Building Our Bar: Putting Down a Deposit and Finalizing Options

We had a follow up meeting with Panda Kitchen at their design center in Laurel, and I'm excited to say we ended up putting down a deposit for our bar installation!  We went into the appointment thinking we would just take a quick look at the design and put down our deposit.  However when we got to the design center we started wandering around all the different sample kitchens and began rethinking some of our choices.  

Originally we selected white shaker cabinets with blue pearl granite, but we switched that after seeing a kitchen in the design center set up with light oak cabinets and blue pearl granite.  We decided that the blue pearl granite was too gray and we didn't like it with the light cabinets.  So we stared at the granite samples for a while and ultimately ended up with Santa Cecilia Light, which is what we have in the rest of our house.  We also debated getting flat white cabinets with the full overlay, but decided to keep the shaker cabinets.  To finalize the design we added the same bar pulls that are in our kitchen and bathrooms.  This was a no-brainer add-on, since it was less than $15 to add including installation.

Here are all of our options:

Santa Cecilia

White Shaker Cabinets

Bar pulls

We're still working on getting an electrician out to move some of our outlets so that they aren't all behind the bar.  Once we get that resolved we can give Panda a call and they will schedule our installation.  Hopefully we can get everything scheduled soon.  We can't wait to get our bar in so we can spend more time in the basement, which is Daisy's favorite room in the house.

Building Our Bar: Getting a Second Quote and Purchasing our Wine Cooler

This weekend we had Panda Kitchen out to measure our space for the bar, look at some of their options, and get our free design quote.  We picked the same options that we did at Home Depot (whiter shaker cabinets and blue pearl granite).  Panda's installation was on special, which made it only around $100 more to have the cabinets installed by them, so we priced that out.  The quote came to $1900, which was about $700 less than the Home Depot quote where we were going to have to install the cabinets ourselves.  They also are going to build a cabinet for our angled wall instead of just putting a cabinet front there like Home Depot suggested.  We were really pleased with the quote so we set up an appointment to go into the showroom and most likely finalize the order this upcoming Saturday.

We also ordered the wine cooler we've been eyeing, so that we have it prior to installation.  We didn't want to spend a fortune on the wine cooler but we wanted something that could be used as both a wine cooler and beer/soda fridge.  We also wanted something that was a fairly standard size so that we have the ability to switch it out easily in the future if we decide to get something else.  We also wanted a modern stainless and glass look.  With all of this in mind we ended up getting this Magic Chef Dual Zone Cooler from Home Depot.

I'm really excited that this project is coming together quickly.  Hopefully we'll have the bar in place this fall, so we can use our basement a little more for entertaining.

Building our Bar: Planning and Getting our First Quote

Building a house is overwhelming, whether this is your first house or you 5th house, so it's natural to overlook a few things.  Well one thing I wish that we had thought more about was our basement.

We initially priced out getting the basement bedroom because we thought everyone loves more bedrooms and bathrooms in a house.  Then we switched to wanting the open concept rec room featured in our model because it was more appealing to us and we can always put up walls if we need to in the future.  I'm glad we went with the open rec room in the end.  It looks great!  I just wish we would have though more about how we want to use our basement when we made our selection.

Aside from our hardwood we went with the basic selections down there.  Up until about a week or two before closing we didn't even consider putting a bar in the basement even though it's featured in our model, so we never priced it out with RH.  We currrently have one outlet and one cable hookup on the wall that we will be putting our bar on.  Both of which will be behind the bar which makes it nearly impossible to put our TV on top of the bar once the project is complete.  Honestly we didn't even consider the complication with the outlets until we got home from our first design appointment.  So now we're probably going to have an electrician out to move the outlets up on the wall so we can easily hook up a TV.  Had I considered all of these issues when we purchased our house I would have at least gotten the pricing from RH and thought seriously about just having them install the bar.

Anyway onto our first quote appointment.  I set this up with Home Depot, specifically the kitchen design section, since they're our closest big box store and they had online appointment scheduling.  We measured our wall thoroughly, including the angled section of our wall in the corner and where the outlets are located (without remembering to think about the height of the outlets).  We brought our measurements with us to the appointment on a little sketch of the room.  This allowed our consultant to really price out everything we wanted.  FYI - the default for Home Depot is for you to order the cabinets and install them yourselves.  We were fine with this since we're only doing base cabinets.  Our consultant started by asking us what look we were going for and what cabinet we wanted.  We decided on a white shaker style.  These came with soft close hinges/drawers, but no pulls or knobs.  Our consultant did the design on his software using the cabinets we selected.  He let us know its way cheaper to rent their truck for an hour and take the cabinets to our house then to pay for delivery so we did not include delivery.  Overall the quote for the cabinets was roughly $1300 and that was with the cabinets on sale.  Here's an idea of our design.

