A flurry of activity since the tenant moved out, including Dan being in NC for a week since then. Demolition has started and Oakley and team (Oakley Bland, his brother Curt and helper Doug) have made decent progress, despite having to take a few days off for a family emergency in Chicago.

And probably more significantly, Dan and I have managed to spend quite a bit of time at Ikea, two granite warehouses, Lumber Liquidators for flooring, Sears outlet for appliances (for comparison only – everything we found online was a better value), and at Ikea again (so help me god), resulting in all major decisions being made or at least seriously narrowed down.

So today I just wanted to check in before too much more time passed because it’s clear things will start moving very fast and I want to document this process. Like a first time father who takes a picture of every new move? Hopefully not. But having not experienced this before, it’s been fascinating to me to watch the progress evolve so I want to capture it.


The short version of what could be a very long story is: after dismissing many other choices in between, our final decision for the granite tops in the kitchen ended up being our first: multi-color pebble. We’re very excited about this choice because it’s so unique, and is largely why we landed there: it wasn’t like anything else we had seen (and we looked at a lot).

 Now you see it….

…now you don’t. This was structurally probably the most significant piece of the remodel: removing that hutch for a variety of reasons, least of which was to widen what was only a 26 inch doorway into the kitchen. We are very happy with the result.

Bathroom door was left of center…

 …now it’s almost flush to the right. To the left will be sink/cabinet, shower, and the toilet, which will be turned to have it’s back to the left wall instead of the wall in front of you. We had originally wanted to move it all the way to the right but that was too challenging structurally (not to mention bad feng shui).