Omaha Steaks Review

First I’d like to say that I’m not getting paid to do this review. I’ve seen the Omaha Steaks banners online and I’ve passed by the stores for years, but never tasted anything. I’ve heard from friends for years that their stuff is good and I just had a craving. So for Father’s Day I [...]

First I’d like to say that I’m not getting paid to do this review. I’ve seen the Omaha Steaks banners online and I’ve passed by the stores for years, but never tasted anything. I’ve heard from friends for years that their stuff is good and I just had a craving. So for Father’s Day I decided to order one of their special packages.

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Kitchen Remodel Is Finished

Just wanted to start out with a before picture as a reminder of what the space looked like before. I’m currently in the process of remodeling that built in wall unit on the left. I had to remove lots of drywall and metal. We are putting in 3 big pantry sized cabinets (like the ones [...]

Just wanted to start out with a before picture as a reminder of what the space looked like before. I’m currently in the process of remodeling that built in wall unit on the left. I had to remove lots of drywall and metal. We are putting in 3 big pantry sized cabinets (like the ones we have in the kitchen and will include pull out drawers and shelves for the kids shoes, games, toys, and other junk. Even some stuff like luggage that we keep in closets upstairs. I’ll post pictures of that remodel soon.

We went with the Korel tiles from Costco. Measured the area and ordered them online. We couldn’t decide on our glass tiles, plus the granite is busy enough. If you see one section shiny and another not shiny its just light reflecting from that section. All the tiles are not facing the exact same direction and it gives off that half matte half shiny look, but when you stand in front of it its all shiny. I think the flash of the camera makes it worse actually.

Barstools added. We got a great deal on 4 barstools in the style we wanted from The counter also has under cabinet lighting using the Dioder’s from Ikea which are LED lights. They are also used in our under cabinet lighting.

Here they are. Dioders.

The faucet is a Hansgrohe single handle pull out and the sink is Elkay.

We took off our old window treatments and haven’t replaced them yet. Loving all the light that comes in every morning though. You can also see the high bar section on the right in this picture. I really don’t know what to call it – “high bar.” Its where our garbage can and recycling bin are as well as our “home center.”

That red table near the window, also purchased from Ikea, was going to be set behind the couch and used a computer workstation where the display would be projected onto the tv. However, there isn’t really enough room there, plus when sitting on the barstools your legs won’t fit underneath, so we moved it over to the window and we actually think its a better spot for it. One of the things before the kitchen remodel was that we had to replace those high hat lights frequently. However the two above this picture (which you can’t see) are on a dimmer switch and we have rarely had to change those bulbs. So we put a dimmer switch on the main kitchen lights to save energy/bulb replacement costs.

The kitchen and this family room have been Feng Shui’d.

TV stand and shelf from Ikea also. We went Ikea nuts. New TV, HD receiver, Wii, and plant.

Some Before and After Photos Of Remodel

I wanted to post a few more pictures because I kind of jumped ahead and skipped over some pictures I wanted to post earlier.
Tip: Use Wax Paper to move heavy cabinetry or other objects over wood or laminate floors to prevent scratching of floors.

Diapers work well too .

In this before picture look at the [...]

I wanted to post a few more pictures because I kind of jumped ahead and skipped over some pictures I wanted to post earlier.

Tip: Use Wax Paper to move heavy cabinetry or other objects over wood or laminate floors to prevent scratching of floors.

Diapers work well too .

In this before picture look at the top of the cabinets. We decided in the remodel get rid of that gap where we always filled with “kitchy” stuff. We didn’t want to do that anymore because we would just fill the space with whatever we could find and never liked it nor had attachment to. Every company we worked with whether it was Omega Cabinetry, Thomasville Cabinetry, or IKEA they all had a solution. IKEA is not custom cabinetry, but they do have 39″ wall cabinets and they were a perfect solution. We also gained a little bit of room if you measure countertop to bottom of cabinet with the new setup.

As I already posted that we scraped the popcorn off the ceiling and made it smooth. The reason for this was because we were moving the cabinets to the ceiling and the eye would be drawn upwards. Another reason would be the trim above the new cabinets would show alot of gaps or light holes because of the uneven surface. The third reason is that it just looks better and if you’re spending the money, spend a little bit more to get all the details covered. Its just a detail, but its a big one.

