A Tale of Travertine

Just when I vow to start blogging more, Summer blows in with all it's sunny deliciousness and I get kicked outta my house for 9 straight days.  I blogged a little bit about our kitchen/entry floors here, here, and then a little bit more here.  I don't know why, but I was lazily thinking putting in new floors wouldn't really disrupt our everyday routines...but, it totally did.  What we thought would be a 4 day stint turned into 9 days + weekends.  Our house was a wreck and some complications with leveling our subfloors really made it a dusty mess.  With our appliances in the livingroom, our kitchen wasn't really functional, and I was caught completely unprepared.  We ate out a lot.  And I totally got so used to our fridge being in the livingroom that I instinctively went looking for some iced tea there one night while watching TV.  

Well, our floors have been finished for about a week now.  Our house has been deep cleaned for a little less than that.  And I finally snapped a few pics of how things are looking real quick while the boys were out playing in the backyard!  Let me just say...things are looking surprisingly a lot more modern, scalloped cabinets and all!

My flouescent cave of a kitchen is notoriously hard to photograph, but I'm really happy with how the floors turned out.  Really, really happy.  Our kitchen feels wider, brighter, and ummm, much cleaner.  The travertine suits the space, and the natural stone really vibes with our old floors, which is really what I was hoping for!  PLUS, cheers to being able to find food that gets dropped on the floor!! 

Without going into too many of the gory details (umm, really not that gory) and for the sake of brevity, I'll just say we had a few hiccups involving communication + tile layout + level floors.  And this combo set us back a few days, and quite a few $$$$ dollars.  So!  What we have learned (again) is that next time we will get multiple bids--no matter what (sometimes lessons need to be learned a few times before they sink in, haha).  And we will think twice about using someone we know personally.  Not that he didn't do a great job, because he did!  But just that it makes things awkward when problems do arise. 

Anyway, it's crazy how much calmer I feel waking up and walking into our kitchen.  In an odd way I can't describe, these new floors are great for my soul.  There is peace of mind knowing that one more project is done, yes, but also a breath of fresh air not having to stare at yellowed linoleum patterned floor under flourescent lights all the time.  These floors really are lovely. 

Up next for us, is adding the baseboards and transitions in (which Dave did most of Saturday) and then some paint touch-ups.  Then after that, I'm gonna finally repaint our mermaid green bedroom.  Other than that, I'm just gonna be really trying to soak up the sun and all this free family time Dave and I suddenly have!!

For fun, here are some before and afters from when we very first bought the house...disclaimer to my brother-in-law who did this pose in just about every before pic I have (he really is so funny)...and disclaimer to what I have going on in my livingroom.  Progress is progress, right?

Da Floors

Oh how to explain my many, many, many thoughts on these kitchen floors?  Guess I'll just dive right in?

Here's what I like.

I really love when there is a cohesive look throughout the house.  My dream would be to have our beautiful, old hardwoods running throughout our entire floor.  I've really grown to love these hardwoods--I love the lighter-medium color and that each plank has so much variation.  But here's the deal:  these floors can not be sanded down and refinished again.  Although they still look beautiful, there are on their last leg.  There are cracks here and there in the joints.  So it's not like we could put down hardwood in the kitchen/entry and then have it all refinished to flow together.  Bummer.

That option is out.

Our other idea was to put in newer hardwoods, that maybe wouldn't be an exact match, but that would still flow and perhaps lay the opposite way so that they ran perpendicular to our other hardwoods.  But, we worried  that doing this would then make our old hardwoods LOOK like old hardwoods.

So, after nixing that idea, we moved on to tile.

Our kitchen and entry sit central in the house--with the living/dining off to one side and then the bedrooms off to the other side.  I don't know why, but I would like the idea of tile better if our kitchen was off in a corner or something.  BUT, it's not.  And this isn't our dream kitchen, and we plan on redoing it in 5-10 years--and at that point, we'll have to address our hardwoods too.  It just never ends, does it? 

So, Tile it is. 

