Look who's in the magazine!

Our town has a magazine that runs local stories about events close by, new restaurant openings, etc. I usually read it see what's new around the area, and I noticed that the contractor we used runs ads in it. When they finished our kitchen in September, they asked if it was okay to use a picture of our kitchen in their ad, and we excitedly gave our approval (I took it as a compliment to our superb design skills...:) ).

 

It turns out it made the "holidays" edition of the magazine, which came out a few weeks ago! You can see below the little picture of our kitchen in the contractor's ad.

It looks a lot like this picture, although their version had a dog leash hanging by the door and clutter on the counter (at least more clutter than our picture below...).

 

We'll try for the cover next time!

Pleasantly surprised by stencils

We have a space around a window in our living room that was really calling out for some pizazz. I collected lots of wallpaper samples, but since we're still laboring through removing decades-old wallpaper upstairs, we were hesitant to contribute more wallpaper to the house. A friend recommended we stencil the space, an idea she'd seen on Esty. We were definitely skeptical but decided it was a low-risk move to order a stencil online from Cutting Edge Stencils, especially since our friend had experience with stenciling. When it arrived, said friend was invited over to help, but when she and her husband arrived, we learned none of us knew what we were doing. Luckily, we're all quick learners and not perfectionists. :-)

Here's the space a few months ago right after the bookcases were installed.

And here we are working on the top portion. (I'm supervising and the process was aided by college football, pizza, and our friend's home brew!)

 

 

And once we finished, we were actually pretty pleased with the wall. The gold really warms up the blue room. Now we just need drapes to literally warm up the room!



The finishing touches!

If any home project is ever finished, I guess our kitchen now qualifies as "finished". We installed the curtain rod last week and I picked up the slipcovers for the chairs today. All set for lots of cooking this fall and winter!

The seamstress did a great job with the slipcovers. Box pleats and piping give them a very custom, cozy, French country look. I'm tempted to ask them to make the slipcover for the living room chair too!

Café curtains fit the style of the kitchen as well as the need for some privacy since cars driving by could see straight through the house from the front to the back yard before they were up!

 

I've always wanted a barometer in the kitchen to check the weather (in case the trusty iPhone fails us). I found this one on ebay for $20 AND it was made in West Germany!

 

 We started a family map with pins where we've lived in the US and where we've travelled internationally. Asia is pretty blank...

And here's the step-by-step view of the kitchen, starting back in July with demo and finishing now, early November.

Kitchen is done...pretty much!

 Here's the finished product! We still need to finish painting the trim and hang a few pictures (yet to be picked out), but similar to the bookcases, if we wait till everything is 100% done, the pictures might not ever get posted. Here's the finished product!

And here's the view from the back door. It ended up having a French "look" although it must have happened subconsciously because I was actually going for the coastal white-cabinets-and-marble-countertops look. (We moved the fridge out of the dining room just a few minutes ago, so that's gone now.)

A few details: we included a second sink with a cutting board that fits it. This came in handy yesterday when I was making watermelon juice at one sink and Craig was cutting veggies at the other one.

We love the farmhouse sink! We're going to try bathing Ellie in it...

A pot rack is probably going to go on the wall here, and maybe somewhere down the line this portion of the wall could be converted into a door to the garage (which is behind the kitchen on this side) OR into a staircase leading to a room above the garage that we could add on. We purposefully didn't have cabinets or electrical installed in this space just in case.

We still need window coverings too...

Here's a pretty good "before" and "after" comparison since both pictures are from roughly the same angle:

Cabinets and Countertops!

Pictures are worth 1,000 words at this point, so I'll keep the text to a minimum and just show lots of pictures of the progress this week.

Sunday night:

Monday night:

Tuesday night:

And a few details:

I can't believe these floors were going to be thrown out!

We're loving the combination of the quartersawn oak, bronze hardware, and marble. The cabinet maker said his wife saw the island and wanted it in her kitchen!

Tomorrow we get faucets and gas lines connected and maybe appliances installed!

Three and a half weeks down!

