We had our granite installed this past Friday! I couldn’t be more pleased with how it looks.

The granite color is Kashmir White. I was so anxious because once it’s done, there’s no turning back. That’s part of the reason it took us awhile to choose one. Everything else we have done in the kitchen I’ve always known we could change it or modify it it we hated it, but with the granite, it was choose it and hope we like it. I’m so glad I like it.

The colors are perfect. There are subtle swirls of gray and tan.

The sink we chose is huge. Seriously, HUGE.

I mentioned in my previous granite post that we were going with the Ticor Zero Radius, but when it arrived I was really disappointed in the workmanship. There were small welding drips and one of the inside corner seams was a little jagged. These things weren’t hugely obvious, but this sink is fairly permanent once the counters are in, so I didn’t want to put something in we weren’t completely satisfied with. I called Overstock and the customer service rep was fantastic. They paid for return shipping and did free expedited shipping on this Kraus 32″ Single Bowl.

The Ikea 36″ sink base cabinet allows for a large sink. This is a 32″ sink which makes the interior dimension about 30″ wide. If you’re looking for a large sink to fit the Ikea 36″ base cabinet, this one really maximized the space. The granite installers did have to cut into the front and back support beams of the cabinets just a little bit to make room for the faucet.

The sink came with a rinse grid which was something I really wanted to try. It turns out our granite installers did a slight overhang for the sink cutout, so the sink grid gets caught on it when I lift it in and out. This is kind of a pain because I like to wipe out the bowl after doing dishes, so taking out the grid is like twirling giant 30×17″ baton. It requires a bit of maneuvering. Wet, drippy maneuvering. I do like that water runs under dishes in the sink and that it’s flat which keeps things like glasses from toppling over as easily. It also makes a nice resting place for the colander so the water you just poured in the sink doesn’t bubble back up into the colander. For now we’re going to keep using the rinse grid and see how we feel about it after using it a bit longer. If we get better at our grid twirling I could see it staying.

This is my first time living with a single bowl sink, and it is amazing. Life changing. Washing dishes is so much easier, and at 10″ deep hardly any water splashes out. This is a tight radius sink, so it is square with slightly rounded corners. I’m really glad we ended up going with the tight radius over zero radius (which has very square corners) because it is so much easier to clean. The zero radius does look more modern, but I think I would have eventually gotten frustrated by having a harder to clean sink.

We are planning on a light backsplash and spent some time last weekend going around and getting samples. I would love to incorporate some marble into the kitchen so I picked up a couple samples from The Tile Shop. One thing I like about them is that you can buy extra tile and return whatever you don’t use. Sheets can be returned individually and individual tiles can be returned by the box. With a natural stone tile, I like that I could buy extra and pick and choose the ones I like best.

This is the Lansdale Carrara 2×4. I’d like to thank the toaster oven and knife block for doing a fabulous job holding it up for me. It has more tans in it than the other Carrara options. I like the tan tones but this one has a few yellows and almost pinkish tiles which I’m not so crazy about. I like it a lot in certain lighting and in other lighting I’m not so sure. I do like that it doesn’t have much in the way of veining. I love veining on marble, but I think it would compete to much with the granite, so looking for a subtle marble.

I tried to position the camera so you could see the white cabinet right above the tile which is why these are at a bit of an odd angle.

This is the Hampton Carrara subway tile. I bought 5 of the honed 3×6 and 5 of the pillowed 3×6. I ended up smooshing all of them together to get a better idea of coloring. The pillowed tiles don’t like to stack for me, or even stand up on their own for that matter, that’s why there are a couple of flat tiles on the counter pushed up against them (which are samples of thassos marble from a local shop, but I need to get more to properly represent the coloring, so no pics of that one yet). The Hampton Carrara is much grayer and has some slight veining. I am worried the Hampton is too gray and would make the kitchen feel cold, but on the other hand the gray sure is pretty. It has a little veining which is pretty, but might compete with the granite. Hi, my name is Jena, and I’m indecisive.

