The Concrete Cottage

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The Concrete Cottage

Thursday, October 6, 2016 The Kitchen - Gateway HouseI haven't shared a whole lot about our kitchen yet because it's progress has been achingly slow. We have cabinets and lights, and the tile is in progress right now. I thought I'd take you through it's progression and share some of the things that I have planned in here.


Let's begin way back this summer when the cabinets first arrived.

The island is a distressed grey/blue. I had planned all along to have an island that would read grey/blue depending on the lighting, but never planned for distressed. This is a custom house, but we still have to function within the confines of our builders options for the big things like cabinets. In order to get even close to the color I wanted, it was available only in this distressed finish. I do still really like it and am praying it doesn't date itself over the years, but only time will tell.









I also would've loved to have full-overlay cabinet doors (where allthe doors are touching), but again we are workingwithin builder options and our budget, so standard overlay it is.

When the cabinets were installed, we noticed a few things had been forgotten. The back of the blue/greyisland was completely unfinished (and still is, you'll notice the orange color of it in most of these pictures). And the side panel to the fridge was missing.




It took several weeks, and a delay in placing some of the countertops, but those parts have finally arrived. You can see the quartz countertops installed on the right, and on the left still missing. That entire cabinet had to be replaced with one that included the fridge side panel which meant they couldn't measure for that piece of quartz until it was installed.

Let's back up for a second and talk about the island a bit more. We decided not to put our sink in the island like in our current house. The idea of having a large expanse of open space to work on was a huge draw in leaving it out, and this layout really lent itself to putting that farmhouse sink under the bank of windows. What you see here of the island is actually less than half of it's finished size. It's final measurement will be 6' 3" square.



There are legs to the island somewhere in the house that will soon hold the butcher block top that's waiting patiently for it's home.
We looked at traditional butcher blocks, you know the ones that are end-grain cut with tons of small pieces sandwiched together, and even got a quote to have one made. In the end they just weren't the look we wanted. We found a gentleman who does beautiful custom work locally and commissioned our island top.It's large, chunky pieces of wood, vs the much smaller, traditional butcher block look. We selected a wood from the many he had available, and it's a species we'd never even heard of before called Catalpa. This catalpa tree is actually one that fell down here in town (I'm told over by St. Francis Hospital for you locals). Our wood guy, Richard of Richard's Wood Shop has had it drying at his shop for God knows how long and worked his magic for us. We were able to stop by the shop and see it during some of the different phases.


It will not match our wood floors, but we're ok with that. We have a piece of locally grown history and were able to support a small business owner at the same time. And really, look at the grain!!If you look closely in some of the pictures below, you can see the finished product sitting on the floor in front of the island. Still waiting on the trim carpenter to come back and do the install.
We have been very blessed to have a builder that allows us to tackle pretty much any design element we can think up. I know that's not the case with many builders, so trust me, we are counting our blessings! We have found some challenges in that though. I knew going into the building process that instead of upper cabinets, I wanted open shelving and wood beams in the kitchen. Unfortunately I didn't know that the framers needed this information very early on in the building process. I found this out when we already had sheetrock and the trim carpenter was ready to start.See those cut outs of sheetrock in the picture below?

That's because the trim carpenter needed to add supports for my open shelving and he had to cut the sheetrock out and then replace it. Fortunately, on this side of the kitchen these walls will be covered in tile, so it wasn't necessary to re-mud the drywall after it was replaced.



On this side of the kitchen, I plan to have a chalkboard wall. We're still waiting for the finish mud job over here so that paint can be done.



Speaking of the open shelving. Here's an example of what it will look like. I contacted two different Etsy shops to purchase the steel shelf brackets before I thought to look locally. Wayne at KCE Industrieshad never made brackets like this before, but still whipped them out in less than two days and for half the price of both Etsy shops. Thanks Wayne!!! Richard, our wood guy, fabricated the shelves out of Ash. It's astounding how heavy they are, but they should look pretty fabulous.

And the wood beams we want in here. Not happening. Well at least not yet. We found out our trusses are running the wrong direction to attach them without also cutting out the ceiling and adding supports. We decided that was just too much added work and expense. Sigh... I have since found this website that makes faux beams that are light weight and intended to be placed without the need of studs. They won't be going in right away, but they're in our future.

The Lettered Cottage
Most of the lighting is up now. We have can lights, island lights and lights for over the windows. The island lights are ones I found online but then got lucky on a trip to Kansas City to be able to purchase them local (also for cheaper than online!!) at The Painted Sofa.



The lights for above the windows were the first lights I picked out for the entire house. I picked the 20th Century Library Sconces from Restoration Hardware.

Once the tile is completely finished, I'll finally be able to see what these bad boys look like installed over the windows!

The tile is almost completed right now. We did have a slight hiccup when the installers grabbed the wrong bag of grout and grouted both full walls in black instead of grey. A few days and lots of scraping later, and we're back to grey. It's supposed to be finished sometime this week, so I'll share that later. For now, I'll leave you with some random pics of tile progression and some wider shots of the space.







Oh, the oven hood is in and waiting in a box. When the tile is done and the electricians come back it should go up. I think electricians install it???





When we get a bit closer, I'll share about the details on the appliances, faucet, and cabinet hardware. And someday, James and I will agree on bar stools. Sigh...
Sorry for the dark iPhone pics. I haven't felt the need to bring my good camera over to take shots of the crazy construction zone yet. Again, when we get a bit closer to the finish line.
Hope you guys have a great rest of your week and we'll talk again soon!

