Counter Happiness

Today makes it officially one week, since our counters were installed. A full seven days of counter happiness, and oh do they make us happy! Like seriously happy: like I did a happy dance, kissed my new counters, beamed with joy kind of happiness! Yup, they make this girl, that happy. After all we did a huge upgrade from our previous counters, which were white tile  extra ugly brown grout, and the we also had a matching backslash for extra credit. not to mention, we lived with this tile for over three years, and I hated spending time in this kitchen. Walking in there pretty much sucked the life out of me, I know I'm being overly dramatic but I gotta share my feelings, lol. Now before I can share our in progress kitchen pictures, here's what our kitchen looked like before, good bones but plenty of ugly. Oh and I should warn you now, this is one my long wordy posts, heck most of my posts our wordy, lol. 

A few weeks ago in mid May, I shared some solid surface samples we were considering for our kitchen counters. We like two colors both from Corian, but the prices were drastically different. One route we would spend $ 975 and the other our option our new counters would cost $ 1800.00 for only 25 square feet, our old rough measurements. We budgeted $1K for new counters not included misc. counters charges, faucet, sink and new garbage disposal. you can read more about those options here. At the beginning of June we stopped in our local Lowes to look at more samples, both of us weren't 100% sold on the idea of solid white counters even though it looks great in other homes, like YHL. We just thought it wouldn't be a good fit for our homes kitchen. 


We decided to take another look at the LG HI-Macs, after reading the great things you all said about them and Lowes installing the product in your home. That's how a new color from LG caught our eyes plus we like the warranty & ease of care. Here's some quick facts about LG Hi-Macs straight from their website.

• Normal Care: HI-MACS® is non-porous, so it can be wiped clean with a damp cloth or sponge and mild detergents or general purpose cleaners such as Mr. Clean.
• Spills and Stains: While most everyday spills can be removed with the cleaning techniques listed, some troublesome spills and stains such as food dye, tea, and fruit drinks may require more aggressive cleaning. These items can be removed with full strength bleach followed by a general cleanse
• Warranty: 15 Year Warranty on Solid Surface Materials 
• Repairing Scratches: For removing superficial scratches, rub in a circular motion with a wet # 7448 Scotch Brite buffing pad until the scratches are removed. Clean thoroughly with soap and water and let dry

The funny thing is we saw the color before and loved it, but the price point was way out of our budget and I refused to even consider it, after all the last time I did that I found out Corian Rain Cloud was $72 a square foot, and we had to keep it moving. We we stopped into Lowes, and talked with a Kitchen CSR, we mentioned how much we liked the LG Hi-Macs Cotton Dust color over going with the standard solid white, we also shared it wasn't in our budget. He smiled and called of the fabricators / installers to see if they have are aware of any sales coming in the future on the color we like. As luck would have it, they we starting a new sale that week, but not yet sure what colors listed on the special. He suggested we leave our name and number, and he would call us and let us know which colors were going on sale. 

A few days later, I received a phone call letting me know the color we loved Cotton Dust was special for an amazing price of $ 37.00 a square foot!!! Which means the price point dropped from Group C Pricing all the way down to Group A pricing!!! Which meant huge savings for us, oh and since we were buying over 25sq feet of counters we also qualified for a free stainless steel under mount sink!!  Yes, sir we saved a lot of money on counters we love and a new sink! Before I share our new counters and our counter price breakdown, here's a reminder of how our kitchen looked after we ripped out our old tile counters, back splash and kitchen sink. Our kitchen started looking better and not so dark.

Here's my kitchen now in Progress. We really love how the counters turned out!! I love how seamless and clean lined the LG Hi-Macs are and feel. They are heavy and solid, and substantial feels like solid stone, type of solid. Out fabricator was amazing he's been installer { solid surface, granite, quartz for over 20 years } and said this new color reminded him of Quartz or Limestone it reminds me of Quartz too! The color is a very soft grey, with flecks light and dark grey almost reminds me of crystal. I'm also in love with our new faucet, its from Peerless. It's a one handled pull down faucet. We went with chrome to add a bit of bling in the kitchen, and I'm so glad with did. It's super high, but not crazy high, just the perfect size. 

