It's been a while...

Soooooo, I took an unintended break from the blog. Again. No, we didn't move again (Thank God!). Life just became overwhelming and I had little time to do much of anything for myself. We got through Thanksgiving, the birth of our 4th grandchild, Christmas and the New Year. Here we are January 3, 2018! I has been a whirlwind of shopping, babysitting, cleaning and trying to find my footing. Of course things are never dull around here. lol 

I had intended to post my outfits everyday and that didn't happen but I did keep track of them in my stylebook app. Here are my calendars for November and December. 

As you can see I am still loving and wearing my black leggings but I have added navy and gray to the rotation as well as a few new black ones. They are just so comfortable! 

Now that the holidays are over and we have put away the indoor Christmas decor we are ready to start the remodel on the main floor. Or so we thought. I spent a lot of time planning our living room remodel and I was so excited for it! We took our plan from IKEA's planner and went to the store and bought our cabinets. The plan was to use shallow cabinets in the area where we now have 4 alcoves on the left and right sides of the fireplace. That was the plan. Here's what it would have looked like. 

The plan was to have open shelves between the upper cabinets as well but the planner wouldn't let me add them because IKEA doesn't sell them. 

So off we go to IKEA to purchase our cabinets. It is snowing. It started around 3 pm pretty heavy. By the time we are headed out around 7 pm the roads are a mess. I mean a mess. We used the GPS to help us avoid traffic due to accidents and it kept redirecting us! What should have taken no more than 45 minutes took a little over 2 hours. What a night. 

We get home in one piece Friday night, with our cabinets. Saturday morning we get up and start demolition. Lucky for us Ed is a smart man. He slowly started taking the shelves out of the alcove and removed the wood that was hold the shelves up. He carefully put a hole in the wall between 2 alcoves and guess what he found. A gas line. Yep. A freaking gas line. I was worried there would be plumbing because there is a bathroom above the area but I never considered a gas line. Needless to say we covered all that back up and changed plans. 

We loaded up the shelves and took them back to IKEA. Have you ever returned anything to IKEA? It was a long wait but other than that it was quite easy. And the way IKEA does their cabinets everything is separate so we ended up returning 103 items which made up 10 cabinets with lighting. Then we headed to the kitchen area and put in an order for four 24 inch which 24 inch deep cabinets. We decided to just put a cabinet in each alcove and call it a day. Once they are trimmed out and we get the shelves up they will look pretty good I think. It isn't my original plan but it's going to work out well. The bright side is that it won't take us nearly as long to complete this way. Always find the silver lining. 

The goal is to have the living room painted and back together by the end of the month. Ed says sooner but we all know things happen. And they seem to happen more frequently around us!

Today we had a woman from Traemand, IKEA's kitchen planning and installation partner come measure the kitchen. She was an absolute delight to be around! The kitchen has been designed but I read that if you have the kitchen measured "officially" and there is a problem they are more willing to accept returns of products already opened. The fee wasn't much compared to the cost of a cabinet and will be refunded to us when we buy our cabinets anyway. She did all the hard work with measuring walls and things and sent it to me so now all I have to do is add my cabinets to it and send it back to her and she will make sure I got it right and didn't forget anything. As soon as IKEA starts their kitchen sale, which should be any time now, we will get up there and order our cabinets. We won't be gutting the kitchen until May but the sale only lasts so long and they only have it a few times a year. And 15% off is worth the little bit of extra effort. Plus we don't have to have the cabinets delivered until we are ready for them anyway. 

Now I am off to work on my kitchen plan. I will share that once I get the "official" version. 😉

Thanks for stopping by! 

Chris