Front view of the design

View from above (since we have the angled wall the far right cabinet is just a front)

3D view of the design

After we went through the cabinet design our consultant asked us if we had an idea of what countertop we would want.  We knew we wanted granite and one particular blue granite caught our eye last time we were in the store.  Of course it was level D, but we priced it out anyway because it would look so great with our basement furniture.  Here's a picture of our dream granite:

Blue Pearl Granite

The granite including installation was going to be another $1300.  So we're up to $2600 without even buying the wine/beverage cooler or the big screen TV and we would have to install our own cabinets.  We decided to walk away and set up more design appointments to get additional quotes.  Tomorrow we'll be meeting with Panda Kitchen, which my parents just recently used to renovate the kitchen in their new condo.  I'm hoping for a cheaper price, but we'll see.

Staying out of the heat = house projects!

It was an incredibly hot weekend, so my husband and I focused on completing some of our projects around the house to stay cool.  Mainly we hung a lot of stuff up.  We put up a picture wall in the morning room/kitchen area.  We also put up curtains in our office and guest room.  We ordered curtains for the master bedroom and are looking for a valance for the master bathroom.  Once we get those couple items, then we'll be done with window treatments.

Here's some pictures of our work from the weekend:

Our picture wall (looking from the middle of the kitchen)

Our picture wall (looking from the end of kitchen/stairs)

Curtains in the office

Curtains in the guest room

Curtains in the guest room

Update and planning for our first project

Sorry for the long time between posts.  We haven't done too much around the house lately since we were out of town last weekend, but we did make some progress on getting more decor on the walls.  We're still planning to hold off on painting until our one year follow up since we are already getting a few nail pops.  So none of our rooms are really finished, but we did get to a point with the powder rooms where we won't be doing anything else until we paint.  It's hard to get a good angle to really see what they look like since they're so tiny, but here are a couple pictures.

Powder room on the main level

Wall decor is up

Close up of our decor
We still need to pick up a couple candles

Powder room off of the rec room

After we "finished" the powder rooms, we worked on finding a stylish coat hanger for the rec room.  Since we went with the open floor plan rec room and powder room, we didn't get a coat closet, so we wanted a coat hanger that blended with the decor for when it gets colder outside.  We found this great coat hanger by Umbra on Amazon and we're really happy with how it looks in the room.

The coat hanger blends perfectly with our hardwoods

You just pull down the sticks and you have a functioning coat hanger

Speaking of the rec room, we're planning to put in a bar area similar to the one in the model, and we are starting to research companies.  So far we learned that we can't use Ikea cabinets, since we have an angle in the corner of our wall, and they're cabinets can't be altered.  We're going to start reaching out to other companies for quotes over the next couple weeks.  I'll do some additional posts once we get the process started, but for now we put our foosball table in the rec room.

Bar in the model home
We'll likely go with white cabinets to brighten up the space

Our current rec room
The bar will go on the wall behind the foosball table

Office

We haven't been doing too much work around the house, but we have hung a few more pictures.  Since it's just the two of us (plus Daisy) we decided to use the smaller of the two additional bedrooms as an office.  We hung all of the pictures on the walls and the keyboard is all set up so we have completed the room.  We used all existing furniture so this was an easy room to finish.  Here's a couple pictures of our completed office/music room.

Gallery Wall Project

We had a quiet weekend for the first time since we got in the house.  It was nice and relaxing.  We went out to dinner, got some shopping done, and got some little house projects done.  Our biggest accomplishment was hanging a gallery wall above our bed.

When we first moved in, we laid all of the pictures and wall decor we brought with us from our apartment on the ground and decided where we wanted to put different things.  We have quite a few canvases from our wedding and our engagement pictures.  We really didn't want to put pictures of just the two of us all over the house, so we decided to do a gallery wall with the pictures and other decor on the big wall above our bed.  It was our first time doing a gallery wall and we must have laid everything out about 15 different ways before we decided how to hang everything.  Once we got to actually hanging everything it wasn't so bad or at least it didn't look so bad.  My husband did all of the hanging :).  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Hard at work on our wall 

Our completed wall

We also bought some ledges this weekend to put up some of our decor that doesn't easily hang on the wall.  We're going to use most of them in the morning room, but we also got a small one for our guest room to display our tile from Mexico and album from Hawaii.  After finishing up the gallery wall we were on such a roll that we got the ledge up in the guest room.

Souvenirs from our Mexico and Hawaii trips

We also put up some decor in the powder rooms and a bunch of stuff in the office.  I forgot to take pictures so I'll update later on those.

Living Room

In preparation for our housewarming party last weekend, we finished up our living room.  We still want to get some decor for the walls, but we have all of the big items.  Since our main floor is all open we wanted to make sure the living room flowed with the kitchen design.  To do that, we decided to carry through the gray with pops of red from our bar stools in the kitchen into the living room decor.  We kept our existing sofa from Value City Furniture and our existing coffee table and end tables from Big Lots.  (We'll probably replace the coffee table and end tables, but these work for now.)  We picked up the red cabinet for under the TV, the red chairs, and the red pillows from Target, and we bought the curtains from Homegoods. Here's a few pictures of our completed living room.

We're planning to pick up a decorative mirror similar to this one for between the windows.

To complete the look, we're seriously considering getting a large Maryland Flag pallet style wall hanging for over the couch similar to the one below.  It might be a little much for some people but we both went to UMD and want to incorporate Maryland into our decor.

