The kitchen is coming together

Pieces are all starting to fall into place at the B.A.B.. The kitchen, in particular, has made significant progress in the last few days.

Tom and I did some touch up work on the interiors of the metal cabinets. We decided to go bold on the exterior color, but we didn’t think we’d like such a dark color on the interior. The cabinets cleaned up pretty well, there were a few places, though, that benefited from a fresh coat of white. It was a messy and smelly job. Even though we masked it off, and put a fan in an open window,  (yes, Mom, we wore respirators) we still have a dusting of paint in places. The only real clean up challenge was removing the paint I got in my hair. I go through a lot of trouble to keep the naturally occurring white out of my hair, you’d think I would have been more careful.

We got to see the finished color Monday night. It looks terrific- they look better than I imagined they would.

Freshly painted cabinets

The next step really finished the transformation.

The counter tops were installed this morning.  I was very concerned about the compatibility of all of the colors, given that we have a lot of different things going on in the apartment. Repainting a wall is a cinch compared to repainting the cabinets or replacing the granite.  Of course, we were looking to incorporate leftovers, so the options were more limited, but we found several nice choices at Graniterra. The first time we picked out the stone slab, they were in a stack and very dusty, so it was a little hard to know what the finish product would look like.

Gary helped us to sort through remnant slabs

We got to see them cleaned up and we located the templates to best accent the features of the material.

We got lucky with the size of the remnants. There wasn't much left over.

One of the things we particularly like about this material, Wild Sea Cross Cut, is the natural veining and the textures. It is hard to tell from the photos, but there is a lot going on in the stone when you see it up close.

It reminds me of the view from the plane when you fly over the middle of the country.

The installers arrived first thing this morning. We watch them drive right by as they looked for ‘a house’, but we flagged them down on their second pass. They brought the 3 pieces in and very quickly got everything in place. It was a relatively easy installation. Most places probably don’t have a handy loading dock for their delivery.

The colors work, one less thing to worry about.

It looks great. Of course, it isn’t at all what we thought we would do when we did the initial design. We were planning to use Ikea cabinets, then these metal cabinets became available (Thanks Jilian!!!). I thought we’d use the same black granite we used on our house, then we saw this remnant. At first we were planning to paint the cabinets a light color, but decided to take a chance and go with our gut on a riskier choice. It’s not like we’re thinking about the generic resale.

It is coming together!

This is what we have enjoyed the most about how we are doing this project. We’ve had the luxury of letting things evolve, changing directs when an opportunity presents itself. On most of our projects at our offices, we have to be able to make every decision before anything is built. Allowing for the unexpected to be considered has made all the difference.