Maybe We Are Fancy After All.

In approximately 3-4 weeks we will have our kitchen cabinets. Yes, you read me correctly, we have purchased our cabinets. The story of the cabinets is a sweet love story between a two new homeowners and Home Depot kitchen design center.

It all began on Saturday August 27, 2011 in a far, far away land….eh, I’m so not entering sappy territory here – I’m a straight up kinda gal.

Anyway, it did all start last Saturday when Ed and I went into Home Depot to check out their in-stock line of cabinets and priced the whole kit(chen) and kaboodle out. The reason we were going the in-stock-buy-it-off-the-shelf route was because Home Depot was offering 20% off said kit(chen) and kaboodle and they were readily available and in our budget range (which wasn’t very big mind you!). So, with 20% off, we were already saving around $500. Score! Until … we went and saw said cabinets in person and winced at their cheap quality, ill fitting doors, and lack of cabinet sizes and accessories. This was definitely a case of quantity over quality. So, what to do now?! We kind of felt defeated, actually. So, with our heads hanging low, we were on our way out the door when we saw our cabinet maven miracle worker, Pierre. Pierre and I go way back and when we stopped to say hello we figured we would ask him his opinions on the in-stock cabinets we were ho-hum about. He said they were ‘ok’ and usually used for apartment type set-ups and laundry/basement/garage applications the most. He asked our budget and suggested we sit down and write up an in-stock vs. custom kitchen cabinet plan. Um, a custom kitchen? Doesn’t custom mean mas dinero? I know he heard our budget range and I know custom can’t possibly fit in the no mas dinero budget that Ed and I gave him.

Enter left stage: cabinet superhero, Pierre. We sat down and after 3 hours and multiple phone calls to my dad (who was our stationed soldier at RHN, armed with a measuring tape) we were set on measurements and we plugged away at designing our custom kitchen (I feel so fancy every time I say it - even though we're not). As Pierre plugged away at adding cabinets in a really cool 3D cad program, I kept getting more and more nervous. I was getting nervous because he was spitting out terms like crown moulding and cushion-close drawers and for the sake of beating an already dead horse, we were on a budget for pete's sake! Then the magic began to flow, the skies opened, a rainbow formed, and unicorns began galloping happily about while leprechauns giggled. Pierre uttered our favorite words in the english language: free, discount, free, and free all while speaking enthusiastically about custom (we're fancy!) kit(chen) and kaboodle cabinets for our naked room. The deal we got was incredible. Wanna hear? Of course you do! Let me mesmerize you with our unicorn and rainbow filled results...


Discount: 

• $500 right off the top due to a Labor Day promotion the cabinet company already had running - spend $xxxx.xx get $xxx.xx off bringing our linear square foot price down $25 per linear square foot.

Freebees:

• Free upgrade to a premium finish. This saved us from buying cabinets in a finish we didn't like and having to spend a lot extra on a finish we did like. Savings: an extra $20 linear sq ft.
• Free hardware - door/drawer knobs and pulls. With 28 knobs and 9 pulls, this saved us $210.
• Free sink base cabinet 36". Savings $200.
• Free garbage/recycle pull out cabinet. Savings $900.
• Free fancy pants 2-tier in drawer cutlery divider. Savings $85
• Free cushion-close drawers and cabinet doors. You can't slam these babies. Savings: $?. 

So, as you can see, for custom fancy kitchen cabinets, we made out like freakin' bandits. Seriously, I kind of feel like we should have been wearing masks and carrying a big bag that could be filled with goodies much like thieves do. However, I have to point out that this endeavor, while fun, was still expensive despite all our discounts and freebees, and we still went about $800 over our original intended budget. (I know everyone is rolling their eyes saying, well duh, idiot. It's a kitchen. Of course it's expensive. Well, we are still newbies and still greatly play into sticker shock. Give us a break, here.) Now we have to get a sink and a new window and then figure out how to build our countertops and then, my dear Watson, we will have a spankin' new complete kitchen. 

C'Mon Irene! Well, I swear what I mean. At this moment...

Paint, paint, paint, all day long...paint, paint, paint while I sing this song.  Cman's room is painted. Donezo.  No mas painting needed in Cman's room.  About 90% of the rest of the trim in the house is painted too. Yay!


Remember how I said we I had a plan for the interior color of the front door? No? Let me remind you...

