Me and My House

Some of you know, some of you don't that my daughter Molly was my ghost writer from the inception of the blog.  She was in her senior year at the University of Texas at Austin and was only taking 3 hours and nannying part-time, so she was looking for a project.  She came up with the idea that it would be fun to have a blog about the new house.  I would send her pictures and words with the pictures and she would blog.  Then she graduated and got really busy with WORK!  Before she went back to Houston after Christmas, she uploaded the Home Tour pictures for me.  So this post, will be my feeble attempt to do it on my own!

One of my favorite things about this house is that you can see the kitchen when you walk into the house (that can be good and bad!).

  I loved at Christmas, the Merry Christmas Banner that you could see right when you walked in, but of course, we have to simplify after Christmas!  The tulips below, were purchased for New Year's Eve.  They have been fun to look at as I have gotten used to the cleaner look again.

After a wonderful week at the beach with the girls, Rodney and I returned home and got back to work soon after we walked through the door. Things had been delivered to our house while we were away, so of course we wanted to get our new things installed and put away to see how they looked!

One of the things that arrived while we were away was a new faucet for our kitchen sink. We liked the previous faucet, but when we painted the cabinets grey and changed the pulls, we realized that the faucet no longer looked great.

The process of finding the right faucet was a bit tricky - we wanted one similar to this French chrome faucet, but we needed something that would work with the pre-existing holes in the marble.
I liked both this one and this one, but finally chose this Danze faucet while we were away on vacation and was excited that it had arrived before we got home. 
We won't be using the soap dispenser and I accidentally ordered two - oops! The third hole in the counter will be used for the disposal cover which I still need to purchase. Luckily, my plumber (Rodney) works on Sundays so we were able to get this done over the weekend!



We are very pleased with the final look:

Soon after Rodney finished the faucet installation, he went from plumber to tile guy! He had installed the tile  before we left for vacation but had not grouted it. 

I LOVE the final look and continue to be very happy with our tile decision!

One of the sweetest things about living here is the sweet little children who live across the street from our carport. Every time I drive up, they ask me what my name is. The first time we talked to them, Rodney tossed them a little Longhorn football he got at a UT game. 
The next day when they asked what my name was (they never remember it is "Miss Tracy"), I knocked on the door and asked the adult who answered the door if it was okay if I gave them candy sometimes. By the time we left for vacation, we were out of lollipops so I stocked up when I went grocery shopping.

Good thing!
An hour later... "Hey what's your name?  You have lollipops?"

I traded my lollipops for the pretend hamburgers and fries they were making with playdough in their garage.

I wish you could hear the sound of the kids playing right now. It is such a sweet sound!

As I mentioned yesterday, our painters came to paint our kitchen cabinets grey. They stayed until past 8pm, and our kitchen cabinets are now finished!

As a reminder of what the kitchen looked like before:


Here are some progress pictures as they were hard at work:


And by the end of the night, our cabinets were all the Benjamin Moore Silver Lake that I found on Pinterest.


I am so pleased with the results! As you can tell in the pictures above, they removed the silver tile that was previously above the stove so that our new backsplash can be put in.

As the end of the day was approaching and we saw the new look of our cabinets, we quickly realized that the old knobs and pulls were not going to work with the grey paint. We rushed over to Elliot's Hardware to get new brushed nickel knobs and pulls.


A few other updates that happened yesterday include:


Our hutch - filled with entertaining glasses and wine

As for today, I am flying to my hometown of Harlingen for the day so Rodney is in charge. He will be hanging a few things that we discussed before I left and doing some raking and trimming in the backyard. Also, the painters will be returning to paint the baseboards and the doors in the master bath from dark burgundy to white.

We are loving the tweaks that we have made so far to make this house our own. It was a beautiful house before that had been meticulously restored two years ago so it has been very easy to simply add a few finishing touches to help everything look just right with our things.

The title of today's post is exactly how I'm feeling - I am in LOVE with this house! Here are a few updates on what's happening in the Frye house today:

The painters are coming to paint our kitchen today! Here are some before shots of the dark wood cabinets which will soon be Benjamin Moore Silver Lake as I talked about here. We are also still waiting for the Saltillo backsplash (the one that we worked so hard to find!) which will go behind the stove.  

Our porch is now the home of the "breakfast nook" furniture from our old house - including the dining table, bench, and grey hutch.

We have new wicker bar stools in our kitchen which I love!

We have added some things to Annie's bathroom - including white framed mirrors, rugs, and a few other accessories.

And one of the things I am really loving about this house... the marble counter tops in the kitchen!

Another fun thing about this house - it's across the street from an elementary school! But warning: don't try to visit us between 7:30-8am or 3:30pm or else you'll face the carpool line!
So that's what's currently going on in the Frye home today! Of course, I'll continue to update y'all as we make more progress (especially after our kitchen is painted), and until then, we'll be busy getting things settled and enjoying our new house! :)