The new cabinets probably have 3″ from the ceiling as opposed to about 14″ with the old cabinets. The ceiling is almost never level, so this where the trim comes into play. Some people don’t even do the upper trim. We just felt it was another detail worth doing. The piece costs around $20 bucks.

This is our installer Marius putting in the uppers.

Here your eye is drawn to the ceiling. Can’t have the popcorn there.

Cabinets flat packed.

The whole kitchen pushed over into the other room.

Some before and afters of the wall knockdown:

After knockout.

The new pantry is split between the two tall cabinets that surround the refrigerator. I’ve already mentioned a few times, the paint is 0 VOC paint from Freshaire. You can get it at Home Depot. No smell at all.

IKEA Cabinets Installed Sort Of

We went with IKEA Adel Medium Brown cabinets with the new thinner handle Lansa handles. IKEA just changed over to the thinner model during our order.
We opted for delivery service so we didn’t break our backs. Plus with C pregnant, it was going to be my back that was breaking. Let the pros handle it [...]

We went with IKEA Adel Medium Brown cabinets with the new thinner handle Lansa handles. IKEA just changed over to the thinner model during our order.

We opted for delivery service so we didn’t break our backs. Plus with C pregnant, it was going to be my back that was breaking. Let the pros handle it for a little more than a hundred bucks. The total weight came out to around 1700 pounds. Yeh no thanks.

We had alot more boxes than this.

Uppers with microwave.

The rest of the uppers and lowers are in.

Looking out to the living room.

We originally had a SBD30 (sink cabinet 30″ for the non-ikeans), but the measurements were off. We went back to the store and got a BD36. Not a sink base cabinet, but a lower 36″ cabinet. We wanted a full door look without the false fronts sink cabinets come with. Nothing is installed yet here. We are doing a door/drawer pullout on the left door, and a hinged door on the right.

Where the old pantry was, we put in a higher bar than our countertop height. We used 39″ wall cabinets on the floor. To break up the space and give dynamic levels. Then we stepped up that bar about 8 inches and put short top around. You’ll see in the final pics.

Added 8 outlets to the “bar” area. Good for charging cell phones, a phone, and if we feel like putting a small appliance there we can.

So we’re going for the built in fridge look on the fridge side, but when the cabinets were ganged, they were installed too low. Actually I didn’t account for the door hinges on the refrigerator when I measured. I would later have to take out these big cabinets and raise the support rail myself. The 36×24 over the fridge was a PITA to deal with.

In this picture you can see the box frame position is lower than the fridge door hinges. So imagine if the doors were put on, they would not be able to open and close. The solution is to raise the support rail where the two tall 88″ cabinets on either side of the refrigerator hook onto as well as the cavernous 36×24 cabinet. Then place 1″ mdf squares under the Capita legs of the 88″ tall cabinets. This will give enough clearance to have smooth door operation.

Now done the right way.

Cabinet Demolition and Painted Wall

After researching kitchen installers, we chose to work with a man/woman team who had previous experience installing Ikea kitchens. If you need good Ikea kitchen cabinet installers at a good price in the South Florida Area, contact us and we’ll hook you up with them.
Our cabinets arrived a day later than expected so on the [...]

After researching kitchen installers, we chose to work with a man/woman team who had previous experience installing Ikea kitchens. If you need good Ikea kitchen cabinet installers at a good price in the South Florida Area, contact us and we’ll hook you up with them.

Our cabinets arrived a day later than expected so on the first day our installers were only able to demo the kitchen. They had originally planned to demo, paint over the newly smooth-finished ceilings and start putting together the cabinetry. After the demo was complete, we painted the cutout wall with Freshaire Natural Wilderness, which looks like a khaki gray color. This is a 0 VOC paint. No obnoxious smell and not harmful to breath in either.

Here are some pics of the cabinet demolition:

Popcorn Ceiling Removal and Drywall Demo

Here are a few pictures after the popcorn ceiling has been removed. Popcorn removal was definitely something that was on the fringe of our budget, but once we did it we knew we made the right choice.
We interviewed with 4 different companies that specialize in popcorn removal and we found Renew Ceilings on Angies List [...]

Here are a few pictures after the popcorn ceiling has been removed. Popcorn removal was definitely something that was on the fringe of our budget, but once we did it we knew we made the right choice.

