Kitchen organization

Lest you think that I was totally idle on Saturday, while the boys were working so hard to demolish the basement, I went to Lowe's to meet with the kitchen planner about adding a small desk with a filing cabinet to this corner of the kitchen. We find that papers that need to be filed downstairs just pile up in the kitchen, and I don't have a good place to pay bills, so this seems like a logical use of space. (The dog's water bowl will relocate after the desk goes in).

I'm so glad that I met with the kitchen planner. She had a lot of good ideas, like the two furniture legs on the desk part of the cabinet, and pulling out the desk part of the cabinet slightly to emphasize it more. It's hard to tell exactly what it will look like from the picture, but I'm excited.
I chose a cabinet with a big file drawer and a smaller drawer I can use for envelopes, stamps, checkbooks etc, combined with two knee drawers under the desk top. I decided on a decorative wall cabinet where I can put my cookbooks and a small stereo (which will be very nice!). The only hitch was that Kraftmaid had discontinued our cabinets in our color- Briarwood Birch in Buttercream. I had to order them in Maple, which was a little bit more expensive, but the nice kitchen designer gave me a discount, so it worked out to be the same in the end.

I also chose Dupont Certified Santa Cecilia granite (also from Lowe's) for the desktop. I would have liked to use the same butchers block as in the rest of the kitchen, but the oil in the wood makes its use with paper pretty messy (we already have problems with this when we leave the paper or the mail on the countertop). There also is a chance we can use a remnant of granite, which would save a lot of money. I should hear early next week if this will be an option. I ordered the cabinets on Saturday and they take about a month to arrive. Hopefully, we'll be able to handle the installation ourselves. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this project!

In related news, we met with a flooring contractor to talk about what we can do with our poor old hardwood floors. (Splintering, holes, and finish coming off are all problems that plague all of the wood floors in the first floor of the house- they were coated with poly before the house was sold, but the coating starting coming off within a few months of moving in. The dogs are pretty hard on all floors but they've destroyed these in a year!) Last spring, we both got really sick of the splinters and had a tile estimate done for just the kitchen-- $5ooo! Saturday, we found out we can refinish all floors on the first floor and the stairs for about half that price. We were really surprised- we thought that the floors were too far gone to fix, but the refinisher assured us otherwise. He said that they were like antiques and would never look perfect (we wouldn't want perfect new floors anyway), but could certainly be smoothed out and refinished to showcase their beauty (and not give us any more splinters!). We will have to stay out of the house for a few days while the floors are refinished, so that will be a pain but I can't wait to see what it all looks like when they're done.