Week 4

Week 4 was amazing! The shiplap went up, the entryway was tiled, the hardwood flooring went down, the lighting went in, and the electricity was turned back on! We also got to remove the plastic in the LR and could finally be in there again! The is the kind of progress I appreciate! :)

We were originally going to do the shiplap ourselves to save some money. Steven and his dad had planned to tackle the project once the kitchen was done, but when Lorenzo said if we'd buy it he'd put it up, who were we to argue? This way he could do all the molding around it and paint it, too. We were going to buy the boards and cut them ourselves when it was our DYI project, but when things accelerated and he was ready for them, Steven decided it would be worth it juts to go to Home Depot and purchase what we needed. So stress free that it was worth the extra dough. We see that now!

Walking in and seeing this was thrilling!! I immediately loved the look of it and I was pumped to see the finished product! It just brightens everything up and adds that extra charm I'm wanting.

This was going on simultaneously....also thrilling!! Getting that old tile out of there was like a breath of fresh air!

We played around with a lot of ideas for the tile and went (what felt like) everywhere to check out our options. We toyed around quite a bit with the idea of brick in there, but ended up going with an easy, cheap option we found at Supply Warehouse (of all places!). The grout is Silverado-a very light gray that we will also use for the back splash. Steven and I agreed on this tile, and we were just crossing our fingers that it would actually look ok once down. We were both really happy with the finished product!!

Final touches on the shiplap.

And here it is later in the week getting the first coat of paint! You can see the top right triangle is the primed portion and the rest has had one coat of paint.

And the excitement continued....here is the hardwood going down!! For the entire planning process we had decided to replace the tile in the kitchen with more tile. It was in the estimate that way and everything. But when looking for tile, we just couldn't find anything we thought would look right for what we wanted. So many of the ones I actually liked for the color pallet we were going with have a modern look that I was afraid I would dislike overtime and just didn't have the warmth or homey feel I wanted. My first choice was to continue the hardwood into the kitchen for a more seamless look, but I was afraid of putting wood in the kitchen (possible water damage??) and Steven also didn't think anything we could fine new would match the 30 year old hardwoods that are in the living room and dining room, so we ruled that option out from the get go.

But when the tile didn't pull together, we revisited the idea of hardwood. I asked several friends plus my mom about their kitchen hardwoods and got all positive feedback, so I decided to lay my worries of damage and durability to rest. Our hardwood is very basic, so it was easy to find at the big box stores-Gunstock at $3.99 per sq. ft.

But we were looking around and Southeastern Salvage and saw that they carried the exact flooring for a huge price cut-$2.49 per sq ft! So we talked to the guys and brought a sample home to compare. It seemed to match perfectly with what we have down already (well I say perfectly-the old stuff is in serious need of rejuvenation which we are going to play around with after the project is over). The cheaper wood is that way because it is seconds, but the guys assured us that this would not be a problem, and they were right. It looks great!

So shiny and new! You can see the difference between the old and then new here, but I honestly don't mind and really love that the hardwood is throughout now. This basic hardwood is hard to beat in my opinion. There are so many engineered hardwoods, tiles made to look like wood, and wood looking laminates, but they are all trying to imitate the original. It is hard to beat this classic look, and I'm really happy we went with it. So are the kids as you can see! They loved running around in the empty kitchen and sliding around on the beautiful floors.

Here you can see the recessed lighting on. I love it! There are 10 in all...switches turn 4 on in the dinette and 6 on in the kitchen. This was also a decision that progressed over time. We originally thought we might leave the lights we had and just add some recessed lighting. We also almost added pendent type lighting to the space above where the bar will be. But in the end, I wanted to seamless, sleek look of recessed lighting only and felt that it would be plenty bright with these alone. We are really happy with this decision!

Lastly, I just had to take a picture of a spot  that looked DONE! Just the switch plate on the wall gives that finished look and makes me so happy! I get a glimpse of what is to come when it is all wrapped up and complete! I can't wait! But it seems I will have to...the guys left on Friday having wrapped up all they could do. They are at a standstill until our cabinetry is ready. They have been ordered, but we do not know how long it will be until they arrive. And so, we wait.