These aren’t technically samples, but what The Tile Shop recommends you do is just buy a few of whatever you’re interested in and then return it, so that’s what I did. I am not sold on either of these yet and need to do a bit more stand-and-stare-at-the-kitchen-for-fun to figure out what I like. Staring at the kitchen and envisioning different tile options has turned into a full time hobby.

Another thing I’ve been working on is the peninsula trim. This here is a mock up I did with my dad to make sure we like the look and test out different paint.

He’s got all the right tools and know-how, so I can’t really take much credit for making it, but the design was my idea. We’re going to run it from the side all the way around the back. I had a scrap piece of baseboard that is propped up against it. It’s the same as the baseboards used on rest of our first floor.

We also still need to install crown molding around the top of the soffit and the eat in kitchen, change out the light fixtures, and move a few outlets. I don’t want to say we’re in the home stretch, but if I squint I can see the home stretch :).

See all of my kitchen renovation posts, and while you’re here make sure to check out my paint color galleries!

Linking up to: Fingerprints on the Fridge, Just a Girl, Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Green Door Designs, Boogieboard Cottage, Dittle Dattle, Keeping it Simple, Between Naps on the Porch, The DIY Show Off, The Girl Creative, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Home Stories A2Z, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, A Diamond in the Stuff, DIY by Design, Savvy Southern Style, Domestically Speaking,  Somewhat Simple, House of Hepworths, At the Picket Fence, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Remodelaholic, Thrifty Decor Chick

We found the slab of granite for our kitchen.

Here she is waiting on hold for us. We decided on Kashmir White from the different white granite options we were looking at.

This slab was lower on the garnet dots than some of the slabs we had seen, and I really like the subtle swirling of tans and grays. After looking at a lot of Kashmir White slabs, I was surprised at the variance in how they can look, even in a type of granite that is supposedly fairly uniform. Some were much more gray or tan, and some had a lot more of the garnet dots and black marks. None of these things are bad, just not what we were looking for. Just to give you an idea, these are a few of the Kashmir Whites I snapped pictures of from our many visits to different distributors.

This one had lots of small tan swirls. We saw this slab a couple months ago while just browsing, and it was this slab that made me realize I really like Kashmir White.

This Kashmir White slab was outside, so the lighting might be making the colors appear a little differently than the rest of these, but this one has more black marks.

This Kashmir White had lots of darker gray swirling.

Moral of the story, shop around!

We ordered this huge single bowl undermount Ticor Zero Radius sink (model S6503) from Overstock and are waiting on it to arrive before the fabricators can get started (insert me tapping my foot waiting). That’s what we get for waiting until the last minute to get our sink.

I read lots of good things about Ticor and they offer 16 gauge stainless steel at a really good price. This one comes with the custom rinse grid which I thought would be fun to try out. It is supposed to help when you have dirty dishes in the sink to let water drain under them (not that we ever have dirty dishes in the sink or anything), it is flat so things like glasses don’t topple over as easily, and it keeps the finish on the bottom of the sink nicer. It just sits in there so we don’t have to use it if we don’t like it.

I think this sink is my most anticipated item. I have always had double bowl sinks, and we were going to go with another double bowl since we like to use a small draining rack for hand washable items in one of the bowls. After a little research and reading about how much people just love their new single bowl sinks, I got to wondering if the pros of a single bowl outweigh the con of not having anywhere to put our little drying rack. So we did a test run and hid the drying rack. We didn’t miss it, but I was cursing that divider between my two bowls every time I hand washed a big pot or pan. Now I can’t wait for my 30 inch wide (interior), 9 inch deep sink. I never thought I would be excited about a stainless steel sink, but I am. The zero radius look sure is pretty too.

While we were picking out the slab I saw another white granite that looks a lot like marble, which I know a lot of people wish they could find to have the durability of granite but the look of marble (see more white granites in my previous post).

