Project Overload

This weekend began with a quick trip to Lowe's and snowballed into a total house overhall. Here is the mess of major projects we got ourselves into... and I need your opinions.

1. Kitchen granite & backsplash

Lowe's recently started carrying a new brand of granite with prices starting at $39/sq ft, with a free stainless steel undermount sink. We thought this was a good deal so we went ahead and purchased 35 sq. ft of "White Pearl":

(Excuse the iphone pic quality). I liked this color because it was light and neutral enough to flow with the rest of our house and not clash with our new floor and backsplash tile.

Here is the floor tile I was thinking. We haven't purchased it yet, but at under $3/sf, I'm pretty sold:

I just love the puzzle-piece arrangement and the look of travertine (without the maintenance)—I think it adds a lot of interest. This tile will be going in both our kitchen and foyer.

We also bought this new faucet:

The total cost for the granite with installation plus faucet came to $1766. We had a ton of gift cards saved from credit card points, birthdays and holidays, so we actually paid nothing and still have about $300 leftover for the floor tile :)

So the granite and sink will hopefully be installed next weekend sometime (along with our new cabinet extension!).... which leads me to the next item on our to-do list

2. Kitchen backsplash

We went to a specialty tile store Saturday to search for the perfect backsplash. I fell in love with this one right away:

  I'm just not sure how busy it will look next to that granite...

I think I'll have to wait until the granite goes in to make up my mind. There are so many amazing tile selections out there, it's tough to choose just one!

But here's where the real tough decision comes in...

3. Bathroom tile

Since we're re-tiling the kitchen and foyer, why not just go crazy and do the bathrooms too?

This is the tile combo that had me at hello...

I've always dreamed about having a cool grey and white bathroom and I was absolutely smitten with this pair. We're going to lay large (12x24") rectangle tiles in a brick pattern throughout the master bathroom and closet, and tile the entire vanity wall with the glass accent tile. I love the look of the modern bamboo pattern on the floors. Just gorgeous.

But then I saw this...

It's the same thing, just in a beige color scheme. Ahhh, what do I do?!

I'm slightly more emotionally attached to the grey set but the beige set will match our existing paint color and shower tile, and the rest of the whole house better.

This might be the hardest decision I've ever had to make! What do you guys think...?

As if all these decisions weren't enough, Brad decides to call up a house painter to get the entire exterior of our house painted...

4. Peace out Pink

The days of the pink house were numbered from the start. I know the previous owner loved pink and drenched the house with it inside and out, but we're just not that type of people.

So I whipped out my color swatches and began the hunt for the perfect new hue:

Herbal Escape became the front runner:



And here's the progression of before and after, courtesy of Photoshop:

Before

After paint

But we're still not feeling those red bricks... so after considering staining and painting them, we decided that it would be awesome to replace them with stacked stone:

L-o-v-e.

We'll see how long we can live with the red brick before it drives us insane enough to shell out another small fortune for the stack stone, but soon enough our house will be looking like this!

As if all this wasn't enough... Brad decided he was sick of manually watering the lawn, so our yard looks like this right now:

5. Sprinklers

There's a major flag party going on in our grass for the big sprinkler install on Thursday. This project wasn't my first choice but Brad said it was necessary so there you have it.

At least we'll finally get some fresh sod on this poor patch of dirt in the back:

So... that's what's going down at our house this week. I'm slightly overwhelmed that this is all happening all at once, but I'm excited we're finally making some real progress!

Now... which bathroom tile... grey or beige?!