BIG news!!!

I have some big news to share with you all (finally). Three weekends ago my husband and I decided to go house hunting. We had come to the conclusion recently that the whole build-a-new-house idea was just too much for us to handle (and too scary financially) so we thought we would take a look at what downtown Ottawa neighbourhoods had to offer. We were pleasantly surprised to find a few homes within our budget that we would be quite happy in. A few days later an agent that my husband had talked to convinced us to put our home on the market the following weekend. !!!!!! I thought she was nuts but we figured why the hell not. So one week after starting to house hunt we had our first open house and it was a big success. We ended up with 2 offers and accepted one of them. Early last week our house was officially SOLD!. Last weekend we went to see a home that blew our minds. And a couple of days ago, that home became ours. If you think these 3 weeks were insane... we get our new house June 26th and have to vacate our current home by July 3rd. AAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! Hectic does not even begin to describe what this 5 week period has been and will be like. But I am beyond excited. The new house is the most beautiful home I have ever set foot in. I will share photos of it with you tomorrow. I thought today I would take you through the last 7 years I have spent in my current home. It is located in Ottawa's Little Italy (which I always really loved because I am half Italian), is 12' wide with 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths and is about 800 sq ft (I always thought it was 926 sq ft but it turns out that was the exterior dimensions).

Besides minimal landscaping at the front of the house, this is pretty much how it looked 7 years ago when I bought it. 

This is the living room right after moving in. Pale yellow walls and ugly oak floors. BLEH. A bit annoying that the front door opened right into the space so the back door became our main entrance. 

Walls were painted and my beloved forest mural was glued to the wall (and another sofa purchased). 

Then we decided to DIY a sofa. 

Then we found what is close to our dream sofa. 

Click to read more ...

My kitchen in a mag!!!

I am SO EXCITED to tell y'all that my new kitchen is featured in the October issue of Style at Home mag! YAHOOOOO!! And on two pages! I am so happy that all the work I put into the kitchen and the kitchen blog (with MUCHO thanks to Greentea Design) paid off and I got a little publicity. :-) I finally got my hands on a copy today and scanned it, as seen below, and it's on my Flickr in a readable size. Thanks Style at Home!

A new addition to the kitchen

Sorry folks, there will not be a Flickr finds post today. Instead, I thought I'd share with you a major purchase I made about a week ago. A bit of background first...

During the kitchen renovation, I wanted a dining table built because I needed something narrower than an average size table, and it needed to fit 6 people. My boyfriend and I were initially going to build it, but my contractor offered so we took him up on it. The table turned out to be pretty disastrous. The wood of the top ended up warping and splitting, and the pedestal base was completely non-functional for such a long table. In the end, I ended up picking up a couple cheap table legs at Ikea and adding those on, particularly for instances when some of my porkier cats would launch onto it from the countertop. Here is a photo of the table:

I've been looking for a table on and off for several months now and have had no luck, up until a couple Fridays ago when I took my boyfriend down to the Byward Market with me on a table hunt. We were in Stacaro, my new favourite store, when Jeff spotted a really cool desk. It was on sale at 40% off (floor model), and had a black steel base and a wood top, the same colour as my cabinets but a few shades darker. It came with a shelf attached to house a desktop computer, and we quickly discovered it could easily unscrew off. It was the perfect width (just shy of 3') and length. Here is a photo of it from their website:

SOLD! It arrived last Monday and I finally got a chance to try it out with the shelf (decided it was too distracting and hid my Pantons) and find some things for a centrepiece. I love it. I am so happy to have something straight to eat off of, and I am no longer embarassed to have people over for a meal.

There's a few more photos over at my kitchen blog.

My dream kitchen

This blog chronicles my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out my kitchen remodel blog for an archive of previous posts. I posted recently some before and after photos, and for this final post I'd like to share some photos I took for Greentea, the interview they have added to their website about my renovation, and a video tour of the kitchen.

My kitchen is complete, and I am ecstatic at the result. I can finally say that I have my dream kitchen. It is beyond my expectations, and every time I walk through my front door and see it, I can't help but smile. I am never going to want to sell this house. I can't imagine leaving this kitchen behind. I'd like to take this opportunity to again thank the folks at Greentea Design. They made this dream come true for me, and I am so grateful (and shocked) that they agreed to this partnership. It was alot of fun and hard work (on both our parts) and they were so patient and helpful throughout the whole process. I hope I can get in a trip to Toronto sometime soon so I can finally meet them and see their showroom. So thank you Greentea Design - you guys ROCK and I'm so proud to have a Greentea kitchen.

To start this post off, I wanted to invite you to check out the interview Greentea did with me that is now published on their website. They've divided it into 3 parts - Planning, Demolition and Installation, and the Finished Kitchen. What an honour to have my renovation featured on their main page. Here are some photos they've included in the interview.

I took some photos not too long ago for Greentea that really showcase the cabinetry so I thought I'd share some of them. (For the purpose of getting decent shots of the cabinets, the dining table and chairs were pushed into the living room).

For more final photos, and to see my video tour (complete with cat shenanigans), click HERE.

Before and after

Just a heads-up for those folks who were following my kitchen renovation. I've done a post over on my kitchen blog of before and after photos, which I think are really helpful to give a realistic idea of the extent of the project. A peek is below, and here is a link to the post.