Well, it was vetoed 2-1. I lost. However, it's ok. No, really, I promise. I LOVE, love, love that green door a LOT, but it wasn't jivin' with the rest of the hizzy. Oh!! I'm going to derail for a few minutes and tell you a story of fabulous deals happening in the world of RHN. So, our ceilings are a short 7.5 feet high; short because I am 5'11" and Ed is just about 6'1". So, what that meant was any ceiling light we installed realistically couldn't be any more than 7.5" in height off the ceiling to make sure us giants of RHN clear said lighting apparatus. Does anyone know how hard it is to find a non-boob-resembling-modern-looking-attrictive flush mount light?! Well, three weeks of Google-ing proved to me there isn't a lot out there, yet a local-ish Brooklyn based company proved me wrong and for a steal! I ended up finding a 6" in height flush mount light that is modern, clean, and a deal! The light was $90 base price; $140 with a "designer" shade. After Google-ing a little more I found the exact same light for $59 + NYS sales tax. I ordered two - one for each hallway - and paid $113 total including shipping. But $59 + $59 does not = $113. That's because I found a coupon, although no cash back, but savings of about $90. Anyway, these two lights cost the same as some single lighting we were considering. What? Too much babble and no pictures? Ok, ok. 

So, back to the interior no-more-green door... wanna see what we decided on?

Black semi-gloss fabulousness. See the light? It's at least 1.5' above our heads and it all. just. meshes. Ok, well except for the plastic on the floor and the fan and lack of added accessories. Imagine, people, imagine. 

Ok, what's next?  Hurricane Irene... um, Hurri-what? We suffered horridly. We lost another tree (yes that was growing in our gutter) and suffered extreme flooding. (disclaimer: I'm not poking fun at those who did suffer; I'm simply poking fun at the hype that was stirred up for Dutchess Co. and didn't obviously happen.)  There was flooding in some areas - especially around streams, creeks, and ponds, but around here all-in-all it was just wet. Very wet. (Haha!! On our way back to Fishkill we were on Robinson Lane and the creek and adjoining pond flooded the road. The flooding was up to my doors and front grill on the GTI and my dad yells out: "can I use my seat as a flotation device?!" We laughed pretty hard because the water was that deep.)

Another tree lost.

Major flood!

Dad and Ed worked on tiling the shower today and got a lot done until the power went out when they were about 20min out of finishing. Thanks, Irene. There's always tomorrow.


On Saturday we sat down with our friend, Pierre. Who's Pierre you ask? Well, Pierre and I go back - waaaaay back. We began working together in 2000-ish and after years and years we both divorced the car business and went our merry ways. Well, Pierre is a kitchen specialist/designer at Home Depot and he's also our knight in kitchen shining armor. That's right kids, we have cabinets. We have beautiful, classy, already finished, ALL-inclusive, premium cabinets that we thought we could never afford. No, I'm not kidding and yes we are beyond ecstatic. Hi, we have cushion-close drawers and cabinets. You cannot slam them shut! Oh!! And we have hidden garbage and recycling cabinet. And crown moulding. We gave Pierre a budget and magic happened. In about a month.5 we should have pretty much an awesome kitchen. Thanksgiving, we will own you.


So, that's what happened this weekend at RHN. Oh, one last note - the pears on our tree are really close to ripe. I found one so big it filled my hand. I bit into it and it was a Bartlett Pear all the way. It was delicious. Not even kidding. Next year lateish-summer party will include pears and apples (and plain prosecco for Katie).

Giant pear on the left; Regular sized pear on the right

Delicious!

O.M.G. That's A Tree. It's Growing To Be Like Five-Foot-Three.

(the title was my attempt at gangsta rap. think Jay-Z would approve? does he even sing gangsta rap?)


This weekend at RHN was insane. And gross. And unbelievable. And served up a healthy helping of OMG WTF ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING RIGHT NOW?!


Remember that ridiculous air conditioner that was protruding obnoxiously out of the side of the wall in the dining room and out of the side of the house?  Oh, right, and it didn't even work.  Well, we took that out this weekend and woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Houston we had a problem. Where do I begin?  (Your answer: 'at the beginning'. Thanks smart aleck.)

