All You Ever Wanted To Know About My Cabinets!

Who knew there were so many decisions to make about cabinets?!?!

Laundry room - easy, just standard overhead cabinets, which hopefully will be over my new front loading washer and dryer on pedestals. These cabinets will be painted white - to match the washer and dryer. Which should really pop with the green walls!! You do know my favorite color is green...thought it might make doing laundry more fun!

Kitchen - wow, lots of decisions. The cabinets in there will be stained Maple wood. We're going to stagger the cabinets. Every other top one will go to the ceiling. My oven is going to be in the wall. The cabinets below will open up with heavy drawers to put my large appliances on. They will come out for easy access. Above the oven will be the tall dividers that I can slide my cookie sheets and stuff into. Beside my cooktop stove I will have small drawers that my spices go into! Cute, huh!??! Oh, and this cabinet guy, he doesn't put doors on the lower cabinets. He uses drawers. This makes total sense, it gives you easy access to every part of the space. I will have a small center island. I have decided to paint the island black. To match this, I'm having an art cabinet built in the breakfast area. This will also be painted black. This will be a great place to put the girl's art supplies, etc. into. Here is a photo of the two tone look. I really like it. What do you guys think?


Cubbies - right as you come in from the garage, these will be painted the trim color to make them blend in. There will be two cubbies, one for each girl. This will be where they can hang up their coats and backpacks. Under the cubbies will be lots of shoe storage. We all take our shoes off as we come in and this will be a great place for everyone to put their shoes without having them pile up outside or in the hallway.

Bathrooms - all of the cabinets will be painted the trim color. The master bathroom will have a staggered cabinet. We have a long vanity with two sinks. In between the sinks the cabinet will be raised 12 inches taller than the sink cabinet. I really like this idea. We are also having the taller cabinets, either 36 or 38 inches. I like this height a lot better. This will also be the height of the cabinets in Nana's bathroom. She will have a basic cabinet with drawers along the side. Also in her bathroom, she will have a built-in medicine cabinet in the wall. The girls cabinet will be a little shorter and they will have drawers down the middle, in between their two sinks. All bathrooms are also going to have an over the potty cabinet.

And I think that about covers it. Making these types of decisions gets me really excited!!! I can't wait to show you all pictures of this!!

More Brick and More Decisions...

Well, here it is with more brick! Also, here it is in the sunlight! Let me say, I am really liking it a lot better now. It's amazing what a little sunlight can make. It looks like the original brick we picked out. It also has had time to dry. This photo was taken on Sunday. We were disappointed to hear that they didn't do any more today, but they are supposed to finish up the bricking tomorrow. We'll see!

The home audio guy did make it out this morning to run the wires for our surround sound speakers/system in the living room. We are going to have two front speakers built into the wall. The speaker frame and grill will be painted to match the wall color. The two rear speakers will be mounted into the ceiling and also painted to match. It should be really nice.

We also had a meeting Sunday morning with a security system company. We have decided to get one hooked up. I think it will be nice to have one, especially while the neighborhood is being developed. We will be the only house on our little street for a while. Plus, it does give some peace of mind that we are safe. We opted not to get the motion detectors...can you see it? Kathy, the cat, would jump up on some piece of furniture and set it off. Or better, one of the girls starts puking in the middle of the night, I run to them...the last thing on my mind will be turning off the alarm. So...in exchange we are getting a glass break sensor. Much better for us.

What's next? Well tomorrow...finish bricking. Tomorrow...insulation goes in. Wednesday...sheet rock is delivered. Oh yeah, met with the cabinet guy. I'm really excited about them. I'll be blogging more about them soon. Another thing...the master bathroom jet tub was delivered today. We're moving right along, thanks for checking in on the progress!

Got 19,000 Bricks!!!

Well, once all the storms subsided, we finally got our bricks delivered and started being put on our house. We went to check on it this past Monday, but all they did was scatter it around the house. Guess it takes a while to do that! 19,000 were ordered and our mason seems to think we will need more!


The above photo shows it all scattered around! Then we went back yesterday and we saw progress!! Here is what they had done when we got there yesterday evening:
It looks really dark in this photo and it seems to be darker than when we first saw the brick on this other house. The light was not the best in this above photo since the sun was getting low on the horizon. The photos below are a little better. The mortar should also lighten a little as it dries.


So, what do you think? Do you think the brick matches the brick on the house in my previous post? It's supposed to be the same exact brick, so we shall see as it goes up some more. Also, when the EIFS stuff gets on the windows (that stucco like stuff that will frame the front windows), it should lighten it up some more.

