Overly Ambitious Home Remodel - Update 5

UPDATE: We have finally bought the two pendent lights mentioned below.  Progress.  Still, we have two more lights to buy: one for over the sink and one for over the dining room table.

As always, we haven't posted any updates recently to the blog. I know...we're horrible people. It's actually a result of being a bit busy and not having time to really make as much progress as we'd like on the kitchen/house. We'll get to the much anticipated overly ambitious home remodel update shortly. But first let me explain a little about what we've been up to.

(Halloween: White Swan and Black Swan)

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Paula is in the midst of her residency. She's actually now a senior resident and is referred to as an R3, which means she's in her 3rd (and final!) year of residency. The past couple months have been incredibly difficult for her. She's had some exceptionally challenging rotations, which is largely due to the combination of lack of sleep and long shifts, complex patients and families, difficult moral situations, and other fun stuff all jumbled up together. As I write this, she's in the midst of a 30 hour shift where hopefully she'll get an hour of sleep. The good news is that there's a few things she can look forward to.

1. First, in December we're heading down under to see our friend Rose get married in Melbourne. Rose and our other friend Lou are two great friends from Australia who made it out to our wedding. Unfortunately, we weren't able to make it to Lou's wedding, but we're not going to miss Rose's. 
2. Second, Paula is on the "Global Health" tract in her residency. This adds a unique glimpse into global pediatric medicine, which is something she's uber-excited about. So, she'll get the chance to spend 2 months in Kenya during March-April working with a Kenyan physician. 
3. Lastly, she's done in June! 

So, there's a few big things she gets to look forward to over the next few months.  FYI, she's amazing.

In addition to pretending that I've been working on the house, I've become a bit involved in my neighborhood. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm enjoying it and am currently the vice president and chair of the land use committee. I'm essentially the main editor for our community's blog and I also won a grant from the Pomegranate Center (a nonprofit design center) and Tully's Coffee to build a gathering place for our community.  The later of these things took up a bunch of time during the summer.

Okay, okay, okay...we'll get on with the house remodel update...

WE HAVE A FULLY FUNCTIONAL KITCHEN AGAIN!  We're a bit excited about it.  The counters are in, the appliances are all in (minus the hood), water is plumbed, and we have lights.  That's what I call a fully functional kitchen.  Okay, never mind the door that needs to get switched out, the floating shelves that are still under construction, the pendent lights that we keep going back and forth on, the floors that need to be stained, and the window trim that still needs to get installed.  The fact of the matter is, we can and have entertained friends now in our kitchen, which is pretty freakin' amazing to us after living in our makeshift kitchen in front of the fish bowl for nearly a year.

"What are our next steps?" you might ask.  Great question!  Well, Paula and I finally made a decision for our backsplash behind the cook top.  The backsplash will extend vertically to the ceiling from the counter and will frame the cooktop and our hood (not installed yet) that are along the green wall in the photo above.  It'll largely be a white 4x8 subway glass tile backsplash with a vein of this funky Regalia tile from InterStyle slightly off center (6x12 in the color Nip).  The tile will arrive on December 27th apparently, so it'll be a new years resolution for us to get the backsplash done in 2012.

We're busy but happy and we're very much looking forward to our trip to Australia to see our friends.  Did I mention it's summer there in December!

As always, here's our Home Remodel slideshow with a few more photos added to the bunch.