Face Lift!!

Nothing like a cabinet reface and granite delivery to brighten our day -- and house. We are so happy with how everything is coming together and highly recommend Affordable Refacing for cabinet refacing and Stone One in Methuen for granite and tile. Tiasha from Stone One has been great to work with, and the granite selection is phenomenal...as you can see for yourself! The granite for the kitchen island will arrive once the island is installed...which is the same time the granite (we actually went quartz) for the master bath will be delivered.
Here's a view from the dining room. New floors arrive in the next week or two and once the plastering/skim coating is finished, this will look so much better. Affordable Refacing is coming back in a couple weeks to build the cabinet above the fridge. It will be a 36-inch wide cabinet (same width as our fridge), which we barely have room for, but Black Tie Property is going to add some wood "padding" and trim to make sure the fridge and cabinet aren't hanging into our hallway.

Here is a view from the breezeway/den doorway. They will also be coming back to finish the cabinets above the microwave they had to shorten/build. There actually was no microwave in the old Phelps' kitchen so we opted for a microwave/venting hood combo. Distance between microwave and stove should be 18 inches, hence the shortening of the cabinets:

This is the bank of drawers to the right of where the stove will be. Love the polished nickel Gilmore pulls from Restoration Hardware:

We actually thought we wouldn't like the backsplash we originally purchased and, instead, were considering opting for something more colorful with blues, greens, etc. Once everything was installed, the original backsplash looked quite good in our opinion. Since the granite is more grey than we rememebered (not complaining, just observing), it serves as a nice contrast and still offers the "marble look" we really like. The blue/green backsplash option that we THOUGHT we would like more really didn't go at all. Just goes to show - trust your gut!


And only because we promised...

And on the topic of action photos, here's Stone One installing the granite.

They mixed up a "glue" of some sort that matched the grey in the granite perfectly. The seams are truly not noticeable. As fun as yesterday was, it was still rather stressful because I had to make a lot of random decisions. How'd I do?
1. Do you want faucet and soap dispenser on right or left? (I chose right for faucet, left for soap dispenser?)
2. Do you want a pull on the "fake drawer" below the sink (I said no because it isn't a tilt or anything and it might be confusing to people who don't know that.)
3. Which way do you want the cabinets to open? (This seems obvious but, when you're in our kitchen, you'll see that we didn't do what's most common these days for the two cabinets to the left and right of sink. We chose to do what the Phelps' did and have two left cabinets and two right cabinets, rather than two sets of right/left. Hard to explain...
There were other questions but the level of minutia is not worth getting into. Those were the ones that I had to "phone a friend" (i.e., my husband) for input. He, of course, chose left side for faucet, yes for pull under the sink and "center open" for the cabinets...but soon came around. It's all give and take. And he's getting his carpeted bedrooms.

Polling the Audience: White or Antique White Cabinets?

It has been awhile since we've posted. Our lack of commentary is in no way indicative of lack of progress. Quite the contrary, in fact! It's more that we've been blown away by progress to the point that we don't know what to focus our posts on and, more accurately, we've been (read: I've been) paralyzed by indecision to the point where I can't decide if I even want to get others to weigh in or not. It's a sickness, really.

The decision that has caused me the most angst thus far has been cabinet color (master bathroom layout and lighting fixtures/placement are a close second). As you know we are getting our cabinets refaced by an awesome company called Affordable Refacing. (God love Shawn, the owner, for putting up with me.) We are to decide between white and antique white. First, we chose white because I love the look of the all-white cararra marble kitchens. Very clean, very chic, very en vogue. But then we chose antique white because I feared the white would be to stark/sterile. But is the antique white too creamy? I flip flop daily and thought that I'd use a lifeline and poll the audience.

Below is a photo of the two color options. We're going with the door style on the left no matter what.


As a reminder, here's our backsplash and granite.


Because I am a big loser, I took the liberty of creating a PowerPoint slide that puts all of the pieces together. Here's a screenshot of it. The two cabinets on the left are antique white and the two on the right are white white.


So which color?

Shawn is so awesome that he actually told me he could custom spray each of the cabinets ANY Sherwin Williams white that I liked, but, before I put him and his guys through that, I want to make sure I can't live with one of these choices. (Because if I go with that option, you do realize there are about 100 Sherwin William whites!)

I'm not cut out for this...

Suggestions welcome :)