I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!  We spent Saturday with my family celebrating my brother, Jason’s, birthday.  We were planning to have an oyster roast, as we often do for his birthday, but NC and its crazy weather brought us SNOW!  Seriously.  It snowed all day.  Last year at the oyster roast for his birthday, we were outside without jackets!  But that didn’t stop us!  My dad steamed 2 bushels of oysters…let me tell you, that’s A LOT of oysters for 6 people!  Plus a bunch of shrimp too.  But we finished ’em off like champs and then sat around feeling bloated and watched a few episodes of Modern Family.  It was the perfect way to spend a Saturday!  (Happy birthday, Jay!)

Aside from Jason’s birthday festivities, Charles and I ventured out to Lowe’s in the snow to look at a few finishes and get some ideas.  For the kitchen, we decided on white cabinets, white quartz countertops with touches of gray/silver, and a slate blue/gray for the island cabinets.  We also landed on keeping hardwoods in the kitchen.  We looked at some pedestal sinks for the guest bathroom that we really liked too, but I’m hoping to find a more vintage one.  I’ve scoured Craigslist and found a few that might work.  I just haven’t been able to pull the trigger.  Here’s what I’m going for:

On Sunday, Charles and I made the trip to go meet with one of our prospective contractors at the house.  We met him at 2:00, and it was about 34 degrees!  It was freeeeeeezing in that big drafty old house! I think our heads are still spinning a bit from the information overload.  We still do not know all of the numbers, but we got a few estimates back.  Some were right where we thought they would be.  A few were actually lower.  And a few were way higher!  I guess that’s how it goes in this business.  We talked in more detailed terms with the contractor about what we wanted and what our priorities are.

When we got up to what will be the master bath, we all sort of drew a blank.  It’s a big room and an open canvas, but that also makes it hard to figure out where we want all the fixtures to go.  Plus we have to think about reworking the plumbing.  So as we stood there completely stumped, I decided to give my design guru a call.  Charles’ cousin’s wife, Mary, is amazing at this sort of thing and always has great ideas and great style.  (Check her out at The Remedy House!)  Her and her husband, Michael, have flipped two houses; Michael is a realtor and Mary is about to be a realtor…so they are our go-to’s for a lot of questions.  Mary kindly ran over and looked around and took a few dimensions, and I know she’ll come up with something perfect for that room.  I can’t wait to see!

Charles and I spent the entire two and a half hours of the trip home making a priority list for everything we want to do with the house.  We divided it all up into five phases:

1.  Get the house safe and livable- this includes all exterior and infrastructure work, plus electrical work

2. Interior priorities- we went through by room and listed what the immediate needs are for each

3. Bathrooms- master bathroom first, then upstairs guest bathroom, downstairs bathroom, and ripping out the other upstairs bathroom

4. Kitchen- since our kitchen is ugly and dated, but functional, this is not a top priority; we’ll wait till we can do it right!

5. Other stuff- for example, fixing the garage doors, paving the driveway, and landscaping

It was a grueling process that took several hours, but we feel like we have everything in order now!  We are expecting (ahem, hoping) to get bids back from the contractors on Friday.  I’ll keep you posted…