More foundations and kitchen inspiration

Construction Update:

Stopping by our lot on the way home is becoming a ritual for both DJ and I. We also loop past it anytime we are going for a walk or a run. Yes, that’s right, I’ve become a jogger. I won’t call myself a runner because I’m pretty certain that the snail’s pace I move at doesn’t qualify, BUT, still, I swing by the house as a mouth breathe my way around the neighborhood.

On Wednesday they finished digging the hole for the foundation and put down the liner and gravel! And I’m told that they poured footings for the foundation walls today! Sadly, I’ll have to run… ha… over there tomorrow morning to get a picture in the AM. It is currently 9:51pm and I’m still at the office.

DJ asked me if I wanted to camp in our lot on Wednesday night. If the gear hadn't been over at the apartment, I might have!

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Now let’s talk kitchens. DJ and I are both foodies. We love simple fare like meat and potatoes and asparagus and corn on the cob, but we want it to be GOOD simple food. We both love to bake, and I’m not ashamed to say that DJ is a better cookie baker than I am. And believe me; I have some experience eating chocolate chip cookie dough… I mean, baking chocolate chip cookies.

While his condo had a great layout, the kitchen was problematic. The work triangles overlapped to the point that we really couldn’t cook without tripping over each other. So When I had the chance to redesign the layout of the kitchen, I jumped at it!

PS: Work triangle knowledge comes from my Grandma Jan, whose kitchen is so well laid out for a one woman cook for a family of nine that I actually thought about replicating it at our house. Then I remembered that we don’t want to have seven children. But! Work triangles! Grandma Jan!

The only tripping over someone will likely come when DJ is going out the doors to the BBQ...

Once I got the layout done and got DJ’s approval, it was time to look for kitchen inspiration. Usually, this search leads me to delicious bruschetta recipes or yummy sangria concoctions, but in this Google image search, it was all the look of kitchens.

I should add that we’ve already decided on a couple of finish materials for the house (in our heads, we still have yet to actually chose the materials. But they’re there, in the warm fuzzy spot of our imaginations). The floors in the kitchen, dining and living room will be some version of a darker circle sawn. The trim will be white, and the windows will be white. We’re trying to find a color somewhere between grey and a sand color for the walls. I’m ready for a dark grey, but too much color is hard for DJ’s palette to handle.

I love how light and airy this kitchen looks! Hmm... a prep sink in the island...

With that in mind, I Googled the you know what out of kitchens. I clicked and “save as-ed” everything that I like (I also failed to save sources, so I’m being a bad blogger and throwing photos that aren’t mine up without naming the source or asking for permission. Sorry. Hopefully the owners see it as free advertising?). And when I looked back through them I realized that I liked white kitchens!

In my mind’s eye I could see the grey walls, white trim, white kitchen with big north facing window and a lighter speckled granite countertop. When I ran the countertop by DJ, he wasn’t so sure. He liked darker countertops. Thinking he was smoking crack, I tried to keep an open mind. Then I realized, in all my inspiration photos, the white kitchens have dark countertops too! Well damn, I knew there’s a reason I like this guy.

I love the look of the base of these cabinets. They have legs rather than a toe kick area! But that's expensive...

Love love love love the door hardware in this kitchen. And the concrete countertops and accents of blue!


More blue!

So the plan for the kitchen is: dark circle sawn floors, white cabinets and trim, stainless steel appliances and drawer pulls, dark granite countertops on the wall and high bar at the island, subway tile backsplash with some sort of glass tile color accent band in it and a butcher-block working table on the island. Thankfully, it’s not a big space.. so hopefully we can afford it????