I love the curves :)

We loved the eased edge on our counters, likes like a pretty block, nice and thick. We actually have a 2 inch font on our counters instead of the regular 1 1/2 size, which gives it a more modern look. The picture below is one of the best examples of how our new counters look. 

We also love our new sink, nice and DEEP. Like super deep, I'm in love with it. I bought this simple metal strainer to place inside our sink so when I put dishes in side nothing scratches or breaks on the stainless steel. 

I love how seamless and clean lined our new counters feel!!! 

Now for our cost breakdown our counters. We ordered 26 square feet of counters, @ $37.00 a square totaling $ 962.00. Plus an additional fee of $ 150.00 for the sink cut out and sink being mounted on counter. Then we paid for them using our Lowes Credit Card, which saved us an additional $ 55.60 { next we paid off the full amount of our counter purchase, didn't wait finance fees :) } the final total of our counters { not including tax, since tax varies county by count and state by state I'm leaving it out } was $ 1, 056.40. We came in under budget on our counters, since we budgeted only $1K for counters only - that budget didn't include the sink cut-out, new faucet, sink and garbage disposal. Now lets add up the savings shall we :) 

The original price of our counters were $ 54 a square foot, thanks to the sale we saved 

$ 442.00!! Plus we saved an additional $ 170 bucks on a stainless steel sink, we most likely would have purchased from Overstock here. So that's a savings of $ 612 bucks that were able to go elsewhere in our kitchen redo :) Oh, and just to make me extra giddy about the savings, I noticed Corian sells almost the identical color we bought, called Silver Birch for $ 61 bucks a square foot! Ok, math problem one more time we would have spent $ 1586.00 on Corian, instead we saved $624.00 going with LG HI-Macs, and our installer prefers LG HiMacs, he had them in his own house for years. 

Now with the counters completed we still have much more to do. Next up removing the old drywall and installing new drywall that we can tile over with pretty white subway tile! Little by little its all coming together. I'm excited for the next steps ahead, because once my counters are painted white, I know the beauty of our new counters will stand out even more :) And my kitchen won't be so dark and I'll be able to take better pics :) and hopefully get better taking pics :) lol 


What do you think of our counters? 

Kitchen Questions: Hood Options

As you know, our kitchen re-do / reno / update whatever you wanna call it is full swing, so far we've demoed out our tile counters and YES our new counters with all the fixings { faucet, sink, garbage disposal } have been installed and I will have pictures and all the details to share on Tuesday, I promise!! :)  Today I wanted to to get your input on Hood Options for the stove. There are two types I like, the Stainless Steel Industrial ones and the seamless blends right into the kitchen cabinets look.

For our own kitchen, we plan on going with the stainless steel hood vent, I'll be sharing all the deets on the style with and why this week on the blog. I like both styles a lot, but really love how the a stainless steel hood vent can me small kitchens feel larger, make standard size size ceilings appear larger too. But I also love the look of the integrated seamless vent hood, it adds so much charm in a kitchen and really makes helps a kitchen look custom.  


Now you turn, what style of hood vent do you like? The Stainless Steel hood Vent, or Seamless Hood Vent? Or do you prefer a microwave above your oven for convenience or the look?
   

Honey, There Goes the Counters

So its official my house is down a sink. I'm now skinless in my kitchen, oh and I have no counters. It's crazy, Sunday morning I woke up to me new reality of being sink and counter free. But let's back up a bit to Sat afternoon, demo time. As you know we are getting new counters! In an effort to keep costs down, we decided to DIY the old counter tops and backslash ourselves. Here's a reminder of how our kitchen looks pre-demo. 

I hope from this picture you can see our kitchen has good bones, tall cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling and they're solid wood which is a plus. We have big plans for our tiny kitchen, on a tiny budget! As with most of our DIY projects we've done over the years we plan on DIYing most of it, and getting help from the Professionals along the way { counters installed, electrical }   Here's my quick rundown of our plan, I will do an in-depth one very soon, since our old plan is dated. We are re-placing our the outdated tile counters with solid surface counters, new stainless steel sink, updating the back splash with subway tile, adding hardware and installing a vent hood. Currently we have an outdated ceiling vent, think old school ceiling vent. Not cute, freaking odd. We also plan on installing a pantry cabinet, again more on that in my kitchen post. Also new lighting, and paint lots of paint { cabinets, walls } Oh and new appliances, one at a time. 

