20 March 2011

My Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Denise, of The Blue Gardenia blog, has posted a wee interview with moi.  So, go check me out if you please.

In other news, I wish I could tell you all that I have been sewing but not posting about it.  Alas, my every waking hour, and countless sleepless hours during the night, have been focused on picking out more "stuff" for the new house.  We have now officially settled on most of the exterior and interior items.  But, it seems that for every step forward (we picked out all the kitchen and bath fixtures yesterday), there is one step back (the islands in the kitchen were too big to allow for adequate traffic flow and had to be redesigned).  However, since spring has sprung in these parts, the builder hopes to start digging the foundation very, very soon.  I cannot wait to see those digger machines chugging along!

3 March 2011

Kitchen of my Dreams

When choosing a house plan, I knew I needed a kitchen that was central in my home and open to the main living areas.  I love to cook, so creating a functional, beautiful kitchen was a priority.  A few months ago, I shared my happiness over the purchase of professional grade Viking appliances for the new house.  I can't tell you how much I look forward to using the 6 burner range.  Ooo, nelly!

Since then, we have decided upon flooring, cabinetry and all the incidentals.  It has been especially tricky to maintain a proper balance between desires and budget considerations.  There are plenty of things I want, but we can't afford them all.
 



We have decided upon shaker style cherry cabinets for both the main kitchen area and the butler's pantry.  We have found a business that will recreate the cabinets in our present house.  Several years back, when we remodeled our kitchen, I designed my cabinetry and my father-in-law built them.  It was a wonderful partnership that resulted in fabulous cabinets and I always loved them.  Below are a couple of pictures of my existing cabinets. 


In terms of flooring, we are pretty set on Jatoba (aka Brazilian cherry) hardwood from Mirage.  It's a very hard wood (so it can stand up to Hartley's nails) that has gorgeous variations of colours throughout the boards (see photo, scammed from the Mirage site, below).  As you can probably tell, we are big fans of reddish woods.

Countertops were a bit of a agonizing decision.  We want to use quartz or soapstone, but it is just not in the budget at this time.  So, we will likely install laminate for now and replace it in the next couple of years.  I love a dark countertop, so we will be going with Wilsonart laminate in a colour called Graphite Nebula.

My sinks will be Kindred stainless steel, single bowl, drop-in sinks - a large one on the biggest island, a small sink on the smaller island and another bar sink in the butler's pantry.  The large sink will be equipped with an American Standard semi-professional pull-down faucet and an instant hot water dispenser.











The house will have a central vacuum system, with a dust pan in the kitchen area - I can't wait to sweep all my dirt into the cute little opening!

I still need to decide whether I will do tile or a stainless steel panel behind my range and I also have to find  stools for seating at my large island.  So many decisions...

Any tips or advice from the crowd?