Nautical Nursery Reveal

So here it is.. Our little James Nursery.. I tend to naturally gravitate to calming and coastal decor with touches of it throughout our entire home.. so when we found out we were having a boy, I just knew the nursery theme had to be nautical!! click for all the details with full source list below...

Farmhouse Kitchen Reveal

Wow its been a while.. Not intentionally, just Life has been happening.. Between the 2 kids keeping me busy, trying to work on myself and getting back in shape and oh ya sleeping in between feeds, still at 3 a night :(.. I have no time.. But today NAP time was kind to me.. They both did at the SAME TIME!! This almost never happens, my eldest doesn't always like to nap, so its a nice surprise when she does.. Finally Mommy could post our long awaited Kitchen Reno Reveal! So here you have it.. Our lengthened, more open concept Kitchen with a touch of Farmhouse Flair. See all the details by clicking below...

Deciding on 'Fantasy Brown' Quartzite Granite

Our kitchen reno is officially over.. what a fun and stressful time!! Before I show you the full reveal let me show you some of the progress.. Here is one of the main staples in the design of our kitchen.. The counter top!!

Now that we decided on cabinets came the fun part .. choosing a counter top.. I thought this was going to be a no brainer.. I went into it thinking No more laminates.. maybe butcher block, granite or quartz, would love a marble.. but I'm not that careful in the kitchen plus I have kids.. Then we went and looked at options.. First let me tell you.. warn you if I may.. Never go down the marble aisle!! NEVER!! It will end up in heart ache,, seriously I knew I loved marble before but when you see all the big slabs staring at you its insane how gorgeous it really is! Even my hubby loved it.. But from a practical stand point I just couldn't..I know that when I inevitably stained or scratched it, I would be so mad at myself.. So onto the Granite aisles.. so many to choose from, all I knew is I wanted a light-ish granite like a Carara Marble. Ah hah ha ha sounds so simple right? wrong.. Oh my gosh first off granite isn't just granite..who knew?? Not me! It's granite quartzite, quartzite granite.. all very confusing. The short of it is.. The granite quartzite is more like a marble, softer, more likely to scratch or stain :(.. But not nearly as delicate as a marble.. the colours however broaden our search a ton, with a ton of marble-like options with lighter creamier whiter, grayish bases.. so I had my list of granites to choose from thanks to Pinterest. .. And you know what.. it all went out the window when we walked by this slab 'Fantasy Brown Quartzite'.. now wait the name makes no sense :) It doesn't have any true brown in it.. Bits of ivory, taupe's and greys! It's slightly busy in its movement BUT the colour tones are soothing, right up my alley. and the best part is the hubby and I agreed!! Now this fact is not lost on me.. quite the opposite actually I lost sleep over it.. Me and the hubby agree??.. "No way, there must be a mistake!we need to choose another slab!".. And so we went back again just to be sure.. and sure enough I was in love! The only thing I will say, is you really have to love the stone you pick.. Embrace its natural beauty.. Because in certain lights, for us its natural light.. which we have a ton of.. On a certain angle you can really see the dots inside the stone which makes it look kind of like water marks :( We are calling them 'fleckles' in the stone.  Now I am just EMBRACING its natural beauty and not letting it bother me cause I know its all part of it, the stone itself has a ton of character almost like a geode glittery stone.. So if you are looking for a marble alternative this might appeal to you. Obviously our counter is still new but so far we LOVE it! So here it is..

I took the above picture at my local Home Depot that shows all the granite options they carry.. The 'Fantasy Brown' granite is the most whitish granite pictured in the middle right.  Below is a picture of our BEFORE counter. It was a faux granite Laminate counter top.

And here it is now :)

We went with a 2 1/2" thickness for the edge.. The slab starts off as 2cm quartzite/granite and then you choose the edge.. I HIGHLY recommend the "Mitered edge"... It creates a seamless flow of the granite down the sides/edge. The company we went with did an incredible job mitring it. It's honestly so hard to even see the seam.

We ended up painting the island..You can see our full kitchen reveal HERE!!

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Lighting for 9ft Kitchen Island

We went back and forth on this one.. should we keep our current hurricane lantern lighting? add pot lights? go with one huge chandelier, go with 2 small chandeliers, or one big pendant??? In the end we went in a completely different direction than we currently had..click for full details ..

Living Room Plank wood ceiling

I'm going to take a break from the kitchen reno right now and share one of our more recent additions.. So if you read my previous post on on Ensuite shower reveal I mentioned that due to our shower leaking we had to patch up our living room ceiling which of course resulted in me adding another DIY project to the never ending list...the silver lining in all of this leak is that now we get a panelled wood ceiling!!! yay!!

