Decisions, Decisions and MORE Decisions

Whew, what a weekend! Starting Friday, we realized that we were behind on ordering the light and plumbing fixtures for the 909 House that we've had picked out for a while. So I ended up heading over to Mom's for the morning (which turned into the day) so that Caed could tag along with her while I made a few last-minute decisions on fixtures and placed all of our orders ... like 6 different online stores to be exact! How exhausting!

Then, Saturday began nice and early as Caed woke up at 6:50 am (he usually wakes up at 8 or later), and not too long afterward, we were out the door to choose our granite slabs for the kitchen countertop and downstairs powder room. Doesn't sound too difficult, but when you're working with a tired and cranky 14-month-old, the level of difficulty escalates greatly! As we were sorting through the slabs, we thought that it wasn't a bad idea to let Caed out of his stroller and walk around a bit. (The granite is way to heavy for him to move or damage, so we thought he would be fine.) But, he is our son and has the curiosity of a cat, so leave it to him to get into EVERYTHING. Before we knew it, he was pulling on the fire extinguisher and pushing his stroller into things, so his time of freedom came to an end quickly. Lots of screaming proceeded, but we really had no other choice. Eventually, he got sleepy and just gave in ... thank goodness ... but no sleeping.

Then, as we were browsing through all of our options, we realized that the sample slab that we've been carrying around to match up with other kitchen decor wasn't the type of granite that we thought it was. We love the sample and thought it was Kashmir White, but turns out that it's Colonial Gold ... ha. So after looking through all of the Kashmir White slabs and realizing that none of the slabs look quite like our sample (slabs tend to vary based on their lot ... where they originated), so we just thought the lots were pretty different. But then we found other types that looked more similar to our sample -- Bianca Romano and River White. (Bianca Romano is pictured to the left.)

(We didn't realize that our sample was Colonial Gold until the end.) Feeling pretty confident that we had found our slabs though, we left with the intent to order Monday. However, we decided to swing by one more granite lot on the way to choose our appliances (yes, another big decision). Funny thing, we arrived at the second granite lot 5 minutes before it closed, so we didn't have much time ... but as soon as we walked in the warehouse, we saw the River White granite and loved it ... it looked a great deal better there than at the other location, so that made our decision that much easier. (I still need to go back tomorrow though, take a second look at it and choose the exact two slabs to use ... more decisions! But at least the granite decision is almost over!) I'm excited ... our countertops are going to be beautiful! (The picture below is just a sample I found online, our slab will probably look a little different from this.)

From the granite lot, we then went to HH Gregg to make our final selection on appliances: Refrigerator, Dishwasher, Range, Mircohood.
We went into the store confident that we were going to go the Whirlpool route for our range, microhood and refrigerator, and we were pretty sure we were going to get a Bosch dishwasher, but trying to decide on appliance finishes threw a few kinks in the road, so we had to deliberate a bit. But after heading home and Brad returning later in the evening to make a final decision, we stayed tried and true with our original Whirlpool and Bosch decision and decided to go black on the finish for the refrigerator and dishwasher and stainless steal for the microhood and range. (That may sound a little strange, but based on the placement of each appliance in the new kitchen, we think this will look great and emphasize the items that we want to emphasize and 'hide' the others. We'll see ....)

The sales guy, Yiuly, was really helpful and gave us a great deal in the end, so if you're heading over to HH Gregg in the near future, you might want to look him up.

Oohh, I can't wait to use my new dishwasher! We've been without a dishwasher for 1 year and a month now and it's driving me crazy! Not too much longer now!

Well, that wraps up a good bit of our decisions this weekend, now we just need to figure out what we're going to do with our windows and then finalize our granite selections tomorrow. We'll keep you posted ....