the kitchen. FINALLY.

I know you guys are in terrible suspense over this, so I figured I'd go ahead and post my COMPLETED, albeit messy, kitchen pictures. ya know, so you can finally get some sleep. it's only been about... oh... almost an entire year since I first posted my inspiration post for our kitchen. 

here's a little reminder what our 50's kitchen looked like before:

and (insert big sigh here)... the after:

excuse the mess. I was too excited to NOT take pictures right away. 

I'm so, so, SO happy with the results... of course, I'd eventually love to have a new backsplash and counter top, but that's not in the budget right now. we did have our floors replaced back in April, which you can read about here. we didn't end up doing the work ourselves outside of removing the cabinet doors and sanding the base, but we bought all the materials and just paid for labor. 

if you'd like to get a source list, I posted about our giant trip to Lowe's right here. the kitchen handles came from a website online that I can't remember the name of, but I'm sure I could dig it up if someone really needed to know.

Happy Wednesday, folks!

Caps + snow + renovation update

welp, the Caps lost again last night, making it 7 in a row now. we still had a great time at the game despite the loss, but it was definitely disappointing to walk out of Verizon after losing.

our seats were great, but when the teams came out for pre-game practice, I quickly realized that we were in puck flying zone, and I was MORE than terrified that I'd end up getting hit in the face with a puck. I was scared for my life, I'm not gunna lie. I made sure to tell Sean to watch out for me, because I have a delayed reaction time when it comes to those kind of things. luckily, I was safe and no pucks made it over the net to our seats. 

 from our seats before practice started (section 115, row x)

hello, my loves. 

yikes, my hair is lookin' rough. but he's cute in his pea coat! ;)

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OH, and guess what I get to look at all day?

that's right - we're finally getting a decent amount of snow here in the DC area, and I couldn't be more excited! now, ask me again how I'm feeling when I'm driving home tonight, but for now, I'm happy. I love the snow... as long as we're not getting multiple feet of it, of course. I'll be content with just a few inches on the ground... just enough to make it look pretty. 

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also - the contractor's are juuuust about done with the kitchen in our house, and I can't wait to share it with you guys. it's been a long journey with this room and we ended up cheating and just paying someone to do the work because we just couldn't find the time to complete it. I'm so happy with how the kitchen looks now. I'm going to try to take pictures tonight, but I might wait til the weekend when I can get some good light (and a good cleaning!). 

they're also working on replacing the ceiling that caved in a few months back, so things are kind of a mess right now - we have an oversize chair and ottoman in the kitchen and baker's racks in the living room! I'm not digging the chaos, but I know it'll be worth it when it's all finished. I can't wait to have my home back to normal! 

 this is what my living room looked like when I got home on Tuesday =/

Happy Thursday!

PS - if you're joining me from the ALMOST Friday blog hop, welcome! 

have a look around, take a seat, and grab yourself a drink. enjoy!

paint paws

the contractor's finished painting all the cabinet bases, doors, and drawers yesterday. they also painted the walls that lovely Valspar Gravity that I obsess over. 

the Bear is super friendly with strangers, and he will walk right under your feet if you're not careful. needless to say, these worker bees got a little shock when they realized he was not your typical scaredy cat. they love him though... they hold him and call him kitty kitty and meow to him. 

I came home last night from the gym to discover little white paw prints on my end table and coffee table. I searched until I found the culprit... the Bear Cub. his little back paws were caked with paint, and not only did he have it on his side from where he blatantly rubbed up against it, but it was on his stomach and his underarms too. 

I text my fellow crazy cat lady friend, Nicole, and asked her what the best way was to get paint off of cats. she said dish soap is the most affective, and most gentle for his skin. I decided I should hold off for a few days until the contractors are completely finished with paint... until he started BITING the paint off his paws. freaking idiot cat, I swear. 

the scene in my house at 10:30PM last night was quite the interesting one. I had the water running in the bathtub with a red solo cup of cold water sitting in it. Bear was climbing over the edge of the tub to get to the water, and I was readying myself with soapy hands to grab his little ass when I had the chance. it started off pretty well, but he ended up growling at me after his water cup was empty. it was pretty much impossible to scrub him and get the paint out, but it did get SOME of it out of his fur. I made sure to wrap him in a towel and dry him off well before I sent him back out into the living room with the other kitties. 

I'm really hoping he stays his out of the paint today.

blogger's block?

I want to write. I LOVE to write. but I can't think of anything to write. the home improvements have been on a bit of a standstill with our summer plans cutting into every single weekend, and I'm kinda giving up on Wedding Wednesdays... not that they require much writing anyway. I've always loved writing, and have always loved making people laugh through my words (or horrible jokes... whatev).