Kitchen Plans continued...

First let me apologize, I have been crazy busy with this kitchen Reno.. it has taken over our life!!.. Don't get me wrong..Its so FUN and surreal to see my vision come to life but at times ultra stressful to plan and execute..

First off the mess alone and the kids which leads to us leaving our home for a week.. packing up with 2 kids under 3 is a MISSION in itself!!

So because we didn't have a project manager .. it all came down on moi but the kids needed me too, so my hubby was the site supervisor while I was available through FaceTime and by phone.

So lets start with how it all began.. as I said before in my previous post, we were keeping our current cabinets just extending them approximately 4FT, adding a island and therefore changing the flooring.. It sounded easy enough at first.. Then came the tough part.. finding matching cabinets.. WOW.. this in itself took weeks.. I went to a custom Kitchen company who refused the job saying they didn't like to MIX the cabinets with other brands?? so weird so they didn't want my money.. ODD !! then I called a few local private carpenters which resulted in nothing so finally after searching online I found a local company that made almost the same style cabinet as ours.. I booked and appointment and met with a kitchen designer, I told him all my dreams and later that week he called to burst the bubble I was living in ;).. Well it wasn't outrageous just much more than I had anticipated. The unfortunate part was the door style that matched (or basically matched) ours was a up there in upgrades 6th out of 8.. so needless to say more money. We opted to just do the MATCHING extension of the kitchen cabinets and go with another company all together for the island. The island was a separate entity, plus I don't like matchy matchy anyways. The other main reason for going with another company for our island is that we were able to get much better quality doors..solid wood! With solid wood drawers, all with included soft close.. unlike our new cabinets that matched our existing.. I had to pay $400 for to get 4 soft closing drawers!!

Clearly the cabinets don't match ours in colour.. They are Natural Maple.. soon they will be professionally sprayed and painted Benjamin Moore Linen White 912. The way to keep the look completely cohesive is to keep the hardware the same as our previous kitchen cabinets. Luckily I was still able to find the matching hardware. The pulls above are from Lowes. 

Now that we decided on cabinets came the fun part .. choosing a counter top.. butcher block, laminate, concrete, marble, quartz, granite .. so many counter top choices out there!

We wanted to get away from another laminate counter top.. First let me say when you chose to go counter top shopping.. AVOID THE MARBLE SECTION!!! Oh my gosh I was in love, it was absolutely heartbreaking, I see why so many people choose it!! Its heaven! Honestly I  wish I were more careful in the kitchen cause I wanted it so bad!! Quartz was nice, I liked that I could get more of the white marble-y look I craved BUT it did look fake to me personally and the cost was HUGE! I couldn't wrap my head around spending that kind of money and not loving it.. After going back and forth we decided on a 'Quartzite granite'.. in the end we chose 'Fantasy Brown Quartzite' a mix between a granite and marble with lots of ivory and whites. The best of both worlds if you ask me.. It has the look of marble with its swirled marble effect and not dotty like most granites. The white colour in the stone is what I loved though it does allow for it to be more porous and scratch easier but not nearly as easy as a marble. Hopefully it holds up.. So here is the slabs we chose..

Fantasy Brown Quartzite - Creamy with taupe's and greys and browns with a touch of sage green. Love! Love! Love! The best part is the hubby and I agreed!!!

So here is a sneak peek of our kitchen Reno progress.. You will have to use your imagination as the lighting still needs to moved, cabinets painted, (still fighting on getting the Island painted!) walls painted, counters installed.. the list goes on and on BUT we are at least in the home stretch now.. I just really need a counter so I can have a working sink and dishwasher.. washing dishes and bottles in the Laundry room is NO FUN!! :( 

Does anyone have any helpful tips for surviving a Kitchen Reno? I'd love to hear them.

Have a Great Weekend!

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Kitchen Reno Plans

Happy 2016!! This is my first post this year so it's fitting that my last post just so happened to be about our kitchen cause this year its getting Reno'd!! One of the last big jobs at our house. Not sure if any of you remember what it looked like when we purchased 3 years ago.. so here is a little trip down memory lane.

Our Holiday Kitchen & Dining Room

Oh my gosh ONE more Sleep!! :) I actually feel pretty prepared this year.. shocker.. Everything is wrapped, presents are hidden in a big laundry basket for easy travel to under the tree! :) Hope you are in the same boat, if not, you still have one more day! Well this is the last of our Christmas Home Tours..  Scroll down to see our Dining Room and Kitchen all decked out for the holidays..