Now back D-E-M-O. For anyone planning on removing old tile counter and a back splash I put together a How To. 


Supplies & Tools Needed


Face Mask
Safety Glasses 
Trash Bin
Broom
Heavy Metal Dust Pan
Crowbar
Hammer
Chisel 
Flat head screwdriver


After putting our safety glass and masks on, safety first! First we removed the old light switch / plug covers, then got down business. We started popping off the front of the tile using the nail mover part of the hammer. The popped off pretty easy. Once the corners were off, we were able to see how they attached the tile to the.

Not sure if you can tell in the picture above, but in the past tiles must have broken off because they where glued back on, not a good look. 

Then Hasani used the crowbar to pull up the top layer, the top layer was cement board. Using this technique we were able to remove a large layer of our old tile counters quickly.

While Hasani was working on removing the counters, I started working on the back splash. I used a metal chisel, we bought a long time ago to tear up our old tile floor in our kitchen and dining room. I placed the chisel underneath the tile and then hit the chisel with the hammer. The tile popped off one, two at a time.

After the dishwasher side was finished, we moved on to the other side of our small kitchen. Apply the same method, this side proved to be more messy. Lastly we removed the heavy old ceramic sink, good riddance to that sink!

Altogether it took about 2-3 hours to remove our old counter and back splash and plywood underneath the tile board. We cleaned as we went, making everything less messy and dusty. Here's my kitchen now, minus the old white tile with icky brown grout, minus our old fugly sink. We are making progress! I should mention in the pictures below, our stove is pushed way out of the area, we just wanted to make sure our fabricator / installer had easy access to our counters on both sides. After our kitchen demo, I placed my dinnerware back inside my cabinet for safe keeping.

Yesterday we had our counters measured for the template! We really like our fabricator / installer. He was very friendly and helpful and answered all of our questions! He also has a quick turn around time,we should get a phone call next week for a date to schedule our counters being installed!! After our install, I'll share our the cost breakdown and of course the after pictures! After the counters are installed, we'll be removing the old drywall and hanging new drywall. Since we plan on tiling we want a smooth surface as possible.

What do you think so far? Doesn't my kitchen look so much brighter with out the dark grout messing it up? Oh, I can't wait for paint and tile :)

Have to Demo-ed tile before, any helpful tips?

Kitchen Questions: Faucets

Everyday we are moving closer to our kitchen re-do, I'm happy to say we decided on a material and style for our new counters that we both love and we ordered them! We actually begin our demo this weekend on our old counters, but today  I'm talking about faucets. We couldn't very well keep our old barely works facet once we upgrade our counters, that's like getting a new car and buying old tires it just looks off. 


There are two types of faucets that I just LOVE and I'm tore between the two. I love the classic timeless look of a bridge faucet, they are just oh so pretty.  Then I also love the sleek goose neck style of the pull down facet, not to mention how extremely easy it makes filling large pots and washing dishes. Here's a better look at the two styles.

Kohler Bridge Faucet via Overstock { here }

Kraus Single Lever Pull Down Faucet { here }

It's hard to judge how pretty a faucet is without seeing it in kitchens, here's how the facet styles look in kitchens. Up first the Bridge Facet. I love these faucets, but they are be very pricey!! I've seen some upwards for 1K, no thanks :) That's our whole counter top budget, thank you very much, lol. But I have seen some more affordable options at Lowes for under $ 150.00 much better pricing. 

{ via Decorpad } 

{ via Pinterest }

{ via Pinterest }

Next up is the Pull Down style faucet. I do love how sleek Pull Down faucets are, and love that they require less holes in the counter top, and preform double duty as a sprayer.

{ via here }

{ via Pinterest }

What style faucet to do your prefer in your kitchen? Have you recently upgraded your kitchen facet, if so what style did you go with?

