Charge It!

Since Brent's days off are now Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we've been keeping busy during his Wednesday/Thursday "weekend."  In an effort to get upgrades for our kitchen remodel, we're doing a lot of work ourselves.  This means packing in as much work as possible in the time we have together.  Last week was demo, this week involved a lot of research and purchasing, and next week will be even more demo.

During the past couple weeks our general contractor came by to check out our demo, and confirmed that there is no problem with us going ahead and removing the wall between our living room and dining room.  I can't wait to finally have the open floor plan that we've been dreaming of since we bought the house.

We also had the electrician by yesterday, as well as the drywall contractor.  They will be making their estimates now, and coming in to do their work before our cabinet install in 3 weeks.

Our credit card has gotten a lot of use these last couple days.  Buying a new garbage disposal, ordering our sink, buying 16 boxes of laminate wood floors, and ordering our quarts counter tops from Lowes.

This was the best picture I could find online of our new sink.  It's an under mount, granite composite sink, and happens to be this color (there are about 6 other colors to choose from).  We first looked at it in the George Morlan show room, and then found and ordered it for a couple hundred dollars cheaper on the Home Depot website.

We got an awesome deal on this Chilean Walnut Laminate flooring at NW Flooring Outlet in Hillsboro.  Compared to other retailers, we saved between $2 and $3 per square foot.  We had about 310 square feet to buy, so that's at least $600 in savings.
The white piece is a sample of our cabinet color, and the quarts piece on top is a sample of the counter top.  We also saved a lot here.  We asked our general contractor for advice on where to get counter tops for the best price.  He said Lowes and Home Depot are great options because their products are all from local dealers, but big box stores have negotiated the ability to sell the product for less.  We chose quarts because of it's look, scratch resistance, heat resistance, and low maintenance.  Initially, we priced things out at Home Depot, but found an even better deal at Lowes. By going with Lowes, we found a color we liked best, and got the cabinets, back splash, and install for $500 less then the Home Depot sale price.  With the Lowes sale, the cost of quarts isn't much more then laminate counter tops.

I'm so excited about finishing this project, but get nervous when we do our number crunching.  This is why we've made some compromises, and work so hard to find the best deal possible.  The biggest compromise I've made is the back splash.  I would LOVE a glass tile back splash that runs from the edge of the counter top, to the bottom of the top cabinets.  Instead, we'll have a standard 4" quartz back splash, with the plan of adding tile at a later date.

Hopefully we'll have some more great pictures and happy updates next week.

-Anna