Domestically Drowning: December 2013

Ain't she a beaut!!!!!!

When I started gathering ideas for my kitchen I was seeing these apron front sinks everywhere. Who am I to not jump on that bandwagon? After all they are fabulous. I was disappointed to discover that they required a special sink base and since we were painting the cabinets and not getting new ones, I thought I was out of luck. But then I came across this! The Kohler whitehaven sink. It's made to retrofit into a regular sink base for people who aren't getting new cabinets but want an update. Hey! That's me! Well played Kohler. Genius. So I toodle on over to the website and check them out. Pictures are stunning! Description is captivating! Price is........ OOMMPHH..... I. can't. breath. I hate you Kohler. I have never wanted anything for this house like I want this stupid sink. I decide I will do whatever it takes. I'll pick up cans by the side of the road, I'll sell my plasma, whatever it takes I'm having this sink. This is the moment I realized that I would be really picky about what I spent money on and cheap as hell on everything else. Since Joe is a contractor, he knows a lot of people in the biz. Including a plumber friend that was willing to get this for us at his cost. Helped. But I had a new goal. Oh I was still getting the sink, but I was going to pay as little as possible for everything else. I was going to do things on the cheap without looking cheap. Thus is born a thrifty DIY addict.

Cutting out old counter and getting sink base ready for new sink

Boom! That's one heavy mutha!

So obviously the next step was new counter tops. I went back and forth for a long time between granite and quartz. But remember I'm cheap and didn't want to spend the money. So we decided were were going to make concrete counter tops ourselves since there were abundant tutorials all over the place and they all made it look very easy. Joe also felt it was doable. Then one night I literally had a nightmare about having my feet stuck in concrete and woke up in a cold sweat. It was either cabinet painting PTSD or God was speaking directly to me telling me not to do it. The next day I was in Home Depot and they were having a sale on granite. I decided it was God and bought the granite. It's called steel gray and I think it was a very wise move. I can't even imagine what the hell we were thinking. With the way all the projects have gone around here, what on earth made us think we should take that on?!?!?

So we bought the sink and counter tops new. I'm 0 for 2 on the DIY projects for this kitchen. But here's where I start to catch up. We moved the old island cabinet base to the opposite wall making a weird little bump out less obvious.

But now I needed an island. I wanted to keep the butcher block island top that Joe had made when we first redid the kitchen but I was on the hunt for a new base and I wanted it to be open. I happened upon a display table at a flea market that was the perfect size. It didn't appear to be for sale but I asked anyway and she said absolutely. How much? 5 bucks. What? I mean it needed some TLC but still I figured something must be wrong with it but she said no. It was just too big for her, but it did have working casters to roll it. Sold! Brought Joe back the next day and loaded it up along with another metal cabinet I planned to paint to hold the kids craft junk and play dough. He was shaking his head in disgust the whole time thinking I'd turned into a hoarder. He said next I'd be keeping my take out containers and bringing home cats. I don't know why he doesn't trust me.