AHHHHH - THE STOVE IS INSTALLED, AMEN!!!

Giovanni Verbene, I believe we may owe you a lifetime supple of Jack Daniels and well as our forever love. Thank you!!!!!!!

PS - Please disregard the exposed sub floor, blue counter tops and two toned wall :) All of those horrid eye sores will be corrected shortly.

x0x0x0x

Cold Chinese leftovers are on the menu tonight, fab!

Hopefully, we can get the stove installed before I kill someone...

The stress of the renovation is starting to make us both a bit nuts. As I said yesterday, our house is in a completely disgusting state of chaos. I had hoped to keep the renovation contained, but it seems to keep spreading like a damn wild fire, ugh!

To get my mind off of the mess, I've started shopping for our second living room sofa. We have a small sofa, two chairs, coffee table, rug, entertainment unit and some antiques in the living room right now;
however we desperately need more seating so we've decided that an additional sofa is a must.

Thus far, these are my front runners, thoughts?

The leather piece is from Home Decorators, and is at a fabulous price point ($999.00 + $200.00  for shipping). It isn't made of the most swanky leather; however, I think it will suit the space nicely.

The second sofa is from Pottery Barn and clocks in at about $2200.00, which is a bit less palatable...

A few benefits that the Pottery Barn piece has: made in the U.S., lots of fabric/leather options and better feet...

Decisions, decisions.

The bigger pieces in the room look like this (yes, those are antique interior shutters found in the basement of our home!):

So, I'm thinking leather might be our best bet. Not sure I want so many different patterns, colors and fabrics all over the place....

Anyone want to weigh in?!?!?

Thanks all!

APPLIANCE DELIVERY DAY, YAY!

Today our appliances finally arrived and I am in love :)

The semi-sad part is that they will remain uninstalled and sitting haphazardly in the breakfast room until we've finished the tile.....

The less sad part is that the kitchen renovation is really starting to heat up!!!! By "heat up" I'm pretty much saying that the entire house is completely torn apart. I've all but given up trying to keep anything neat as it is nearly impossible admits the chaos.....

Ah, such is life.

Speaking of tile, on Tuesday night we FINALLY found our tile :)  We have decided to go with a tumbled travertine. We used travertine in our last home and we very much love the look; however, this time around we wanted something a bit more rustic to fit better with the overall "vibe" of the house.We had requested several samples via Build Direct and a few other online suppliers, without much luck.

Alas, we found a great place in Wexford, PA called Best Tile. Best has a "discount room" and much to my surprise that room just so happened to be filled to the brim with several natural stone options.

Lesson learned folks - don't let the vanilla name and oddish location fool ya, this place was awesome!

Here is a little snap shot of what the floor will look like:

For your enjoyment, this is the present state of my kitchen:

To up the excitement factor, here are a few pictures of the new appliances.  Thanks and "mad props" belong to both my lovely husband and our wonderful friend Gio for bringing these babies into the house with simply their biceps and a mere single strap appliance dolly. Thank god I was able to focus solely on the sound system pumping out some raging 'Lil Wayne tunes while the fridge was being wheeled in; without that fabulous distraction I may have had a heart attack and dropped dead right in my very own living room....

 

Our time line for completion is about 3 weeks away!!!! Until next time folks :)

x0x0x0x
Sarah

Farmhouse Picture Preview!

You asked, I'm providing :) Below are a few shots of our home. We aren't finished with anything, but some rooms are starting to take shape. Enjoy!

Living Room:

Breakfast Room (old floors in this room still!):

Upstairs Hallway (also old floors!):

Dinning Room:

My Favorite antique store find:

I'm taking a break from the renovation updates to provide a few tidbits on cleaning and caring for hardwood floors. Andrew and I had hardwood floors at our last home; however, we had them put down and stained in place so I felt like I could be a bit more rough with them.

This time around, we decided to go with a prefinished product because we really did not want to have to deal with how invasive the traditional lay/stain in place deal ends up being...

I don't  know about you guys, but I'd rather not have to pack up all of my belongings up, move them into storage, move them back to the house and deal with the dust factor for the next two years, etc.

