Finished Kitchen

The kitchen is now complete!


There were a few glitches with a couple of things along the way. I think they were partially due to our inexperience coupled with some miscommunication between the designer, kitchen builder, the home builder, and ourselves.

The last 4 weeks before closing we were out of town several times for work so that made it difficult as well, as we weren't always on site as things were happening.

In the end we decided to just go with how it turned out instead of delaying closing to go back and change anything.

Nevertheless, it's a beautiful kitchen. My favourite part is the island. I love it so much that sometimes I wish we had done the whole kitchen in the dark stained maple. But I suppose if we had, the island would no longer stand out as a focal point.

Cooking in this kitchen is a dream. After unpacking every kitchen related item from our old house I still have empty cupboard space. And I had a lot of stuff in our basement, including seasonal and decorative serving ware, as well as several appliances such as our bread machine, large roaster, slow cooker, rice machine, blender(s), food processor, electric grill/griddler, deep fryer, etc.

I'm looking forward to many years ahead of making lots of good food and memories in this kitchen. After all, it's where I will be spending about 50% of my time every day.

Picking out Paint

Joanne met me at Sacwal to pick out paint today. I was a little wary of how long it might take to pick out paint for the entire house in one meeting. It took me about three weeks to pick out a colour for our current entry way & family room.

As usual, Joanne was amazing and had some great insight and suggestions. I think the colours we chose are going to look beautiful, and we were done the entire house in under 2 hours.

I'm pretty conservative when it comes to paint colours but we did branch out of the neutral palette for a couple of rooms.

I feel like everything is really starting to come together and I am getting really excited! The fireplace in the great room was installed today too and it looks awesome.

Sacwal Flooring: Part 1

Today was another decision-making marathon with Joanne.

This time the meeting place was Sacwal Flooring, and I had my Mom with me because Scott was working.



We started with hardwood, and found some nice maple flooring. My stipulations for hardwood were:

1. Hard Maple (We like the grain AND it has a high rating on the Janka hardness scale.)

2. Medium stain (I LOVE dark stained wood, but it is hard to keep looking clean and shows scratches and dents way too much)

3. Not too glossy (Again, it looks awesome but too impractical.)

4. Has to be in our hardwood allowance, and not over budget.

So, these options really narrowed our choices down to about, um, three choices. I quickly choose the one that looked the least red and had the widest planks. It was actually under budget which was amazing.

Then we moved on to tile. This was so fun! I was the most nervous about tile because there are literally thousands of options and we have a lot of bathrooms plus a laundry / mudroom area.

But Joanne really took over here and started pulling out beautiful tiles that matched the countertops so nicely and I have to say that the tile was one of the most fun things I've done yet in the whole building process.

Joanne gets all the credit. And John (The Sacwal owner who was part of the whole process). He was awesome too. They can pick out grout colours like nobody's business. Seriously, it's a well-honed talent.

We even manged to do some cool detail stuff in the bathrooms which I'm so excited about. And again - all within the allowances. I think we may have had one $100 upgrade.

We picked out tile for the fireplace surrounds as well.

Next we moved on to carpet. I took a leap of faith and got the berber / plush blended carpet that Joanne & John simply raved about. It was a nice colour, practical for kids, and again (not to beat a dead horse here) was in the carpet allowance.

Three of the bedrooms will have the same carpet as the stairs / hallway, but I chose a shag carpet for the master and Samantha's room (different colours though).

Finally we moved onto the last flooring area: the basement. This is where Scott and I have had the most discussion on WHAT to get. I hate carpet. He hates laminate. What else can you put in a basement?

We thought we had found a suitable compromise when we found CORK flooring until we saw the prices. $$$ Yikes! More than our hardwood!

We found a cork flooring clearance and the colour was bearable, not great, but okay. We went ahead and selected it.

By this time, it was 2 1/2 hours later and time to go. Joanne had brought her paint samples, but we decided to save that adventure for another day.

Electrical Walk Through

Today we met Rick, Joanne, and Stan (the electrician) at the site for our electrical walk through.

We went through the entire house, inside and out (except for the basement, which isn't framed yet) and chose where to put pot lights, lighting fixtures, electrical outlets and switches.

Joanne was so very helpful during this process, and thought of so many practical ideas (separate switch for Christmas tree lights, etc). Her experience really saved the day for us, as I believe the whole process would have taken double the time without her.

We ended up adding a ton of extra pot lights, over and above our allowances. But since I am not willing to commit to having a large amount of lamp lighting throughout the house, we wanted to be sure to have enough light in the ceilings. I think we should be good.

We had been told to really think things through beforehand, to be sure we include everything now. I understand why that sounds like good advice, but I did find it hard to anticipate what we might need in the future, even if we aren't using it now (for instance, desks in the younger children's bedrooms). Again, Joanne was so helpful in this department.

One thing I am excited about is that Rick has included door jam light switches in our pantry and all larger closets. This was something he had done in his models and Scott and I loved it when we saw it. It's so practical and I think it will just be so convenient.

This was another great learning experience for us and I really enjoyed it.

Kitchen Day

Today I went to finalize kitchen details at Woody's. Joanne (the designer) and Shawn (from Woody's) were there, although Scott wasn't able to make it due to some last minute things that came up at work.

Now that I've had a few hours to mull over the samples I brought home, and digest everything else we picked out, I'd say it went well overall. But the meeting itself was a little stressful. Mostly because we had to make so many choices in such a short period of time.

We started with going over cabinetry details, including stain / paint colours and accessories (hardware). The stain was easy. Paint was a little harder. I followed the designers suggestions with regards to which shade of paint (we ended up using the same as the trim colour so that it will match perfectly). I hope to get some samples soon to take home and match to other things.

We discussed some minor changes in cabinetry, specifically in regards to some drawers in the kitchen and the main bathroom upstairs. Shawn said we can finalize island size and placement on the site when the framing is done.

I was a little disappointed that we didn't keep a running tab of what was included in the standard allowances and what were upgrades. Shawn and Joanne wrote it all down, but I came home feeling like I wasn't sure exactly how much over budget we were going to be. Shawn will send us a summary in the next couple of days. Hopefully it will be reasonable.

Next we picked out countertops. The solid surface samples were beautiful. So many great choices. The bathrooms and laundry room were a little trickier. I was somewhat disappointed in the selection of laminates. But to be fair, I think it was more a reflection of my bias towards other counter surfaces, and not so much Woody's lack of selection.

I love the counters we picked out for the basement bath and the boys' bath. I wasn't 100% sure about the selection for the girls' bath and the laundry room, but after bringing the samples home to look at a little more, I think they will be great too.

Joanne was really helpful in mentioning things that had never been discussed at Woody's. She pointed out choices in cabinet crown moulding, light valence, drawer / cupboard organization, and counter top heights. I was glad to have her point out those details so I could see the options.

I am learning so much during this process. It has been very educational and eye-opening.