It was called White Princess. I remember seeing this somewhere else and asking the cost. It was in the top price range, as in they had groups A – E and then Exotic above that, and it was in the Exotic group. The previous slabs I saw were much whiter, but this one had nice gray swirls making it look a little more like marble so I had to share! I don’t think there are any granites that look exactly like marble, and you can see in this up close picture that the texture is a little different than marble. It almost has a translucent effect. It is very pretty in person.

I am not patient, so all this waiting is killing me. I can’t wait to see how our new granite looks!

Last week when I showed you our new kitchen drum light I also gave a sneak peek at our new range hood! I promised details, and details you shall have.

If you’re just visiting for the first time I feel like I should give a disclaimer and say those counters are not staying. They are our old laminate counters that we temporarily put back on our cabinets until we get stone counters installed.

We got this Electrolux range hood (number RH36PC60GS) majorly discounted from Sears. We needed an island range hood that hangs from the ceiling which are apparently quite a bit more expensive that similar wall mounted versions. I got lucky and stumbled on this one browsing online. I found it on the Sears Outlet website, but it was actually being sold at a regular Sears store. When I called to ask about it the Sears store said that they only sell this one online, and it was likely someone returned it, so they had it discounted about 50% off retail to get it out of the warehouse. We hurried out to the store and it didn’t appear to have been taken out of the box, so we felt comfortable buying it. It also came with a year warranty. We negotiated a bit more (you can usually negotiate prices on appliances) and got it down to $535.

Our old hood was recirculating, meaning it sucked up the air and spit it back out in the kitchen. I’m not even sure our old one did that much, it was in such bad condition. It mostly just made noise so we never used it.This is an old picture from right after we bought our house to give you an idea of the old setup. I think we’ve come a long way.

Recirculating hoods in general aren’t nearly as effective as vented hoods. Because of this, we decided that since we were taking out the soffit over the range and would be opening up the ceiling anyway, we may as well take advantage and install vents to the outside for the hood.

The first step to install the venting was to get all of the right parts, and we had to special order the hood wall cap that goes to the outside since the big box stores only sold 6” caps and we needed an 8”. We could have used an 8” to 6” reducer to connect the 8” vent to a 6” cap, but that is not ideal, so we found one on Amazon and had it delivered. We spray painted it white before installing.

The new hood required 8 inch vents. We discovered that the space where we would be installing the hood was only 6 inches. I don’t think we could have installed our 8 inch vents in a 6 inch space had we not had complete access to the ceiling. Normally I don’t think you would need to rip out your entire ceiling to install range hood vents, but with this little snag it meant we had to squish the rigid metal 8 inch vents into a 6 inch tall oval. Venting experts can feel free to critique us on this :).

It seems to be working fine, though, and everything we read said to not use smaller vents than recommended by the manufacturer because it can affect the airflow and also increase the noise.  We figured it would still be round and have the same overall surface area so we weren’t too concerned about squishing them a little.

In the picture below you can see 2×4 horizontal supports going underneath the vent. We took all of the 2x4s out to install the vent, then put them back up in place. The 2x4s are what are squishing the 8 inch vent into a 6 inch tall oval. The are pushing the vent up against our second story floor.  The two 2x4s on either side of the elbow (the elbow open end that is curving down toward the range) are used to support the hood and the other 2x4s are used to support the drywall that we replaced.

Make sure your venting is the right length before installing it. Just lay the venting flat (when you buy it, it comes as a flat sheet) and cut it with metal shears. Then lock it into a circle. We didn’t, and let’s just say it isn’t fun trying to get it the right length after it is already locked into a circle and installed in the ceiling. If your venting is already closed up in a circle, you can pop it open and lay it flat to cut it, then lock it back in a circle again.

After the venting was in place came the drywalling. I don’t really have a lot of tips on doing the drywall. We cut drywall to fit, screwed it in place using drywall screws, skim coated it, and sanded. It took a few coats to get it looking smooth, and it’s not perfect, but once painted the imperfections aren’t noticeable. The reason I don’t have a lot of tips is I’m still trying to figure out how to do it well myself. It’s hard to get the amount of joint compound on the putty knife and the pressure to apply it just right. I think it just takes practice. My best tip is to wear a mask when sanding the ceiling (talk about breathing in some dust) and a hat. A hat is a lot easier to shake dust off of than your hair.

