Day 26: The marriage counselor is in

Wendy
   The plumber came today to install the dishwasher and hook up the new sink.  I am so excited to see my dishwasher…oh, how I have missed you so!  No more continual hand washing dishes for me…woohoo!!  The crew was here this morning working on trim, re-hanging the cabinet doors (all upper doors needed to be removed for the painting of the crown molding)  and doing some prepping of the woodwork for paint. 
   This afternoon, Wayne and I went to the tile store. Oh my lord- I was sooooo overwhelmed.  We are trying to find a design and color scheme that will be timeless but also different than everyone else.  We took some boards home.  Out of the three we picked, we now don’t like the look and/or color of any of them! Ugh, Ugh, Ugh. It looked great in the store and in our head but not in our real, live kitchen.  Always take the samples home …always!  But we did get new wall paint and hopefully that will be the awesome gray we envision.  So back to the drawing board we go to figure out the tile situation. 
   Thankful that Wayne and I have been on the same page through about 95% of this renovation.  The paint salesman today told us that he usually feels like a marriage counselor when couples come in.  Hahaha-oh, it is so true!

Wayne
   I can’t count how many times I have told clients to “enjoy the experience of picking out tile and paint – it should be fun”. What was I thinking? I will never give that advice again – it’s not fun at all!
   The day started out great, the plumber installed the sink and the dishwasher, and our guys accomplished a whole bunch of punchlist items. All work was finished by noon and the house became quiet. Wendy and I decided this would be a great time to go out and do some tile and paint shopping. We stopped for lunch at Strafford Farms and we both spoke of how excited we were to go look at tile. I reiterated to her what I always tell clients – this will be fun.
   We went to Tri-City Masonry, which I highly recommend, and met with Laurie, who was great. But we left there with our heads spinning… we couldn’t decide a tile we liked, we couldn’t find a color we liked, and we were confused on what we wanted for a design (we knew we didn’t want the standard subway tile with glass accent). We left with a bunch of sample boards and headed off to the Sherwin Williams to get our wall paint.
   We knew what color we wanted before we got there - until we saw the sample chip under that florescent lighting… it was nothing like what we expected. We ended up selecting a different color (our 3rd choice to this point) but it did match the leading tile contender perfectly. Feeling pretty good and thinking we nailed the paint color and possibly the tile - we headed home.
   At home we put the tile board on the countertop and immediately realized it was not compatible with the countertop. Oh noooo…jubilation turned to despair and we just looked at each other and shook our heads…this is not fun!  Oh the bright side - we do like the new paint color though.