Completed Backsplash

Saturday was a very eventful day for us.  I spent the evening grouting the kitchen backsplash while Travis was working. 

 When Travis got home, he installed the pot filler!

 The pot filler works great and I feel so spoiled.  I decided that it is going to add to my laziness - now when I want to fill my water glass, why should I have to walk all the way to the fridge or sink when I can fill it above the stove?

 After I finished grouting the kitchen, I decided that I may as well do the tile on the mirror in the Jack & Jill bathroom - not because I was having so much fun grouting, but more because I knew if I didn't do it right then, I would never finish it.  I forgot how much of a pain it was to grout and I was even sore the next day!  For this whole last week, even when I wasn't actually tiling, I was dreaming about it, so I am sure glad I am done with tiling for awhile!

 Also on Saturday morning before Travis left for work, we brought down the sand for the back patio and were getting it leveled out for the pavers.  It still needs a bit of work to make it slope away from the house, but we hope to make some progress on it before we leave for vacation.  We were going to work on it today, but we were exhausted from all the work yesterday, and it was rainy.

 We got two different sizes of pavers.  The bigger size is leaned against the box in the picture below.

Backsplash Accent Tile

After work on Monday, Travis and I worked on the accent piece for the kitchen backsplash.  We spent some time trying to figure out how many pieces of black granite to put in and then tiled away until 8:30 pm.  I feel like we are back in the full swing of building a house with eating our dinners so late again and having progress to post every night.  After we moved in and relaxed for a little while, I thought back and couldn't imagine how we didn't feel completely exhausted from working after work each day and on weekends, but as we get back in the swing of things, it is amazing how fast our bodies can adjust.  Now that I have said that, I hope my motivation doesn't magically disappear!  So, here's the progress for tonight 

We just have a little more to tile around the stove.  All that's left is the area above the cabinets to below the hood.

As promised, the pavers were also delivered this morning (3 pallets worth), so we aren't running out of stuff to do anytime soon.

Weekend Warriors

It seems after I post something, I always remember something else we did.  So we are still doing some little projects around the house.  When Travis had gotten the master shower all ready, he also put hooks and shelving in the "mud room".  Now, he doesn't have the excuse for not finding his keys, wallet, coat, etc. as long as he puts them away as soon as he walks in the door...Amazing how this little touch makes the house feel so much more finished when you walk in from the garage!

 He also surprised me this week by hanging shelving in our master bathroom (and cleaned too!).

 Another nice touch he did this week was adding the toilet paper holder in our master bathroom - like I said, lots of small projects are still getting done

 This weekend was a big weekend for us.  It was our last weekend off together before our vacation, so we thought we better get some work done on some bigger projects too.  Trav and his dad spent another full day rocking the outside of the house.  Trav's dad made a lot of progress and got to the bottom of the window on garage wall.

 Travis got all the way to the top on the inside of the arch.  I wasn't out there to witness, but I can only imagine how hard it was to do those cuts along the curve.  Again, the pictures weren't very good because it was getting dark, but when they finish at 7 pm and we didn't eat until 8, my stomach takes priority over pictures:)

 We had a spur of the moment decision this morning to do the backsplash tile in the kitchen, so I spent my Sunday tiling away.  After over a year off from tiling, it was fun to get back into it again.  We'll see how I feel after I have to grout though...

 I did all the walls up to the cabinets and we used a random pattern of 3 different sizes of tumbled marble and will do a different pattern as an accent piece above the stove.

 These 2x2 inches of honed travertine will go above the stove as the accent and we are going to put in some 2x2 pieces of black granite in there as well.

It already feels a lot more finished in the kitchen, so I'll be excited to see the finish product.  Notice the abundance of tile pictures and lack of rock pictures - not sure if I'm going to blame it on the lack of sunlight or the fact that I am working on the tile and am pretty proud of my handiwork...I'll stick with the lack of sunlight:)

We also made a big purchase on Saturday and will hopefully start installing pavers for our back patio this week.