So prefinished it is! As I explained in my first post, we've started  putting the flooring down (just the first floor thus far) and I am TOTALLY in love with it. Each piece is pretty unique, some much darker or lighter than others, and we decided to go with a heart pine so they look extremely imperfect and rustic :)

The only issue is.... I have been MAJORLY stressed out over finding the perfect cleaning product for my new love. The "old" me would have just busted out the swiffer mop and gone to town, but because we made such an investment in our new flooring I really want it to look fabulous for years to come..

Enter Bona hardwood floor cleaner. We actually had Bona hardwood floors at our last home; however, the darn cleaning products can be pretty expensive, so most of the time I just used a little white vinegar and water (per the suggestion of our flooring guy).

So today, I finally broke down and went to Lowe's to purchase the Bona mop. It actually wasn't as expensive as I had originally expected (about $42.00 for the "jump start" cleaning system, which includes:  mop, washable mop pad, 1 bottle of cleaning solution).

I got home, used a dry dust mop to clean loose debris off first and then WENT TO TOWN with the Bona mop. The thing works like a dream, honestly! The mop is designed to spray the "right amount" of solution so you don't end up with standing water on the floor (a HUGE "no no" for hardwood floor as standing water can cause issues FAST) the mop pad is also a good size, as well as soft against the floor

Here is the Bona website for anyone else looking to get an AWESOME mop for their home!

http://www.mybonahome.com/lines/hardwood-floor-mops.html

Here is a picture of my clean dinning room floors (and a small teaser of what we've done thus far - installed decorative trim and crown, added new light fixture, painted and put up wall paper!).

Special "shout outs"  belong to the following:

My Dad (installed crown and MADE table and buffet!)
My Mom (gifted mirror)
Nancy (painted room)
Andrew's mom (installed wallpaper)
Gio (helped move the CRAZY heavy table and buffet about 10 times)

......and my fabulous husband who installed the decorative trim and new lighting fixture!!!!

Happy Sunday!

X0X0

Sarah

Happy Saturday! As promised, I'm spilling the beans about our new countertops! Andrew and I ventured out to Lowe's on Thursday night to order them and as usual our trip turned into a bit of a disaster....

It went a little something like this:

We gleefully show up with our drawing in hand, all ready to finally bite the bullet and get this show on the road, only to be told that we can't order without an appointment?!?!? An appointment, you say? The gentleman that we had worked with on Saturday completely neglected to mention that we needed an appointment to review our dimensions with a "kitchen specialist"  - MAJOR BUMMER!

Thankfully, after speaking with a manager we got everything all squared away and Lowe's ended up offering to take our drawing and have it all ready to be signed off on for the next morning. YAY!

I had to work yesterday, so Andrew ended up meeting with the Lowe's kitchen specialist and reviewing our specs. After much debate, we decided to go with LG Viatera Quartz. We had granite in our last home, and I never had any issues with staining; however the granite was dark and this time around we wanted to go with something very light. After speaking with many folks that specialize in kitchen design and maintenance I found myself becoming obsessed with the idea of spending thousands of dollars on a new (very light!) granite countertop and then leaving some olive oil on it and having an issue...

Furthermore, the color I was eyeing up, Absolute Cream was coming in at about $86.00 dollars per sq/ft - OUCH!!!! What can I say, clearly I've got designer taste on a regular folk budget....

The LG Viatera products range in price (they are priced via a grading system: grades A,B,C & D) with prices ranging from $54.00 sq/ft - $88.00 sq/ft. The color we selected ended up being a grade B, but as luck would have it, Lowe's was having a great sale on four promotional colors so we ended up getting a STEAL!

I was much more hesitant to go with quartz than Andrew was; however, after seeing how beautiful the countertop sample looks with our flooring sample - I'M SOLD! Saving a few dollar bills never hurt either!

This link will tell you all you'd ever want to know about LG Viatera products. Personally, I think they are a great option to get the look of a true natural stone, without the hassle and worry of sealing, staining, etc. Also, they tend to be a bit more wallet friendly, which is always a plus!

