Happy Thanksgiving 2013!

Happy thanksgiving from our home to yours! We will be serving up more surprises in the kitchen on Monday. Enjoy the holiday:)

- caroline and ty (&lilli&sylvan)

Kitchen Renovation: Cabinet & Appliance Install

KITCHEN CABINETS & the wonderful men from Lowe's who installed them FOR US! 

This was absolutely the most luxurious day for me. After prepping and tiling for a solid week, Monday came & I watched Olivia Pope cure White House Scandal's on TV while this wonderful crew made the kitchen functional again. 

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Once the crew left, Ty installed the appliances while I stocked the cabinets.
We are so HAPPY with how it all turned out.

Our beautiful kitchen... AT LAST!

The BIG REVEAL is coming soon!

Here is what's left TO DO in the kitchen:
1. install granite countertops
2. install sink and hardware
3. paint trim
4. install molding and baseboards
5. install transition between hardwoods and tile
6. purchase kitchen island
7. repair ceiling around both light fixtures
8. repair, sand, and paint small wall

Missed our kitchen reveal from start to finish?
Click here, here and here!
Can't Wait: The Kitchen Final Reveal

Kitchen Renovation: Tiling the Kitchen Floor Part 3

It's been a long three days, and its finally time to finish up this kitchen flooring. Our Galvano Charcoal tile gave us a run for our money 24 hours after drying. Like I mentioned in Part 1 of this kitchen tiling series, we were misinformed about the size trowel we needed to lay thinset. Turns out, our trowel was 1/4" too small. The result....loose tiles! When we walked across the tiles for the first time, some were not even stuck to the floor!! How embarrassing!! (and disappointing). So, we pulled up the loose tiles (16 in all), scraped the dry thinset off the ground, remixed the thinset, and relayed the tiles appropriately with a 1/2" trowel.....

Grouting has to be the easier piece of tiling, or at least it was for us. We used a premixed grout from Lowes called TEC Sanded Premixed Grout in Delorean Gray (a lighter gray grout that contrasts well with the charcoal tile) and were able to grout the entire room in about 3 hours. I used a floater and worked the grout into the joints, while my mom and Ty cleaned each tile.

Half-way there! Ty had to run to the store last minute for one more bucket of grout. 

The final stretch! 

The kitchen is ready for cabinet installation, just in the nick of time.

Speaking of time...

Grouting: 3 hours

Laying Tile: 8 hours

Laying Hardibacker: 5 hours

Cutting & Placing Hardibacker: 6 hours

Replacing Loose Tiles: 4 hours

TOTAL = 26 HOURS

Praise the Lord, the tile is complete!

Mood Board: Master Bedroom

While we finish up the kitchen, ideas are brewing for our master bedroom. We love the idea simple elegance by using only two subtle colors in varying textures and shades. We already have bedding from Restoration Hardware (seen here in ivory) that we LOVE! and my parents gave us a custom upholstered headboard like the one featured on the board for our wedding gift (as if the wedding wasn't enough!). So we want to use those as our base. A pretty neutral pallet! If you remember, we have dark wood dressers in the room as well.

This is my first go at a mood board. In addition to the pieces below I would like to find a pair of art prints  (or make them!) for over the dresser. I also have a few accessories picked out! (here, here, & here)

(From left to right) Clear glass lamp. Paint: Benjamin Moore: Wickham Gray HC-171. X-bench from Overstock.com. Second Row: Grey Honeycomb Fabric, Grey Fretwork, Silver Clock, &

Curtains from Etsy.

Here is some other inspiration for our room:

Contemporary Bedroom by Houston Interior Designers & Decorators Elizabeth Jewell Interiors

Traditional Bedroom by Vancouver Interior Designers & Decorators Enviable Designs Inc.

Do you have any mood boards your have created lately? We'd love to see them. Any ideas for our bedroom? Send them our way!

Happy Saturday!

Kitchen Renovation: Tiling the Kitchen Floor Part 2

24 hours later, the thinset and hardibacker are begging for tile! 