Kitchen-week 2 & 3

Weeks 2 and 3 kind of blended together. There was a lot of electric/plumbing work going on. There wasn't anything "pretty" happening, so I was ready for this phase to be over! But it was all the really important stuff that can't be skipped, that's for sure! It seemed to drag out a bit, too, because we lost 2 days due to weather and another day b/c the lead contractor had truck trouble one day. BUT, you can see here that the header was added. Also, the wall was ready to come down-it was only the flimsy drywall between the 2 rooms at this point-I was itching so see it down!! But I realized they were keeping it up as long as possible to contain the dust, so I would have to wait a little longer.

Lots of work was done inside the walls...drywall was cut away and electric was pulled out and re-wired.

Here you can see the beams supporting the wall while the header was going in.

We ran into a bit of a hiccup-as they were working on the wall they realized the floors had a slope/dip in them because the beams holding up the were positioned in between the joists rather than on them. This explained our uneven flooring in there. They went under the house and built supports to correct the problem and to ensure the new flooring would lay correctly. He said adding this might mess up the current hardwood in the LR, but luckily it did not!

Drywall down and plumbing/electrical work happening.

And lines on the ceiling for our recessed lighting that will be added. I'm excited about this!

We originally asked them to put our old cabinetry in the garage thinking that we would save it and use at least some of it in the second garage for storage/organization. After it sat for a few days, though, our thoughts changed as we realized we wouldn't be able to do this any time soon and they were awfully big things to just have laying around. So, we decided to donate the cabinetry, faucet, and sink to Habitat. Goodbye cabinets!

Ta-da!! Finally the wall was cut away in the 3rd week and we could at least envision the look we were going for. I loved it immediately!

Here you can see all the circles are cut for the recessed lighting-whoohoo!!

 Here is the header up, wall down, drywall back in place, and on the half wall you can see plumbing for the sink and dishwasher in place. This was taken on 3/29.

We left that afternoon to head to TN for Easter weekend, and we stopped by Steven's dad's place first and checked out his new woodworking shop he just had put in their backyard.  He has been working on a table for us, and we got to see it in person. We love it! We asked him to make benches so that they can slide under and hopefully save us some space. He also showed us a few of the stain mix options we had suggested. Seeing them in real life was helpful so we were able to pick what we wanted it to look like. The tops will be a gray and brown stain mix and the legs will be white. I'm excited to see it in the dinette once he finishes. So nice to have a retired handyman in the family!:)

Kitchen-week 1

 Week 1-We left for Iowa on Spring Break on Sunday and demo started on Tuesday. We didn't really want to leave and not be able to oversee everything happening at the house, but at the same time we didn't really want to stay and have 3 kids in the middle of demo either! It ended up working out just fine, but we were curious the whole time about what was going on at the house, so when we got the picture above from Pavy, we were thrilled!! The tile was gone! Cabinetry gone! There was lots of work being done in our absence. Whoohoo!

When we returned, this is what the living room looked like. Dust everywhere!

I don't know WHY it didn't dawn on me that the living room would be off limits too, but it just didn't! I had envisioned no kitchen, but not no living room, too!! YIKES! In addition to everything being covered in plastic and the floor being covered with dust, there was no electricity in there (duh!). Some of the outlets and the closet in Henry's room are w/o electricity, too. SO, we have been confined to the bedrooms and playroom, but I can honestly say that so far it has worked better than I could have hoped. The kids really do great. They just want to be where we are, anyway, so everyone is happy all huddled together on one side of the house-ha!

Both doorways from the kitchen were taped off with plastic. They were constantly shop vaccing the LR to clean up the dust. Much appreciated!

This is what the inside of kitchen looked like when we returned!

This is the wall that will partially come down.

Everyday after school we come in and check out what they progress they are making. Henry is a curious little guy and very interested in their work. Next up was all the electric and plumbing (week 2). More on that to come!