Counter Samples

Its finally happening after living with our current counter tops for more days than I care to think of ( well over a thousands days) we are finally giving them the heave-ho and having new counter tops installed!! Yep, that sentence required two exclamation points :) I'm beyond thrilled, picture me with a sledgehammer dancing around my kitchen ready to start demo, lol 


We want to get our counter-tops replaced in June, which is right around the corner! Right now were not to far into the process regarding who's going to install them. Here's what I do know: DIY the counter demo, install new counters, DIY white subway tile, installing a stainless steal kitchen sink, replacing our facet and getting a new garbage disposal. Replacing our counter tops has been on my mind for quite sometime, in fact a six months after moving into our home went to a few local tile shops and got some samples. The timing wasn't right ( we were planning our wedding and doing lots of DIY projects around the house and then we got pregnant and demo and my pregnancy didn't mix) Now I feel the timing is finally right and want to get started on this project asap. 


I want our kitchen to feel clean and fresh, right now the area is very very dark. Our current cabinets are dark brown, and the current counters are white with dark brown thick grout (yuck!) and our floors are dark brown (faux wood floors) even with our good sized kitchen window, the area is dark. Our plan is to lighten everything up, and say bye bye to its current gloomy state. We have decided not to spend the extra money on Granite or Quartz both our nice but, way more than we care to spend on our small kitchen. My personal goal is to spend less than 1k on new counters. With that budget in mind, solid surface is our best option. Here's a look at the counter top selections, the lighter natural counter samples with decided to to nix, we picked those ones long ago when we were first thinking of replacing our counters.  


Samples left to right skipping the ones mentioned above: Corian Night Sky, Corian Rain Cloud, Corain Glacier White 

Option # 1

I really like the look of Corian Rain Cloud with the white subway tile, the tile really picks up the softer white tones in the Rain Cloud sample. The tones are more noticeable in person. Corian Rain Cloud is so pretty I love the subtle grey veining. 

Option # 2

This is how the white subway tile looks with with the Glacier white Corian. The glacier white is pretty and so much whiter than the softer white subway tile. 

Option # 3

Another option that I've always liked is going with dark almost black counters and white subway tile. The look is classic and clean. The black Corian reminds me of satin finish granite. 

Not An Option

Lastly, this is my dream 'A girl can dream category', gorgeous marble slab of pretty with subway tile!! I love the look, but it would blow my budget away lol, but I still had to share!! :)

After going back with and forth with the options. I really think I prefer the white on white look of Option # 1 & 2. I really love the look of pretty much white counters with white cabinets and eventually stainless steal appliances. 

On Sunday evening we stooped on Lowes to get the pricing on the samples we liked, because in the end it all boils down to square footage we have roughly 25sq + feet of counters that need to be replaced. I'm also not sure how they take into account sinks and free standing stoves into the overall counter measurements. I'll know more when we have them professionally measured soon. Here's the price per feet breakdown at our local Lowes in Sacramento: Option # 1 falls into the E category at $72 a square foot total $ 1800.00 for kitchen budget blown!  Option # 2 falls into the A category at $ 39 a square foot total $ 975.00. Both of my totals don't include pricing on sink cutouts and holes for facets. I'll know more about the extras when I speak to a CSR at Lowes. While we where at Lowes, I noticed LG HI-MACS also has a solid white counter option. I need to see how the counters compare against Corian, but I'm liking the pricing, two dollars less per square foot can add up.  

I also snapped at picture of Allen + Roth pricing - the white counters I like are $ 33.00 a square foot. I need  to do some research on the warranty, but the total would be $ 825.00. 

Now back to the backslash, I've love the look of white subway tile for eons. I LOVE it, the look is timeless, pretty and clean. So if we go with Option # 2 white counters and white subway tile, white cabinets, I think we can pull the look out with out our kitchen feeling sterile. Here's some white kitchens I love.


I love the white counters (OK they are marble, but from a distance they look pure white) look pretty with the white cabinets and white backsplash. I'm also a fan of glass doors on cabinets, we got the middle sections of our cabinets cut a while back, next we'll be adding glass once the doors are painted.

{via Pinterest}

This kitchen is almost perfect example of the look I want (but on a much much larger scale!)

{ via Pinterest}

If we stay on budget with the other items we need to make our counter makeover complete (new sink, new facet and new garbage disposal) I would love to have marble subway tile for the backsplash. That would be PRETTY! 

