The BIG! Kitchen Renovation Reveal!!

The first time we toured the house with our realtor, we knew the house was going to be a huge renovation project. The previous homeowner's taste and ours were on opposite ends of the spectrum. Deeply opposite ends of the spectrum. It took us walking through the home multiple times before we could get past the cosmetic aspects which made the home appear very dark and depressing, and focus on the floor plan.

The popcorn ceilings in the home were painted a depressing shade of grey, while the walls were a dark golden color. The cabinets and trim work throughout the house had a shade of brown/green slopped all over them, with paint drips and globs of paint everywhere. The walls had a hand-troweled DIY texture applied, which was thick and stuck out so far from the wall, I sliced open my arm when I got too close to it as I rounded a corner.

As we walked through the home, we noticed the cabinet paint was peeling, revealing a blood red underlying color. We opened up the kitchen cabinet doors and jumped back as the blood red painted interior assaulted our vision. The brownish color paint on the outside and the blood red on the inside, made it appear as though you were looking at the inside of an animal that had been slaughtered.

The camera flash makes the kitchen appear brighter than it was in person

Yes, even with the lights turned on, the house was very dark

That red jumps out and grabs you

Say hello to the slaughterhouse red!

You can see the paint brush swirls and the peeling paint

With a budget of $2,500 - including appliances - my husband and I (after months of design disagreements) decided on a design. The ceilings were professionally scraped of the popcorn gray and redone with a knock-down texture and painted a bright ceiling white. 

We kept the existing cabinets because we didn't have the budget to replace them. The cabinets were stripped, and stripped, and stripped some more of the red paint (which never fully released from the wood), and then sanded, primed, and painted in a cheerful shade of white. We added an extension to the top of the cabinets, due to the kitchen's 9' high ceilings making the upper cabinets look short and squatty. Satin nickel cabinet hardware replaced what few pieces of cabinet hardware had been left on the cabinets.

A new neighbor was remodeling their home and gave us a section of upper cabinets (which matched ours) to hang above the long bar area. Because the cabinets our neighbors gifted us with were actually for an angled wall and we were going to be installing them on a long straight wall, my husband had to cut the cabinets in half. This allowed him to trim the angles from the cabinets so they could hang in a straight line. 

The kitchen walls were scraped of the odd DIY texture until our hands bled, and then re-textured with a softer appearing hand-troweled texture to smooth over the harsh lines of the previous wall texture. It took 23 paint samples before we found just the right shade of a grey-beige for the wall color.

The brick countertops were sledgehammered out, and granite tile countertops with a tumbled marble backsplash replaced them. A new deep heavy-gauge stainless steel sink and kitchen faucet replaced the worn out and leaking old one.

The utilitarian light over the sink was replaced with a fixture that was a bit modern and pleasing to the eye. A breakfast room chandelier was purchased and installed as well, since the previous homeowner took it with them. The photos below are the renovation as it unfolded.

The first pieces of brick are removed

My husband and I raced to see who could pull the brick off the backsplash first. I won.

This countertop was incredibly difficult to remove

We discovered our son loves demolition 

All of the brick is being ripped out, slowly but surely

Goodbye brick countertops

There comes a point when you just say to heck with it and rip the drywall out

That red paint....EEK!

Free child labor

The primer is on

I laid every single one of the granite tiles

In the midst of the renovation, I discovered the pantry space wasn't going to cut it with 2 growing kids. "We" (meaning me) decided to tear out the 3 stacked cabinets which served as the pantry, and I coerced my husband into extending the wall by another 2 feet. This created enough room for a walk-in pantry.

Say hello to my new pantry

The support strips are in place!

Oh shelving, how I love thee!

Time to fill it up!

After several years of back-breaking work and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (and a few design arguments thrown in there), here is the light and bright finished kitchen. The brick floors and the oven and microwave will be replaced somewhere down the road. 

We expanded the doorway to the formal dining room after we discover the refrigerator door couldn't open properly

The upper cabinets on the right are the ones we were gifted with by our new neighbor

Sooooo much brighter and cheerful!

The extension we added to the upper cabinets to give them the appearance of more height

I am in LOVE with my kitchen hardware

We are so happy the dark depressing colors, gray popcorn ceilings, oddly textured walls, and slaughterhouse cabinet paint scheme are all a thing of the past. It's time to move on to the next project in this house........ scraping more poorly hand-troweled texture off the walls. I should probably stock up on some band-aids first though.

Christie Bielss

I Found It!

It happened.  It finally happened.  After several months of longing, of searching site after site, of looking at everything from magazines to decorator's websites, I finally found it.  I didn't think I would.  I thought it would always be just outside of my grasp and I would always long for it.  I was prepared to settle.  I even looked at lesser alternatives in hopes they could pacify my need...... my selfish desire.......... to have just this one thing that was not only perfect, but oh so lovely. 

And then it happened!  Without warning, up it popped on Craigslist!  I couldn't believe my eyes! There before my eyes was a desk so very similar to the one I'd been drooling over!  How could this be?!  It was almost exactly like the brand new one, but at a price which was not only astonishing, but affordable!

