Kitchen Update

I will include pics at some point but here's where we're at with the kitchen:
-kitchen cabinets will be installed in two weeks
-all appliances except dishwasher have been ordered
-kitchen counter will be installed in December
-kitchen floor is being laid now
-backsplash is likely slotted for December

The kitchen cabinets will be gorgeous. They are a wide rail shaker style solid maple door painted Cloud White (Benjamin Moore CC-40 if memory serves). We ordered them through Carleton Kitchen Creations in Carleton Place. The designer, Charline Beaulieu, came highly recommended and lives up to her reputation. CKC carries two lines; Acorn and Cuisines Laurier, with the latter being slightly more expensive. But this summer they had a promotion and we were able to get the Cuisines Laurier cabinets at same price. I think they are made by a Quebec company.

The countertop is an engineered quartz by Cambria, the colour is Snowdon. Essentially is a creamy coloured stone with flecks of taupe, mushroom and beige. We selected quartz because it is low maintenance. Its priced similarly to granite and other natural stone products but requires no maintenance. There are also more choices for colours, especially if you're looking for white.

I'll have to post later regarding the appliances because I dont recall the details. Seb was in charge of selecting and ordering these.

The marble backsplash is worthy of a story in itself and hopefully it will have a happy ending. Who knew it would be so hard to match whites? The team (myself, Irene and Charline) have all been looking for the perfect tile. Its hard to select because generally you're looking at very small samples and you cant predict what the overall pattern and colouring will be. Charline found a 12x24 marble tile at Ciot in Toronto. I think its called White Jade. We've seen 3 tiles and it looks like its perfect. Yippee! So the challenge is that we need something like 25 tiles. They have 25 in the store in Toronto, we have 3 samples, and then there are roughly 10 spare with chipped corners. So, we're leaving ourselves with a very small margin of error. But at $7.95 (compared to $22-25/sq ft) we decided to risk it. At best, we have a gorgeous backsplash and at worse, we have a $400 do-over. We're trying to hire an excellent tile guy so hopefully it'll end well. At this point, I've spent too much of my life looking at backsplash tile.

The kitchen, as part of the great room, will have a pine floor.

So we're making great progress here and will ultimately have a gorgeous kitchen, a few months too soon but the boys promised not to ding it in the meantime. :-)