{ via Decorpad }

I plan to make a lot of headway on our counter project this weekend, I will be stopping into a local kitchen showroom and getting prices vs. going with Lowes. Right now I'm leaning towards Lowes because we can use our Lowes card and save 5% on our counters, of course we'll make a payment right away and pay the credit card off.   


What do you think our countertop selections? If you had your counters replaced did you go with the Big box store or keep it local? Do you know if the included free standing stoves in the square footage when measuring for solid surface counters??  

Spice Girl

First, sorry for my lack of posts last week. I had one of those weeks, where I got a lot done and never had a chance to blog about what's been going on {I even took off Friday from my day job
}  I had such a nice Friday being a mommy going for a pretty walk along the river and doing a little shopping. I'm glad to be back to share what's going on, I missed blogging. I really feel its my creative outlet and really helps my thought process and its my way to maintain my voice in my sometimes crazy busy life of being a mom to a tween and a baby about to turn one and wife to a husband I adore. I know you can all relate :) Life is busy, but fun! And now for my spicy post, lol. 


I'm a wanna be spice girl, no not the late 1990's Spice Girl kind, the all my spices are in pretty jars kind of Spice Girl. This post is sadly 7 months in the making, wow I admitting it took me 7 months to complete this simple upgrade I'm about to share. So lets go back in time seven months ago, I was getting fed-up with our spices. Everything was in mismatched spice containers and I could never find the spice I was looking for so most of the time I would buy another container. Because of that, I had three spice containers of cumin powder! which just means we were being careless and wasting money. I really wanted all of our spices jars the same, its just more pleasing to the  eye the spice jar then spice jar chaos. 


I mentioned to my friend Summer, I was in desperate need of a spice jar makeover and I wasn't loving the spice jars at Ikea. She suggested I check out the spice jars at World Market. I pulled out all my spice jars and did a count, I made sure to exclude the duplicates. Next I popped on their website, I liked the styles are the prices too! 

Before I left my house, I pretty sure I was going to buy the boxed set of four spice jars for $ 3.99.  I like the simple style of the upright ones. 

However, when I got there I decided on a different style of jars and the price was good too, only 99cents a jar! I loved them. I needed 20 jars and was only able to buy 12 at that store (I cleaned the store out!) So on my way to another Cost Plus Store where I bought the remaining 8 jars I needed. I planned on to starting my spice makeover (pun intended, lol) asap, but got delayed. So the jars I bought which I'll share in minute, sat in tow bags wrapped carefully untouched for seven months. Sad I know, but that's' life sometimes you get sidetracked a little or in my case a lot, lol. Remember when I mentioned I did a little shopping on Friday? Well I've been meaning to pop into Sur La Table forever and since Hasani had the day off and wanted to check out their BBQ stuff (they have great grill stuff) off we went. 


We spend a long time in the store looking around, I made friends with the sales person and he showed me their huge clearance section tucked in the back of the store. There I spotted the cutesiest ceramic salt  containers. I was stunned buy the awesome price of $1.99! They only had blue and purple left, I grabbed a blue one. They have them online for $ 3.99 on clearance the regular price is $ 9.99, you can check them out here. 

The Salt Jar Reads ' Terracotta from Tuscany Salt ' 

Back when I bought my spice jars, I also bought these little white ceramic jars for our salt. I love that I know have three separate salt containers, one for table salt, sea salt and kosher salt. 

So after our trip to Sur La Table, I decided that night I found finally give my mismatched spice containers a makeover. I used a funnel to transfer the spices into the jar. It made the process so much smoother and almost mess free. 

Here's a better view of the spice jars I bought. Simple glass jars with a twist on metal top, they come with a removable insert. For now I used simple white mailing labels and and wrote all the spice labels. In the future I want to use a heat transfer on glass and do more text. Kind of like these cute jars, I pinned a 'How To' a while back here. For now I like how they look!

I love that i can now keep my sesame seeds in a jar!

Next I want to upgrade all my baking stuff to glass jars , I'm so over bags! lol. We have some nice metal containers we keep our flour, sugar and coffee in, but I like the idea of glass because you can see how much you have left. 

Have you done in a spicy upgrades recently? What do you think of my makeover? Are you shocked it took me seven months to finally finish, what was supposed to be a quick makeover? 


Lastly, how do you keep your spice jars?