I could post inspiration pictures everyday... I know that I like to see those as a reader of many blogs, but I want to WRITE. I want to put my words on paper and allow others to read them. so that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to write about daily life and what's on my mind, and no one reads it, I'm okay with that. :)

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let's see... I haven't read anything great lately... book wise, I mean. I started The Time Traveler's Wife a few weeks ago, but I really can't get hooked into it. the dates and all the jumping around between ages is a little irritating, and while it IS entertaining, I can't keep focused long enough to finish it as quickly as I would like to.

I just picked up Chelsea Handler's new book for a lighter read, and it's hilarious so far. of course, being an easier read, I can get through it in a matter of a few days - I'm about halfway through and I always put it down in the midst of laughter. she really is one funny bitch, I gotta tell ya. I wish I could meet her... I feel like we would be best friends. and if not, I would just openly stalk her and convince her to be best friends with me.

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I rescued another kitten at work this week. well... I can't say that I rescued him, because my coworker found him, and is keeping him at her house until she decides whether she's going to keep him or find him another (yet still loving) home. we have stray cats at work that multiply like crazy, and we knew there were newborn kittens out there, but we didn't want to risk scaring the mama into leaving them. well, it turns out, she did that anyway - cause Renee found this little guy all by himself.

wittle milk face! love it!

he's about 3-4 weeks old, and is extremely dehydrated, has a bad upper respiratory infection, and a head wound from being attacked... but other than that... he's pretty healthy! I went through the same healing process when I rescued Bear, so I was happy to help Renee take care of him at work - yesterday, we got him drinking some kitten milk and using the litter box. I tried to feed him the milk through a little bottle, but he has a lot more teeth than Bear did, and consequently, tore the nipple right off the bottle with those chompers and got milk everywhere, hahaha. and today he was eating soft kitten food and drinking water. he's making slow progress. oh, and I guess I should mention how fucking ADORABLE this cat is - he's ALL black - I mean black fur, black paws, black lips... everything! he has big giant ears and resembles a bat, so I suggested she name him Bruce Wayne, after Batman... but she's still deciding.

I'm really happy that I'm not the one who found him, because Hubs would KILL ME without second thought if I brought home yet another feline.

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I made a big trip to Home Goods a few weekends ago, but I have yet to post pictures of my goodies. I need to get on that. let's just say that I got approximately a bazillion things for about $185, including something that lights up, something that smells good, something that shines, and something that reflects. promise I'll take pictures and post them soon!

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we finally have all our new lights/fans installed that we bought from Lowe's a while back, mentioned in this post. see what had happened was... we took down all four lights that were in the kitchen, dining room, and entry way... we were ready to get them all installed... and with each light removed, we discovered gross, brown, rotted looking wires.

paint color = Grape Leaves by Behr = LOVE


I decided right then and there that I was NOT hooking up any fixtures to faulty lighting and possibly burning my house down. so we've been waiting for an electrician to be able to come out and check it out. they finally came this week, fixed the problem and installed all our new lights. SO, since we haven't had lighting in the kitchen, we haven't really been able to finish the sanding and the rest of the work that needs to be completed in the kitchen. I tell you what... next house we buy will have my dream kitchen in it... because this damn room has been the biggest headache. it's bad enough just trying to find the TIME to do with our busy summer schedule, but then when we DO have the time, we have to prep and remove everything from the room and blah blah blah. P.I.T.A.

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ANYWAY. I have a sleeping Bear on my lap right now. he's like my little mini-heater. I still can't believe how much he's grown. he was a little 6-7oz baby nugget when we first brought him home, and now he's fully grown and crazy as ever. you'd never know he had/kinda still does have the balance issues. he's so active, and SO funny. I'm convinced that he thinks he's human.

I mean look at this face. how can you not be completely in love with him?
so handsome. I love his grey nose. I just wanna poke it and go "boink!"
I'm weird. I know. I've learned to accept it.


Happy Friday!

I apologize for any misspellings and/or improper use of grammatical terms. my Ambien is kicking in. ;)

kitchen floors!

