The Pursuit of Happiness in Manhattan
I would like to say that I am not materialistic, but that would be a lie, and I am not a good liar. Here is a post about an object I have obtained and why it matters. It’s been a long while since I did a material objects post, so I thought it would be perfect to do one while I am on vacation this week. It is also nice to post something, anything, that is not about the kitchen renovation, although it is still related.
I can finally say that Phase One of our kitchen renovation is done(ish)! Woo Hoo!!!!! And wow is it beautiful! This past holiday weekend, I met my goal of completing the majority of work on phase one of our kitchen renovation. OK, so we are two months behind our original timeline, but still….. We have a functioning kitchen folks. The last major hurdle being the completion and installation of our glass doors for the upper cabinets. Once we got through the fiasco of ordering our glass, it all went fairly smoothly and now I can move on.
Oh Yeah! This is our new reality and it is Cold, Hard, and Beautiful! It’s Marble Countertop Reveal Time!
Our kitchen may still be unfinished, but ten days after the second marble install was finished, I find myself in awe every time I walk into our kitchen. I also find myself freaking out about spilling wine, or tomato sauce, or lemon juice, or any other threat known to honed marble… But rest assured, it will be fine.
The countertops are in! And they are AMAZING!….. But you will have to wait a little bit more for the full reveal… Later this week, I will be posting a full marble countertop and backsplash reveal…. And it will be FABULOUS! In the meantime, let me catch you up on our now still unfinished, but finally functional kitchen! This is huge! After 130 days (a third of a year!) without running water in our kitchen, we got hooked up this past week. And after sealing our countertops on Saturday, we began to move things into our kitchen on Sunday, including the unpacking of some of my daily dinnerware which has been boxed up since January of 2014 when I packed up my Hell’s Kitchen apartment.
There is more coming soon! Seriously! It’s been a super busy work week and I haven’t had a moment to relax…. But next week, more pictures and updates. Copper sink is from Sinkology. Faucet is from the Delta Trinsic line
[Photo: While waiting for our train back to New York City after approving our slab of marble, we took in the beautiful scenery of Edison, New Jersey.]
Holy crap! I just realized I haven’t done a post since May 3rd! That would be three weeks in which I am confident you have been doing nothing but checking the internets on the hour for an update on our kitchen… Or maybe you have a life and cannot be bothered checking for updates but you still want to know about new stuff. There is a solution, plug, plug…. In the left column you should (if you haven’t done so already) sign up for email notifications of new posts. (I promise you will never receive unsolicited spam from me, nor will I ever share your email address, ever.) End of plug. OK, so it has been three weeks, and I can say that things did happen! Actually a lot happened, just not all related to our kitchen. Progress has felt like it is moving at a snails pace, but it is still progress nonetheless.
[Photo: Welcome to the Hoarders! Our living room has been even more chaotic than our kitchen during the renovation. The TV was covered in plastic for nearly two months as we were too busy to bother with watching TV.]
Hey all! We are now 13 weeks into our kitchen renovation we have had a lot of progress, a few delays, and a lot of excitement built up in anticipation of finally having our dream kitchen.
I know you have been waiting on the edge of your seat in anticipation for the next progress report on my kitchen (probably not), but suffice to say that real progress has occurred. Like OMG! This dream is beginning to really actually look like a real kitchen, and a really amazing one at that. For those who cannot wait to see where we are, at the end of this post you will find a photo of the kitchen as of this morning. For those who are like me and enjoy the journey, here is an update on the progress and some of the fun along the way.
I mentioned last week that I needed to make the sink wall the priority in order to return to a functioning (if not finished) kitchen. This past two weeks has forced me to tap into my inner perfectionist in ways I had not anticipated.
OK, so we are now a full week into my two weeks off to work on the kitchen renovation and in some ways I am very happy with the progress, and in others, not so much. The focus of this week was installing the beadboard wall behind the main bank of cabinets. This turned out to be much more of a challenging week than I expected, but in the end, I am proud of our accomplishments… Even if they are not very visible.
[Photo: My self portrait for today]
OMG! OMG! OMG! WOW!
The floor that we have been planning for this past year… The floor that went through dozens of changes and iterations…. The floor that we finally decided was the right floor, regardless of cost…. The floor that makes our hearts sing… Has been installed and it is AMAZING.
[Photo: This Tiffany blue marble was found amongst the debris under the floor, perhaps a child found a secret passageway to the underworld long long ago.]
I am beyond excited to say that as of Monday Morning, we were tile ready. But OMG what a hell of a three weeks it has been getting to this point. Last week’s progress report was titled Subfloor on Subfloor because when I started writing it, I expected that we would have finished installing the new subfloor by the end of the last Sunday in February. Boy was I wrong… Very very wrong.
[Photo: One of the areas where we had to replace the 1x4s with plywood. All of the boards in this patch were totally rotten.]
Last week in our first kitchen progress report I gave a brief recent back-story on our kitchen floors, followed by an update from the previous weekend’s adventure. Another week has passed and there is progress, but as usual, there are also hiccups.
We are in the thick of it now and the original kitchen floor is no more… We have moved even deeper into full renovation mode as we spent this entire past weekend pulling up 105 year old oak parquet flooring. Now for those that don’t know the back story, don’t get your panties in a bundle just yet at hearing we are ripping up 105 year old oak parquet flooring.
In December and January, I went over the final details of our kitchen renovation and shared our excitement that this really was finally happening. And now that the tile and cabinets have arrived (having filled up our entry hall), its time to follow up on a promise that I would do a post about the budget, and here it is…. First thing to remember… Setting location aside, kitchens are expensive! And when you factor in our location, it can become downright frightening.
Hi, my name is Devyn. This was my blog about the adventures of finding, buying, renovating, fixing up, restoring, DIY'ing, and decorating a part of New York housing legacy. We have left NYC for a new life in Philadelphia. Visit my new blog Our Philly Row and read all about our "fixer-upper-ing" an 1852 rowhouse
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