Kitchen

We bought our current house in December 2014. We didn't have to move, but always knew that our wonderful house on Chesapeake Blvd, which we lived in for over 7 years, wouldn't be our "forever" house. So, we had fun searching for other homes via the Internet and driving by neighborhoods for several years-even meeting with realtors for several tours of ones we thought we were interested in and then even making an offer on one that didn't work out.
We had some things on our list for our new home that were negotiable and some things that weren't. So when we found our current house in October, it fit enough of our non-negotiables that we were willing to make a voluntary move.

Some of these items were the lot (large-1.5 acres and flat-ours backs up to woods rather than other houses), pool (which it had!) or spot for a pool (I grew up with a pool in the backyard, so my hot, Southern yard just feels lacking without one), location (close enough to both of our jobs that we could commute without frustration. We don't mind driving a bit, but the traffic is where we struggle, so being able to hop on the interstate and MOVE rather than just sitting still on poorly laid out back roads was our goal), storage (there's a 2 car exterior garage with storage above), natural light (lots of windows and even 2 skylights which I love!), and size (4 bedrooms which we thought would be enough for our family plus a guest room, but we had a surprise baby since then that will eventually get that 4th room, so I guess it worked out either way!). I also didn't want anything too big that I couldn't keep clean, so our square footage is pretty much exactly what we had before (2,000 sq ft). I didn't know it at the time because I've always lived in 2 story houses, but a huge bonus (in my opinion), is to have a 1 story house-who knew!? I LOVE all the rooms being accessible and it is just so much easier for me to clean and keep straight (even though the sq footage is the same, for some reason the layout just lends itself to more ease for me in these areas). So that has been so awesome and an added surprise.

The main things I felt I was negotiating on were exterior aesthetics (the yard is beautiful and exactly what we wanted, but the single story ranch style just isn't real pretty in my opinion), the kitchen and bathrooms (more on these later!), having only a laundry closet rather than an actual room (which has worked out fine since the closet is right beside the kids bathroom and bedrooms, I have only a few steps to gather/deliver everything anyway! And the guest bedroom is right there, so that is my folding room!), and the interior aesthetics (our other house was really cute and had a lot of charm that this one doesn't (yet!!) have...the previous owner at our other house was a really handy guy who had added so many things to the house to give it the charm that this one is missing...BUT I was excited to eventually add some of that charm back in myself!). I was more than willing to temporarily give these things up, but wanted hubby to know that these were things that I WOULD want to upgrade if we went with this house. We both agreed that we would start saving, planning, and scheming to do some of the facelifts as soon as we were able to after purchasing the house. And while it does require patience, it is also fun to plan and pick what we want. AND the cool thing about living in a house for over 3 years before getting to do anything to it is that now we really know what we want for changes!

Don't get me wrong, when we moved in, we did a ton! The couple before us built this house and it is almost 30 years old, so it was certainly dated! We replaced every light fixture, added recessed lighting, replaced the interior hinges/doorknobs and every vent cover, painted every room, had the ceilings scraped prior to moving in, removed wallpaper, removed a mirrored wall in the dining room (yes! ha!), and so much more that I can't even remember! Someday I will blog on that bc I know we took pictures along the way! But the first major thing we wanted to tackle was our kitchen (a biggie!!).

