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May 5, 2014

House Project | Before Photos

Neither of us have done anything like this before.  Sure, I’ve painted dozens of rooms in my lifetime, but I’ve never done anything to require the word “renovation”.  But we met with contractors, found one that fit us and what we were wanting to do and they’re going to start remodeling the kitchen in a couple of weeks.  It’s crazy!  It’ll be even crazier when it’s all finished because right now I have this idea in my head of what it will all look like and how I want the new kitchen and den to feel like… but I know some of that will change along the way.  But hopefully for the better!

When Ben bought his house in 2006, the previous owners had renovated the bathrooms and the basement, but hadn’t touched the kitchen.  Which is good for us because it means we just have that one main project (along with some painting projects I mentioned on Friday) before we move over there.  We spent a couple of days this weekend painting and finished two rooms (yay!) but I’ll probably wait to show you those final photos after we move in and they aren’t just bare rooms.  Because bare rooms are much less exciting than finished rooms are!

So, here’s the “before tour” of the house…

This will be our bedroom, which we finished painting Saturday afternoon!  The doorway to the left corner is a bathroom.

House-Before-101

I haven’t had a bathroom in my bedroom since… well, since I was a kid and the house we rented had a small bath in one of the front bedrooms of the house.  Because it was a smaller bathroom, my parents let me have the “master bedroom” when I was about 6 years old!
We’re planning on painting this bathroom too, but we didn’t have time to get to it this weekend.  It won’t take nearly as long as the bedrooms did though.

House-Before-102

This is the other bedroom we painted this weekend.  It’s across the hall from the master.  Gosh, it feels so good to have TWO whole rooms painted already!

House-Before-103

And here… is the kitchen/dining room!  Y’all, this is real and legit wood paneling.

House-Before-104

And the cabinets in the kitchen even match!

House-Before-105

With all of those windows along the back wall, this area actually gets a decent amount of light.  But, the wood makes it darker in there.  And y’all know how I love natural light.  So, we’re going to do several things in here to open up the space and lighten things up.  The “island” that juts out along with the cabinets above it will be knocked out, so that alone will open up the space a lot!  We’re going to reface the cabinets, have them painted a lighter color (think taupe or antique white), and update the hardware.  We’re then going to have the wood paneling painted in the Parisian taupe I showed you guys on Friday!  Even if that was all we did to this space, it would be so much more open and brighter!  But, we’re also going to replace the tile with hardwood to match the rest of the upstairs and adjust the area where the fridge is so that it’s facing the kitchen instead of it facing the back wall.  And since we’re losing a fair amount of counter/cabinet/drawer space by knocking down the current island, we’re going to build a freestanding one to take its place!

We’re also going to turn the current dining area into the den/living area.  My feeling is that we’d spend most of our time in these two spaces (everyone always gathers in the kitchen!) so why not just make it all livable, open and welcoming??  I’m so excited about how it will turn out…

House-Before-106

Which brings me to the current living room.  This is what you see when you first walk into the house.  I love this space!  There’s so much light coming into this room too, it’s wonderful.  But, we’re going to make this the dining room… and to make it more accessible to the kitchen, we’re going to make an opening in the wall to the left of the fireplace.  You know where the refrigerator was in the above photo?  Where I was standing to take that photo would put my back against the wall that we want to open up.

I was dreaming yesterday of what this will all look like and how amazing it would be to have dinner next to a fire!!  It’ll be a gas fire, but still!
You can see my reflection in the painting on the wall… that’s the front door behind me.

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In the image below, the front right of the photo is where the front door is, the doorway you see against the far wall goes down the hallway, and you can see a sliver of the wood panelling, which is the kitchen.  Since the wall to the left of the fireplace will have an opening, you could essentially run laps around these three rooms if you wanted to.  Ha!

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And just for good measure (because this will be painted too), this is the hallway… in front of you is the living room in the photo above, the door in the front right is the master bedroom, the door in the front left is the other bedroom we painted, and the door across from the master is another bedroom that we will tackle at some point down the road…

House-Before-109

So there’s all of the before… at least with what we’re planning right now!  My office will be downstairs and that will be a whole other project that I may not take on until we move in.  I can only do so much planning/executing at once.  If I get too far ahead of myself with ideas, I’ll get overwhelmed and not get anything done!

Happy Monday, everyone!

  1. Mommy says:

    It all sounds very exciting! Can’t wait to see it next time we come. Any plans for the theater room?
    Sending lot of love,
    Mommy

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