We are IN!!!!!!

It has been a long, short road to where we are today. I have to say that everyday, we both can't wait to just go back home and spend time in our new apartment. I have to keep the closet door next to me open during the night just so that I feel more closed in, because the bedroom feels very large! I'll get used to it! We attended our first shareholder's meeting last night, it was an experience. Anyway, here are the pictures that detail the completed work, albeit our myriad boxes scattered everywhere. We'll get to those too...

It was a race to the finish as our contractor was finishing to install the counter top and faucet as the movers were starting to bring in the boxes and furniture!

Here is the finished product! This view is from the window at the end of the kitchen looking toward the island which sits where the wall that we removed used to be!



Here is the right side of the island. Check out our pantry...this may look familiar to some people. It used to be our coat closet in our old apartment! We integrated it into the design and it works really well!



Here is the left side of the kitchen. Here you can kind of see where the sink is (which is enormoujs!) and our new faucet! AND, our dishwasher - I still have to learn how to use it.


View of the kitchen from the island! We are already congregating here more than in any other part of the apartment!



For those of you who have been diligently following this blog (Bular? Crickets?), you may remember that the bathtub and sink were a horrible maroon color. We had them reglazed for the time being while we muster up the courage, and the money, to upgrade the bathroom. We are now terrified of dropping anything near them for fear of cracking the glaze (which is too easy to do)



Here is the front area taken from the living room. At this point we are just showing off our mess of boxes!


And here is the living room, which will be the last room we unpack!

Almost done!

I can't believe we are almost done! Here are the latest picture which show that nearly everything has been installed and how well the apartment has been "sewn" back together. The last THREE (yes just three!) things to be done are: 1. Refinish the floors (happening today and tomorrow) , 2. Glazing of the bathroom sink and tub (happening right now!), and 3. installation of the kitchen and island countertop, sink and faucet which will happen on Friday and possibly Saturday. Saturday is moving day!


Here is the kitchen again, now you can see that it is nearly complete, just anxiously awaiting the counter top and sink.


Here is the kitchen again from a different angle. I can't wait to hang out at the island!


Here is the bedroom - you can still see all the dust on the floors. New ceiling fan too!


View from the front door to the bedroom - again so much dust!


View from front door to living room


View from living room looking toward the front door and island. One of the features we are most proud of is that we made every single light in the apartment dimmable! Something we've always wanted, yeah!



Living room! Check out our new fan!

So close...and yet still a little bit away.

A little more progress, AND the apartment is finally painted!

Here is a view from the living room. You can see the dark blue of the living room (the other living room color is light-blue) looking into the kitchen (light yellow with a splash of orange)

Kitchen closer up

Here is a close up of the cabinets, now with handles!

Dishwasher is in!

Here is the foyer, now a light green.

and here is our range over, hanging out in the living room!

The next post will show all the appliances in!

Infestation!

Not exactly an infestation, but just a quick detour a few blocks away to Rachel's parents' house who are fostering 9 irresistible puppies and their mom. They are so tiny and stinky, but oh soooooo cute.

Look at that face.

After a little puppy play we headed over to our apartment to check on progress. IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED, THEY WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR ADOPTION IN 6 WEEKS! As you can see, they come in black too!

The island is in! Here it is now, installed and ready for the countertop.

Here you can see the island from the living room.

Back to the kitchen, the pantry doors are in and we can finally see the room take shape.

That board on top of the cabinets is actually the template for the countertop. This board is then taken to the countertop provider and is used as the guide for the cuts.

The details are really showing now with the wall colors going up and fresh coat of white paint on the ceiling and moldings!

Here now is a picture of the island with the painted living room in the background.

The rest of the apartment has been painted - more pictures to come! We also bought the light fixtures and ceiling fans and the appliances are going in today. YES!

Slowly Coming to Life

All this writing on walls is pretty awesome. Now I completely understand kids using writing utensils wherever they please. So here are our color choices, tile choices, and where they need to go. Luckily, our contractor will pick up all the gallons of paint! It's hard to see here, but you can also see our counter stone choice! yeah!

Choosing tiles, countertop and wall colors is EXHAUSTING. Here we are on the last leg. After spending over four hours looking at granite slabs and an abundance of tiles, we spent the next day agonizing over paint color to go with the countertop, tiles, cabinetry, pantry....and on and ON. We decided to test our taste. At the paint store, we pulled every paint chip they had. Once at the apartment, we made our kitchen color choices. THEN, we invited Rachel's parents to come over and asked her mom to make her color suggestions. We did not discuss what we had chosen and TADA....she picked the exact same colors we did! With our courage back, and with more of her color expertise, we decided on the colors for the rest of the apartment and concretized our choices by pasting them to the kitchen wall. We then wrote out how the tiles should be layed out. It seems that we have to hold off on the tile for now - apparently glass tiles are hard to cut... who knew!

Here we are at the tile store, at the fourth hour, finally making a decision...which in the end we may not be able to implement. Ah well. Anyway, that IS our countertop, that is not changing!

We were undecided about three different countertop choices so Robert from Mondial Tile (who is great!) had all three slabs brought out to be shown to us. Pretty cool! they used this truck to bring them out...The man in the background is cleaning off one of our options which I really liked.

Here is that same slab as well as the creamy one to it's right, that I also loved. However, we ended up going with a more uniform look, with a slab that is shades of gray, blue, and black.

Here is the view from the front door. Archways gone and wall is now plastered!

Still so many tools in the living room!

And here is the kitchen that is finally coming together! Cabinets are IN!

More cabinets...

and so is the pantry...

Pantry doors are waiting patiently in the bedroom.

View of kitchen looking out. Enlarged doorway is now plastered and finished!

Ceiling holes patched up!

Our faucet arrived! The sink was delivered and we'll bring it over to the apartment during the week!

new fridge also waiting patiently

Island cabinets still in the box (but rumor has it they were installed today!)

Oven+Range still in the box...

The packing is proceeding according to plan. We will be moving on March 20th! We can't wait!