I mentioned in this post that we finally have new kitchen floors. they don't match the rest of the wood in the house (it's technically not even wood, it's laminate), but that's alright - I think they look fantastic!

keep in mind that we're still in the middle of renovations and remodeling, so there's CRAP everywhere.

sadly, these are the ONLY before pictures I have of the ugly ass flooring that was previously in our home. I took these when we bought that new microwave rack. I meant to take pictures before the contractors started working, but the guy called me on a Monday evening and they were on scene the next morning. good timing for us, but not so much for proof of hideous flooring. ;)

so just imagine this gross yellowish linoleum ALL over my kitchen


our contractor referred us to this flooring discount store, where we chose this material. like I mentioned in the linked post above, we were positive that it matched the rest of the floors in the house... but it doesn't. so, without further adieu, here are our brand spankin' new floors! I'm going to do a budget run down once everything is completed... it always helps me to see how inexpensive renovations and DIY work can cost, so hopefully I'll be able to proved the same motivation for others.

oh yeah, don't mind the cats that appear in these photos... they're kind of hard to avoid around here. a couple other things to ignore: the curtain over the sink window, the dying roses by the sink, the vertical blinds, the uncovered baseboard heating, the towel rack on top of the cabinets, the litter box in the corner - all to be changed in due time.

that reminds me... does anyone have any good tips on hiding litter boxes? I hate having them out in the open, but I don't have a spare room or anything to put them in if we have company.


here's the difference between the kitchen floors (on the left) and the floors that run through the rest of the first level of the house (on the right, obviously).



aaaand here we are in the middle of out cabinet reformation. all the doors were removed from the bases, and there's CRAP everywhere. it's driving me crazy, but I really can't wait until everything's completed! just the floors alone make for a brand new room, so I'm thrilled to see what kind of room will appear after crisp white cabinets and sleek new counter tops appear.




so there you have it - our new floors and the proof that I'm not being a lazy ass when it comes to my cabinets any longer! I can't claim that I've actually done any work yet, because Mr. FoFandee just started the sanding today, but I fully intend on being an equal part of this project.

stayed tuned into TBNT for more updates and hopefully a reveal in the near future!

I will be undergoing a root canal on Thursday afternoon, so I won't be around much through the weekend. I'm still posting Wedding Wednesday this week, so no worries!

I hope everyone has a fabulous week!

checking things off the list.

this is going to seem really wordy at first, but I promise there are pretty pictures too! remember a while back, I posted that awful spring cleaning list? well, with the exception of cleaning out my closet, which I did a few weeks ago, I finally made a pretty big dent in the "kitchen/dining remodel" section of the list. woooo!

here's a little reminder of what the list looks like:

KITCHEN/DINING REMODEL:
- get our contractor to look at the floors and determine an estimate to level them
- if the price isn't too high, hire contractor to level floors
- if the price IS out of budget, we will attempt to get some friends together and do it ourselves (I'm totally hoping my contractor gives me a break) - we hired the contractor.
- purchase and install new flooring for the kitchen - I'm thinking a medium to dark grey vinyl - we ended up going with a laminate wood flooring. more on that below.
- paint kitchen and dining rooms walls Sparrow by Behr (also used in our entry) - bought the paint, but instead of Sparrow, it's Gravity by Valspar.
- paint kitchen cabinets white - bought the paint! Ultra White by Valspar.
- replace all hardware (knobs, hinges, and pulls) on kitchen cabinets - purchased. see below.
- paint base of stainless steel island white - bought the paint! Ultra White by Valspar.
- check out Ikea counter tops (dark grey or black) - if it's in the budget, replace counter tops and sink
- new lighting in kitchen - under cabinet lighting and pendant lighting
- new pendant light for dining area
- purchase and/or DIY art work for kitchen/dining
- refinish and paint dining table and chairs (black)- bought the paint! decided to go with Ultra White by Valspar.
- possibly try my hand at upholstering dining chairs... or buy new ones, depending on budget

the contractor came out and started the flooring last Tuesday, and they should be completely done today. my kitchen was a big gaping hole for a few days, and we haven't been able to eat at home for a week! we wanted to get the same hardwood laminate that we had installed throughout the rest of the house, so we peeked online and made a trip to the wood flooring store to make sure the one we picked online was the same in person, and it was!




... or so we thought. we were 100% sure and positive (like bet-my-life-on-it positive) that we had chosen the exact match to our current flooring, so we ordered it. wrong. dead wrong. the new floors in the kitchen have a much more cherry tone to them than the rest of the house. we didn't see them for their true color until they were installed, so at that point, there was nothing we could do. I mean sure, we could pay to have them ripped out (and probably trashed) and then find the right stuff and pay to have THAT installed... but that's a lot of money we're talkin' about, and let's face it... we ain't rich folk. so, it is what it is - the flooring is still gorgeous compared to the old 70s linoleum tile that was there before, so I'm happy. :)

we've been putting off all the major housework for the past few months, and this weekend, we decided a giant trip to Lowe's was in order so that we could get the ball rolling again. we spent just about $1,000 and we came home with a rack of goodies! I bet you wanna see what we got, huh? no? don't care? too bad! I'm just going to go down the list here... so bear with me!

I'm also going to list the recent purchases I've made for the entryway, since that is also still a work in progress.

