Ode to the Kitchen

I think the kitchen is one of the most important spaces in the house. Think about entertaining and where the people flock... The food, the kitchen. Our kitchen (along with everything else related to this project) has been a labor of love. Lots o' labor. But now we have LOTS o' love. Below is a picture after the wiring and plumbing and insulation - right before drywall (oh, and there was plenty of labor before this pic). We had drywall up shortly thereafter and paint. Then cabinets! See that little faux door looking thing right behind Randy? That's for our fridge. Instead of buying a counter depth fridge (which has far less room and can run up to $1k or more than a regular one), we built a false wall for the fridge to sit back into - the fridge will appear to be counter depth, but will have plenty of room for party trays!

All of the cabinets needed assembly - but Ikea does have their stuff together - it took awhile, but all in all, we have some good cabinets. Thanks to Adam, my dad and mom for getting these suckers together.
Adam and Randy and my mom have worked hours to get to this point below. Hanging cabinets! What daunting task! Especially when your floors, walls and ceiling are NOT level. We had to make sure we had some cool lighting in and around the cabinets. The fridge fit into its cubby nicely....well, maybe we had to rip one side of the corner bead out to fit it in, but no one will see it!
Can you believe it's the same darn place??!! Check out the cabinets behind Adam's head - frosted glass with lights! Doesn't it make you happy? It makes us super happy.

I'm pretty much obsessed with our appliances too. GE french door, bottom freezer fridge (with a special space for a pizza box - Adam request). GE microwave and dual fuel range (gas on top, electric inside). Bosch dishwasher to top it off. I love the black dishwasher - mom has one and it doesn't show as many dirty fingerprints! We went with the stainless and black motif. I also want to point out the pendants! They look orange in the pictures, but they're actually red. They make me think of apples :o) The island is not fully operational, but it will be soon. Who is excited to come sit at our island, watch me cook and have a beverage??? I am excited for you to visit!

Can't wait to furnish!

As we continue to get the house put together again, I finally feel like we can start thinking about furnishings! I've decided to wait it out in a sense (e.g. pay for drywall and tile first), live there for a bit and then get some inspiration for furniture, etc. In the meantime, it doesn't hurt to look!

It's very exciting to put together a house because your style starts to shine through and Adam and I have decided that we want clean, modern, but not cold. A few great places to look for such items include West Elm, CB2 and Ikea.

Storage is tight in our little Vic Village condo/house/townhouse, so we're always looking for wonderful pieces with room for stuff! I love this bench, not too "country" but could fit lots of warm blankies and such.

In our "dining" area - I put dining in quotation marks because the first floor is going to all run together - we have some great space for a buffet and what is better than a buffet fit for wine???

Any suggestions are welcomed!

If you've never been to Ikea, you should go...

Ikea was once a name that I had heard occasionally when my Swedish sister was living with us while I was in high school....then I went to Sweden, it was everywhere. I thought, "hey, cool, Ikea is in every nook and cranny in every house here in the land o tall people" - but after coming back to the States, it had left my mind.

Then, kitchen cabinets became a topic of discussion during a Rehab's R Us meeting. "What shall we do that's cost effective?" Once again (thank you Bush family) Ikea came back into my life.

When you drive to Ikea, you'll see the sign from a mile away. The glorious gold and blue color sign will draw you in and say "please, buy a lot of things from me to furnish your house." You walk into to a warehouse type of store with kid friendly activities (yes there's a play room/kid center) and food....delicious, cheap, Swedish food. It's truly a maze, so you must allot at least 1 to 5 hours while visiting to get through the maze and you may feel too overwhelmed to purchase anything at first. I didn't purchase one item my first time.

But as we got further along in our project, I realized that I had to undertake the daunting task of designing a kitchen using the Ikea software. Then Adam (and his assistant Kaye or Randy, depends on the day) would have to take on the even more daunting task of laying out the electrical plan, the plumbing plan, the gas hook up and the assembling of every single cabinet.

We've made it through thus far....cabinets are almost in place with a few setbacks (hey, I'm not a professional kitchen designer, okay)...and we're moving along. Pictures are being held hostage right now by a digital camera and will arrive shortly!

You definitely need one of these things after you design your kitchen!

Behind the name

My little baby brother said "I don't get it" when I showed him our cool blog with our cool new background (thank you Under a Green Roof). It has double meanings - 1) we have worked our tails off day in and day out on this place, thus it's our "price" (like, dolla dolla bills ya'll and tons of time spent) of happiness (sure, it's spelled wrong; think Will Smith movie)...but we're paying the price for what we want and 2) Price is our street name and soon it will be the Price or the Place of happiness when we we have fabulous gatherings and make many a memory. Check out the every day apparel at Price Ave.

The Story of the Beginning

About a year ago Adam and I started talking about taking the "next step" and of course the next step (for us) was purchasing an abode. We starting thinking about where and from renting in Victorian Village (Vic Village as they call it) for 2 and 1/2 years, I had fallen in love with the fabulously fun artsy part of Columbus's downtown area. But what could we possibly afford in this market?

Thanks to our friends Andy and April, they let us know about this little gem that is 148 Price Avenue. We heard words like "bank owned" and "foreclosure" and thought yessssss, this could be a winner. Erin, our fearless realtor and high school swimming buddy from the days of yore, took us to the place and with her honest little self, warned us and said "this house will change your life." Why you may ask? Well, before we stepped foot inside, we had heard many stories about how this place became so cheap. Drug dealing, SWAT raids and unruly dogs were just some of the rumors - which proved to be true. The house had been vacant for almost an entire year and it looked liked someone wanted to flip it, but quit. Investors were drooling over this nicely priced place and said, no problem, it's an easy fix and sell. Realtors were popping up out of the woodwork. It all happened so fast....

We deliberated for a whole 24 hours after seeing the house; I had flown to Atlanta for work and from the Wyndam Hotel front desk, with shaking hands, I faxed in our offer. The next day we found out that someone else had bid on the house and we had the weekend (it was Friday at the time) to put in a blind bid. Yes, blind. We decided on something that just may work and Monday I received the best (and maybe also the worst) call - we had won.

We had two inspections of the house and nothing seemed too wrong. As Kaye said, "the bones are good." We thought, hey, no worries, some paint here, some drywall there, rip up the carpet, put down some new floor and wa-la! We would have our lovely Vic Village home.

Oh yeah...and we had to replace the roof - hence the blue tarp.

The windows were busted out during a SWAT raid. Replacing glass, no problem! Wait....you can't do that with Pella Windows - you have to order the entire freaking thing. For four months we worked in a boarded up house and tried to forget the other rumors that bums had taken refuge there the previous winter...

Our little saving grace - you have to admit, our little courtyard is pretty cool. We were fortunate enough to get the corner lot with the courtyard for privacy and a side yard for our future puppy. The mower is there for a purpose! Just ask the bum that Adam paid $5 to mow the side yard!

So within a week, we started on our journey that was our new house. We thought, 6 months tops, this baby is going to be great. 9 months later, we're not in yet.....but it's been quite a ride and one day we'll look back and laugh.

Demolition Day (Adam's B-day)

Demolition day! We were fools to think that we'd only fill one dumpster one time. May 4, 2008, Demo Day and Adam's B-day....we had no freaking clue what we were getting into!




Thanks to Randy, my bro, my pops, my mom and Smitty, we were motivated and ready to take on this eye sore in the neighborhood.
Again.....silly, stupid and so naive! Ah, but it was fun and we felt accomplished.