House Project Central

Adam and I have been non-stop house-obsessed. It has been fun and challenging, but overall, we are just really ready to get our house put together and so we can relax. The past two full weekends, we have worked morning-night on our kitchen.

Here are a few before shots.

Before we moved in........ The wall color here is actually called "Peanut Butter"

JUST moved in.... dark, dark, dark. Brown, brown, brown.

Just moved in... looking from the living room into the kitchen.

First we painted the wall a celery green. In pictures the color looks a little more lime than it actually is in person. Sorry for the mess!

Then we took off the top cabinets:

And repaired/painted the patches

And painted our cabinets an Antique White

Oh hey Adam.

Then we decided to tile a backsplash. Don't let this pic fool you- I did A LOT of the work. Actually most of it.

We decided that open shelving was what we wanted for above the stove. So we just went to Home Depot and had them cut the wood to size. We had left over paint from our cabinets to paint them with. And we bought some brackets we both agreed on. Once we upgrade our appliances to stainless steal (eventually) I think the brushed nickel brackets will tie in well. I am going for the "cottage feel" with a modern twist. I believe I have heard vintage is the new modern?! I may have just made that up.

Tyson checking out the shelving situation.

And here is the final product (and by final.... I mean about 65% finished)

BETTER?! (note: no idea why it looks like it is dirty above the tile... shadows maybe?! It doesn't look like that in person I promise). Actually it's probably some left over grout I need to clean up.

And lets not forget our "coffee nook"

We still are not finished. Do you see the short wall with the wine and corks (below)? We are creating a little wine storage/accessory area. We are adding a few more shelves specifically for wine glasses and building a wine rack in the odd space under the counter for a "built in" look. This little space is so awkward.

Then we need to accessorize this place. And buy a buffet or hutch for the space across from our coffee nook. Progress people!!

And in other news. Meet my new obsession:

I think I will call her Layla. She is going to live in our living room and I am going to design around her. As you can see, we have yet to fix the trim on the wall behind Layla. But that is where the door used to be- that we filled in.

If you need a contractor, we are open for business. Griffindoor Construction. Our slogan is "It might not be perfect, but it looks good enough to us." Or Adam's suggestion: "HGTV" Homes by the Griffins, Tyson and Vino.

Weird Day

I had a weird day today. In a nutshell, I had someone call into my office today- when I answered, he proceeded to ask if he could speak to a man instead- when I put him on hold to find someone to handle him, he hung up.

Immediately, he sent two emails. One to our support team saying "Emily in sales seems to be ditzy, can someone else call me" and one to sales saying "I am having trouble getting someone competent on the phone"

HMMMM.

So I decided to call him back (there is only me and one other rep in sales). Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot. Called him back, every time he would ask a question and I would try to answer him he would say things like "you have really poor English" or "you are really confusing-you must not be very smart at this" Like REALLY, REALLY rude things. Finally, I told him that we were not a good fit for him anyways and that I couldn't help him since he was being rude. He then blew up saying even worse things such as "you are a terrible employee, you are not competent, etc...." at this point a tuned him out.... and he then hung up when I wouldn't talk to him anymore and I wouldn't transfer him to anyone else.

Fun stuff! Happy Friday everyone!

White or Gray?

I am going to try and tackle a mondo project this weekend. I am going to put white subway tile in our kitchen, as the backsplash of course.... all. by. myself. Why?! Because I have read tutorials and it just doesn't look that hard! But I can't decide. White grout or gray grout?

WHITE

or....

GRAY

Is this dumb to do by myself? In other news.... last weekend we painted our kitchen cabinets white, we took off the top cabinets and while I am subway tiling the crap out of the kitchen.... Adam is building the open shelves for the kitchen this weekend. Exciting stuff! Here's to hoping we don't screw our kitchen up and have to pay to remodel and redo it.....

C to the H to the IPOTLE

Today it's official- our company gets free Chipotle forever, whenever just for saying we work at SendGrid. Chipotle is on level 1 of my building and we are on the second floor.... I have never seen the guys in my office as excited as they were this morning when we found this out.

Now you may be wondering why I am taking the time to blog about this. Basically its because I know that most everyone likes Chipotle. And now that I get it for free, I can try everything on the menu and make new concoctions almost daily. What better place to share my Chipotle adventure than on my blog?!

My new favorite Chipotle meal: Steak Salad. Lettuce, onions/peppers, steak, mild, a little cheese, guac ON THE SIDE, and their vinaigrette. If you haven't tried their salads- do it! Their dressing is so delicious.

Happy eating.

Here goes nothing

Are you ready for the longest blog post ever? Wow- we have a lot to catch up on. I mean we have moved, have had several people come visit and have been diligently trying to get our house put together. Do you ever feel like crying because of how exhausted you are? Well that is me, almost every night.... hence, having no time to blog!

We moved in on July 18th-

Here are some "just moved in" pics of the house. All of our rooms are pretty tiny, so it is hard to photograph them! I am not proud, these are messy pics, don't do our house justice.... and are in no order what so ever. Don't judge me yet.

