The Waiting Game

In some ways there has been a lot going on in the past week; in other ways there has been very little going on.

My Week #45 for OrgJunkie is apparently a lesson in waiting instead of decluttering. We're making some decisions that are not only very costly, but that we will be living with for a very long time. Everything requires a lot of thought and reflection and discussion instead of simple, quick decisions.

The kitchen has been delayed until either the beginning of next week for the cabinets only, then the granite install after Thanksgiving; or the entire thing being delayed until the first week in December. I didn't realize while I was so sick that I needed to okay the stain samples the builder had done, or that I needed to pick out the actual slab of granite that would be used - I thought I just told them color names and they picked it up. Oops!!

I'm scared of some of the decisions I've made, and there are a couple of things where it seems like there isn't an option for what I want. This is approximately the color scheme we first wanted, dark wood with light granite:

I didn't want a lot of wood grain, but the wood they used has a lot of grain in it (maple). To have less, we would be going to a softer wood like pine - and we already said no pine as we've had furniture pieces made of it before and it nicks and dents too easily. Other woods that had less grain but were hardwoods are completely out of our budget. Also, we nixed the dark wood color due to a lack of natural lighting within the room and not wanting "the cave effect". So then we were looking at a color scheme more like this:

I originally went wanting a granite that was a lighter color with a lot of quartz or reflective bits in it and black veining. I did locate one and liked it, and then saw a very unusual slab of black that had not only reflective bits but almost pieces of what looked very similar to the wood color we chose (it really does look like wood chips in it!). I felt very drawn to it at the time and decided on it because it was so unique. Now, I'm scared that I didn't go with what I decided on ahead of time and found. I'm so nervous. Granite is expensive - if I choose something we end up not liking, we are stuck with it for practically forever.

So now we're at this color scheme:

It's the exact opposite of where we started out. I hope I have not chosen badly :( We are adding under cabinet lighting to keep the granite very reflective and increase the light in the room without adding too much to the electric bill (they will be LED). We are going from a single pendant over our sink which was already offcenter to a strip of 3 pendants that can be moved down and centered exactly over the sink and provide more light there and on the bar.

Another large consideration is the floor. The kitchen quote came in right under $20k and that means we have no budget whatsoever left for flooring. We have this awful, horrible black tile that never looks clean (I've ranted about it before) that we wanted to go over with laminate wood. We are stuck with the black tile for now, which was one of the reasons I went with the black granite; it will look good with the tile, and later when we DO get the laminate, the wood tones in it will also go well with the laminate.

Still very anxious about how it's all going to look.