I left work early the other day (but before I had to pick the boys up from daycare) and scoured the valley for tile samples.  Trying to keep in mind that I wanted something to flow as best as possible with the hardwoods + be reasonably priced.

Which one is the winner?

In the end, we are going with the lighter travertine.  I really do love it.  The tone really goes well with the neighboring hardwoods.  I love the natural variations, and how no two tiles will be the same.  Of the ceramic and porcelain tiles none really stood up to the travertine.  The tones were off, and honestly just looked fake.

Lighter travertine first 2 tiles on left

But, I know, I know.  Travertine is high maintenance.  It cracks, and is pourous.  No, I don't want to spend money and a year later regret my choice.  Yet, I have hated these linoleum floors for so long that I really don't want to settle for something I don't love.  So we're doing travertine and hoping for the best!

Of the samples I picked, most run around $3 sq/ft.  But, I was at Home Depot today, and wouldn't you know it, they have a special right now for $1.66 sq/ft if you buy a whole pallet/crate/whatever.  It's a little more square footage than we need, but even so, the total cost comes to a couple hundred less than the other travertine samples.  Pretty stoked on that!

Travertine is large tile bottom right

We are having the tile installed by a contractor/handyman and we are scheduled to start Wednesday.  EEK!  He is a family friend, and it's awesome because A) my dad has agreed to help him and B) we completely trust him in our house while we are not there--so that means demo can begin while we are at work, and I can take the kids out to play the other days instead of just having to sequester them outside or something.  THIS IS HUGE and well worth paying someone vs. DIYing it ourselves. 

So, here we go!  What are your thoughts?  Have your heard nightmare stories about travertine?  I sorta want to hear if you have, but then again, I sorta don't... ;)

Kitchen Update

 

So, I wasn't really blogging much back when we updated our kitchen last summer, but I am now.  Let me catch you all up to speed real quick:

When we bought the house, the kitchen looked like this:

Hello, brown & cream everything...Here's an analogy for you:

Then : cream & brown  ::  Now : white & grey

Seriously, someday, someone will walk though a kitchen and say, "yeck.  why'd they use so much white and grey?"  I like thinking about that stuff, because I really don't get how this could have ever been in.

Anyway.

I wanted to remodel it asap.  You know how it is when you walk through a potential house..."Oh, we'll just change out this, and switch out that..." not realizing the full extent of what you're saying until you're in the thick of it.  Yeah, after living through remodeling 2 bathrooms, moving, and having a baby 10 days later PLUS learning our walls are all lath-and-plaster and not sheet rock (read: sooooo muchhh dusttt), we decided we would get by with some smaller tweaks until our hearts and pockets were ready for the full deal. 

So, this is not our forever kitchen, but likely our 5-10 year kitchen.  Five if you ask me.  Ten if you ask Dave.  And we did things with this time frame in mind.

We painted the kitchen cabinets using Benjamin Moore's Advanced line following in YHL's footsteps in Cloud Cover and Galveston Gray.  

We chose arctic white solid surface counter tops (once again, thank you YHL), because they look modern, yet are pretty reasonably priced.

We put in a simple, but NEW under mount sink, and NEW faucet.

 

 

We added NEW hardware.  A NEW dishwasher.

And a NEW microwave.  One of the cooler things we did was retrofit the cabinet above the stove to make way for the new microwave.  Doing this, there wasn't much space left for an actual cabinet, so we turned it into a little wine rack.  I really love it, because it forces us to keep our house stocked. ;)

So that is where we stand today.  We'd still really like to switch out those fluorescent lighting boxes for some canned lights (or skylights?$?$), and I'd like to change up the other ceiling fixtures as well.  Also on the list are new stainless steel appliances--including adding a gas line for a gas stove!

But, all these upgrades won't mean a thing until we do something about the floors!  So, that's up next: those beautiful, cream and brown, geometric linoleum floors.  Tentatively, flooring demo/install is set for next week...so yeah, I realllly need to pick something out, and pray that what I like is in stock.  Full post on those coming soon!

Welkomen

I dunno why, but I like titling posts in other languages.  This one I actually know--from my Dutch days, and it's in reference to my aforementioned blank slate. Two months later, I'm happy to report a finished product.  

