Pottery Barn vs. Restoration Hardware

Holly and I went out the other night for some retail therapy for her. My retail therapy comes when we buy a TV, but for now, we went to Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware for lighting, fixtures and some furniture that we are going to need. Talk about two totally different experiences.
In both [...]

Home Depot vs. Restoration Hardware

Anyone that has been reading this blog for any amount of time understands that we have champagne taste on a beer budget. I’m pretty cheap. Holly has been pretty cheap. We are at the point now, where we are bragging to our friends about how little over budget we are on this [...]

My Blue Mantel

Well, we purchased our mantel the other day.  Actually, it is this one here to the right, however, we got it in a very dark, heavily distressed blue with a nice little gold leaf trim.  Holly found it on MantelsDirect.com.
The people at MantelsDirect.com are great and they offer a wonderful warranty if you aren’t buying [...]

Garage Days Re-Revisited

Since Metallica were such a bunch of bastards about the whole Napster thing, I’m stealing one of their titles for my post.

I spoke with Sig at Morgan Hill Garage Door Company today.  It was a pretty simple process of picking out our garage door.  He said go to the website, pick out a door and [...]

I’m Floored

Get it??? Thanks, I’m here all week.  Try the veal.
Okay, that may be the cheesiest tag-line that I’ve ever come up with.
Today, we made the single quickest decision to date on this project.  Picked out flooring in less than 5 minutes.  In fairness, we’ve known what we wanted for a long, long time so once [...]

Decisions, decisions, decisions

I really haven’t been in the mood lately to do much writing.  My personal blog has taken a bit of a hit as well.  Between work, family and actually building this house, the amount of free time to do recreational writing has taken a bit of a back seat.  Any who, we are starting to [...]

Appliance Shopping - Standards of Excellence - San Jose

We purchased our appliances this week from Standards of Excellence in San Jose. Since I mentioned early on in this blog that I wasn’t going to write about finances in terms of dollars, this is one of those hard to write posts. The place was really nice, however I don’t think that our budget was [...]

Plumbing Fixtures - SisBro - Campbell, CA

Did you know that you could buy dragon head sink faucets?  How awesome is that?  While it doesn’t go well with Craftsman style home that we are building, they would be wonderful in any type of design.
SisBro Plumbing Supplies in Campbell, CA is an amazing place if you need stuff.  They have an incredible selection [...]

The Demo is Done and the Framing Begun

W00T!!!
It’s been a while, but due to holidays, family, end of quarter and life, I haven’t been able to post much lately. Well, the good news on the house front is that all of our demolition is finished and our framing has begun. The crew is working on the garage first in [...]

Paint It Black

We hit Viking Door in San Ho the other night and did a little door shopping. Boy do they have you by the cookies for those things. God forbid you cheap out on a decent front door. It is the first thing that people notice. It is what gives the house [...]