LG Viatera Quartz Information:
http://www.lghausys.com/us/product/surfaces/whylg_viatera.jsp

My only hope is that I don't end up longing for the look of a large scale grain pattern, because I do truly love that look.....I guess only time will tell!

In other reno news, as I write this, we've got our plumber making the necessary changes to the the kitchen gas and water lines so we can install our new appliances! I'm looking forward to our first dinner party :)

Have a wonderful weekend everyone,

x0x0x0x

Sarah

Ah! It's finally here! My first BLOG post. I've been thinking about putting something together for a while now; however, I am majorly technologically incapable so I've been putting it off. In fact, after I "save" and "publish" this beast of a first blog post, I'm not even certain it will actually save...

Trial and error, I suppose?

Enough rambling about the my blog anxiety as we must move on to more important anxiety inducing life problems; such as: OUR GIANT Reno project!

Andrew (the husband) and I are pretty much working on 10 major projects all at once (um, yeah - how did that happen?) and this morning I really started to find myself feeling like I had lost my shirt (I believe that is supposed to be a cleaver expression of sorts...).

Last weekend, we decided to start laying the new flooring (for more information on those fab floors - check out this link: http://www.lumberliquidators.com/ll/c/Vineyard-Heart-Pine-Virginia-Mill-Works-VMVHP5/10022610).  We are TOTALLY in love with them, perfect "old farm house" feel.

On top of the flooring, we also got the bright idea to start refinishing our solid oak cabinets. We had been toying around with the idea of trying to tackle the cabinet refinishing ourselves, especially after a local big box  hardware store quoted us $21,000.00 for a cabinet reface and new counters. We knew spending $21,000.00 on a REFACE was nuts, so then we started thinking about just ripping out those builder grade babies and starting anew, decisions, decisions.

After much debate, we decided we'd save the cabinets (nothing a little primer, paint and stain can't handle!) and use our cost savings towards A-mazing new appliances. Our current stove is an "antique" GE (aka older than both of us by at least 20 years!) and our dishwasher is honestly falling apart so we knew the appliance situation was getting desperate...

After building "cart" after "cart" of various appliance packages we decided to really pony up some cash and buy what I've always wanted anyway - Viking. We found a great deal on our desired package, the D3 Series. Viking has two main "Series" available: Designer and Professional. Designer is more suitable for residential spaces, while the Professional series is a bit more geared towards commercial use. I'll include the link to our D3 set for your viewing pleasure: http://www.vikingrange.com/consumer/category/brand-landing-pages/d3-series).

We ended up ordering the range from S & W Appliances in NYC (they had simply the BEST deal and I was able to talk the guy down a bit - EXCELLENT!). Then we bought the remaining three pieces from another appliance shop in Alabama.  The range arrived on Friday (damn is that a story, I'll save that baby for the next blog post!) and I AM IN LOVE. To be honest, before it arrived on Friday I was having some anxiety about spending the money for something a bit more swanky then what is really needed for my level of culinary expertise; however, after seeing the range in person - OH BABY! It is solid, made in the U.S. and I truly believe we will have it long enough to pass along to our first born if we so desire. You can tell it is QUALITY (even if it will be sitting in my breakfast room, covered in a bath towel for another 5 weeks...).

The remaining three pieces are scheduled to arrive on Thursday, via fright. "Fright" is a fancy way of saying they'll be dropping those babies off in our driveway and running for the hills. Thankfully, we've got some truly amazing friends, who we've been able to enlist for several moving adventures over the last few months (we love you guys!).  

While I'm rambling on about the kitchen - we finally picked counter tops! I won't share just yet because we are waiting on our Lowe's coupon to arrive before we take the plunge. We are hoping to have them purchased by the end of this week, so I'll spill the beans towards the end of the week once we've got the deal finalized.

In a nut shell, things are CRAZY at the Dylewski Farmhouse. I'm looking forward to sharing all the details of our project with you all over the next few months (notice I said MONTHS, not years - unlike our last project we aren't looking to live in chaos for years, getting too old for that!).

Until next time...

x0x0x0x

Sarah