Once the drywall was up and ceiling painted, we installed the hood per the instructions. That was the easiest part, and definitely the most rewarding. My dad came back over to help with this part, and he and Marty held it up (it’s heavy and glass, so better to have two people holding) while I screwed it in place. The actual hood installation took a few hours, from attaching the support frame on the ceiling, lifting the hood into place, screwing it in, hooking up the electrical, and installing the final covers that hide the motor and support beams and such.

The hood works really well and has four settings. The settings one and two are pretty quiet, the third setting is loud, and the 4th setting is like standing in front of a jet engine and only used if we really really need to clear some steam or smoke quickly. We knew when buying this hood it wasn’t one of the super quiet types, but we didn’t want to pay the premium to have a super quiet hood since the hood was a “nice to have” thing for us. It wasn’t something either of us felt was worth spending upwards of  $1000, which is what some of the nicer hoods would have cost. You can easily spend more than that on a nice island hood, but that seemed to be the entry price point for the nicer island models. We cook a lot, but most of what we cook doesn’t require much hood action. The first two settings get the job done for most of what we make.

One unexpected plus that we absolutely love now are the hood lights. They are really bright and shine directly on the cooktop. I don’t know how I ever cooked without them before. It seems so dark without them on now.

Our checklist of things left to do in the kitchen is getting shorter and shorter:

• Add trim/wainscoting around peninsula
• New counters
• Crown molding
• Paint soffit (it’s only primed right now)
• Tile backsplash
• DIY roman shade for window over sink

If you’d like to read about the rest of our kitchen details, see my kitchen renovation posts, and while you’re here make sure to check out my paint color and room inspiration galleries!

Linking up to: Fingerprints on the Fridge, Just a Girl, Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Green Door Designs, Boogieboard Cottage, Dittle Dattle, Keeping it Simple, Between Naps on the Porch, The DIY Show Off, The Girl Creative, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Home Stories A2Z, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, A Diamond in the Stuff, DIY by Design, Savvy Southern Style, Domestically Speaking,  Somewhat Simple, House of Hepworths, At the Picket Fence, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Remodelaholic, Thrifty Decor Chick

For our new drum pendant over our kitchen table. Isn’t she pretty?

So, I knew I wanted a drum light over our kitchen table. I’ve seen lots of bloggers all over blogland and Pinterest making their own using a pendant kit. All of the cheaper kits I could find only had one bulb (I wanted 2 or more and those kits cost more), plus I wanted a diffuser (that cover you can see on the underside of the light that hides the bulbs), a big shade, and a matching metal cord cover so you don’t see the cord coming from the ceiling. With all of these requirements, the cost of DIYing it wasn’t really much cheaper that just buying one, and buying one is a heckava lot easier.

I hunted around and found exactly what I was looking for at one of my go to stores, Overstock. It’s the Indoor 4 light White Shade Pendant.

Before seeing the light installed, I was all set to jazz up the shade and recover it in a patterned fabric or add a stripe or something around it, but after seeing it up I kind of like the softness of the plain white shade. What do you think?

I also changed up what’s in our ever changing frames. I put in the fabric samples I’m considering for a no sew roman shade and a table runner. Because of course I need to stare at them more just to make sure I won’t get tired of them too quickly.

Oh and if you’ve been following our kitchen renovation you might notice some big changes there in the background!

We finished the venting for the new hood and got the hood up. I’ll be back soon with a detailed kitchen update!

While you’re here make sure to check out my paint color galleries and room galleries!

Linking up to: Fingerprints on the Fridge, Just a Girl, Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Green Door Designs, Boogieboard Cottage, Dittle Dattle, Keeping it Simple, Between Naps on the Porch, The DIY Show Off, The Girl Creative, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Home Stories A2Z, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, A Diamond in the Stuff, DIY by Design, Savvy Southern Style, Domestically Speaking,  Somewhat Simple, House of Hepworths, At the Picket Fence, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Remodelaholic, Thrifty Decor Chick

We are now in the cabinet hardware buying phase of our kitchen renovation. That’s because we are finally putting doors on some of the cabinets! Since the doors are full overlay, the are difficult to open without hardware.