We interviewed with 4 different companies that specialize in popcorn removal and we found Renew Ceilings on Angies List for the South Florida area. They rated high and were extremely good at what they did. We hired Renew Ceilings to do our drywall cutout of our pantry as well as the popcorn scrape. They brought in a crew of at least 7-8 people and got it all done – the whole job inside one day. Everyone we talked to said it would take a few days and some said we can’t stay in the house overnight. These guys are professionals and they left the place clean. It would have been a tremendous undertaking for almost anyone else we interviewed to get the job done in the same amount of time.

C’s parent’s just used this company the week before we did to scrape their ceilings and C’s mom told us that the primer was the reason she had a headache for 3 days. Well we’re eco friendly. So I haul butt down to Home Depot and pick up 4 jugs/gallons of this Freshaire Drywall primer. This paint and primer is sold only at Home Depot and has no VOC’s which means no headaches.

It costs a little more, but the amount is negligible when weighing in the discomfort and potential health issues from exposure to VOC’s from traditional primers and paints.

Ok so I was trapped upstairs during the process, but I took a shot through the plastic. They plastic up the area that is being scraped – walls, floors, you name it. In this case it was the area of the kitchen, living room, dining room, laundry room, and downstairs bathroom. We couldn’t only scrape the kitchen because now with the wall knockdown it transitions into the other two rooms. The whole enchilada would need to be scraped.

This picture shows the wall not fully taken down yet, just the hole cutout. The electrical had to be rerouted here and the doorbell was moved. Its that black thing in the foreground near the ceiling.

Here is why you want to remove the air vents before popcorn scraping. Actually the company we hired should have taken these down. It was two screws…

Closeup of popcorn scrape, primed, but not painted yet:

Here are some shots after they cleaned up the popcorn from all over the place and the drywall was well, drying.

New Appliances Installed

Happy Earth Day! The Earth Friendly and energy efficient appliances were installed about a month and a half ago and replaced older less efficient appliances. The dishwasher has a very high efficiency rating.

Happy Earth Day! The Earth Friendly and energy efficient appliances were installed about a month and a half ago and replaced older less efficient appliances. The dishwasher has a very high efficiency rating.

Remodeling Our Kitchen

Some of you know we are remodeling our kitchen.
What we’ve done and how we made some of our decisions.

New stainless steel appliances.

Sears is running a deal till early March that gives a 20% discount if you buy 3 appliances. Done.
We already have the Kenmore Elite french door/bottom refridgerator with water/ice on the door. Its really [...]

Some of you know we are remodeling our kitchen.

What we’ve done and how we made some of our decisions.