When the moulding around the AC came off it didn't look too bad. Then the AC unit removal came in and disastrous is an understatement. Ok, think I'm being a drama llama queen? I'll prove it. There was a birch tree growing in our wall. No, not a weed, a tree, with roots, in our wall. The wood frame built to sturdy it up was so rotted due to water damage and eaten away by who knows what. Then came the cringing what's behind door #2. My dad began to take down some of the interior holy sheet!rock because it had been so wet for so long that it was mushy and had turned the consistency of paste. Not too bad. Then came the outside. The water/rot damage was significant. As in Ed had to take out about double the amount of the wall around where the small AC hole was. Ed was a champ on that ladder - it was high up and he was a circular saw/sawzall/caulk gooper/drill user/screw putter-inner rock star.

After our gawking at the amount of grossness subsided, we (dad and Ed) built the stud back in, filled the gaping hole with insulation, put ply wood on the exterior and holy sheet!rock on the interior, caulked, and re-sided the exterior and mudded the interior.  It's like magic! Magic with power tools! The Harry Potter of RHN. (he uses magic, right? maybe I should stop referencing things I don't know much about. Nah, that takes all the fun out of it.)

While the boys were screwin' around (get it? screwin' around? because they were using screws to put the interior & exterior back together? bad joke? thought so) I was painting my little heart out. I painted the kitchen ceiling, the attic access point in the front  hallway, the trim all throughout the up and downstairs, Cman's bedroom trim and the front door threshold trim. Phew! That's a lot of painting! Oh and in our broken down festering rain filled pile of a 'pool' in the backyard, we have a new resident. 

We have chosen a definite paint color for the giant room and have found our kitchen floor tile at a steal!!! (like hows $3.99 sq ft for 12x12 tile on sale for $1.99 sq ft plus an extra 6% cash back and I'm on the hunt for an extra coupon.) We haven't yet bought the cabinets for the kitchen and have good reason to wait. Lowes has fantastic deals come holidays and Labor Day is less than 2 weeks away. Bye-bye, summer. Hello, cabinets. 

Opinions Are Like Eyeballs...

Ok, we are enlisting the help of RHN readers/followers/stopper-byers to help Ed and I choose between two grays for our living/dining/giant room.  So we have it narrowed down to two grays (even though my father disagrees with the choices) pebble gray (medium gray) and Granite Gray (darker gray).  My dad picked out a different "gray", but his gray really isn't gray at all - it's a silver blue called Antique Silver. So, as much as I love my dad and value his opinion, we need (read:want) a gray-gray, not a so-so-blue-ish-gray. 


So, we ask: which gray??

Oh a lil mix up! 

We know which gray we think we like - even if dad doesn't.  The adjoining hallway is a light gray called Shining Silver.  Keep in mind, all trim will be white; the color of the hardwoods is natural and gorgeous; an we are modern-ish. 


So, friends, what's the verdict???  Dark Gray? Medium Gray? or Blue-Silver? 

It's Quality and Quantity, My Dear Watson.

Things are happening at RHN. Are you reeeeaaaddy to ruuuuuuuuummmmmbllleee?!?!? This is going to be a picture heavy post, my dear peeps. Although all of the items done this past weekend were somewhat small, they all added up. So, let's take a jaunt through small accomplishment weekend at RHN.


1.) Ed built the bathroom vanity. It is awesome and made of solid red oak. The graining in the wood is fantastic and almost resembles a zebra. Wanna see? Cman and Saranac helped.

1/3 finished:

 2.) Dad finished mudding the ceiling in the kitchen. We had to quarentine the premises to ensure the dust from sanding the mud didn't blanket everything in the color white. We covered all the newly redone floors in plastic, too.  Oh, and that attic access point in the second picture? That stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb nonsense is now white to match the ceiling. Didn't think it was excitement enough to capture on camera.

3.) Connor ate pizza and drank Arnold Palmer (that iced tea is the shizzle).

4.) Cman and Ed finally replaced the one piece of missing holy sheet!rock in the living room. This piece was the missing link to all walls solid.

5.) My dad is a maniac sander and sanded the old peely, splotchy, kinda-rotting-but-can-be-saved, cracked front door. This door is heavy and solid oak. Translation: replacing a door like that would cost mucho dinero. So, Ed and I picked a stain color called Kona (coincidence?) and I stained and polyurethaned the bee-jeezeus out of it. The color we picked doesn't look 100% cohesive with the red, but there is a method to our madness. Hopefully next year RHN will get its big outdoor makeover. That's all the splainin' I'm doing, Lucy. Anyway, with the stain and poly, no longer will the door be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment known as the the wrath of mother nature. We are super heroes, saving one door at a time.