TOOLS
for the sanding:

PAINT

as mentioned above, the kitchen walls will be Gravity by Valspar with a soft gloss finish, and the cabinets will be Anthem White in a semi gloss finish.

www.valspar.com


HARDWARE
I swear everything is brushed nickel, even though they all look like a different finish.

drawer pulls:



cabinet handles:
hinges:
LIGHTING

ceiling fans for kitchen & entry:

under cabinet lighting:


chandelier for dining room:


ART
for the kitchen:


for the entryway:




so, there you have it! obviously, that's not everything we purchased, but it's a lot of it! I'm really happy with our lighting choices, and we were both really surprised by Lowe's choices. it's going to take a lot of hard work, but we're determined to get it done - our weekends are going to be full of sanding, priming, painting, and installing for a while, that's for sure!

I have pictures of the new kitchen floors, but I have to find a good "before" picture before I post them to show what a huge difference it made. and I may or may not have misplaced my camera cord.

Happy Tuesday!

Wedding Wednesday - V. X

I hope I'm getting these roman numerals right, or I'm just going to look like a giant douchebag... nothing new there! anywhozits, welcome back to Wedding Wednesday, folks, where I shamelessly post some fab pictures from my wedding and you get to tell me how pretty I am. don't you love how it works out that way? if you'd like to be nosy and see past installments of WW, feel free to click right on over here.

as of today, we are one month and one day away from our 2 year "engage-iversary"... otherwise known as the day we got engaged. I know, I know, that was hard to figure out. soooo, in celebration of having this gorgeous rock on my finger for almost 2 years, I'm going to post pictures of it... professional pictures that is... and I may or may not just break the rules and post some pictures of our rings on the beaches of Hawaii from our honeymoon. maybe.

first, I should probably explain the rings. when Mr. FoFandee proposed to me (over Five Guys Burgers & Fries and the TV in the background... he's such a romantic), he gave me a princess cut solitaire ring. I loved it. love, love, LOVED it. and then somewhere along the wedding planning process, I decided that I wanted a solitaire enhancer as my wedding band... so I got it.

and THEN, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the enhancer just made it look like I had a gigantic engagement ring. I told the Mister I'd like to get a new band, and I'd return the original enhancer... I just didn't want it to look like I was only engaged... I wanted my jewelry to show that I was married... get what I'm sayin? so in the end, he told me to keep the enhancer and get the other wedding band as well... which is exactly what I did. for reference, here's a picture of my original engagement ring (from our engagement session, also taken by the lovely Jen Lowe.



As always, all photos are credited to the lovely and talented Jen, from JLowe Photos. If you'd like to see more of her work, feel free to visit her blog here.

and here are the ones I took on our honeymoon:

yep, that's it. I think that's all the pictures I got of our rings. somehow I thought there were more. oh well.

I'm hoping to have some time at work today to update you guys on our kitchen! we finally had our contractor come out and quote us for removing, leveling, and replacing the floors, and they showed up yesterday morning to start working! right now my kitchen is a big gaping hole, but I can't wait to see when it's done!

OH, and since the Caps decided to take it all the way to game 7, we bought tickets to wish them a little luck. so tonight, I'll be rockin' the red and cheerin' on my boys to take the first round!

Happy Wednesday!

kitchen inspiration

well, we've decided to take the plunge and begin our kitchen transformation. I've talked about it here and here before. you can see the list of things we're going to attempt to accomplish in my spring cleaning post.

we're making a trip out to our semi-local (meaning it's still 1+ hour away) Ikea this weekend to scope out some kitchen needs - counter tops, knobs and handles, and lighting. we're going to paint the cabinets white, so I decided to look for some inspiration for our freaking huge little renovation/revamp project. I want our kitchen to be crisp, bright, and modern. I want clean lines and funky green accents. I want it all, and I want it now! (Veruca Salt anyone?)

oh, and let me also let you in on a little secret - my kitchen is probably 1/3 of the size of these kitchens pictured below. the entire space itself is pretty sizable, but the kitchen is small and the room is oblong. FML, right? not so much. I'm gunna make this shit work. here's my sad attempt very professional drawing of our kitchen. pretty!



I tried to find all the sources for these pictures, but we all know that doesn't always work out. If you know where any of these unclaimed pictures belong, please share... so I don't feel like an asshole!

image source

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GAH, I love looking at kitchens, don't you? I'm really excited to start this process, but also terrified that we'll slip out of our budget. I'm going to be contacting a few contractors this week to give us a price on removing the current floors, leveling the subfloor, and installing the same hardwood we have throughout the house. once the floor is done, it's all FoFandee action from there!

READER question: if you could change one thing about your kitchen, what would it be?


Happy Tuesday, fuckheads!