Amazing!

I skipped going to the house yesterday, so when I went by today it had been 48 hours since my last visit.  In that time, so many things happened!

First of all, here’s a better photo of the floor color in the man cave:

There’s really no other way to describe that color than “creamy pumpkin.”  I like how warm and bright it makes the room — much better than the original depressed-needing-Prozac gray.

Up in the girls’ toy room, the very last little detail was completed — the wood  trim on the half wall overlooking the stairs:

This is a seemingly small thing, but we’ve learned that all those little things add up!

(The pieces of blue tape are to mark places where the paint needs a little more work.)

Speaking of the stairs, the cable railings are done in the foyer:

Yep, it’s a lot of cable, but now we don’t have to worry about anyone going over the edge, particularly our young nephews or other little friends.  For code purposes, we will also need a railing on the wall, but we’re working on that.

We also have cable railings outside:

All of this is a mere trifle compared to the Big News:  The kitchen is essentially complete!  That’s right, the counters were installed today, along with the rest of the lights.  Woot!

Check it out:

After agonizing over the endless choices — granite, quartz, stainless steel, slate, Fireslate, laminate, and more — we ended up going with a slate gray Formica with a subtle pattern in it. We (or at least I) hope to put in a tile backsplash of postage stamp mosaic glass tiles in mixed colors at some point in the not-so-distant future, so we wanted a simple counter that wouldn’t clash.

Formica was admittedly not the most eco choice we could have made, but the  company has improved its processes in recent years and is now more environmentally friendly.  Furthermore, we went with a higher grade that should last for a long time and won’t need replacing.  And for those of you who say that laminate doesn’t last, we’ve had our current cheap white laminate for nine years and it looks great, so we know what we’re getting into.

If you look at the first photo again, you’ll see the large piece of diamond steel we had put on the front of the peninsula.  Shiny!  We needed to put something there, as it was just the rough backs of the cabinets, but felt like wood would eventually show wear and tear.  Pete and I have always liked the look of diamond steel and we’re pretty sure that it can withstand just about anything our family can dole out.

On a related note, the bar stools we ordered came yesterday.  That was another one of those long searches that I agonized over.  I found something I liked, but Pete didn’t.  Then he found something he liked, but I didn’t.  Once the diamond steel was installed, we decided against getting shiny metal stools and turned our attention to something that would be noticeable.  We ultimately decided on unfinished wood stools that one of the guys is going to paint fire engine red for us.  I’ll post photos when they’re done.

In the second kitchen photo, if you look above the kitchen sink, you can see the pendant light.  There are three more like it hanging over the peninsula, but I didn’t get a good photo of them.  As I mentioned here last month, I shopped for months for the peninsula lights.  I knew exactly what I wanted and apparently it did not exist in this universe.   So we bought some simple lights, only to be told by the electrician that they wouldn’t work, which led to an eleventh hour order at Home Depot’s website.  They’re simple chrome pendants with white shades.

I think that pretty much covers it for today.  Hopefully, we’ll have news on the driveway and garage doors soon.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Greenhouse
• The kitchen is more kitchen-like
• The front yard.