Day 201: Snowcation at Greystone Cottage

We had a huge amount of snow fall (for Atlanta:) earlier this week, causing the entire city to basically shut down. Our entire hill was an ice luge. The neighborhood kids loved it. People trying to get to work, not so much. We spent a good amount of time at home during the week (Shannon braved the roads by Thursday, but I stayed home the entire week and worked from home - office was closed anyhow), so we made the most of it and got out and played in the snow and took a walk or two around the 'hood to check it out all covered in white. Here's a photo of our house all snowy and white - surreal isn't it?

Day 196: Real Countertops!

As you can see, our countertops have finally arrived and been installed. We had what Shannon calls 'custom' countertops for awhile, which is his little joke for particle board countertops to hold up my beautiful sink ;) Unfortunately the vendor got our order mixed up, and they came the first time with the wrong edge finishing. But, the correct countertops came in right before Christmas and we installed them just this weekend! They look awesome, and we're very happy with the way they turned out. We went with laminate for now, and the color is WilsonArt rustic slate. Eventually we want concrete coutnertops, but we want to DIY so they, like so many other things, will just have to wait!

Day 183: The Kitchen Sink

Confession: We haven't made a ton of progress on the house since we moved in. We've been too busy living IN the house to work ON the house ;) Can't complain too much about that.


We also haven't been great about updating the blog with the progress we HAVE made. We've had the kitchen sink installed since mid-November. Apologies for not posting pics sooner.


Here she is. She's a beaut. I never thought it was possible to fall in love with a sink until I spotted this beauty in Ikea (I know, right?). Never thought I'd find a traditional farmhouse white porcelain sink in Ikea, but there she was. It's the domsjo model, and we're really happy with the way it looks. Unfortunately our setup is not conducive for my newly purchased garbage disposal, which is a bummer. But I have a ncie deep double sink, which is great. The faucet is Moen, which is also great. The pull-down sprayer head didn't work, but they overnighted us a new one and it's gangbusters.

Day 179: White Christmas

We got a white Christmas in Atlanta this year - the first time in over 100 years! Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Day 169: Catching Up

Well it's been a little while since we posted anything.  We are right in the middle of holidays and have been pretty busy with traveling, visiting, shopping for gifts, etc. and working on the house but not so much with the blogging. 


So the picture of the upstairs bathroom is because we needed to do some hasty work up there about a month ago in order to keep our water turned on!!!  Unincorporated Dekalb County has an ordinance that mandates updating to low flow toilets and fixtures when a house in sold.  If everything is not updated at the time of sale you have 30 days to get it in order and inspected or you can't have any water.  We had been getting 30 day extensions while we were not living in the house but once they heard we had moved in they said no more extensions!  We had not planned to do any work upstairs yet but it was forced on us.  We had to take some areas down to the studs and tear our a few layers of flooring to run some new supply lines to the tub/shower, sink, and toilet.  We got enough done to pass our inspection so that's good but the upstairs bathroom looks pretty bad at the moment but functionally speaking it's in better working order even if it looks bad!   


Back to the other projects at hand.  The kitchen is primary focus.  The goal is to get it all finished up for Mary's big 30th birthday party.  The counter tops should be here tomorrow and if the weather will stay clear and warmer we can get to making some doors and drawer fronts to match the old stuff in the rest of the kitchen to go on the front of the base cabinets we replaced.  

Day 154: Christmas at Greystone Cottage

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

Here's a sneak peek at the cottage as we begin to decorate for the holidays... don't you just love this time of year?

Day 144: Shan's Special Recipe

It's been awhile since Shannon cooked breakfast... he's gotten so used to his other tools I think he was a little confused ;) Nice hand-mixer, eh?

All kidding aside, he did make us a delicious brunch today, and we were able to wash everything up in our newly installed kitchen sink and dishwasher. Yayyy!