Housewarming Recap

We had our housewarming party on Saturday and it went really well!  For the past couple months, we have been busy buying furniture and trying to get as much as possible put together before the party and it really paid off.  Ultimately we know this is just the first of many parties in our new house, so we didn't worry about having everything perfect.  Some rooms still don't have anything on the walls and that is ok.  We'll get there eventually.

We really appreciated that so many people took time out of their weekend to show up to see our new house.   It was nice to see everyone and a lot of fun to show off the house.

I haven't taken any pictures of our newest projects, but you can see our new red chairs for the living room and red pillows in these pictures of the dogs from the party.

my parents' dog came for the weekend and she really liked sitting on our new chairs to see out of the window

our Daisy loved having so many visitors

I'll update later with better pictures of our living room set up.

Basement

We ordered our furniture over Memorial Day weekend and finally received our basement furniture last night.  Part of our sectional was on back order which caused the delay.  We put everything together and we're loving the space.  We'll eventually get a couple accent chairs to put opposite the sectional to make it a good area for conversation.  We're also planning to get a dry bar installed on the opposite wall (not pictured) and we're going to put a big TV (70" or larger) on the bar counter top.  Since it's just the two of us we really want to make this a fun space to have our friends over and to just relax and watch movies.  Anyway onto the pictures :)

Here's a before picture:

Our beautiful floors

Less than 24 hours later we have a usable basement!

Have I mentioned Daisy is loving "her" new sectional?  As soon as we put the sectional in place she hopped up and didn't want to leave it the rest of the night.  

We are working on assembling chairs in our living room to complete that space plus getting ready for our housewarming.  We can't wait to have people over to see the house!

Ready for Guests

We are getting our first visitor tonight, so we worked hard to get the guest bedroom all set up last night.  We used existing furniture and bedding in this room, and we're really happy with how it turned out.

We have been out of town almost every weekend since we moved into the house, but we have been working really hard to get everything set up during the week.  We are having our housewarming on Saturday, and although everything is not done at this point, the house is definitely in good shape to have people over.

After working so hard to get to this point with the house, I have finally come to the conclusion, with the help of my husband :), that it will take us months, maybe even a year, to get to the point of really feeling like the house is set up.  I am okay with that because we don't want to rush into buying stuff just to get it done.  We would rather take our time and search stores like Homegoods until we find the perfect accent furniture and decor for each space.  In the meantime, I'll keep updating the blog as we go.  

We're expecting to receive our rec room furniture tonight, so I'll be sure to post tomorrow if we actually get it.

30 day and we (finally) got our bedroom furniture

We had a super busy weekend at our house.

On Friday, we had our 30 day follow up.  We didn't have any major issues with the house.  Our biggest issue was the toilets not refilling every time you flush, but other than that there were a couple squeaky floor boards and touch ups.  RH went above and beyond with our fixes.  They fixed everything, including marks from our move-in and a step that our puppy decided to chew shortly after we moved in.  Now that we had our 30 day, I can say for sure that we are really happy with everyone that we worked with at Greenbelt Station.

On Saturday our bedroom furniture was finally delivered.  We ordered the furniture over Memorial Day, but our nightstands were lost in transit to the warehouse, which caused a delay in delivery.  Even though it seemed like we waited forever, we are really happy with our new furniture and feel like it was well worth the wait.

Our beautiful new bed and nightstands

Our new dresser

On Sunday we hung curtains on our main level.  We had picked these up at Homegoods a few weeks ago, but we had other things we wanted to do around the house before we had time for curtains.  We are really happy with the curtains we picked up and it's amazing how much of a difference curtains make.  They were relatively easy to hang and make the space look so much more finished.  We also found some red pillows for our couch and ordered red accent chairs.  Once we have the chairs, our living room will be complete (except for wall decorations)!

Red pillows!

Living room curtains

Morning room curtains

Blinds and a Grill

We were away the past couple weekends but we managed to hang some blinds and get our new grill put together.

Blinds
We went with basic white 2" faux wood blinds from Home Depot and we are installing them ourselves.  Installation is really easy so we're glad we decided to do it ourselves although we haven't been home much so we only got the blinds up in our master bedroom so far.  We're only putting blinds on the bedroom level and will just have curtains on the main level and basement.  We'll eventually hang curtains in the bedrooms too to dress up the windows but it will probably take us a while to find curtains that we like.

Blinds in our master bedroom

Grill

Our townhome has a small deck out back that we mainly want to use for grilling.  We picked up a small 2 burner Weber grill on our last trip to Home Depot and assembled it last week.  Unfortunately we were either not home or it was raining so we didn't get to use it.  We finally had good weather and a free night on Monday so we grilled and it was delicious.  We also picked up some new pillows for our chairs on the deck, so our outdoor space is complete.  It feels good to get one more space how we want it.

Our first time using the new grill

Living Room Rug

We went out of town this weekend so we didn't get any work done around the house.  We did get our new living room rug on Friday before we left, so we set that up when we got home last night.  The rug is absolutely perfect for the space and it is so soft and comfy.  We love it!  I'm still looking for a couple fun, red toss pillows for the couch and a couple red chairs to complete the space and tie the look into the bar stools at the end of the kitchen.