Hung

This weekend went by entirely too fast. We had some of our really good friends visiting so we took a little break from the kitchen to do a snowy vineyard trip. Sunday, Ryan was up bright and early working on building our cabinets. The thing about Ikea cabinets is until you spruce them up, they look mediocre at best. But, hey, atleast they're cabinets!

cabinets!

Ryan started hanging them and it's just crazy to think that we might actually have a working kitchen in the near future!

I'm so excited every time I walk in to the kitchen and see the amazing amount of progress that is being made. It's also really crazy looking through all of my iPhone pictures and seeing where we started. A lot has happened in eight months. Maybe we'll even get around to having our housewarming party this winter.... one year after moving in :)

FLOORED!

While I spent the weekend frolicking in Pennsylvania (and by frolicking I mean full out wedding planning), Ryan and my brother were hard at work back in DC. I left to an unpainted, half tiled kitchen and I came back to this:

Primed and painted ceiling.

Tiles layed

And quite literally came back to this:

Ryan grouting.

Greg and Stewart building cabinets.

I am one lucky lady and a HUGE thank you to my brother for spending the weekend helping us with our kitchen.

Greg building cabinets

After I dropped Greg off at the train station, I holed myself up in our office to study  for my econ final, while Ryan finished grouting the kitchen.

Note to self: grout haze is miserable to wipe up

Fast forward an hour or two of him (and later me) wiping down the tiles to get the haze off and we have gorgeous, travertine floors. I'm in loveeee.

I love the differences in each of the tiles.

Now we're ready for some cabinets!!! Squeal!! I can't wait for my appliances to be in here and not my family room!!! Life is VERY exciting these days...

Because Ryan's my Hero...

... he spent a good portion of the weekend tiling and it looks amazing.

Rewind back to Friday night and Ryan built the axis that we would be building our diagonal design off of so, he mixed up the thin set, and we were ready to start.

Mixing the thin set.

You can see the design on the Dittra.

Laying down the Dittra tape (for lack of technical terms).

First tile down!

Fast forward to Sunday night and he had made all the cuts for the side wall and had layed down about half of the tiles.

And it's looking good. Travertine tiles? Yes, please! We also took down the plastic that separated the kitchen from the family room, it's amazing how much bigger the rooms feels. Ah, living in a full house again now wouldn't that be amazing?

The Case of the Too Tall Light

We got in our chandelier the other day and I managed to put it together all by myself (we won't mention how simple it was). As soon as I had all the pieces together, Ryan took one look and was like, um, that's too tall, the door is going to hit it. So, we debated it and decided to try it anyway.

Ryan taking down the old, ugly light.

Trying out the chandelier.

Yep, too tall even with just using one link of the chain provided. Ryan decides that the only wait it will fit is to not use any chains but the problem with that is the chain links the piece in the ceiling to the actual chandelier. So, he decides to saw open the top piece of the chandelier so it will link with the ceiling piece. As he's doing that, I hear an oops and the entire piece has broken in two. Ryan tries to sauder it back together but...

no dice. Day 1 of attempting to put up the chandelier was a fail. 

The next day I headed to our local hardware store and they had the replacement piece (love Fragers). Since we no longer had the option of connecting the two pieces with the metal piece, Ryan went McGiver style and used a plastic tie and....

Success!!! 

Swoon. So there you have it, the case of the too tall light is solved... for now. Ryan still has his hesitations but I'm in love ;)

Thanks Columbus

This weekend was such a great weekend. Not only did I not have school work (or not enough to care), we also managed to make huge progress on the house and actually get to hang out with great friends. A win on all sides.

On the house front, we primed and painted the walls on Saturday. We were going to do the ceilings too but the part of the ceiling that the previous owner's did wasn't sanded well so Ryan's going to touch that up before we prime and paint. One more grey room, yes, please!

Primed!

Grey, swoon.

Sunday, we layed down all the dittra and started organizing the tiles. We decided on a diagonal design and boy is it looking good. I'm loving the look of the travertine tiles.

Mixing up the mortar.

Nice orange dittra.

Laying out the tiles :)

Today, our washer and dryer were delivered to add to our family room collection.

Washer & Dryer!

Unfortunately, I still have to hit up the laundry mat until we lay down a floor in the laundry room but luckily for me the end is now in sight.

Chandeliers

I can never seem to have enough. When I was looking at wedding venues, it was one of my big must haves and not those brass, cheap looking ones, legitimate chandeliers. For months, I've been telling Ryan I want one over our front door (and bedroom and laundry.. but that's besides the point) and once we put up our new light in the family room, he finally agreed we needed a new light for the entry way. So, instead of studying, I went on my new favorite website build.com. After many trial and errors on my family room design board (which I can't figure out how to upload to the blog), I found the one.

Isn't she pretty?

She has the same lines as our other new lights but in a totally different design. Will she be too much? I guess we'll have to wait and see but I can barely contain my excitement.

LIGHT!

Later, horrible, spotlight.

Why, hello there lovely, soft overhead light. Welcome. We needed you.

New lights make such a difference in a room. I feel less like I'm being interrogated and more like I can see. Definite win. 

Of course, I hate our entry light even more now.... 

Same Old Story

This weekend we were pretty much homebodies. Ryan worked on the kitchen and I worked on cramming as much econ in to my brain as possible. Progress was made on both fronts. 

Saturday, Ryan managed to finish framing out the ceiling and dry wall it himself.

This picture was around 1:30am.

Sunday, I took no pictures but Ryan finished mudding and sanding. We'll have to prime and paint the kitchen but we should finally be tiling next weekend #thankgod. On the other hand, it's looking like our washer and dryer delivery may be a bit premature... #storyofourlife.