An (Almost) Finished Kitchen

Hi!  It's been awhile.  How are things?  How were the holidays?

We took things easy around her during the holidays, which is part of the reason I haven't updated the blog recently.  Between finals and a baby shower and then Christmas and New Years, we decided to take a few weeks off from the house reno and just relax.  We all needed a break.  Landon and I worked on unpacking and sorting through the piles of boxes hidden in the basement and making a huge pile of things to sell at a yard sale in the spring--so if you want any of the stuff we don't want any more, start saving your pennies now.

We did take the chance to finish up a few projects that had been lagging.  I finally got all my trim (at least in the main areas) spackled and the paint touched up.  And we finally got our soft close drawer glides installed, although we're still waiting on the last of our upper cabinets to get swapped out (they didn't send us the correct ones--we paid for plywood sides but got pressboard instead).  With the kitchen finally (mostly) finished, I thought I'd share a few pictures.

First, just a refresher on what the kitchen looked like before:

This was the entirety of the kitchen.  All four feet of counter space and one drawer.

And the lovely plant window.  

The entire room was about 10 x 10.  It had two doorways, one into the dining room and one into the family room, but there was no direct entry from the main hallway in to the kitchen.  There was very little cabinet space and even less counter space.  It was closed off and just kind of awful (although the counter tops were relatively new solid surface).

And now it looks like this:

The stove is actually almost exactly where it was (we moved it just a foot or two to the left), but we added more counter space on either side.

The sink moved to under the big plant window and we took down a few
walls so we could add in an island.  We also moved the refrigerator to the back wall.

Our LED under cabinet light strips.
 They came in a huge roll and you just cut them to size.

We also added a huge pantry (which is much more full now).
 It lives just to the left of the refrigerator.

 While I love everything about my new kitchen, I'll have to say that my favorite part (and the part that we use the most) is the island.  We love it.  I do homework there.  We eat there.  I do all my cooking there.  When I hosted a baby shower all the food was there and most everyone stood around it.  It's the best part of the new kitchen aside from the fact that I can now walk straight down the hallway and into the kitchen.

My pretty pendant lights.  

Obviously this picture was taken awhile ago.
We do not still have the Christmas tree up--it's February for pete's sake! But it does show how different things are from where we started.  

So, what's left to do in the kitchen then?  Well, here's the short list.

• Trim around the plant window.
• Install a tile backspalsh.
• Finish the toe kick on the island (there is none currently)
• Get the final upper cabinet replaced.
• Get the last bit of under cabinet lighting installed.
• Install the last bit of pantry door hardware.

There's still plenty to do in the rest of the house, so don't think we're almost done.  But at least the kitchen is nearing the finish line.

We're Still Alive!!

So, it's been awhile.  A long while.  I swear it seems like the last month or so has flow by, probably because I've been so busy with school, the house, and hosting a baby shower.  Wait, what?  How can I host a baby shower when I don't have a house?  Well, we do.

Just before Thanksgiving, we moved into our house!  It's not finished yet; we still have major work to do on the master bathroom, the master bedroom, and the family room as well as small things to do around the rest of the house, but we're in.  So far, we're loving it, but we still have so much unpacking and decorating to do.

When we first moved in, things look like this:

Total Chaos.  And this was after a lot of the boxes were unpacked.

The kitchen counters weren't in yet., so I had two small pieces of plywood.
This was all my counter space for a couple of weeks.

At least the TV was working.

Note, we don't plan on leaving the bookshelf in the middle of the floor.  

Things have come a long way since then.  We've gotten two of the bedrooms settled enough to feel "finished" at least in terms of being able to use the beds.  And the office is getting somewhat more organized as well.....although it is still the catch all room, so it's a bit of a mess.  The guest bath (which is currently the only one) is also finished, and looks great.

The current master bedroom, at least until the real master gets done. 

The guest bath.  Sorry for the crappy pictures, it's so tiny that it's very hard to photograph.

I love the shower curtain, though.  It works perfectly with the tile in the shower.

My new IKEA towel bar/shelf.
 The solution to only having room t hang one towel bar in the whole bathroom.  

The middle bedroom (Bedroom 2).  If you look closely,
 you can see a cat butt peeking out from under the bed.

