Kitchen?...slowly starting to look like one!

Ok...so we last left off and I was telling you about finishing my beautiful kitchen! In December...we did all the demo in the kitchen, such as, removal of the countertops, cabinets, and old appliances. Before we did the demo we went to Home Depot... they now know my parents as Dr. Mc.Dreamy and Katie Couric (that's house Brock describes them to his buddies at the Depot!) At HD we sat down with a nice young man named Jackson who put together our whole entire order of countertops and NEW APPLIANCES! It took about 4 hours to get everything together... so we were looking good in the time department to get the kitchen finished so I could move in... WRONG!!!!

BROCK--->

^ THIS GUY!

and his beautiful wife Teresa! :)

Brock... who is a very near and dear friend of our family... who is in the business of Restoration & Remodeling, told myself and my mom that if we expected to put new granite countertops into the kitchen that we would need to get brand new cabinets to go with it... so off to HD we went! (again!) We had to order new stock cabinets to match the granite and to make everything come together. We eventually chose the maple American Woodwork Cabinets (pictured below) and we were ready to go... WRONG!

After you order cabinets you need to wait for them to be built.. then shipped to HD...then shipped to the house.. then installed (exhausting process if you get my drift!) So we waited and were told that the cabinets would be in at about 4 weeks time, right after new years... WRONG AGAIN! They didn't get delivered to the house until about Jan 21st and were installed that weekend by Brock and my dad.

AND BELOW IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT!

HAHA... I WISH!

But anyways... the cabinets got delivered, countertops were getting measured, and appliances were going to be delivered as well. It was a long process.. a bout 1.5 months to complete the cabinets and 2 months for everything else to get in and semi put together... I chose to paint the kitchen STONED CORAL... NOT PINK! But stoned coral...to bring out some of the color in the granite! Looks great!

So here are a few pictures of the semi-finished product.. 

Until next time my friends... I will get a few better pictures! Cheers!

-D

Brilliant Ideas...

So before I wanted to move into the house there were a few things that needed taking care of. With Kmags being Kmags...she had all these elaborate ideas for the new pad. (For those of you that don't know who Kmags is, it's my mom! Kmags is her street cred name for when she is selling houses!) I of course started to build off of those ideas and came up with a few of my own.

On the first day that my dad and Brock went into the house to re-do a few things... they began with the small stuff.  In my dining room and leading into the living room there was a small railing that acted as a wall to separate the two rooms. I thought it to be a bit cheesy so I asked that we remove the railing and put a half wall in between the two rooms. (Sorry I don't have any before pictures of the railing...but its not too hard to imagine what it looked like.)

 Sorry I look a tad bit creepy standing in the kitchen in this one! :)

The next BIG thing I wanted to take care of was a new kitchen! Like I stated in the previous blog the house was built in 1986 and the kitchen was straight outta '86...the only things that had been even remotely updated were the appliances. So we wanted to update the kitchen just a tad bit... oh yeah, also... the previous owner must have loved the house so much that he took many parts of it with him. He must have decided if he was going to move into a new place he needed all the buttons off of the appliances in my kitchen!! So I didn't really have a choice and had to get new appliances. Sometimes I wish appliances could work with out their buttons so I could have saved a little bit of money but whatever...now I could work towards getting a great kitchen that I had always dreamed of. (Actually... I don't really have dreams about appliances and great kitchens...they are more like last minute thoughts of a great kitchen!) So the demo began...

 Here are the old yucky cabinets and appliances. If you look closely the buttons are ripped off the front of the appliances..

So the kitchen looked like that for a while before we had many of the new parts delivered... We will get to that at another time!

Thanks for checking in! Peace!

So it begins...

So... at the ripe age of 26 I have become a new homeowner. Well... it's not exactly a new home, but I sure do own it. At least that's what Wells Fargo Home Mortgage tells me every month! Before moving into my new town home, there were a few things in which I wanted to complete in the house before it really felt like my own.

Let me give you a little background on the house...This fabulous home was built in Germantown, Md in 1986. Two years after I graced this earth with my presence. :) It's located in the Waters Landing Community and feeds to Waters Landing Elem, MLK Jr Middle School, and Seneca Valley High School (GO SCREAMING EAGLES!). It a very spacious end unit, with a deck, natural light, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a lovely moldy picket fence in the back! Ok.. I'll just give you the picture...

So there she is.. my lovely new home. Did I happen to mention earlier that the family of Michael Malagari the 1st lived in this house already? Well... when my family moved down to MD from Binghamton, NY we lived in this quaint little home for about 2.5 years. We rented it during that time period and moved onto 2 other homes in MD after that, but this is besides the point. The reason for me purchasing this home is because I have lived in it before. I have gone through a long process of becoming the homeowner (everything I will discuss in this blog) and I put up a fight. I wanted to move into a house that I was going to be comfortable in as MY 1st home! 

So stick tight... I will show you the process from start to finish.

Cheers! :)