We are meeting with a home audio guy on Friday morning to see about running our wires for the surround sound in the family room and then after that we will be meeting with the cabinet guy to discuss cabinets!! It's getting really exciting now. Betty and I went to Metro Builders Supply today to scope out the appliances. We found some we love. I'm seriously considering getting a convection oven. Anyone have one and like to share their comments about it? I would love to hear from someone who has one. Well, that's about it. Gotta get dinner cooking. Until next time...

Wild Weather Round 2?

There are some yucky storms heading our way. There have already been tornadoes in them. Are we in for another wild ride? Right now it looks like it may stay to the south of us. Stay tuned to find out.

Another note...brick was supposed to be delivered to our new house yesterday. Pray it doesn't all get blown away!! Maybe....just maybe...they will be able to start bricking tomorrow!!

Update: 11:22am, tornado sirens going off here in North Little Rock. Weatherman says one was sighted in South Pulaski County, I'm in North. They just went off. And they just came back on. What does this say about me....there are sirens going off and I'm here blogging about it instead of taking cover. Hmmm.... I'm just worried that my kids are freaking out now.

Update 4/16: Guess you could figure out we are OK. It missed us at our apartment, but again, got close to our house in Cabot. It hit near Ward, which is just north of where our house is. But everything is still OK. Praise God!

Wild Weather!

Most of you know or have heard...we had tornadoes here in Arkansas on Thursday night. Since we love our TiVo, we hardly EVER watch live TV. So, Thursday night, while watching the recorded CSI, I kept hearing something, but thought it was was on the TV. Then a little later, Betty said, "What IS that sound?" So, we paused the TV, and guess what? It was the TORNADO sirens!!! OK, it's time to turn on live TV and see if we're about to be blown away. And we were. The tornado was on the ground in Benton/Bryant, just south of us.

The sirens finally stopped and it got really quiet outside. Not a good sign. Then they started saying that it was near the North Little Rock airport. That is less than a mile north of our apartment. So what did we do? Nothing. We didn't wake the girls or anything (they slept through the entire storm!). We did discuss where we would go...in the hall bathroom. We were amazingly calm. And as soon as it started, the storm passed and was gone. Well, that storm was gone, there was another one behind it. But this one, as the weather people said, "Is NOT a tornado producing storm." The bad news now...the tornado storm was heading straight towards Cabot!!!

Cabot...is where our new house is being built. Around 12:30am, we finally head to bed. We wake up to hear that some schools are closed because of power outages. Rachel's school was open, so after taking her, we drive to Cabot to see if our house is still standing. Here are some photos of around Sherwood. We saw lots of destruction on our way to school. The North Little Rock airport was destroyed. It's an airport primarily for small, personal owned aircraft. Most all of the small airplanes were scattered ALL over the airport. And the hangers were mostly destroyed. Here are some pictures of the street that runs beside the airport.
After dropping off Rachel, we headed to Cabot. We were so relieved to find our new house still standing, all windows still intact, all shingles still attached to the roof! Here is the photo of our house.
But Cabot did get hit hard. All of their schools were closed because there was no power. The high school had a lot of trees down around it. There were several roads we couldn't even get down because the police had them barricaded. Here are some photos I took while driving around in Cabot. I am not sure what this mangled mess of metal is, but it was on top of at least 10 cars that I could see!! Sorry for the poor image quality, it was taken through a wet windshield while we were moving!
Sheets of metal hanging in the trees like Christmas ornaments!
The street entering one of the areas that was closed off by the police.
I don't know if you can see it or not, but the left side of this house WAS their carport. Two large trees are now on top of it. You can barely see their two cars underneath the mess!
A company missing most of it's roof, which was probably scattered all over Cabot.
An example of why there is no power in Cabot!
Another mangled mess of something!
And now, for the best photo of all. The true sign that a tornado has been through your area:
Yes folks, that is a trampoline, wrapped around a telephone pole. And it was completely, tightly wrapped around it. I was one of about twenty other people there getting pictures of it. It was truly amazing. Hope you enjoy the photos and thanks to everyone who checked on us to make sure we were safe.

Progress...

We have windows - Front of House!

We have more windows - Back of House!

We have a roof with shingles!!!

And on Monday....we start bricking!!!
It's getting so exciting.
We also have on the inside the HVAC unit and
duct work, all electrical lines and can lights in,
Nana's shower, the girls bathtub,
our arches framed, and our tray ceilings!