broken bottle bathroom

I'm not entirely positive I'm going to go with this, but I'm pretty sure this is the counter top I'm going to put in the bathroom:




It's the Vetrazzo counter top that I wanted for my kitchen, except that it costs A LOT and I couldn't afford it. It's made from recycled granite and recycled bottles. I'll decide next week if I'm going to do it. Because, surprise, it's more than I budgeted.

But I feel I should get it because wine and beer bottles are an essential part of my house.

wall, y'all

Lots of progress was made in my kitchen today! And we passed the electrical, plumbing, and drywall inspection!

Finally, a wall! And no more cold drafts coming from under the window!

This hole was patched up too.

The floor holes are gone!

Um, not sure what's up with this. It's like an alien creature is coming out of the electrical panel.

Close up of the floor.

I was wondering what that hole in my exterior wall was for...

Neal did get the hole he drilled through my wall patched up quickly.

This is what it looks like from the outside.

Will be nice to have a REAL vent in my kitchen. Like for the times I accidentally cook mac and cheese in the microwave for 15 minutes instead of 1.5 minutes on accident.

Looks good! I was worried but I think this "beam enhancement" will be pretty cool! Though, guess who gets to paint the ceiling. Again.

I've decided Christine is a bad influence on me

My kitchen designer Christine took me to a granite remnant place today to pick out a remnant for my bathroom cabinet. Since I've blown my budget in the kitchen I wanted to try to stay on budget for my bathroom.

Alas.

Well, we'll see how the pricing comes back...

I loved this slab but Christine was like "I can see you at 1 o'clock in the morning cleaning all those holes with a toothbrush." Hm. She knows me too well.

Interesting pink river stone slab. It's the lowest ranked slab on my list, but still kind of cool.

Christine and I both loved this slab. I think my dad will like it too. He likes rocks.

Christine insisted we get a price on this even though I know it's out of my budget (a slab of this costs $20,000). I told her any granite named after an artist (this is DaVinci) is way too expensive for me.

I just took a picture of this because it looks like there are exploding penii in the middle of it.

I REALLY loved this slab but it's unfortunately too small.

While this looks kind of meh it's a granite that has been treated to give it a leather like feel. It looks much cooler in real life.

more holes...in the floor

I don't know why, but I'm kind of freaked out that my plumber Joseph drilled holes in my floor today. I guess it's like the "no turning back" point for my kitchen.

And he and Neal keep asking me questions like "which side of the sink do you want the garbage disposal to be on?" and "how many light switches do you want on this wall?"

Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know!!!! Left! No, right! Did you interpret that as my left or your left since we're standing on opposite sides of my fake island which is really just a picture Neal drew on the floor???????

To make matters even more interesting, some teenage boys have been hanging around. Neal keeps going out to his truck because he's afraid they're trying to steal his tools. This afternoon I was on a conference call and happened to look out my upstairs window. One of the kids was standing on my front porch with his hand on my safety door. He was making hand signals at someone I couldn't see. So I went down, yanked open the inside door, tried to dramatically yank open the safety door (it was locked, thank you Joseph!) and yelled at the kid "what are you doing on my front porch?!?"

He looked shocked, then said he was waiting for a friend. I was like "wait somewhere ELSE". He left and didn't come back. But I was talking to my neighbor later in the afternoon and he saw the kids coming out of a house three houses down from our building (known drug dealer but the cops haven't done anything about him yet). I called our local cop and hopefully they will step up drive bys.

Usually I have no worries because I park in my garage, but I can't park there until the cabinets are installed. Luckily after this week Jake will be at the airport. They have really good security there. And I took the precaution of removing everything from my car just in case it gets broken into.

dust bowl

Today Neal made more holes in my kitchen. I had a HGTV moment when we realized that he can't run the exhaust for the stove up through my room because the pipe would be 6 inches away from the brick wall. I was like holy fuck that's going to look like a stripper pole in my bedroom.

So then he thought he would run it across the ceiling. Not entirely crazy about the idea but what's a girl to do. He called a guy who's apparently going to cut a hole through the outside brick of my house. The idea terrifies me but...we'll see...I'm sure the guy cuts lots of holes through people's brick walls.

Meh.

Another hole. With yellow wires sticking out.

They built the soffit today. Of course my ceiling isn't plumb. Ech.

Neal cut this hole to see if he could run the exhaust for the stove above the ceiling. No dice. They did something fucky with the support beams and he can't cut through them. So the pipe will have to run under the beam seen at the top right edge of this picture. I hope it doesn't look insane.

They pulled out the bathroom vanity today too. Forgot I have to buy a sink and faucet. I'm just going to start referring to my remodel budget as my remodel "budget".

Electrical panel. It looks like an evil doomsday device.