Big Purchases

Me and the hubby made two major purchases for the house this week.

The first was the mattress for our new king-sized bed.  We cannot wait to have a king bed!  Ya know, because the bed can get a little cramped when this one decides to sleep with us every night. :)

My parents got themselves a Tempurpedic mattress, years ago, when they first came out.  They swear by it, and even purchased a new one for their new house, when they moved to NC.  That meant that their old Tempurpedic was put into one of their guest bedrooms.  Can you guess which bedroom my hubby and I sleep in every time we visit them?  Yup, that's right...the one with the Tempurpedic.

So when Pete and I decided to get a king bed for our new house, we also made the decision to invest in a Tempurpedic.  {Let's be serious...a Tempurpedic mattress is expensive, and I do consider it an investment since we rest up on it every single night.}

I received an email that my local Ashley store was running a $200 off Tempurpedic promotion.  I could barely believe my eyes because Tempurpedic is known to be a brand that does not give any sort of discounts.  With these savings on my mind, I convinced my hubby to head to the store with me on our way home from work this week.  It took three whole seconds of laying on the TEMPUR-Cloud to be sold.  That was the mattress for us.  And luckily {this almost NEVER happens}, we fell in love with that one, and not the Cloud Luxe or Cloud Supreme, which are much more pricey.

Besides the $200 off, Ashley also gave us a 10% discount on the mattress cover, as well as free delivery.  And the no interest financing until 2016 didn't hurt either.

Now, onto our second huge purchase this week...our countertops.

We weren't told by our GC to get our countertops yet, but I researched the Allen + Roth brand online, and on their website it states that they sometimes need a lead time of 21 business days AFTER the template is made.  This, combined with the fact that the holidays are right around the corner, and the entire world is trying to get their kitchen in order for said holidays, made me want to get to Lowe's and put the wheels in motion.

We stopped by our local Lowe's and the helpful sales person confirmed that we needed to get a move on if we wanted them in in time for Christmas {yiiiiiikes}.  She told us to provide a rough sketch of our countertop space, along with the dimensions, so she could price everything out for us.  I put together this drawing using Floorplanner.com {the same program I used to put together our home's floor plans...see here} and sent it off to our sales person. 

Within an hour, she had the price of our desired countertop {Allen + Roth, solid surface, in White}, plus a couple others, in case we wanted comparables.

Since we were purchasing over 25 sq. ft. of countertop...in fact, we were purchasing almost double that...we were eligible for a free sink.  Scoreeee!  That means the one we previously purchased {that I mistakenly bought too large for the cabinet it'd be installed in anyway} would be going back...saving us a couple hundred dollars.

For our free sink, we selected one that was stainless steel and single-basin in design.  I am not the biggest fan of double-basin sinks because I prefer to have one open area to clean any dishes.  And I stayed away from the solid surface, integrated sink for two main reasons.  1) We prefer the look of a stainless steel sink mounted in a countertop and 2) we heard the maintenance for integrated sinks could be difficult...especially since we are going with a white solid surface.

After we received our quote and had a quick, in-store meeting with our sales person, we were ready to schedule a time for our template to be made.  Surprisingly, they said they would come the following day....which is today, and they were done and gone by 11AM. 

Now we can start a 21 {business} day countdown until our heinous kitchen countertops are no more!!