Hello my friends! Sorry for the late post today, but it was a rough weekend for our family. My boy has been sick with a fever all weekend and is still home today. And last night we had to put our sweet old kitty to sleep:
He was a Maine Coon and most beautiful animal, inside and out, I've ever had. Just gorgeous. That picture his him in his prime. :) He was 16 and we knew the day was coming soon, the end just happens so quickly with older cats sometimes. One day he was old but managing fine, the next day (yesterday) he could barely walk and was having a bunch of other awful issues.
We've said goodbye to a couple other cats and it never gets any easier. This one was especially hard because I found this sweet boy 15 years ago at a rough point in my life. He lifted my spirits and gave me so much love from that day on. He had the absolute sweetest disposition and the grumpiest face to go along with it. :) We will miss him so much. My heart is in pieces today.
Anyway, I'm sorry for my gushing, I just had to share our beautiful boy with you all. :)
Today I'm excited to report that our granite was finally finished up! We've been without a kitchen for a week now and I'm so happy that things are being put back together, slow but sure.
I shared the process of picking out granite here (I had no idea what the steps were till a friend clued me in) and I also shared some granites and quartz countertops that look like marble here. I love the look of marble but didn't want to worry about the upkeep. I ended up finding a gorgeous granite called River White and I have to tell you, I couldn't be happier with it. It is truly beautiful!
First though, when I decided on the stone I needed to figure out the edge I wanted. Our fabricator offered a bunch of free options and then the more detailed you got the more expensive they were. The profile we had on our old kitchen island is an example of a more expensive cut:
I had that IKEA butcher block routered at a lumber fabricator -- a great option if you want more detail on your butcher block.
It is a beautiful look but I didn't want to do that again because you lose some of your countertop space. It's not much -- about an inch and a half or more along the edge. But if I'm paying for granite I want to be able to use every square inch of that granite. :)
At first I was going to go with just a basic (slightly rounded) edge until I saw this:
It's called a quarter inch bevel and I liked that it gave it a little detail but didn't take away from the usable space.
Also, when you look at it next to the more basic option you'll notice it gives the illusion that it's thicker:
The 1/4 bevel is on the right. Isn't that crazy? I thought it looked so much thicker. It's because the light catches that bevel and tricks the eye a bit.
So last week the install happened and it took much longer than I expected -- there was a lot of detail work that went into getting them installed. I was so nervous to go check out the first slab down but when I did I was THRILLED. Oh my goodness, they are just gorgeous.
The installation gets a little stinky. I think it's the epoxy and your room will stink for a few hours so open some windows. I stayed out of their way the whole time so I didn't get many pics, but this part was interesting:
Those are the tools they use to pull the seams crazy tight. They suck to the counters and then pull them together. We were only supposed to have one seam at the sink, but ended up with two seams. I wasn't thrilled about that but after the fact you can't even tell there's one till you look for it.
Unfortunately they broke the piece next to the sink so we had to wait another five days (over the weekend) to get that installed -- that went in today (another reason for the late post). I was frustrated about that but in the end it was so worth the wait!
I am over the moon about having an undermount sink!:
We used our old granite sink that we installed about four or five years ago. It is one that can be undermounted (I looked for that when I shopped for a new sink way back then) and I think that's what I'm most excited about (other than the granite being beautiful). It will be fantastic to just wipe crumbs into the sink!
Some of you have asked if we were going to put a big farmhouse sink in. I do love them! I just didn't want to deal with changing up the base cabinet to work with one. Also, I may be one of the last people on Earth who still likes having two sinks instead of one big one. I like having a separate, smaller sink for clean dishes.
The only seam we were supposed to have was here and you can only see it if you look:
Here's a better look at the granite close up:
It can appear lighter in some areas like above and then some has more of the darker spots:
I mentioned last week my only concern was that the brown spots sometimes look purple -- but I noticed in natural light are definitely brown. Thankfully our kitchen gets a ton of natural light! I actually LOVE those spots! They are what make it so beautiful and unique. This granite has so much movement but it's subtle movement -- I didn't like the stones with bigger designs. Also, when the light hits it there are bits that light up like glitter. :) I'm so glad I ended up going with the polished instead of honed granite.
Here's a another shot to show you how light it is -- but it still has so much color to it, which is what I wanted. I didn't want bright white:
The faucet still isn't installed but they said it would be fine to put it in later today. (We are using our old faucet as well.) I'm crossing my fingers we'll have a working kitchen again by this evening.
I wanted to wait till these went in to decide on the cabinet paint colors and within seconds I knew what I was doing. The lower cabinets will be Peppercorn (like on the island) and the uppers will be white:
The gray Peppercorn will go beautifully with the granite. I cannot WAIT! I adore contrast and love using gray and white in our home. It feels surprisingly warm when you find the right gray.
Here's a before of this view a couple weeks ago (before I built the uppers and the new counters were finished):
And now -- my vision is coming together!:
I wasn't thrilled that we ended up going without a working kitchen for a week, but after last night and saying goodbye to our kitty, I really could care less. It sure put things in perspective.
We need to have some drywall patched up and then I can get moving on the tile -- that's my next project! It's really coming along and I really could not be happier.