the business parts of the kitchen, this really feels like progress!  The rest of the kitchen still looks great, so our painting wasn't a total waste.

The hole in the middle of the wall is for an electrical outlet.  The hole on the right is for the garbage disposal switch.

The hole up top is for the microwave.  No word from the electrician on whether that was already a dedicated circuit but also no word on a change order, so I assume we're fine (famous last words? we'll see...).  The two wires sticking out of the wall are for under-cabinet lighting and the three holes below that are for electrical outlets.  The bottom hole is for the stove's electrical outlet.

Big lesson here - we would NEVER have been able to do this within the appropriate timeline (i.e., today) and without messing something up.  This would have taken us a whole weekend at least and there isn't a weekend coming for a few days.  We would have forfeited Tuesday through Friday of professional work, probably made the crew mad, and totally ruined everything.  This is the part where I sheepishly thank Tony for thinking I was too much of a girl to repair my own wallboard BECAUSE I TOTALLY AM.

The same two guys (brothers) who fixed up our walls were also the guys with the big truck to haul our junk away.  Mind you, we did not pay for anyone to haul away our junk, but this is another place where Tony decided to "help us out."  Thanks Tony!

We wanted to donate the old kitchen cabinets to ReStore, a great organization that sells used construction materials and household goods and then gives all the profits to Habitat for Humanity.  When we were taking out the bottom cabinets, they got pretty banged up either because we had to dismantle them to get them off of the wall or because they were too flimsy to begin with.  We planned to put small parts of the lower cabinets in the trash each week (to avoid angering our already-grouchy garbage man) and donate the uppers.  Our guest room has been full of upper cabinets for over a week now, ready for donation.

I called the ReStore today to see if they picked up cabinets or if we had to drop them off.  Do you know what the guy told me?  "I don't think I'm interested in just upper cabinets."  He was sort of snooty about it, which pissed me off, but he had a point.  Who wants to buy a set of just upper cabinets?  I think their goal is to sell complete kitchens, not parts of kitchens, which makes a great deal of sense.

It sure was a good thing that there were nice men with a large truck at my house!  Such serendipity!  Drew helped the guys haul the stuff to the truck and, on the way, some guys working on a nearby building took our sink and all the knobs off of the cabinets.  In the harsh light of day those were honestly the only parts of the old kitchen that were *really* suitable for donation, so it all came out okay I guess.

And now?  Our guest room/future nursery is void of cabinets, as is the back porch.  BLISS.  That was one huge step that was going to be a PITA to solve, let me tell you.

Tomorrow, John the Jobsite Manager comes back to start installing cabinets.  We can't paint for 3-5 days, so I think we'll end up having to do some fancy taping around the installed cabinets, but that's okay.

More tomorrow!

It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

The crew from Home Depot filtered in and out over the course of the day on Patriot's Day to begin phase 1 of the "installation," which involved making A LOT of holes in our walls and taking every formerly functional thing out of the kitchen (sink, dishwasher, stove).  It's totally fine and I totally expected this, but ohmagah the kitchen is such a mess.  Some close-ups for your viewing pleasure:

The sink used to be in this corner.  Those are "true 2x4s" in the wall, which apparently you haven't been able to buy for a very long while.  Also notice the total lack of insulation.  They moved the garbage disposal switch to the right of the sink, which will be much more useful than where it was before, halfway across the room.  

Close-up of the "true 2x4s."  We were told to be impressed, so we are.  

You can't tell from this photo, but you can see through the floor into the basement. 

Huzzah for structurally sound living spaces! 

This is the wall where the stove goes.  Peeling off one of the many layers of wallboard revealed...

More yellow paint (a different color this time), green paint, AND fake painted bricks!  

Fancy people call it trompe l'oeil, but around here, we call it crappy painting skills.  

Then came the part where the gas line was capped off (lower right corner) and the stove's electrical supply was gone (many exposed wires hanging out of the wall) and the stove was in the middle of the floor and I got a wee bit panicky about how the heck we are going to eat this week.  Hotplate?  New raw food diet?  Take-out?

Here is the "finished product" for the day -

Those shiny new blue boxes mean the electrical system will now be up to code in the kitchen.  The wires hanging out of the wall are for under-cabinet lighting, which will be hard-wired and not plugged into the wall and snaking through the cabinets like our previous (ghetto fabulous) under-cabinet lighting.

