Revealed: New Kitchen!

We remodeled our tiny kitchen back in January - and I am pretty sure that the greatest thing on the planet is having a new kitchen, and a functional one, too! I shared a lot during the renovations, which my husband and my dad did on their own, but I wanted to share the final results.

Our kitchen is tiny, like really tiny, but we managed to make it incredibly efficient. We added a double-decker cutlery drawer, pull-out waste can cabinet, and an awesome lazy-susan for the corner cabinet. We cut corners by using semi-custom cabinets from Home Depot, a floor model fridge (our best bargain! It had a few little dents, so it was 50% off! We never would have been able to afford it otherwise!), and we went with a 2cm (slightly less thick) quartz countertop. We came in under budget, and the whole renovation was complete in about 10 days! Amazing!

We don't have any windows in our kitchen, so we wanted everything to be light and bright. The whole mission was for the kitchen to feel more spacious than it actually is, and I think we pulled it off. Especially when you compare to the before pictures in this post. We took down a wall, which helped TREMENDOUSLY! My father-in-law was hesitant, and he doesn't like to admit it, but I was right - taking the wall down made the biggest difference. We also got really lucky at a Sears Outlet Center and found a counter-depth fridge that had a little ding on it and was 50% off. The extra few inches of floor space also help to make the space feel bigger.

To see some of the progress along the way, here are some of my posts:

Remodel: A Prelude
Kitchen Update: The Expensive Part is Over
Chaos
Quick Hello
DIY Kitchen Update

DIY Kitchen Update

Sorry for leaving you all hanging with our kitchen renovation! I was really hoping that the next time I shared photo's would be when the kitchen was 100% finished. Well, it's 99% finished right now, so I thought I would share some progress.

Here's a post with the before & during construction pictures.

And here are a few iPhone pics of the assembly process, as well as a few behind the scene shots. Amazingly, the kitchen went in incredibly quickly (like, in ONE day) with no hiccups at all - everything fit perfectly! It took a few weeks for our quartz counters to be measured and installed before we could put in the tile backsplash. Now all we have left to do is a few paint touch ups and the toe kick.

Eventually I'll take some real photos (sans iPhone) and post them full size. But for now, I thought I'd share these little tid bits. I am madly in love with my new kitchen - it's so amazing how such a tiny tiny space can be so darn functional and spacious feeling. Nothing beats a brand spankin' new kitchen. Nothing.

Chaos

We're on day 14 of project New Kitchen and we're starting to wind down. We still have lots and lots to do, but I'm majorly proud of my husband for all of the hard work he's done over the past two weeks. What started as new hardwood floors turned into a new kitchen and then turned into new track lighting and then turned into replacing all of the doors in the home. What started out *small* became rather large, and our home has totally transformed almost in Extreme Makeover style. I'm blown away by the whole process and cannot wait to see everything when it's totally done in two weeks, when our quartz counters arrive.

Oh a side note, anybody else have quartz? How totally cool is it when they come and measure for the template? The poor guy that came to do ours yesterday was surrounded by my husband, my dad and myself. We were like little kitchen stalkers in awe of his process. As he measured and surveyed and lazered and digitized (among other equally cool things), he had his own little audience full of "ohhh!!" and "wow! did you see that?!". He definitely thinks we're freaks.

Anyway, it's snowing here in NYC right now and it's the first snow we've had this winter. It's super pretty and while I'd love to go to the park and enjoy it, I really need to get back to cleaning my home. And eventually, I really need to get back to designing. This two week hiatus has been painful, and I cannot wait to start working on some fun projects I have lined up!

Quick Hello!

Hello!

I'm having blog withdrawals, seriously! While I want to gab on and on about the past holiday season, New Years resolutions, future stationery projects, and some other fun (and design related things), I cannot get my brain to move past the dust and chaos that is happening all around me. Right now, my home is about 50% completed, with new floors, new lighting, new area rugs and a completely demolished kitchen. Hopefully by the end of this week the kitchen will be totally finished - except for the counters, which take a few weeks to be produced.

Here are some pictures of what the past week has been like (courtesy of iPhone, since I packed away my real camera, oops):

 As you can see, the past week has been action packed. We found all sorts of surprises, from the good (five bucks, thank you!) to the really nasty (more mold under the floors). We used Lumber Liquidators for the floors, and they were a pleasure, I'm thrilled with the outcome. I hope the kitchen goes in as easily as the floors did! 

Speaking of kitchens, how awesome does it look without the walls? Hellllllo open layout. Tomorrow our cabinets and appliances are being delivered. Thank goodness. I am counting down the days to having a hot meal again. Oh, and my desperation for a hot meal is mostly because my husband dropped our old microwave, which means right now I cannot even boil water. Darn! 

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday! I'll be back very soon to share some area rug bargains! Yippie!

Sayonara - Just For A Little

2012 is here and I'm hitting the ground running. If you've been following me you know that we've had some  home issues (floors buckling, anyone?) and I'm happy that we're finally getting things squared away. We've finally gotten the adjustment back from the insurance company, and we are ready to GO! Next week we are getting brand new floors throughout our ENTIRE condo, and then two days after the floors are installed - get ready to call me crazy - we are remodeling our kitchen!

So over the course of three weeks (fingers crossed that it doesn't take longer!) we will have all new floors, an entirely new kitchen, and a bunch of grey hairs. What won't we have? Well, I won't have time blog. It's sad because there is so much I want to chat about, from recent design projects to the holidays to new things for 2012. However, home ownership is calling, and I've got to unplug (literally) my computer for a few weeks. Looks like January is going to fly by, and while you may see a few posts from me over the next month, but don't set your expectations too high. The magic isn't going to start up again until February; however, I promise there will be some blog magic when all is said and done.

In the meantime, you can follow me on twitter @believenotes for all sorts of fun real-time thoughts, and follow my pins on Pinterest to see what's keeping me inspired. Oh, and as always, you can shoot me an email at believenotes@yahoo.com.

So, everybody, I look forward to speaking again soon, and please don't comment if all of my hair turns grey. Speaking of grey, how pretty are these DIY dollar store fake fruits covered in glitter??

Source unknown - from Pinterest

Kitchen Update: The Expensive Part is Over!

It really wasn't long ago that I posted this post, about our upcoming kitchen remodel. Well between then and now, Mike and I managed to purchase EVERYTHING we needed for the remodel.

It wasn't totally expected, but it worked out pretttttty darn amazingly. We decided, after shopping around a whole bunch, that we were going to use Home Depot for the cabinets. So this past Saturday we made an appointment for them to measure our kitchen, and the unplannedness started from there. The following Monday some dude was knocking on my front door - he was the measurer, who I totally wasn't expecting until Wednesday, but really happy to see! The very next day somebody called from Home Depot to schedule a time to sit down and create our design, and we decided to go that day. So, we decided to go in on Wednesday to do our kitchen design, and as luck would have it, Wednesday was the very last day of a big kitchen sale they were having. We ended up staying at Home Depot for over 4 hours, but at the end of the 4 hours we had ordered all of our cabinets (white painted maple), our counters (quartz), our back splash (marble and glass), our sink and our faucet. And the best part? We got everything for almost 30% off!

crummy iphone picture of our back splash tiles

I can't wait for everything to be delivered and installed! Now I just need to get through the floor remodel first, ugh!