Oven Hood Update, Kinda

In my Barbie Dream Kitchen Post I included a somewhat obstructed picture of our oven hood. On a scale of "can survive without" to "NEED," a glam oven hood of this variety was about a "really want."  With a million other interior and exterior selections in play, the decision seemed like one that was going to have to wait until close to the end, so that we could make sure it fit within our budget. However, the oven hood decision was made MUCH quicker than originally planned when we found out how affordable it was. With the hood in one of the models costing over $10,000, we were ECSTATIC to hear that the hood we wanted was less than a fraction of that. We'll take it!

Here's a picture of exactly what our oven hood will look like (same stain and everything!):

Since I have a super handy hubby, we also plan on adding an applique to it afterwards. This is our (read: my) favorite applique so far. Isn't it fab?

Here's a picture of an oven hood with a similar applique. The hood is different than ours, but you get it.

What do you think of doing the applique in Java? Our island cabinets are going to be Java, so it might be a nice tie-in.

Our builder could have done a stainless steel oven hood like the one below for cheaper, but we thought they were too modern/NY loft-ish for our European/vintage style house. They're still very chic, just wouldn't fit our motif.

We Finalized our Interior Paint Selection (& it's surprisingly non-pink)!

After sorting through what felt like T H O U S A N D S of paint swatches, we've finally decided on Sherwin Williams' Sands of Time, color SW6101, as the color for the majority of our interior walls. Our builder charges extra to change up the paint color in any given room from the main color, so we had to find something that would look good throughout the house and be able to blend with the different colors we're using in each room. We plan on changing it up in a few rooms (certainly the master closet, master bath and media room), but we feel like this will be a good fit for the majority of the house. Like it?

PS - Why are the names of paint colors so dramatic and/or ridiculous? I know this is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, but still. We thought Sands of Time was a little nuts, but here are a few other crazy names Sherwin Williams offers:

Gale Force
Houseplant
Envy
Cargo Pants
Sociable
Croissant
Rosy Outlook
Magical
Daydream
Childlike
Mystical Shade
Vaguely Mauve (my personal favorite)

Blueprints of Our Foundation!

Since we're still riding high on the excitement of our blueprints coming in on Thursday, I thought I'd share a picture! The foundation seems like the logical photo to share first, since that's the first thing that gets built. Have a fabulous Saturday barbies! xox

Door Drama

Every brand-new, expensive, barbie dream house should come with a fabulous front door, right?

Apparently not. The door that comes standard with our house is not so hot. In fact, it looks eerily similar to the front doors on our Texas rental home that was built in 1981. The builder's proposed remedy to this glitch is that we upgrade to the super chic mahogany front doors that he offers. The only problem with this is that they're $4,500 and require bi-annual upkeep by a professional mahogany door guy. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? 

After a cursory sweep through the 'hood to gauge what percent of our neighbors sprung for the pricey mahogany double door upgrade, we found the result to be almost 100%. How bad would it be if we were the only people in the neighborhood that didn't get the awesome front doors? We don't want to be conformists, but we don't want to be the house that brings down the subdivision either.

Here's one of our neighbor's houses, with the $4,500 mahogany doors. You'll see it's arched, as opposed to squared off at the top. This is what the majority of our neighbors have.

The builder's other suggestion is that we pay $1,100 (a more reasonable figure) for double front doors that are wood framed (with a maintenance-free wood) but have giant class rectangles in the middle. Although this seemed better initially, I've come to the following conclusions:
            1) they're not very ornate;
            2) they don't seem safe to me (but maybe I'm just paranoid); and
            3) don't lend much privacy.

 This is basically what they look like when stained:

What I would love to do is upgrade to the glass doors and find someone who does iron work to create iron grilles for them on the cheap, so that they ultimately look like this:

The only problem is, I have no idea where to find said iron-smith. Does anyone know of anyone who can do this?

We have to finalize the door decision in the next two weeks.What are your thoughts on our door drama?

The future look of our street!

I thought it might be fun to include a few pictures of the houses currently being built (or in the pre-permit stage, like we are) on our street as well as some that are already built. We love the European look of our neighborhood and can't wait to see our street evolve! :)

 This house will be immediately after ours on the right, with about an acre in between us and them. We haven't run into this family yet. :(

This house is being built by an awesome young couple on our street and will be on the right, just past the above pictured house. They're so much fun and their house's floorplan rocks!

This house will be diagonally across from us and is being built by another young couple that seems really fun!

This is our next door neighbor's house, which they just finished building two weeks ago! They're really nice and the house is AMAZING (they added a ton of bells and whistles, including geothermal heating). We heard it's almost 8,000 sq. ft. with all of their fabulous add-ons! Plus, they have a pink dining room! :)

There will be two of these in our cul-de-sac, hopefully a little different from each other. They belong to a young couple and the wife of that couple's parents. I LOVE my parents but next door may be a little too close for comfort, especially for Ross. Should be interesting!

Light Fixtures Have Been Ordered!

We all know that bad lighting can be unflattering to even the prettiest of barbies, but bad lighting can also be a bad look on your barbie dream house. We had to sort through a TON of whack (for lack of a better term) light fixtures that our builder offered to find the right lights. Here's a picture of the only chandelier that Toll offtered that I thought was Barbie Dream House worthy:

The only problem with it is that it's a "foyer light" and is thus only supposed to be used in the foyer. Our builder let us order it for all of the places that required a chandelier though, for which I'm eternally grateful since the dining room, formal living room and bathroom chandelier options were much smaller and not as grand.  All in all, we ordered 6 of these. There are still a few chandelier spots that we'll need to find our own chandeliers for, but we're already working on that (Home Depot has a surprising expansive, affordable selection). This is what I have in mind for over the island:

These are the lights we chose for the hallways and rooms that don't have fans or chandeliers:



Closet Inspiration

Since very few decisions remain at this point (thankfully), and one of them is the master closet, I thought I'd share some of my closet inspiration. We have a few space constraints that may inhibit us from doing a few of these, but they're still fun for a barbie to look at.

For the record, at this point I definitely prefer a cute dog hanging out with me in my closet (image 4) over a baby (image 1). I only wish it could be this little girl. Miss you baby. <3

As always, thanks for looking barbs! xox