2nd Bathroom:

Kitchen looking into living area through the doorway (which will be widened!):

Upstairs Bath- this is the bathroom with the clawfoot tub:

Upstairs guestroom::

Backyard:

Adam and I's bedroom. Hard to call it the "master" due to its size

Tyson being cute

Mud Room

Living room

Basement

Notice the door that leads from the living room, to the bedroom..... this is our first project. (well second). We painted the living room a soft gray color. I say gray but actually it sadly reads as a pale blue. Slightly disappointing, but I don't hate it- just getting used to it not exactly looking like I was expecting! And I am not going to change it anytime soon- why too much trim to work around a second time.

Before Color (mind you- this was JUST after we moved in....):

After Paint Color (much better!):

The door that leads from living room to our bedroom

Filling in the doorway

I just realized I haven't taken an after pic after we filled in this door. Its filled in, though. So try to picture it.

Notice the brown- overly large couches in the above pics? These are all gone. Let's recap how that happened:

So after we bought a new couch (needs to be photographed)- got rid of the brown couches- yep we were those neighbors for a few hours.... we decided we wanted to do some readjustments on our kitchen. Notice the "hood":

Believe it or not, this is a fake hood. It serves no purpose and besides that, since our galley kitchen is so narrow- it make the area feel even more narrow. So we took it down. It gets worse before it gets better- as you will see....

We are still deciding if we want to take ALL of the top cabinets off.... do YOU have an opinion from these few pics? Imagine three long floating shelves with some white subway tile- yes?! We would just take off these now two lonely cheapy cabinets and add long, white floating shelves.....

Let me think what happened next. Somewhere right around this time my sis has come and gone (she helped paint the living room) and now Mikey and Allison are in town and I chop all my hair off....

Mikey and Allison left- we went to IKEA three times (some goods to photograph and put on here soon). Then Adam's mom came into town. We had a blast! Then Erica and Andrew came into town. We painted the kitchen and our bedroom that same weekend. And Adam and I are getting more sleep deprived by the day.

New bedroom color + new bedding. Nowhere close to being finished with any room yet. But a few improvements are happening.

I LOVE our GREEN kitchen. Love love love it. Picture it with ALL white cabinets, white shelves, white subway tile etc. White, white, white. I love white. And gray. And green. And teal these days.

The following Thursday night, Ali & Andrew Moore and Lora & Casey Winchell came to stay with us! We had a freaking blast of a weekend. Camping, hiking, drinking some wine, etc. Perfect. Hopefully Ali will blog about this soon. It was FUN people.

Back to the house. There are two areas to put our dining table. The above "just move in pics" show the table in the kitchen. We have finally decided to push the table out into the living room/new dining room and instead have just a coffee/breakfast area in the kitchen. I am still deciding what dining room chairs I want, so in the meantime, I redid a few of our old chairs for our new coffee area. Here is the before and after of the chairs:

Ha! Love how this picture still has the table price tag on it.... ANYWAYS.

We are almost up to date now. Maybe I can keep this up.... lots and lots of work to do. I am in the process of picking out our window treatments right now. Will photograph our current living room once it is cleaned + the few other odds and ends that didn't make it onto the ole blog :)

Toodles!

PS- One quick admendment to this post. Our very first project was putting in a doggie door for Ty which has been one of the best investments of my life. He LOVES it.

Beefin Up

I think this is the longest period of time I have gone without blogging. With that being said, just know that I know that you want to see house pics! I will post them ASAP- but here is a short summary of our house move in process and project process:

July 16- close on the house. Go over there that night to clean/sleep on an air mattress and have some sparkling wine

July 17-19- Move into the house! Exhausting to say the least.....

(During the week prior- try to sell my brown couches... didn't get them sold, so had to move them)

July 20-24- Work, teach at the gym, etc. Try to unpack a little every night. Oh! And take apart some of the cabinets in our kitchen. (aka: putting a hole in a neighboring cabinet and adding an WHOLE nother project to the list).

July 24- Start painting the living room! Kayley decides to come in town for the weekend. This whole weekend is spent by me taking my crossfit certification, Adam and Kayley finishing up the painting and having some fun on the side.

The week following consists of Allison and Mikey coming into town, us STILL not selling the couches (I kept listing them and people would call but I was too busy to actually SHOW them- which is a crucial part of the selling process). Deciding to START another project (filling in a doorway)...... ya- we like to start projects and just not complete them.... we still have boxes laying around.... :)

July 30: First trip to the new IKEA in Denver. Opening weekend- we went twice (story in itself). Bought a new couch in the process.... this leaves us with 4 couches sitting in our living room (old brown uglies + the new pretty one).

July 31: CAN'T TAKE THE OLD UGLY COUCHES ANY LONGER. Don't have time to show them- so we put them in the front yard with a sign that said "free couches". Couches were gone within the hour (thank the Lord!). We get a lot done this day- a lot unpacked and our house semi- put together.

Aug 3: Finish the "filling in the door" project (well mostly).

Aug 4: Mama Griffin comes into town for the weekend!

And now we are up to date on the house stuff- pics to come.

Oh! And the title of this post?! Well, Adam and I have decided to train to compete in crossfit competitions. Exciting and scary and well- lets just say I have been told to eat a lot because I really need to "beef up" haha. Love it.