Nope, the stove is still not connected.  But it is in the right location, which is encouraging.

But look what else they did!  They took our beautiful new cabinets out of the boxes and set the up in the dining room.  They're SO NICE.

It was super hot all day, but not even open windows and plenty of gatorade could stem the intense sweaty man smell that now permeates the house.  Tomorrow the plaster guy is coming to "help me out" (Translation: They saw through our naive claims that we could repair the holes in the wall and are going to fix it for us so we don't screw everything up).

We are going to cap off a day full of healthy choices and go eat ice cream for dinner.  I'll be back tomorrow with an update!

Painting the Kitchen

All right folks, the big moment is here(ish).  This is the part where we get to put our Humpty Dumpty kitchen back together again.  It's not exactly a "moment" as much as a (likely) several-week span of having strange men in our house, but whatever.

To refresh your memory, here is the state of our kitchen:

Our neighbor knew we were re-doing our kitchen and came by the other day.  She stepped into the kitchen and cautiously asked Drew, "So, do you guys like it like this?"  She apparently thought we were going to leave it in this state.

NO, WE DON'T LIKE IT LIKE THIS.

The first tiny step in getting our kitchen back in order was to paint the walls.  As of yesterday (Sunday) morning, we hadn't picked a paint color yet and the work was slated to begin at 8 a.m. this morning (Monday).  For a girl who takes eons to choose paint colors, this was a little anxiety-producing.  I was thinking some sort of gray would be nice, maybe a shade between the bathroom and the bedroom, but that made me worried it would look a little sterile - white cabinets, white backsplash, gray/black/white granite, and gray walls didn't seem to do the trick in a house with colorfully painted rooms.  We're also leaving the ugly brown tile in place, and a gray-white-black color scheme would probably highlight the brown.  Not ideal.

We were wandering through the Copley Mall this week on our way to dinner and passed by a Starbucks.  (Bear with me here - inspiration strikes in strange places if you let it).  The Starbucks had these delicious teal walls covered in white subway tile.  Hmm.  Teal.  I filed the color away in my mind as a possibility.

We got up bright and early and headed into central J.P. to our favorite hardware store.  I was full of vim and vigor and ready to choose the perfect paint color, but the darn place opens at 11:00 a.m. on Sundays.  It's run by a bunch of twenty- and thirty-something dudes that have apparently given themselves hangover recovery time on Sunday mornings.  Fine.  I guess if you're going to sell saw blades to weekend warriors, you've got to be on top of your game.  Deflated, we decided the only reasonable thing to do with the hour and a half before the hardware store opened was ... go to brunch.

We got to the hardware store right when it opened and went straight to the paint wall.  So many choices.  We found a teal that looked remarkably like the teal in the Starbucks.  It's called "Oregon Teal" and is mysteriously absent from the Benjamin Moore website, so I can't post a color sample.

We bought an entire gallon of no-VOC Oregon Teal paint in eggshell finish, reeeeaaallly hoping it would look good when we put it on the walls.  Fingers crossed.  That stuff is expensive.  And not returnable.

In yet another bid for the Best Husband Ever Award (even though he's already won that several times over), Drew painted all the trim and all the walls all by himself.  What a champ.

Look at all that lovely white trim!  The paint is still drying, which is why it's a little splotchy looking.  

It still looks like a crack den, but now it looks like a *high class* crack den.  Improvement! 

This is what it looked like all dry this morning.  You can see a corner of the brown tile, which I think looks just fine.  The teal warms things up a little and, even if the tile doesn't look intentional, it doesn't look crazy ugly either.  Good enough!

We have all red dishes and things, which will go on the open shelves, so I put a bowl on the white table for funsies to see how it would look against the teal.  The flash is a little intense, but you get the idea.  I think it'll look great!

This morning, four smelly men have begun work in the house.  Two of them look exactly the same, which is confusing.  They were supposed to come at 8:00 but they showed up at 7:45 when no one was decent enough to answer the door.  I love punctual people, but I also love being fully dressed when strange men come in the house.  You win some, you lose some, I guess.  I'm sure things will either look worse or better as the day rolls on.

Updates to come!