No huge progress to report lately – just little snippets around real life. M took E back to Minneapolis for her sophomore year of college, and I stayed home to get F settled into 8th grade. The two of us had a pretty busy four days of activities while the others were gone, and in between those acitivites, she and I did a serious deep clean of the third floor and a good cleaning of the whole house. It was long overdue.
We continued to streamline things in the house, and delivered donations and hand-me-downs to others. I pulled all of our appliance and fixture quotes together and started mapping out some of the next steps on moving out of the kitchen.
The finish samples for the ILVE range arrived on the doorstep Sunday morning, and that was kind of fun. The knob colors I think I want are this dark bronze (they look black in this photo) – but M also likes the polished chrome, so we’re still mulling over that. I shared a few more details on the kitchen finishes on IG and also shared this photo I came across in a newsletter a few months ago. As soon as I saw it I sent it to M because it looks so similar to our own kitchen sketchup model it’s uncanny.
I ordered color swatches of “Pigeon” from Farrow & Ball, and I’m going to pick up Benjamin Moore’s “Silver Song” this weekend. I’ve been thinking (and modeling) this kitchen for ages, and have considered just about every wood species and finish and painted color imaginable, until finally landing on a painted cabinet in what I’m calling an “interior version of the exterior colorway” on our house. In the gray-green family, but super neutral – not gray, and not sage. I’m not sure what the color is in the photo above, but that’s the tone I’m trying to hit here.
A good part of the cleaning and sorting has been of E’s art portfolio. We made some new storage pieces for all of her oversized work (which is most of it – she works BIG!) and now that’s stored under her bed. I took this painting to Artmart on Saturday to get it framed. The new dining room and kitchen will be filled with artwork – which is great, because I need some more display space!
And my garden is still a joy to me – dahlia season has officially kicked off, and the rest of the front garden looks pretty good, with the exception of a couple of plants that suffered root rot by the house when we had two 500+ year flood events a few days apart, in the middle of an historic heat wave. Gardening has been an adventure this summer, for sure.
Stay tuned for the coming weekend though – we’ve got scaffolding coming tonight! And some big mechanical decisions on the horizon – hello vent hoods.