For this wall, I wanted someone standing on the porch to be drawn in past the entry way and on into our home.  I like to think of it as our welcoming wall.  And I do find it pretty welcoming. 

Much like our gallery wall, it is mostly a bunch of family photos.  Which I lurve.  I've said it before, but it feels soooo damn good to get these things off of the screen, and onto something real.  These photos give a visitor a glimpse into life at our home...that, and probably the kajillion cars, puzzle pieces, trains, sippy cups, and Tupperware lids lining the floor along the way.  It gets messy here folks, real quick.

Some other things that made the cut this round:

A reminder to live simply--cardstock and a sharpie and I was done.  
A beautiful butterfly that my dad brought back from South America when I was little.
A little painted pot for a fake succulent in real dirt. ;) 
My little hanging plant holder that took me two tries to get it right.
And a giant canvas of me and my babe--It's grainy, and textural, and figured I'd love seeing this my whole life--Leland all small and perfectly melded into my arms--so I splurged.  It's 24 x 36, and helps add much needed visual height to the room.

So, now that this is all up, and Dave is all done with school, I guess I have no more excuses.  Let's get surrrrrrious about the elephant in the room.  It's time to pick out some kitchen/entry flooring...

Worth it: My Gallery Wall

One hundred percent glad I finally did this.  Lots of baby pics, my little family, little bits of what our life is centered on in these years, the baby years.  And one hundred percent nothing I'd rather look at.  Staring at this wall is just better now.  And, gosh, it would be fun to expand, here and there, to showcase different moments.  But for now, I'm beaming.

The view from our cave of a galley kitchen

The view standing in our living room (and near our front door).

And Up Close & Personal

 

 As my usual, I stayed up way too late putting the photos into the frames.  Jude kept coming out--half asleep--just to stare.  He thinks Dave's film pic is one of when "Dad is building me my trains??"  Took me a minute to figure out he thinks the snapper (technical term??) looks like a railroad crossing.  And Leland can't stop pointing out all the "ba-by!" pics.  Dave came up from studying and gleamed at all the pictures as well.  I even got a "Well done, Lis."  So, ya know, feeling the love.

The chairs have it!

A few years ago, I scored these super sweet chairs + one pretty-alright-for-the-time-being table from the classifieds for $125 total.  Let it be said that these are my best thrifty purchase EVER, as I am a horrible thrifter/craigs-lister (I basically just buy it when I get there, even though I know it's a bad choice).

Soon after I bought them, I recovered them in some Ikea fabric that felt right at the time.  Since we were renting, a bolder fabric choice seemed fun.  AND Jude was still confined to eating in a high chair...big AND there, because I had no idea as a first time mom just how grubby little hands could be.  Fast forward to the past year, and these chairs are pretty much smeared with dry yogurt/oatmeal/etc. most of the time.  I could clean them up pretty well, but they'd only stay clean a short time. 

After the first experience of recovering them, I was d-r-e-a-d-i-n-g the thought of a re-do.  Yet, I s-e-r-i-o-u-s-l-y had to.  See where this is going?  Yep, we ended up recovering the chairs.  This time around, I was a little smarter, and bought an electric stapler.  So no carpal tunnel flare-ups.  And I was a lot smarter because I basically had Dave do all the new stapling.  While I undid all the old stapling.

We did these over the course of a couple of nights, and once while watching A Few Good Men.  I think the 90s dramatic piano theme really was key...  Puh-lease click that link!

We chose a felted vinyl in a soft white color, and I'm super happy with how they turned out.  The vinyl feels soft to the touch, much like leather (and not plastic-y like cheap vinyl) plus they wipe up clean in no time flat.

What's surprising is just how much calmer the room feels now.  Like, a true sigh of relief from the jumbled floral grey pattern that was before.  And, I even like my random free rug better.  So, in the end, it was totally worth it to just jump in, and git 'er done!  Ya know?  I don't know how many times I have to re-learn that lesson...

Anyway, can you guess what's up next?  Hint: What's grey and white all over?