Back Splash

Joseph and I spent whole week (actually 4 days) on back splash in our kitchen.

This is how it looks like before we bought the house...

This is how it looks like when the contractors finished the countertop and tore our back splash...

I'm too tired to write the story in words....

Let us just watch the pictures....

This is an advice for couple who are married and going to get married...

If you want to know a person, you can do the house remodeling together...

This is really an opportunity for us to work together.

We have been fighting since Joseph decided to do back splash by our owns.

I told Joseph it's not wise to do by ourselves at this moment. We're going back to Taiwan on 12/25 and the wedding is coming up.

He still wants to try...

Since he insists, I have to 順服~

The following is our progress....

DAY I----- (Tuesday 12/11/2007)

工欲善其事，必先利其器

We bought lots of equipments and materials on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning.

Look at Joseph---> He didn't know how to control the tile cutting machine very well at the first day so He was like 落湯雞 all day....

 

DAY II----- (Thursday, 12/13/2007)

Start to 貼瓷磚...

Joseph is getting used to control that machine...

And I am more familiar w/ the tiles...

Now it's 1:30am... We finally finish one small wall...

There's a 小插曲 which is our furniture arrived on Thursday morning...

This is our new dishwasher... but it doesn't look as nice as we thought...

Last but not the least.....Jiang-Jiang....

Our PA system arrived at the same day....

DAY III&IV----- (12/15~16/2007)

We finished tiling on Saturday night....

This is how it looks like...

We did grouting on Sunday afternoon after co-worker meeting...

Now we have to wait at least 3 days to seal the tiles....

Will upload more finished work after we clean up the kitchen...

If you see it carefully, you'll notice that the faucet is missing...

The countertop company hasn't sent a plumber to install our plumbing system in kitchen....

In the end of this page I would like to tell ppl who want to tile by themselves.

Do it if you have enough patience... and try to simplify the pattern if you don't have enough patience....

I have been sitting on my countertop for days...

I told Joseph that I might be the only sister in our fellowship who "SITS" on her countertop....

Kitchen Remodeling...

well... even though it's very tiring, we still learned a lot...

The contractor finished the flooring job past Sunday.

Overall it's ok, but I think their closing job is kinda sloppy...

The kitchen tiles are not that straight....

Anyway, we change another contractor for kitchen remodeling...

We want to upgrade our kitchen this time.

We went to a lot of granite stores recently.

and here'r from my final list....

Black Galaxy

Uba Tuba

They look kinda dark, right?

so far we haven't decided to upgrade it or not...

It depends on the quotes.

Will update it later once we decide to do it or not...

Designing Floor...

I found a good website to estimate the amount of tiles we need.

This is the one I like.

However, I want it a little bit different so I drew this one.

This is our utility room. The black line on the top left is door.

W stands for washer and D stands for dryer.

The floor will be like this one. The contractor will put "Texas Beige" tiles on the purple areas and "Canyon" tiles on the small white areas.

Hope this will look good...(It'd better look good... the contractor charges us $200 more for this extra job...)

Shop for Flooring...

Past 2 weeks, Joseph has been requesting quotes on our new house's flooring.

Finally we decided to hire a contractor to do it. This contractor is cheaper and we need to buy the material we want.

Last Saturday, we went to 2 Home Depot, 1 Lowes, and 1 tile store.

Yesterday, we went to another Home Depot and Lowes near our new house.

Finally we found the one I like and within our budget. (Joseph said I'm too picky...)

Here's our laminate floor. (Pergo Springdale Dark Cherry Glueless Laminate Flooring) 

Here'r our tiles. (12"x12" Texas Beige and 6"x6" Canyon)

 

We bought all these in Lowes. (This is a nice store.)

Right now Lowes has 15% off on in-stock laminate floor.

Plus Joseph got a 10% off coupon from har.com.

This is really a cool experience. It is too bad that we do not have enough time and budget to shop for more.

I believe this is a good opportunity for a first-house owner like us.

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Because of this experience, we notice our difference more.

Joseph cares more about the value and practicability but I am more artistic.

so we came to an agreement.

He set the limit and I make decision.