During Week 2, the remaining drywall on the ceiling was removed along with all the old plumbing and electrical wiring. Halfway through our East coast trip, we got this picture from our contractor to update us. All those studs are brand new because the old ones were so uneven - not the mention the ceiling was sagging - that the new, level cabinets wouldn't have fit correctly.

By the end of Week 3, new electrical, plumbing, insulation, and drywall were all in. We were told it was time to paint, so we painted...and then we were told it wasn't time to paint yet...we'll be painting again this weekend...

The original wood floors were covered by a subfloor and two layers of linoleum. We removed the linoleum and got it to look like this.

Then, the contractors removed the subfloor and it looked like this (wood with tar on it).

After some sanding and lots of paint thinner, it looked like this. They also had to mill new floor pieces from reclaimed white oak wood (because there were some pieces with large holes from previous plumbing coming up from the basement below), so you can see some of the brand new pieces in this picture (left, middle). Apparently new trees are conditioned to grow faster than trees 80 years ago, and this affects how the wood absorbs stains and finishes. Thus, we went with custom-milled, reclaimed oak (ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching) versus using new wood since we were patching the floor.

And at the end of the day today, this is what it looks like.  Three different grits of sandpaper and it's like new...yet 75 years old. Beautiful!

One week down!

When we left town this past weekend, this is what our kitchen looked like. After one week of renovations, we headed East for two weeks to give the crew time and space to work (and to get us and Ellie away from the dust). After two days of professionals working, all the walls, insulation, and subfloor were out. And under the subfloor we found original hardwood floors! Needless to say, we're looking for an alternate use of the unreturnable cork flooring. :-)

Sometimes the "after" pictures don't quite do the effort-to-date justice, so maybe a comparison will help. Here's a photo of the kitchen from the real estate listing when the house was for sale last fall.

 And here's how it now looks with a larger cased opening connecting it more with the dining room beyond it.

Plumbing and lighting have been laid out and hopefully this week it's all being installed so drywall can go in next week. By the time we're back on August 18th, it should be time to paint, which is good, since we're doing that part!

Kitchen Demo!

Over the weekend, the kitchen project officially began because we had this kitchen...

...and we had dreams of a kitchen like this!

Well, we know this isn't really possible since we don't have that much space, or a fireplace, or ceilings that high, but it's about inspiration and vision. The first step to getting closer to the vision was to get a clean slate, so we removed everything from the room, including the appliances, cabinets, counter tops, two layers of linoleum, and wallpaper. We wanted to recycle as much as possible, so we didn't get to take a sledge hammer to anything...yet.

We thought we were ready for the crew to come, but apparently the subfloor (two of the three layers down there) has to come out. After the weekend we had, we decided to pay to have that done. Many thanks to Momma Medlock and trusty sidekick Sophie for all the help!

Today Habitat for Humanity picked up the cabinets, range, microwave, sink, and dishwasher! They will either go into a Habitat house or be sold.

Next step: the wall between the kitchen and dining room is coming down! Woohoo!

Operation Yard/Backyard - Part 2

Everything is blooming! This is our white hydrangeas up close. We also have green ones.

And here's a yellow flower that came up from a bulb. Anyone know what these are?

Our front porch has impatiens.

The side yard (and quite a few other spots) have hostas and a boxwood.

Our back patio has rosemary, mint, and basil.

 The front porch has a Japanese maple next to it.

And the driveway recently got this little tree...I don't remember what it's called...

And thanks to the farmer's market, we have fresh peonies!

We also made homemade macarons over the weekend - almost as good as laduree :).

Upstairs Bedroom

The most time-intensive project we've tackled so far has been the upstairs bedroom. It was covered in wallpaper that had to be stripped before we could paint everything, so we've been picking at the paper for months.

Finally, last weekend it was time to sand, prime, and paint the walls.

I picked up a few home decor magazines in Paris on my way home from a conference in May, and some beautiful grey bookcases inspired the grey-wall-grey-trim paint colors we used. The trim is actually the same color as our downstairs bathroom - Behr's Dolphin Fin - and the walls and ceiling are a lighter shade of the same color. We still need to add some more personal touches, but at least it's ready for guests!

Here's the best comparison. I think I should invest in a better camera; the iPhone photos just aren't doing it justice.