I looked around quite a bit for cabinet hardware, and the first places I looked were Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Target, and I didn’t see much I cared for, particularly for the drawer pulls. I knew I wanted bin pulls, and all of the ones I saw at the big box stores were too small. I was looking for 4″ pulls, and all the ones I was able to find at these stores were 3″.

Restoration Hardware has lots of hardware that fits the look I was going for. I trekked out to our nearest store, saw all the gleaming samples, excitedly asked the sales person if they had this one, and that one, and that one over there in stock, only to be told…they don’t stock the hardware in the store. Okay Restoration..ahem…Hardware. Can I order it? Why yes I can, and I can pay the shipping too, so I was told by the sales person.

I went home hardwareless. About a week later, I decided I would try calling another store in our area to see if maybe they stocked some of the hardware. They did in fact have some of the ones I wanted, though not enough of each, but they offered to order it for me at no charge.  Woo hoo. So I guess each store has a different policy on ordering the hardware.

Always the comparison shopper, I thought I’d check out Pottery Barn’s hardware line as well. It is only sold online, BUT they offer free shipping on hardware! I ordered one of each type of knob and pull that I thought I might like.

Now that I have both the Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware (let’s just call these PB and RH from here on out) hardware options in front of me, I thought I would do a little side-by-side comparison.

On top is the PB Classic Hardware 4″ Bin Pull The bottom is the RH Gilmore 4″ pull.

From left to right: PB Vintage 1.5 Knob, PB Classic 1″ Knob, PB Decorative Beaded 1.5″ Knob, and RH Duluth 1.25″  Knob. I only got one RH knob because I had already seen them in person and liked the Duluth the best.

Appearance:
While this is personal preference, the RH bin pulls have extra detailing that I think really add to the pulls.

I think both stores have nice knob styles.

Quality:
RH definitely wins for the bin pulls. You can see here that the RH bin pull is much thicker. The PB pull is might lighter weight.

Just to give you an accurate idea of the weight of each, I thought I’d break out my handy food scale.

The PB bin pull weighs 1.5 ounces.

and the RH pull weights 4.2 ounces.

The RH pull weighs 2.8 times the PB pull. It really is noticeable when you’re holding them.

The PB knobs are about the same quality as the RH. Both are a good weight and the metal quality seems comparable.

Size:
RH wins here. The RH 4″ pulls are longer than the PB 4″ pulls. Go figure.

The RH Duluth knob on the far right is 1.25″.  PB’s sizes vary, but all were smaller. The PB Vintage knob was substantially smaller than the other knobs, but the PB website says it is supposed to be 1.5″, which should make it substantially larger than the other knobs. It is called the Vintage knob. Did people measure things differently back in the day?

Well hello there. That’s s me in the reflection of the PB Classic knob. Does this picture make my right hand look velociraptor-ish or what?

Cost:
PB wins. They are cheaper and offer free shipping (without having to call).

Overall:
I think RH is better overall. The higher quality is really noticeable in person, and I much prefer the larger knobs. I also like that their 4” pulls are actually 4”. The PB pulls are cheaper, but for us the extra couple dollars to get the better quality RH pull is worth it for something we will use every day, multiple times a day, for many years.

While you’re here, make sure to check out our paint galleries, room galleries, and furniture gallery!

Linking up to: Fingerprints on the Fridge, Just a Girl, Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Green Door Designs, Boogieboard Cottage, Dittle Dattle, Keeping it Simple, Between Naps on the Porch, The DIY Show Off, The Girl Creative, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Home Stories A2Z, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, A Diamond in the Stuff, DIY by Design, Savvy Southern Style, Domestically Speaking, Pink Postcard, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Somewhat Simple, House of Hepworths, At the Picket Fence, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Remodelaholic, Serenity Now