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