Yes, Its true!! After attending the Dallas based Marble and Granite Auction 8x and only buying one thing the entire time (our 3x6 travertine pavers as remembered here, and installed here and here) we finally took the plunge and bought our supplies to redo our kitchen and bathrooms!!!

 I know I haven't really said much about actually taking the steps to redo three of the most outrageously ugly rooms in our house, but that's because we have been saving, scrounging, rubbing our pennies together, and eating Top Ramen for the past several months to be able to finally afford "thinking" about taking the necessary steps to redo our kitchen and baths.   Well, that and the fact that our kitchen flooded over Memorial Day weekend (I promise I will post about it... I was home alone when it happened and even looking at the pictures make me kinda nervous)... here's a quick preview though.

Please feel free to picture me crying and leaving Chris sobbing voicemails begging him to come home

ANYWAY, with all that being said and a little bit of homeowners insurance money in our pockets, we got a postcard in the mail a couple weeks ago from our good friends at the Marble and Granite Auction place saying they would be having their LAST auction here in Dallas on 11/11/12.  I guess attendance has been less than steller here in the Dallas area so they have decided to close their auctioning doors (they still do other auctions across the country and in TX...)

We have been to these auctions a couple times before, but knowing that this was the LAST auction and that it was either now or never made us a little nervous.  So we went up this past Saturday and previewed what they would be auctioning, HOPING that we would find something that would work for what we were thinking (FYI - you get what you get at these auctions... every time is different, so you can't really count on what you've seen before because it could be gone).
 One of the things Chris and I both REALLY liked last time was some Marble countertops we thought would be beautiful for the kitchen and as a bathroom vanity... Good News - they had them again at this auction!!
 Bad news - they only had two... (waaa-waaa)... so Marble for the kitchen was definitely out.

Chris and I are pretty go-with-the-flow people so we gave the marble one last sigh, and moved on...

Right into the arms of this lovely lady...

It looks a little pink in this picture, but I promise that is just the warehouse lighting

 Granite Counter tops... 26x84... Almond Mauve.... (Cinderella's music "So this is love" started mentally playing in the background).

Chris has always been a super big fan of granite where as I always want something a bit more different and unique.  The fact that I have never seen Almond Mauve and that is wasn't a super popular color (at least from what Ive seen around Dallas) made us both fall in love.

Also, bonus point, it had travertine tile backsplash right next to it which complimented it wonderfully.
 Oddly enough, Chris and I both had a crush on the same back splash... the honeycomb mosaic.
 We also brought a couple broken pieces of our future kitchen flooring (the 3x6 travertine pavers... already found in our sunroom and laundry room)
 We carried around both backsplashes to some other granite slabs around the warehouse but nothing seemed to go quite as well as the Almond Mauve.
 However, with our granite picked out for the kitchen, it still left us needing something for the bathroom vanity (we are having a base vanity made by the same guy making our kitchen cabinets!! Again, more details to come...).  True, we could have just done one of the marble slabs, but I was REALLY feeling a polished travertine slab which I thought would really tie the whole "travertine" house together.
 Since the auction doesnt tell you what the starting price for pieces are until the actual item is up for bid, we did some research that night on stuff we liked and set a ceiling for what we would pay and still get a "good deal".

Like two love-sick One Direction-loving tweens, we were still swooning over the travertine honeycomb mosaic and found it online for nearly $11.99 a sq ft.

Found here

The next day I was more nervous than Lindsay Lohan making a court appearance so we got there about 20 minutes early to re-scout our stuff... I, of course, was my usual bubbly friendly self.

"So much as look at this granite and I will cut you..."

 Was I a bit over protective? Maybe... did it work? HELL YEA IT DID!!!  We won it!!  $175 a slab! We got five! (I know that sounds like a lot but we wanted to get extra just in case of any breaks during transporting it to our place and cuts and stuff)...

And, for some fun math for all you numbers people out there, here's how we determined what we paid per sq ft... size of a slab 26x84 = 2,184... divided by a sq ft (12x12 = 144) ... equal 15.166 sq ft per slab.  We paid $175 so divide that by 15.166 and we only paid $11.54 a sq ft!!!!  The edging and the corners are already fabricated so we only really will need to have it cut for the sinks and the corners!!

Here is a bit of a better picture of the granite...
We also scored the honeycomb mosaic back splash for, (are you ready for this?), $3.00 a square foot!!!!!  Shut up, I know...

I also got my polished travertine counter for $175 for just one slab!

Since we were in the buying mood, we also snatched up these awesome 16x16 travertine tiles which we plan to cut in half length wise and use them to encase the shower in the master bath with a subway pattern...

Sorry the picture is so yellow... warehouse lighting is tough... its actually a very creamy neutral

 There were 10 slabs total (we bought 5) so I may have gone a little overboard when labeling the ones we wanted...
Oh and did I mention each slab comes with a 4" granite backsplash? Cause it does... 

Ah! yea, wow, I almost forgot to mention... we also scored a broken piece of the same Almond Mauve for $50!!
 I measured it out and if we cut off the broken parts, it still has 4ft of usable granite... we have corner cuts for our kitchen that are only about 34" long so this would be perfect... Doing a little math, our 4ft slab was only $5.77 a sq ft!!!  This also leaves us room to resell what we dont use on Craigslist and hopefully make some money back!

After hugging and kissing our counters goodbye for now (Im not joking, I really did...) we loaded up our backsplash and travertine tiles and headed home...
 And added to (what Chris affectionately calls) Mt. Travertine in our garage...
Do you guys like what we got?  For all those interested to see if Marble and Granite auctions are happening in your state/town, here is the website for the company we bought from (we loved them and their prices are MORE than fair!)... http://stoneliquidatorsgroup.com/... just call their 1-800 number and they would be happy to check for you. (P.S- Im not being paid or given a discount for dropping their name... we just really liked them :-)