1. New stainless steel appliances.
   • Sears is running a deal till early March that gives a 20% discount if you buy 3 appliances. Done.
   • We already have the Kenmore Elite french door/bottom refridgerator with water/ice on the door. Its really a rebranded LG I think.
   • The three appliances we bought were the Kenmore Elite Dishwasher (Elite UltraWash HE 1315), rated high by Consumer Reports, Kenmore Elite Microwave 8083, again rated high by CR, and Kenmore Elite Oven #46713, unrated by CR.
2. Scraping the popcorn ceilings
   • Popcorn removal is kind of expensive and I looked into doing myself because its not that difficult to scrape off, but its an extremely messy job.
   • There are two options with popcorn removal. The first option which is the most common and least expensive is knockdown. Basically its a sprayed clay or mud that has a stucco like look to it, but flat. The second option which is a flat scrape is the most expensive and most time consuming option. To flat scrape its around double-triple the price and it requires about 3-4x the amount of time and you can’t live in the house when its being done (or so we’re told).
   • We found a company who brought in a crew and did flat scrape within 1 day. In and out. Great service and highly recommend them for popcorn ceiling removal in South Florida area.
3. Kitchen Cabinets
   • We’ve looked at 5 different Kitchen remodeling stores to compare prices. Home Depot Expo, Home Depot, a very reputable local Kitchen & Bath co., a wholesaler for Omega Cabinetry, and IKEA.
   • Home Depot EXPO – Retail prices, comfort of someone doing everything for you. Good for the person who wants NO HANDS on the job. Also good for higher end appliances, fixtures, and finishes. Again its retail prices and you pay for the comfort of someone taking care of it all for you. No ability to find best prices. At EXPO you get an account manager that manages all the sub contractors, but they come from different places and they never know what each sub contractor is doing so it can cause frustration for the homeowner when there is a communication breakdown. You can also opt to act as the General contractor and sub out the different parts, but you are still paying a middle man here.
     Final opinion: Considerable savings by going elsewhere, but would require considerable work/research/time on our parts.
   • Home Depot – Retail prices, semi-comfort of someone doing most of the job for you. Good for the person that doesn’t want much Hands on the job. Limited ability to find best prices. At Home Depot you also get an account manager that sort of manages some sub contractors. If you choose to do just the cabinets, then its up to you to get sub-contractors for everything else. You are still paying a middle man here. One bad item for people who choose to do the whole remodel through HD is that they sub out to all different companies anyways based on availability and then those subs tend to not have good communication with the homeowner and between each other. These are some of the reasons why there are a lot of complaints about HD for kitchen remodels. If we went with HD we were only going to order the cabinets from them.
     Final opinion: Cost was semi reasonable, but for a little bit more money, we could opt for the best cabinets on the market. So for around one thousand dollars more we could get Omega cabinets vs Thomasville cabinets. Omega is rated the best from Consumer Reports while Thomasville is second best.
   • Local reputable Kitchen co. – Very expensive – retail prices. Best option for the person that wants nothing to do with the remodeling job. You have one main contractor and he handles all the work. They used Omega cabinets. Very high end kitchen remodel place. This reputable local kitchen co. was even more expensive and charged a huge premium for using Omega cabinetry. There is a large mark up on these cabinets and they are rated as the best.
   • IKEA offers a high end look for an extremely discounted price. We have never been to an IKEA and had limited experience with IKEA products. Although we always loved their catalogs. However, that price comes with the hassle of assembly, cheaper quality construction, no customization in terms of special sizes, and limited styles.
4. In the end it came down to two things. Style and cost with cost weighing heavily. We loved the looks of IKEA Adel Medium Brown cabinets as well as the Nexus Black Brown cabinets. However, the closer we inspected the Nexus Black Brown style the more we were worried about chips on the cabinets. See Nexus BB is a veneered MDF, while Adel MB is of slightly better quality with solid doors. With two kids running around we didn’t want to worry about easy chips happening in the kitchen, which is what our old cabinets were. The other thing was cost. With IKEA cabinets being about 1/4th the cost of Omega Cabinetry it became a no brainer, not to mention we loved the style of the Adel Medium Brown. We were buying alot of other things, so the savings in the cabinets afforded us to do more around the house, like buy a new couch, new tv’s, a new wall divider, scrape the ceilings, other new furniture.

More to come later until then, here is a video of our old kitchen:

Kitchen Remodel Steps

I know we’ve been talking about this for a while, but we are finally really knee-deep into the process of remodeling our kitchen. I’ll post about each step individually in more detail, but for now, I wanted to post a list of all the steps we’ve been taking and still need to complete in [...]

I know we’ve been talking about this for a while, but we are finally really knee-deep into the process of remodeling our kitchen. I’ll post about each step individually in more detail, but for now, I wanted to post a list of all the steps we’ve been taking and still need to complete in order to finish this entire project! It definitely takes a lot of time and energy, but I know it will be worth it.

1. First of all, we had to come up with a kitchen design.

2. Pick out kitchen cabinets. The hardware can essentially come later, but needs to be done at some point too.

3. Buy new appliances. This needs to be done in order to measure correctly for the cabinetry.

4. Find contractor(s). J and I are working as the general contractors, but we needed to find people to do the actual work. I wrote about this step here.

5. We figured since we would be replacing our cabinets with taller ones that go up to the ceiling, we needed to scrape the popcorn off the ceilings and of course repaint.

6. Pick out granite for the counter tops.

7. Pick out tile back splash.

8. Choose new sink and faucet. We are going to keep our current garbage disposal and let it run it’s course.
9. Decide on whether or not we are getting new lighting fixtures and get an electrician for some other minor electrical changes.

10. Speak with phone company to see about adding a new phone jack. We changed things when doing the design and need to make sure that what we planned will actually work.
11. Empty all of the current kitchen cabinets to get ready for demolition. What a job!!!

12. DEMOLITION

13. Install the new cabinets, reconnect all of the appliances, sink and counter top installation.

14. Putting it all back together……..

Stay tuned for photos and updates.