With the royal wedding now behind us and the mystery of Kate's dress now a thing of the past we are moving towards the second most hushed design for 2011- our new kitchen! While I do know the designer I don't really know what the kitchen will look like beyond a sketch. The past 2 weeks the G&S crew has been hold up in the workshop in Madison building our kitchen cabinets. I can't wait to actually see them! While we have seen the design of the kitchen and submitted pictures of cabinetry we liked, there is still a little mystery behind what it will all look like. When you buy cabinets from a mass produced cabinetry line you go to a showroom and see a mile of door styles and colors. It's overwhelming and when I went looking to get ideas I was not really impressed with what I saw and would have been hard pressed to choose something if I had to. The companies do have nice fancy glossy booklets that you take home and see how it all looks put together. Not so with the custom cabinet. When I asked if there was a portfolio of designs G&S could do, Peter told me that I could have "anything I wanted". OK, no pressure there, what if I am a follower and not creative enough to know what I want to be looking at in another 20 years? Panic over what I really like aside, I have seen a number of G&S kitchens now and they are all really great and fit perfectly in the homes that surround them. I should not be worried (and really am not but it makes for good reading) since I have no doubt that ours will be just as fabulous and probably even more so! Peter has kept to our desire for an "unkitchen", meaning that there is no uniform theme to the kitchen. Each piece seemingly an evolution over time and kind of furniture like. We wanted more windows (which we got) and less upper cabinets. We have a total of 3 upper cabinets with one being a plate rack and another a spice cabinet. I also know the color scheme (for the most part)- the lower cabinets will be Sundried Tomato- deep and richly red. The center island Revere Pewter with a soap stone top (more about that later). The whole kitchen will have a lot of drawers- yeah!!!! Since I don't have even one in my present kitchen. We also opted for a lower, dresser like piece emulating furniture that will have a marble top. Now there will be no excuse for buying a pie crust- huh? Maybe I can roll it out flatter there and no one will know I didn't actually make it????
OK- Here are some pictures of the kitchens that I liked and sent to Peter. They are from Plain English Cabinetry http://www.plainenglishdesign.co.uk/kitchens.html. There are many amazing kitchens on this site. Be prepared to drool.
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| Simple and elegant |
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| Love the feel of this kitchen- needs toe kicks though |
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| Upper cabinet design- just right |
Meanwhile outside Bob and the little purple digger have been going great guns with regrading of the yard and driveway area. What was once a sheer drop off of the yard has become a lovely terraced wall that sweeps effortlessly around to the barn. Now there were a few days of unsightly fencing- actually quite funny. Dave and I would joke that you would never see this picture on the G&S web site! Eventually the yard was evened out and the fencing fixed. No permanent fencing yet but at least not looking like a shanty town!
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New photo for G&S web site?
Probably not! |
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| Terraced retaining walls- looks even better now |
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| Look look where I am parking my car |
When Bob moved to the driveway side we were given a few days to unload the storage container and get it the hell out of here! We called in the reinforcements to help us unload. Robbie, Cathy and Jay all stepped up to help out! We had a split personality dinner- cooked in the old horrid kitchen and ate in the new dining room.
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| Could this be the last dinner party in kitchen nasty? |
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| As usual- beautiful food from Cathy! |
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| Nice picture of Robbie with our make shift dining room |
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| Mr. Smith dressed for dinner? |
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| Can't tell you what this was all about but trust me it was funny!!! |
We have also been busy painting painting and more painting......
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| Painting take 1- Dave what kind of paint are you using? Crap, not the right kind. Take 2. |
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| Pip doing what he does best (besides pooping where he's not supposed to- bad dog!) |
Last week Peter and I took a road trip to Hackensack NJ to pick out a piece of soap stone for the top of the center island. It was a pretty rainy day and I was at the tail end of getting my part of a grant finished so I was a little stressed about taking the afternoon off to pick out the stone but I went anyway. We made a short stop in Southport to drop something off at a house that G&S had done work on previously. I got a short tour of the house and my god I could have spent all afternoon looking around in all the rooms. The house was absolutely beautiful and there was some really amazing stuff in there.
We arrive at M.Teixeira Soapstone
http://www.soapstones.com/ without too much trouble with the help of my iPhone (what did I do before I had that phone?) We were led to the back where the big slabs were kept. Since we needed a 4 x 8 the choice was not as great as the little pieces but enough to make it a challenge to pick one. I found one that I liked well enough but that one was already chosen. They told me that the next one in the sequence would be the same but I didn't believe them. They brought out the little crane and moved the stone. The next stone was not the same and I didn't like it. I asked again to move to the next. I thought I had better like that one since it was an ordeal to move the slabs. I think it will be very nice. Let's face it- it's soapstone, how bad could it really be???
On the way home we were hungry and stopped for lunch at the Casual Habana Cafe in Hackensack. It was really good and surprisingly inexpensive. A nice piece of salmon and salad for $10! The owner of the restaurant came around and made sure all his customers were satisfied. I was impressed to find this neat place in Hackensack.
I didn't really have any reason to put in this picture but I liked it. The old front door is looking very inviting. Seems ironic since we don't have a door bell and never will. Please don't show up unannounced. Unfortunately we also don't like to answer the phone. Is there something wrong with us?
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| Looks so inviting- but we will never had a door bell so don't bother to show up unannounced |
