Steve likes a clear countertop and I've gotten to the point that I like it too. We had a space for the toaster oven built in to keep it off ov the counter. 

The backsplash is 3×6 subway tile with an accent strip of 1/2" tiles. They aren't all white, and they aren't all glazed which makes these little tiles more interesting in a subtle way.

There was enough granite for the window sill which is really nice! I moved some of my favorite paperweights to this window. Why didn't I think of that before!

There are two false drawers under the sink that pull open to reveal a tray. Great place for the cleaning brush.

The granite is really interesting to look at. There are bits of color every now and then – burgundy, orange, gold…

That said, granite is unforgiving. There has been a little bit of breakage. (Honestly, I never liked that sugar bowl very much anyway.)

You might be wondering about the baptism… Bear is such a cheerful baby! He rolls with whatever is going on. After his third baptismal dip he decided that he had had enough and he cried for about 10 seconds. Once he was back with his mom, he was smiling again. 

I'm sorry I haven't posted but I have been so very busy unpacking, cleaning, finding a home for our stuff, making other stuff go away… it was a little over-whelming. But now, it's done and can share what I think are the best bits. 

Best Bit #1: We had an excellent contractor, Rick Owens. He has an amazing crew. I have absolutely no complaints. How often do you hear that about a contractor? If you remodel, I hope you can find someone as good.

Best Bit #2: Everything feels so very clean. All of the trim was repainted and most of the ceilings. The white walls (in the few parts of the house that have white walls) are freshly painted. 

Best Bit #3. The white kitchen is light and airy and open. Yes, I'll have to keep an eye on the cabinets and wipe them often. I can do that. In fact, I'm happy to do that. When I had darker cabinets the dirt was there, I just didn't see it. Ick.

Best Bit #4: The natural hickory floor we chose is amazing. It looks more patterned in photos than it feels in person. It feels light, Scandinavian almost. It suits us well. And so far I can tell you that dirt hardly shows. 

Look at the before photo, below. Notice the fur down (or fir down, or soffit) above the cabinets in the breakfast room. 

It was 1' of dead space and it was over all of the cabinets here and in the kitchen as well. We turned that space into cabinet space, with solid doors, not glass.

The actual cabinets in this area didn't get ripped out. William, the cabinet maker, made new doors and drawers and built the cabinet to replace the fur down.

The plate mosaic looks much better surrounded by white. The wood floor adds color and texture. You might also notice that Orville trimmed out the shelf in the wall on the right where we put coffee mugs and Robert painted it. It blends better now.

Best Bit #5: We gained some excellent storage space! What is going into the new fur down cabinets? Things like the cups that go with my punch bowl. I don't plan to stuff these cabinets full but they are great for over-flow.

I'll show more beginning Monday. Bear is being baptized this weekend – in our pool tomorrow night with about 30 people in attendance to celebrate. There will be a more formal celebration at church on Sunday, followed by brunch here. I am oh-so-happy that the house if finished!

Janice, among others, commented that she really wanted to see the neutral quilt. I can't show the whole thing because of the 'surprise' factor – gotta save it until the book is closer to publication. But here's a little bit of it:

Quiet, with a very cute little bird!

In college, we had a friend who used to joke about names for rock bands. One he liked was Babies in Neutral, because babies are never in neutral. Sewing is not a neutral experience either – but using neutrals alone makes for a quiet kind of quilting. 

I made a pieced quilt (that I can't show you) in wild colors and big prints for the color book. The pattern was so fast, so easy, and so much fun to make that I decided to make a smaller version in neutrals to show with the colorful quilt. The two quilts are very different in demeanor – one is fun, the other is more refined. I wish I had time to make this one pattern up in many more colorways.

Below are two of the accent fabrics that I used in the quilt. As it turns out, the one I liked the most, the top fabric, didn't work at all. I realized that after I had sewn all of the pieces into place. Luckily I was able to replace them in a couple of hours. That sort of thing happens to experienced quilters, too, just so you know :-).

(I wrote this post on the way home from Austin. I'll show more of the kitchen soon.)

It’s been a little crazy at my house and I haven’t found enough time to post. The kitchen is nearly finished – I took these photos late yesterday. 

You can’t see one of the lights in the ceiling. The far light is in the breakfast room, the next one is one of two round, florescent fixtures that are on either side of the SolaTube.

Luis spent most of the day installing the sink. It was surprisingly complicated because the new sink is deeper than the old sink and the drain pipe was sort of in the wrong place.

Orville got most of the cabinet pulls installed yesterday. Robert and Jose painted – touching up cabinets, painting the walls, etc. It took all day. The open space in the granite, above, is where the cooktop will go.

I chose 3×6 white subway tiles and an accent band of 1/2″ white squares for the backsplash. Luis and I spent some time making sure that the tile was going to fit the space (it will). I think this will be something we won’t tire of and that will go with the mosaic of blue and white dishes in the breakfast room.

I especially wanted to show you the granite. When I went to the granite yard, I was surprised that most of the granite had small, tight patterns – like little dots, or peppercorns scattered densely. I think that most people imagine that if they choose a slab with a bigger pattern, it will overpower a small kitchen. I don’t find that to be true.

Don’t you think that the big pattern in the stone opens up the space? Steve and I do – and I have to say that the guys on the crew appear to love it as well. Granite this white, with this big of a pattern, is not the norm. 

Steve and I left town this morning to go to Austin for a friend from college daughter’s wedding. We left Orville laying the kitchen floor, Robert was doing something (painting or flooring), and I think Luis was going to start tiling the backsplash. When we get home it won’t be all done, but we will be able to start putting things away in the kitchen. Hooray!

I thought you might be interested to see what a difference a SolaTube makes. Here is the (empty) kitchen, before:

I took the photo above, mid-afternoon. I took the next photo at the same time of day, after the SolaTube had been installed:

The light in the room is not electric. It is shining down the inside of the reflective tube that ends in the roof. I wrote about SolaTubes when we added them to our bathrooms. Amazing, isn't it! 

The contractor says that we actually get more light from this than we would from a skylight. I think it's the reflective lining of the tube that does it.