kitchen design

Today is my first meeting with a local kitchen design company!

As I've mentioned before, our goal for this kitchen is quality, natural wood cabinets.  I'm okay with formica counters to start, with a plan to upgrade later.  Especially now that I've found karran undermount sinks for (YES!) laminate.

Here's my super rough draft for our kitchen layout.  It's already outdated- I doubt we'll spring for an apron sink & the {required} solid surface, quartz, marble, or granite countertops.  The corner of the kitchen is right at the notebook binding.  I need some help designing those corner cabinets, between the range & the sink.  I'd love to have a pull out garbage in there.  And I will certainly be including uppers!  Also not included is the center island, which will have additional storage.

 

Channeling Love it or List it, my must-haves include:

• ample storage
• enough drawers
• pull out shelves in pantry and for pots & pans
• island storage
• island seating
• graduated/staggered uppers
• crown molding
• single basin sink 

Would-really-likes:

• pull out garbage
• wine storage
• usable "blind" lower cabinet storage

until then!

paint!

As we're not so patiently waiting for our appraisal, I've been focusing on paint colors.  I've never had an open concept home before, so the task of choosing a color that will work for the kitchen, dining, & living rooms is daunting!  That being said, I'm leaning toward Sherwin-Williams copen blue.  I am a bit hesitant, and likely will be until I can put a sample on some fresh drywall, but for now it's the front-runner!

I know I want the master bedroom in gray, I'm thinking the knitting needles would be great in our master, and the master closet.  For the office, I'm dreaming of mint.  It's very similar to the color we have in our current bedroom, and I LOVE it, but think it's better suited for an office rather than a master.

At this point, I'm still mulling over what to put in the spare bedroom, laundry room & bathrooms.  I'll probably do both bathrooms the same color {likely based on what vanity we pick}, and the laundry room may end up whatever color we have leftover.  HA!  But seriously, we are responsible for painting the entire house.  The builder will have primer & a coat of white completed, but anything else is our responsibility to bid out, do ourselves, or throw a paint party & beg our friends and family to help out with.  wink.wink.nudge.nudge.  Good thing R & I are decent painters!

loan upate

Eep!  The bank approved our funding.  WOOHOO! 

This is a huge relief, especially considering we already had one bank turn us down because of the shared well.  They didn't want to fund a property that didn't have a well, despite our legal contract, a.k.a. shared well agreement.

Next steps:

• initial appraisal (This is already ordered, and expected to occur in 3-4 weeks.  This is when we'll find out how much the land is worth {we own it outright} and how much cash we'll need to put down.  A high appraisal means less cash required from us {but higher property taxes each year}.  Fingers crossed for a nice, high appraisal!)
• closing on the construction loan (cash required, followed by monthly, interest-only payments)
• dig!  Let's break ground, baby (there may be opportunity to start this before closing, and potentially before the appraisal comes in.  Long story short, it's up to us on how much risk to assume {again, fingers crossed for a high appraisal!})  edit: on second thought, I think we're going to wait for the appraisal before breaking ground.  we're not confident what the land will appraise for- it's been in the family a looooong time and who knows what a parcel that BIG is really worth.  The bank could definitely go either way on this one.  Too much risk for us to jump in before we know.

kitchen inspiration

Today I'm dreaming of a new kitchen!

my first farmhouse style kitchen

As I'm getting into the design of our new kitchen, I'm pulling up all the pictures I have of my first kitchen.  It was a custom, Amish built design, and I LOVED it.  Absolutely beautiful, with tons of light and ample storage space.  I do plan to replicate many of my favorite things about this kitchen.


There were many details I loved-

• the hidden pull out trash
• the huge pantry cabinets (complete with pull-out shelves)
• giant, farmhouse style sink.  It was not an apron sink, but I loved her anyway.
• crown molding on uppers
• staggered height of uppers
• island storage & seating

And just a few things I didn't love-

• no usable "blind" lower cabinet storage space.  It was completely blocked off
• the glass upper cabinet.  Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful.  But, soo not practical for storage of anything useful.  I didn't have a whole lot of usable upper cabinet space, so this was kind of a waste for me.  I wouldn't do another glass cabinet again, unless I had much more room, and several additional uppers.  It was a wonderful place to display my polish pottery!
• can lights over the island
• laminate counters
• white appliances (blah, blah, I know... get over it.  haha!)

Without further ado... some pictures of my BEAUTIFUL farmhouse style southern Wisconsin kitchen.  This was a huge reason my first house sold so quickly!

There first 4 are listing pictures from when I was selling:

This last one is when I first moved into the house.  You can see my design style hadn't quite come into shape yet.  The window over the sink looked into a big, fenced yard.  There was no need for the curtain!  It didn't last long.  Neither did all that wine!