Could I email fast enough to be first in line?  The thought of having someone beat me to the punch was gut-wrenching.  To know that I'd found it, that I could afford it now, only to have someone rip the rug out from under me could've pushed me over the edge.  I typed that email with lightning speed and quickly hit "send".

And then the wait started.  Every 10 minutes I checked my email that evening waiting for the reply.  I stayed up until 11pm in hopes I would see the reply, but nothing appeared.  During the night, with every shift in the bed, I would grab my phone and check my messages.  Nothing.

At 6am the next morning, I couldn't take it any longer and sent another email using a different email service.  And I waited again.  As I drove my kids to school, my daughter kept checking my email every few seconds....... nothing.

I drove myself to my doctor's appointment that morning and checked my email at an extraordinarily/ridiculously long stoplight on the way to the doctor's office.  Nothing.  I arrived at the doctor's office, checked in, sat down, and looked at my phone.  There it was!  The reply I'd been waiting for.

The excitement mixed with fear nearly overwhelmed me.  I was now actually afraid to open the email.  How was I going to be able to control myself and not start crying in the waiting lounge if the seller told me the desk was already sold?!  How would I be able to control myself and not start crying (see a pattern here?) if the seller told me I was first in line for the desk?

With baited breath I clicked to open the message.  As I was waiting those milliseconds for the email to load, the nurse called my name.  Are you kidding me?!  I quickly grabbed my things and walked to the nurse with my phone in-hand watching and waiting for that email to load.  The nurse, who knows me quite well, looked at me and asked if everything was alright since I never have my phone out at the doctor's office.

As we walked to the room, the email finally loaded.  That first sentence had me leaping in the air.  "Yes, it is still available....".  I was first up for the desk!  The nurse giggled and told me to quickly reply before someone else could snag it.

The desk was mine!  With great excitement I picked it up and brought it home.  It took 4 of us to unload it from the car and bring it into the house.  Yes, it was that heavy!  We gently placed it into what will be my office. Even that ugly unfinished room took on an almost heavenly aura with the mere presence of such a distinguished and stylist desk.

And now the great office makeover begins.  Stay tuned as I show you glimpses of how I am progressing.  With the addition of the desk though, this makeover may happen a whole lot quicker than I first anticipated.  Yippee!!!

Christie Bielss

Moving Beyond Procrastination

I saw a post recently titled "10 Tips To Stop Procrastinating Right Now".  I decided that article sounded very interesting given my great propensity for that particular behavior trait, so I saved it to read later.  2 months later..........it's still saved.

 

 

When it comes to procrastination, I think I should be given an honorary PhD.  I have perfected the art and made it into an artform.  Not only have I just avoided doing things I didn't want to do, but I have even gone so far as to spend hours trying to figure out a way how not to do something.

Unfortunately, when I'm done pondering, that pesky task is still sitting there waiting patiently.  Lately this trait has really started to get on my nerves, so much so that I have been researching organizational strategies to try to help make my life easier, if not simpler.  The thought of not having paperwork laying around my house for days..... ok weeks........ oh, who am I kidding, years.... actually excites me to the point of perusing The Container Store.

Of course, once I get into looking at all of the various items to organize my life, I then become so overwhelmed that I retreat back into my comfortable little world, surrounded by...... paper.  With the dawning of a new year, I again got invigorated to organize my little corner of the world and, if nothing else, make it presentable.  Ok, I'll be happy if I achieve the level of not being embarrassed when someone stops by.

In an effort to gain momentum, I decided I need my own little area of the house where I can write my blog, as well as other contracted writing jobs I've been getting, and edit images when I do photo shoots (from my part-time photography business).  I also realized that while my computer area was quite "functional", it was also extremely uninspiring and, to be quite honest, claustrophobic.

I don't like being boxed in and it actually overwhelms me when I started seeing even just a few papers laying around my computer.  Once I felt overwhelmed, then I'd just leave the stuff there, which then seemed to have allowed the paper to breed and create more piles of paper.

So, having figured this all out, my husband and I have decided to transform our guest room into my office/guest room.  First thing to get this wave of momentum going was to sell the computer armoire.  Thanks to Craigslist it now has a new home.  Second to go was our queen sized bed in the guest room.  Again, thank you Craigslist.  It was sold in less than 3 hours.

I'm now in shopping mode for a new desk.  You may have heard of the HGTV show "Design on a Dime" which redecorates a room in under $1,000.  With all of the renovations our house needs due to it having been a foreclosure property, I'm going for the "Knock-off on a Nickel" budget. 

And thanks to Pinterest and Houzz, I now have a bit of a design plan and am "happily" moving forward.  The photo above is my "before" picture.....ok, but the bed has already been sold, so it's not truly a before picture.  As you can see, we have done nothing to the room since moving in, so it just looks like a disorganized storage area right now.  But! I have a dream!...... and I have my photos from Pinterest and Houzz to keep me focused.

So stay tuned.  I am working hard to create my "working retreat area" as I'm now calling it, and will post an after picture when we get it complete.  I'm thinking the hardest part is going to be moving all this cr.......errrr..........junk out.  If you all are interested, I may even post some "sneak peeks" along the way...... I am truly looking forward to having a pretty area to go to, but mainly one that doesn't look like a hoarder lives here.

Christie Bielss