Granite Yards & Ale Houses

I’m so excited that we have finally decided to update our kitchen! We’ve been talking about this since the day we moved in. Brian says we should replace our kitchen counter-tops, and update the bathrooms in order to make the house more appealing when we go to sell. I wholeheartedly agree, but with renovations comes bills, so it’s one thing at a time. My mother made an excellent point, that if we’re going to do it for resale we should at least be able to enjoy it for a while. Case & Point! With that being said the time has come for the kitchen to get a face-lift!

There won’t be drastic changes, as we’re not changing the layout or the cabinets. I do not Love our cabinets, but there’s nothing wrong with them, so they’re going to need to stay. I would like to play with the idea of new hardware, and browse around a bit though. Now that we’ve settle on the fact, it’s time for granite; the fun began and we headed out to some granite yards! 

Strolling Among the Stones

While perusing the web for ideas I stumbled among some kitchens I thought looked nice and had similar color scheme to our kitchen as far as cabinet color, and wood flooring goes. I sent Brian a few pictures of kitchens with more of a natural tan coloring granite, but I also sent him a few with black. I wouldn’t have ever thought to go black, and while at the yard we focused primarily on the gold/tan stones.

Tan Stone We Originally Were Going With

After discussing with one of the contractors in the yard, he swayed us to look into the darker black stones. He mentioned all new homes use the darker slabs in the kitchens with lighter cabinets, it seems to be more appealing to the masses. If that’s the case we should redirection ourselves that way, being we want to sell the house as move in ready for the next owners.

This Is The New Counter-top

We made our selection with the steel gray granite, and we were sold on this! We then got a quote from two different granite yards, and of course went with the lower price quoted to us by Stone-Tech Fabrications. 

Brian is excited for them to come out on Friday afternoon to laser measure the counter tops for fabrication. While they’re measuring they’ll be able to let us know if we have the wiggle room to insert a bigger sink! I’m excited because I’ve talked Brian into also adding a slab of granite at the footing of the fireplace. This has been sitting just slightly unfinished for a long time now, and I’ll be thrilled to have it polished and completed! Another project checked off the list!

We still have fun in store for us this upcoming week. We can take our sample granite, and shop for some backsplash, and a new facet for our larger sink (Fingers Crossed)! We still need a new microwave, and little does the Hub know, but maybe we can give the kitchen a new paint job to go with the changes coming our way!

Stone-Tech Fabrication will be out this Friday for measurements, and next Friday for the install. Stay tuned for the update photos! Next project will need to be our Master Bath, the fun just never ends!

Celebrations were in order after a unanimous decision such as this, so we swung by the Yards Ale House in the Moorestown Mall. I tried an Ace Pineapple Cider, yum & Brian had a Great Lakes Eliot Ness. 

It was the food that was awesome and will draw us back. Expensive, so I’m not sure how often we will venture back out here, but none the less our meals were excellent. Brian got himself two street tacos. A Grilled Korean Beef Short Rib, which we both agree was the better of the two, and a Vampire Taco. Interestingly you can order any taco and upgrade it to Vampire, which is just a hard shell taco with cheese backed around the outside. I ordered up the Carnitas Enchilada Stack, it was ridiculously flavorful I can’t even put in to words how great that thing was!

VAMPIRE TACO - cheese crusted tortilla, carnitas, bacon chorizo, chipotle salsa, roasted garlic, cumin crema, guacamole, cilantro

GRILLED KOREAN BEEF SHORT RIB - spicy green papaya, sriracha aïoli, chili threads

CARNITAS ENCHILADA STACK - pinto beans, chipotle, pasilla, jack, avocado, pickled onion, jalapenos, fried egg

Have you recently remodeled a kitchen or bathroom, ideas/tips I should look into for our house? Leave me a comment I’m interested.