Ranch vs. The Man - Part 1

In all fairness, the city hasn't jerked us around yet. At least on this project. Three years ago the design board had a real problem with our plans for a new garage. We are still bitter and will probably hold a grudge until the day comes when we are no longer paying taxes to this municipality.

Anyway, we got the call this afternoon. Thursday night Kevin, our builder, and Brian will go in front of the design board and hopefully we will be able to get permits real soon! Kevin doesn't think there will be a problem...and he's probably right but based on prior experiences we have reason to be cynical.

And The Winner Is....

Why this hood and not the other one you ask? This one is about $1500 cheaper and does the same thing. This is the Zephyr, Savona model and has 685 CFM. Our current hood is probably about -15 CFM. It actually blows fumes back at us and then laughs and mocks us. Ah yes, we are going to win this one!

Amost Ready to Get a Building Permit

I spoke with Kevin (from the OAR Group) last night and all of our drawings are ready to be submitted to the architectural review board and one other group of people who I'm sure enjoying holding up building projects. I'm so cynical about all of this because of all the problems we had trying to build a garage three years ago. Kevin is picking up a copy of our property survey (glad we still had that from the garage...saved us a couple hundred dollars) today and maybe on Friday we'll have a date that our drawings are going to be submitted!

I'm starting to find new homes for my plants this weekend...if you are in need of full sun perennials, I have a lot! They all have to go!

Cabinets, Flooring, Counter Tops, and Back Splash

Yesterday we picked out our cabinet color, flooring, counter tops and tiles for the back splash. We were both totally blown away by the design for the back splash; it's going to be the whole wall. Not just the area behind the stove, but the whole wall!

This is the elevation drawing of the wall that has the stove and as you look out the window you'll see the driveway (the mudroom/entry way). All the squares and rectangles behind the stove is the back splash. When Stephanie, our designer, said she wanted to do something dramatic, she wasn't kidding! We had several options to pick from for colors but ended up picking this sample of color:
This is just to show what the colors are going to look like. Our tiles are all going to be 12x12, 12x6 and 4x4. Like she said, dramatic! Here is a scanned sample of our countertop:
Finally, here is a picture of our cabinets (from the Design Studio). We are not getting the "appliance garage" (the cabinet that goes down to the counter top) in the corner or the plate rack and we haven't picked the glass yet but I think you get the idea of what they are going to look like.
Wood Type: Alder
Stain: Nutmeg
Style: Mission

We also made the decision to upgrade the drawers to full extension. Meaning, when we open them we will be able to see the WHOLE drawer, not everything but the back few inches. Initially, I didn't think this was going to be a big deal but now that I know what our new cabinets are going to be like I'm thoroughly annoyed with our current drawers. It's going to be nice!