So, ladies and gents, this here is what was completed this past weekend at RHN while mother nature was pouring down rain. We are pretty close to picking a color for the giant room walls. I think this weekend we will be tackling the air conditioner and priming the kitchen ceiling along with tiling the shower in the bathroom and maybe painting in there. Wait until you see that color for the bathroom. It. is. genius. Ok, that's really not the technical name - honestly, I don't know what name Behr gave it, but in super hero speak, it's genius.

Awesome Sauce Deluxe With A Side Of Amazing. Spank You Very Much.

I want to begin with a note I should have written a few ago but didn't. Now that our (mine and Ed's) worlds are slowly coming back together...


Thank you. Thank you to all of our friends & family whom contributed to Katie and I and the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure to end breast cancer. Katie and I were supposed to walk on the weekend of July 22-24 in Boston. We were supposed to walk 20 miles a day for 3 days and gain a million blisters. We were supposed to raise $4600 total for our team, Baby Got Rack. Due to some tragic and absolutely unforeseen circumstances, we were not able to make it to Boston to walk, BUT we were able to raise just about $5000!!!! We surpassed our goal by quite a bit and we have you all to thank. So, Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts and almost blistered feet. Thank you for your support, encouragement, cooling packs for our necks and the sweet post cards and treats, and seriously, THANK YOU for being all around awesome - we have the best group of friends and family on the planet. And thank you for taking the time and effort in this crappy economy to donate to something so meaningful to myself and to Katie.


Thank You. You all Rock.

They Came. They Sanded. They Conquered.

I seriously LOVE. OUR. FLOORS. Yea, yea, I can hear the I-told-you-so's from here. What? As far as I was concerned, the pee stain yellow that was there before was going to rear it's very ugly head and stay forever in our home. That's why I really wanted a medium stain - you see now? Pee stain yellow compliments nothing we have in way of ... anything. Plus, it's pee stain yellow throughout the entire house.  You can't get much worse.


Anywhoosle, the new floors have transformed RHN into a hardwood floor paradise (they must have run out of fruity cocktails, they were no where to be found). Much to my surprise, the guys at TH were able to fill, patch, and sand all of the nasty spots on the floors. Don't remember? I'll post the video tour so you can check all the horridness again.

So, let's begin show and tell with before and afters of our wood floors.


First up: The entryway that used to have the closet.


BEFORE:                                                       AFTER:

Next up:  Giant Room

BEFORE:                                                    AFTER:

                                                                    
So, those are just a taste of the before and after comparisons. I have more, but I figured I mine as well just cut to the chase and dish the afters. Eye candy for all. You're welcome.

Stairway to Heaven 

Spare Bedroom/Office

Giant Room Looking Towards Entryway

Looking From Entryway to Giant Room

Upstairs Hallway

Looking Down Upstairs Steps

And that my friends is how amazingly gorgeous our floors turned out.  They aren't as glossy as I had imagined they being, but sealed up and loved nonetheless. While Ed and I were at Lowes the other day buying the store out of every single bathroom supply they had, we found Connor a ceiling fan to replace the old craptastic one that was in his room - missing blades and all. He had originally picked a ceiling fan out that honestly looked as if it belonged in a 85 year old woman's house in Florida. I had to remind Cman that he is in fact: 1) a boy 2) he's 13 not 85 and 3) he's a 13 year old boy - he needs a boy fan! Well come to find out, Cman is not confused as to whether or not he's a 13 year old boy or an 85 year old female, in the end all Cman wanted was the luxury of laziness. Yes, he had to have a fan with a remote. Now, it could just be the sheer coolness factor that no only can he use the switch, but a remote as well ... or it's the sheer fact that he's 13 and less is more in terms of effort. However, if we were talking room color, that statement just made would be a flat out lie. So, we found said boy ceiling fan on clearance Clarence (what's your vector Victor? C'mon! I know you know this! I know Marilyn and Ma know it) and my dad installed it last night in Cmans room.

See what I mean by no lack of less is more in room color choice? I bet you're thinking, it's not that bad, well that's because I used a flash. It reflects green all the way into the hallway and into the other bedrooms. I'm not complaining, Cman is happy and loves his chalkboard paint wall. That's all that matters to us.

Well, that rounds up this episode of RHN. I'm hoping this upcoming weekend will be full of accomplishments and project completions. Ed has built a piece of furniture that deserves its own post and some tweaking has been made to accommodate some 'things'. Vague you say? Of course! It's only because I heart you!