Below are a few pictures of the kitchen prior to us moving in.You can see the terrible 80's beach house tile that shows EVERYTHING. I am SO, SO excited to replace that. At first, we thought we would be happy just to give this kitchen a facelift (paint cabinetry white, get new flooring/granite counter tops and do most of the work ourselves just like we did in our old house). BUT after using this kitchen for several years, I began to really dislike the layout. I thought the butterfly corner sink would be great, but quickly grew to hate the bottleneck it created between the trashcan and the dishwasher. I couldn't open the door to the trashcan while the dishwasher lid was down, so we would just make a trash pile beside the sink while I was doing dishes and throw it all away once I was done-gross and inconvenient! Being unable to get to that spot easily also meant that the giant cabinet under the sink is not really used like it should be. I wasn't putting much in it because I couldn't easily get it out! And it's huge under there!
Another issue with it is that while loading the dishwasher, there is only a tiny spot to stand to do the dishes, and in reality it only allows for a small portion of the sink to be accessible (like 1/4th of it). In addition, the corner sink means my back is always to everybody, which I hate! I really wanted a  more open feel to the kitchen so that I could be part of what was happening in the living room and not have to turn the sink off and yell back and forth at each other from the kitchen to the LR.
The third thing I struggled with was the spot right at the fridge and the bar. This is such a high traffic area, and with the fridge door open, no one could get through. I despise this! People just tend to stand right there in front of the fridge, too, so we were always having to squeeze past or ask people to move...it was just a very inefficient spot. But I loved the bar and didn't want to loose that! 

SOOOO....I began slowly presenting my ideas to Steven, who is a major planner and does not generally like change. But I am the dreamer, and he is the realist, so I really appreciate him because without him none of this would actually get done, and it would all just be a dream in my head. It took a LONG time, but he slowly warmed up to the ideas. I wanted to switch the location of the sink and the dishwasher and take down (partially) the wall that separates the kitchen and the LR. A big, lengthy, pricey endeavor that we didn't even know was possible! I also wanted the current bar completely gone and for a counter top to extend into the living room for the bar area to be there instead of right beside the fridge.
We met with AB in June at our house and they determined that the wall could come down, but would have to have a header because it was load bearing. Not the exact look we wanted, and a little more money, but still much better than a closed off wall. If we were going to loose that wall, we would have to put additional cabinetry in the dinette to make up for it. So, we came up with a design for that as well.

 We pretty much kept the kitchen like you see it above except that the ceilings were scraped, the door that separates the dining room and the kitchen came down. We painted, put new bar stools in and replaced the fan with some cute schoolhouse lighting. But for the most part it stayed the way you see it above.

Finally, on March 13, our kitchen renovation began! Almost a year ago we started talking to AB Stone about our ideas. We had some other folks come out, too, but eventually decided to go with AB. We met with them several times and they drew up our plans, we tweaked them over and over, and eventually decided we would be able to start in the Spring of this year. The project is supposed to take 4-6 weeks, barring no complications. The weekend prior to them doing demo, we cleaned everything out and Ben helped Steven remove appliances. Where does all the stuff come from!?!? Geez! Our cabinets were packed. But we were excited and nervous to get started.

Goodbye dishwasher!! This one is old and does not work well, so I am pumped to get an upgrade! You can see Henry is right in it...he is excited to see everything coming together.

I boxed up a bunch of stuff for the garage, but also loaded our dining room table with some of the kitchen junk and covered it with plastic.

Goodbye, stove! Same story as the dishwasher...can't wait for an upgrade! From here you can see some of the lighting Steven put in when we  moved in.

We removed the microwave and put it temporarily in our bedroom as part of our make-shift kitchen.

I moved all of our food into the bedroom and bought paper products for the meals we would eat at home. We knew we would be eating out or eating simply for the most part.

Below is the kitchen all cleaned out and ready for demolition! 

Above is the dinette. There will be a built in cabinet to the right for extra storage and Steven's dad is building us a rectangular table with benches that can be slid under to hopefully save on some space. Until now we have had a vintage square metal table in the center, but now that we are a family of 5 that table doesn't fit our  needs anymore!

 

And this is our make-shift bedroom kitchen! Nothing like waking up to a highchair, crockpot, and table to one side of you...

And a fridge and microwave on the other side of you! Midnight snack anyone?! Ha, ha! It's fine. Just kinda crazy. I emptied our armoire and filled it with our food for a temporary cupboard. It works.

And here are the kids eating breakfast on our bedroom floor the next morning....they think it is great and an adventure! The first few weeks we had crummy weather, but now the weather is really nice and we can eat outside and just play after naps.  There is MUCH MORE to come.....stay tuned for updates as we renovate our kitchen! Whoohoo!