JeannineThrown together byJeannineat9:21 AM3 comments: Labels:Gateway House,Kitchen Tuesday, September 27, 2016 Random Update (and a video) - Gateway House
Alrighty friends. What's the latest andgreatest going in our home building, home selling neck of the woods? So far our current house isstill on the market andstill praying for our perfect buyer. God will provide!! The new house has several updates since I last shared with you, but those updates are actually a few weeks old. Not much has been happening lately. All the sub-contractors seem to be waiting on either us or each other to find or complete things, and it's standing still. To tell you the truth, this doesn't bother me much right now since we're still waiting to sell our house. If I was soon to be homeless, I'd worry about it, but for now, not so much.

Let's see, what's new that I haven't shared here?

Floors! The hardwoods are mostly done and the tile is in progress. We've had some more small issues with both of those things, but they'll be resolved so I'm choosing not to dwell on them. Instead, I'll show them to you.





The floors are engineered hardwood made from white oak.(Independence Flooring, the Arcadian collection, White Oak engineered hardwood in Barnwood) They have a slight pickled look to them in person, which I was a little hesitant about, but the hubby loved them.I gotta say, they are beautiful, and match that beam just perfectly! I think he made a good choice.
The tile in our master bath and closet you guys... LOVE! When hunting for inspiration for a year prior to breaking ground, I kept finding these beautiful encaustic, concrete tiles. They have such detail and beauty. They also cost an arm and a leg and are extremely fragile until they're installed. Imagine my joy when I found out that Home Depot carries a porcelain knock-off that's much more reasonable in price, and has free shipping as long as you go pick it up at your local Home Depot. Our tile lady even did some research on it and told us she couldn't find anything even close to this style for anywhere close to this cheap. Her words were "buy it!" We did. This is the Arte White by Merola Tile, but it comes in a few different color combos that are all pretty fabulous! Interesting... in getting the link to the tile, it looks like they've increased the price about .60 cents a tile. Still way cheaper than concrete tile, but I'm glad we got it when we did.


We found these vanities at Restoration Hardware after ages of searching for just the right thing. We had them shipped to my sister's house in Tulsa and made a mad dash down there one Saturday to pick them up. How crazy that it saved us around $200 to ship to a city with a Restoration Hardware, vs to Wichita, that doesn't. I finally found mirrors that I was happy with that also happened to be from Restoration Hardware. I had discarded them as way too expensive when I originally saw them on their website, but something made me check RH Baby and Child. Guess what. Same mirror, but $210 cheaper on the Baby and Child site. Unbelievable! After deciding that was what I wanted, I found a picture of them with vanities almost identical to ours. Takes some of the pressure off your decision making when you can see the items already put together and know they look good.

We took the tile into our closet as well because of the washer and dryer being placed in there. Carpet would've been the normal choice in a closet, but risking washer overflows andruining carpet changed our minds.


The master shower is also in progress. I could've sworn we chose a hexagon tile for the floor, but square tiles showed up. And honestly, I've made so many decisions that I don't think I can keep them all straight anymore. I most likely chose square. Either way, I'm happy with them.

The walls in the shower are an oversized white subway tile. I would've been fine with the normal size subway tiles, but James wanted these, and since they keep the same style I was looking for, didn't have a problem with them.


And just cuz we're a little nutty. How 'bout some mini-chandelier bling in the toilet room. I'll try to get better pics later, but you get the idea.



We also used the Home Depot Merola Tile in the powder room, but this time we chose their Twenties Classic design.


A rectangular vessel sink is going on top of this desk-turned-vanity. I can't wait to have this little room all put together to show you guys. It's fun!!
The last two rooms with tiled floors are theupstairs bath and utility/laundry room.

This is the girls bathroom. I chose the black to play off the white walls and the wood vanity and linen that will be in here. Those should come soon and they're gonna be fun!!

Terribly dark shot of the utility/laundry room upstairs. This was originally supposed to have linoleum, but I hated the options we were given, and the flooring guyfelt it would be much easier to lay tile vs cutting linoleum to fit. This is just cheap white tile at .99 cents a square foot, but I'm happy with it.
I'll try to sharesome of the kitchen progress in my next post, but for now I'll leave you with a short video I took for Instagram that shows some of the main floor. Speaking of Instagram. You can follow me there for more in between post updates if you'd like.

Hope you guys have a great week! I'm off to work in Oklahoma for the next few days, so maybe there'll be more done when I get back!
Jeannine
Thrown together byJeannineat11:14 AM1 comment: Labels:Gateway House Older PostsHomeSubscribe to:Posts (Atom)AboutJeannineI'm a full time nurse, mom and wife.This is my little spot where I get to share my craving to create. So tickled you're here to share it with me!!View my complete profileSearch This BlogTrending PostsPainted Lawn Stars I told you yesterday that Id show you how I made my lawn stars. The entire thing took about 30 minutes from beginning to end. A ...Paper Dahlia Wreath My girls came to me somewhat distressed yesterday evening. { drama queens galore } After spending most of the day a few hours w...Glass Bottle Lamp ~ DIY Pottery Barn Knock Off Im not really a crazy lamp freak. Truly, Im not. I realize Ive already blogged about lamps HERE and HERE . And, as ...Latitude m a fan of personalized artwork, but more than that, Im a fan of CHEAP personalized artwork. So, when I saw L.L. Beans L...Blog Archive 2016(12) October(1)The Kitchen - Gateway House September(3) August(2) July(1) May(2) April(1) March(2) 2014(22) December(1) October(1) September(3) August(5) July(1) June(1) May(3) March(1) February(4) January(2) 2013(38) December(4) November(2) October(6) September(3) August(5) July(5) May(3) April(1) March(4) February(4) January(1) 2012(31) December(2) November(2) October(3) September(5) August(4) July(8) June(7)Follow on Pinterest

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