First things first, it is time to create a grid. With Lilli's help, I started by measuring the longest wall, found its midpoint and marked it. I did the same on the opposite wall. Next, I snapped a chalk line between the two midpoints using Irwin Strait-line. I repeated this for the other two walls as well. 

Next, I had to determine whether or not the room was actually square. From the intersection of the two lines, I marked one of the lines at 3 ft. Then I measured and marked the other line 4 ft from the intersection.
The distance between the two marks should be 5 ft if the room is square.
Who knew tiling would require so much high school math? 

Moment of Truth: 5 feet...Hooray! Our room is square.
Time to Tile.
After trialing several layouts (and a vote on instagram!), we opted for a classic brick pattern.

And so the tile laying began. 

We started in the right lower corner in the room, and worked in quadrants. 

Ty cut & measured tiles while I laid thinset and placed each tile. 

Despite buying an extra case of tile and improperly cutting ONE tile, 

we were short ONE TILE at the end of a very long night! 

This portion of the project took a solid 8 hours, but we officially have a kitchen floor. 

We are tired and happy.
Goodnight all!

We want to see your work too!
Show us your tiling skills or some of the home projects you have been working on!
(leave comments/pix below)

Kitchen Renovation: Tiling the Kitchen Floor

I believe that part of blogging is transparency. The good and the bad. So here is the ugly truth: Tiling was terrible for us. I don't know if it was the tiling until 3am on a work night and still not finishing, the Monday morning cabinet-install deadline, the exhaustion from all of the demo work the 72 hours prior to starting the tile install, or inexperience... but our tile project had us saying we would never tile anything ever again! Now, that we are a few weeks removed from the project, we may take back that last statement, but all that to say: IT.WAS.CHALLENGING.

One of the biggest challenges was taming our uneven flooring. We not only had to remove the top layer of vinyl tile, but we also had to lay plywood in the areas where the old cabinets use to be as there was only sub-flooring. We debated and debated laying the tile straight over the old linoleum (above), or laying hardibacker and then tile. We landed on laying the hardibacker then tile. It was good practice for mixing and laying thinset. We did not use QUICK SET thin set as this was our first go at tiling, but opted for a thinset that had about a 2 hour time frame. We added water to the mix, and mixed for 10 minutes to create a workable paste.

Our first piece of hardi-backer down! We used a 1/4 inch notch trowel to lay the thinset. Unfortunately, we were misinformed about the size trowel we needed. If we did this again we would use a size trowel more appropriate for the tile size. This came back to bite us later on when we were laying the actual tile pieces.

Before laying the hardibacker, I did a dry run with each piece and cut it using a backer board scoring tool. I numbered each piece so that when we went back to lay the board down with the thinset, we'd know just where to lay each piece.

While one of spread thinset and placed each backerboard, the other would drill the hardibacker into the floor using special hardibacker nails.

It took us about 5 hours to place the hardibacker. 

This did not include the time it took me to cut and lay out each piece. 

That wraps up our first evening knee-deep into tiling and thinset. 

More to come when we lay the tile! 

Have you ever had any tiling mishaps? Or better yet, any DIY renovation regrets?

Missed our kitchen reveal from start to finish?

Click here, here and here!

Can't Wait: The Kitchen Final Reveal

Kitchen Renovation: Demolition & a To Do List

Kitchen Demo Day has finally arrived. We have QUITE A FEW things to get done before the cabinets can be installed next week, so of course we have a list to get us started. 

Here is our day in pictures.

I have to pause here to say, taking down the wall turned out to be a bigger project than we'd hoped. The entire wall had electrical wiring for various parts of the kitchen. Not to mention, removing the wall revealed just one more type of flooring for us to cover up!

48 hours later... the cabinets, flooring, & wall are demolished. 

On to the next...ceiling paint & wall prep! 

One step closer to having a new kitchen! In the meantime, we have set up a temporary kitchen for us to use for the next week or so until the cabinets are installed.

Check back next week to see our new kitchen floors! 

Can't wait for the kitchen reveal?
Click here: The Kitchen Final Reveal