Beach Trip Recap + House Update

**Anna Duffy** (0:03)
Well, hey, hey, y'all, welcome to today's episode of Every Mom Needs a Friend. We're back after a fun fall break. I don't know if y'all are following a school schedule, but if you are, you probably are having your fall break right now or some form of it. I have friends who are in different types of homeschooling situations and partial school, partial home situations. So maybe that's not relevant for you. But for us, we had some assemblance of a fall break. You could say to the beach, which is so great. And I kind of get into it in the episode about where we went, what we did. But it was just a joyful, joyful week. That was definitely refreshing and just resurfacing for my soul. We've been going through it in our house and with just lots of newness and lots of stress. And so it was a wonderful week. And we talk about that today. But I thought y'all would giggle that the working title of today's episode was honing in on good relationships and talking about honed countertops. Because I also give a house update in today's episode because I feel like y'all need it. I've been excited to talk about it. And this home, our over 100 year old home, is joyful, wonderful, great bones, but just needs some updates. That's what we're doing. And I talk about both those things today. So let's go ahead and jump in to today's episode. But first, we must do a big question. So everyone warm up your hands. One, two, three. So when you come to organizing your daily schedule, do you do A, a paper calendar, B, your phone calendar, C, no calendar, D, a combination of the above? Because for me, I have to have multiple layers of protection for my schedule.
I get in to today's episode with kind of talking about how stressed out I am, and that takes a lot of coordination to be the stressed, if that makes sense. So we have a paper, we have the calendar on our phone, and then we have some things that seemingly are slipping through the cracks. But hey, it's okay. We're here. We made it to today, so I hope you enjoy today's episode. Let's go ahead and get into it. Oh my goodness. I am so excited to be back. Wow. Isn't that just how life changes? You know, there's a Thomas Rhett song. Life changes. And I just think it's a little funny how I had this grand vision of doing a pack and prep with me for the beach on top of everything that's going on in my life right now, and also packing and prepping for the beach. It's just wild to learn this new version of life right now, where I feel like every day I wake up and I have to look at my calendar and I have to go, okay, what's in store for today? And where will I take a break? And when will I get to go to the bathroom? It is been a new normal that I am currently just getting used to. And so last week was, well, I guess I should say two weeks ago was a week full of just doing all the things that had to happen before we got out of town. But I mean, like any time anybody goes out of town, don't you have that sense of, you know, wanting to come back to a clean home, a home that you walk in, you go, ah, there it is. There's my bed. It's all nice and clean. There's the kitchen. All nice and clean. You know, everything's put in place. And that's just not my daily life right now in a construction zone. And so on top of doing whatever I could to pack and prep and prepare for the beach, to drive 12 hours to the beach, I also had to get my ducks in a row for them to completely gut my kitchen and them to gut my bathroom. So little things like that that I had to, you know, just add on top of packing and prepping for the beach. So today's episode is both those things, of course, as well as I think you'll deserve a house update. And I know podcast is, you know, verbally instead of visually. But I want to do my best today to kind of talk about both things because it is just the thick of it of what I'm going on right now. Oh, actually, you know what I should say, Christopher is mowing in the background. So excuse that background noise. But so for our kitchen specifically, we are doing, this week is cabinets. And I didn't realize that you even have to like really be there for a cabinet installed because I mean, I guess cabinet exterior, like the exterior of our walls, they are what they are, and we've already made that decision long ago. But for the island, we have to, I mean, the island is the size it's going to be. But I do need to sit there and there's going to be like four men that set it down and I take a step back and I'll say a little bit to the left, a little bit to the left. You know, like I think we do need to be intentional about how much space between every walkway. And of course, there's like ordinances for that, but he just wants me to be there. So this week, it will be kind of hands on deck for cabinet install, which will be great because don't you feel like spatially, you can really see what the kitchen looks like when you have the cabinets in. But then at the same time, it will be tile installed this week. Tile, I mean, for our master bath. We aren't actually doing, yeah, we're not doing backsplash. And so we don't have any backsplash tile being placed, but we do have in two weeks, we will have the countertops. And from our countertop place, we do have a couple of specifics. Like, of course, we have our huge slab for our island. And we picked this really beautiful white, I don't know if it's quartz or quartzite. I think it's quartz. So it's white with, you know, diffused white graining. You've probably seen it in every single house right now. And then, but on the exterior, so where our range will be next to our fridge, around like the L shape of the kitchen, we're gonna have this beautiful gray honed granite that has a little bit of a white veining. And the honed is important to me because I liked the grippiness and the matness of the honed versus kind of a shiny granite that you think of that's like sparkly in your parents' kitchen. You know what I mean? But then that exact same gray granite is actually going to work its way up the back behind the range, if that makes sense. So we're getting a whole extra like slab or half slab to go up the back side. So hopefully they can match that white vein kind of following its way through the backsplash behind the range. And so we also, I'm interested how this will actually look, but in my mind, it looks great. We're doing a like shelf, so a piece of the exact same granite sticking out above the range. So for, I mean, and I don't want it to be this, but it is going to be like a dust catcher, but you know, you can put some cute little spices and maybe a little plant or something that makes sense right behind the range. I might even install some sort of hook system there, but we'll see on that. So yes, we have countertops in two weeks, and I'm feeling excited about that. Also, the butler's pantry cabinets will be installed. And then in two weeks, the butcher block inside the butler's pantry will be installed. So we kind of have two weeks of base and countertops for the kitchen. But like I said, in the master bathroom, they will be tiling and it is going to be no small job because the tile for the floor is going to be awesome. It's this ginormous, like gray honed marble. And then for the shower, I don't know how to say it, but my friend Chelsea was telling me it's called zealage or something tile. It's this very specific look of tile. And we're going to do vertical stacked. But it's like this cool kind of teal kind of turquoise. I don't know why I picked it. I just love I was drawn to it. It felt very bathroom, it felt very clean and happy. So that's going to go in the shower, but it's going to be walls, of course, and ceiling just because we wanted that cave shower look. And our shower is really tall, so I hope it does mimic that feeling of a steam shower. But if you know this, I didn't know this, an actual steam shower is so expensive. You have to get all these extra sealants because you're basically increasing the moisture level. So to make sure no mold or anything like that. So we're not technically doing a steam shower, but I'm going to be so excited to take a shower in my house. As well as we have the bathtub, and it's just currently sitting in there right now. I should take a picture of that. I'll post a picture of that. But the tub is sitting there, and I have not been able to take a bath since I came to Louisville. Now, yes, of course, I'm taking showers, and that is obviously completely fine, but I am a daily bath taker. I do not take a shower before I go to bed every night. I know a lot of people do that. I don't, and so I've had to do versions of that because I'm like, you want to get in the bed clean, but I just love that ritual of getting in the bathtub. And so I'm so excited to take a bath in my beautiful bathroom once it's done, but they will be laying the tile this week. So that will be something that I feel like can really bring it together. So I'm excited about that. I did have certain questions for our contractor like plug placement is a huge deal. I know y'all know this. If you've ever constructed anything, you know that that's like a ginormous cost, a specific decision. You know, you want as many plugs as possible without being like, whoa, there's plug, plug, plug, plug, plug, because you just feel like especially in old homes, it's like there's no plugs. So we've definitely increased plugs and I've put plugs in certain drawers and the bathroom in the kitchen with the hope that we can like visually not see the plugs, but we have access to tons of plugs. So that was a big decision this week.