We also finally got our kitchen counters installed, and they are beautiful.  I love them!  And it's so nice to have so much space to work.  I've been cooking up a storm, and I've yet to run out of room, even with cookies spread all over everywhere.

The kitchen.  Please look past the cereal box on the island.
  I forgot to move it in the first photo.

My beautiful island with my beautiful counters.  Quartz all the way.

So much space, even next to the stove.
This is more than was in the house when we bought it.

The view from the sink.
You don't get a close up of the sink since it's still full of dishes from the baby shower, but trust me, it's beautiful.

And my beautiful pendant lights.  

We've also been working on the rest of the living area.  We love that it's all one big room and that I can be in the kitchen cooking and still watching TV or talking to Landon while he's on his laptop on the couch.  It's so nice.

Looking from the hallway toward the kitchen.

Looking from the foyer toward the kitchen.

The Christmas tree in front of the window nearest the foyer.  

So there you have it.  We've been busy, but now that things have slowed down, I'm going to try and update you on a lot of the little projects that have been going on to get us to this point.  Stay tuned.

Ch, ch, changes.....

In my last post I hinted at big changes afoot.  In fact, this is the single biggest change we are making to the house in this entire project.  Have you figured it out yet?  I'll give you a hint:  There's one section of the house that we haven't really done much work on yet.

Yup, that's right.  We finally settled on a floor plan for the main living area of the house.  And on Saturday, the walls came down!  And you won't believe the difference it made.  But first, some before photos to set the stage.

View from the front door.  Living room to the left.

The living room looking at the door to the dining room.

The living room looking toward the hallway & family room

The dining room looking at the door to the kitchen 

The dining room looking to the living room & kitchen.

The view down the hallway from the bedroom end toward the kitchen wall (with the "x")

The view from the other end of the hallway (I'm standing against the X from the last photo).

Got it?  No?  Well, here's an image of the floor plan when we bought the house:

We knew when we bought the house, we wanted to open it up some and expand the kitchen, but the question was how?  And let me tell you, this has been a huge source of stress for me during this process.  It seems simple, until you start looking at structural issues.  For example, we found out pretty quickly that the wall between the kitchen & the family room was the only load bearing wall in the house.  Which meant that if we wanted to open it up, we had to put in a beam.  

Ann, my designer friend, came up with a wonderful floor plan that opened up to the back with an island and a formal dining room.  But after consulting with the structural engineer, we found out that if we wanted to open the back all the way up, we'd need to either end the beam over an existing post in the basement or add a new post.  Now, we didn't want to add a new post since we hope to finish the basement one day and there are already plenty of posts down there.  And, if we wanted to end over an existing post, that put a column right in the middle of our island.  :(  

After much discussion and angst, we decided to leave the back alone and open to the front.  So, working off of another floor plan that Ann drew up for us, we finally settled on this:

Ignore the random island in what is really the 2nd/3rd bedrooms, it's left over from some design work.

Basically we took out all the walls and widened the doorways to the family room.  It's not perfect, but it is nice, and now with the walls down, you can really see the difference.

View from the front door.  Living room to the left. 

Living room, looking toward the dining room (left) and kitchen (right).

Former wall between living room & kitchen.

View from the former hallway looking into the kitchen/dining room.

Wide view of the entire space, you can see the family room in the background.

 So, I had to give up my formal dining room, but I'm getting a  huge pantry and a large island.  And I didn't have to add any more posts to the basement.  Also, we had hoped to put in a powder room on the main floor, but since the is not plumbing stack large enough on that side of the house, and it would have been expensive to add one, so we had to scrap that as well.  Maybe one day.

But that's the big change.  And with some help from Alan's cousin Rick, they already have the electric roughed in for the kitchen as well as a good portion of the plumbing.  Next week, I'm going to start shopping for cabinets....

And the Soffits Came Down

So, in going back over old posts last night, I realized that I never updated you on the final stage of gutting our kitchen--removing the soffits above the cabinets.  It happened a week or so ago, but since I never shared the progress, consider this your update.

Pulling it all down.

Getting there!

Watch for falling insulation

And covered pot lights.

So close.

Cleaning up the mess.

All done!

No more soffits.

Or weird shallow pantry.