Interior before and afters

So we closed on this house exactly 95 days ago… It feels like much longer than that, especially when I look back over pictures from when we first purchased the house. We have done so much in the past three months and it feels so good to finally be getting close to the end of our initial to-do list. We have a couple small projects still to do but for now the main interior projects are just about done! So today I have a flood of before and after pictures for you.

Above you have the stair case at the front entry way.

Projects Completed:

– Staircase stripped, sanded, and repainted.

– New carpet on stairs and hardwood in the hallway

– Hall and staircase painted

I’ve already shown most of the kitchen but we recently did some more work to the breakfast nook.

Projects Completed:

– Walls painted

– Bi-fold doors added

– Vertical blinds removed and curtains added

– Light fixture changed

Projects left:

– Hem curtains

– put door knobs on doors.

– Eventually we want to take the sliding doors out and put a window in its place

Dining room

Projects Completed:

– Flooring replaced

– Walls painted

– Light fixture changed

Projects to do:

– Add crown molding to match living room

– Window treatments

– Eventually add in windows on the front walls (where the London painting is hanging)

Living Room

Projects Completed:

– Half wall knocked down

– Columns refinished

– Flooring replaced

– Walls and trim painted

– Closet door replaced

Projects to do:

– Change out light fixture

– Finish decorating

Side note, I love the light in our living room during the day. We have a huge sky light that fills the room with a gorgeous even light for most of the day and it is so peaceful! Also the wall color in the living room, dining room, hallway, bathroom, staircase, and landing are all the same color but each room looks completely different depending on what time of day it is.

Amydog and Troubadour McLaren approve of all the changes 🙂

Downstairs bathroom

Projects Complete:

– Walls patched

– All doors replaced

– Walls painted

– Cabinets painted

– Mirror hung

– Shelves hung over toilet area

Downstairs guest room

Projects complete:
– Doors replaced

– Carpet replaced (praise Jesus!)

Projects to do:

– Paint walls and trim

– Add closet doors

– Replace windows (they have lost their seal)

Master Bedroom
Projects Completed:

– Walls painted

– Vertical blinds replaced

– Carpet replaced

Projects to do:

– Add crown molding

– Replace doors

– get new bed frame 🙂

 

Landing

Projects Completed:

– Walls painted

– Vertical blinds replaced

– Carpet replaced (oh dear it was so nasty. Y’all it gave me nightmares)

– We have no clue what we are doing with this area. It is the only room we can’t agree on. I want to move the tv up here and have a sitting area but Philip wants to bring in a pool table… we will see what happens.

PS Troubadour has managed to fall off the side of the landing twice. How that cat keeps falling I don’t know. She gets up there multiple times a day and can’t seem to stay up 100% of the time… I hope she doesn’t kill herself!

Philip’s Office

Projects Completed:

– Lady Bugs killed and painted over 🙂

– Trim painted

– Blinds replaced

– Guitars hung

Projects to do:

– Hang new doors

Probably my favorite corner of our house. For the first time since we’ve been married Philip has a room that is 100% dedicated to his music. As a professional musician he is always playing outside of the house but never played at home because he didn’t have a place to set up his gear. Now he plays all the time and I am thrilled!

So that is what we have been up to the past 3 months 🙂

Savannah

The Kitchen: After

Oh the glory of nearly finishing a project! I wold say that the kitchen is about 85% finished. Tuesday we hung the new pantry door (a task that took way to long because we couldn’t find our router in the mess that is our tool storage area… and the hinges area didn’t come precut…) and it needs a coat of paint as well as the laundry room doors. The new cabinet doors should be build and installed within the next couple months but other than those small things, this room is done!

Since we have all white dishes and good bit of our serving pieces and baking bowls are glass or white we will be leaving the above set of cabinets open as a display cabinet. I really like the idea of having some open cabinets but I don’t like clutter or things that don’t match. All the other cabinets hold at least one or two pieces that stick out a little and so doors are going up 🙂 The OCD side of me needs order and uniformity.

A look at the bottom cabinets and the new dishwasher. Please ignore the smudges on the stainless… still trying to figure out how to clean that properly. Any suggestions blog world?

This is about as much as I can handle on my counter tops… and that is pushing the limits. But I ran out of cabinet space.

If you remember from my inspiration images, I wanted a large sink and oversize faucet. We got it and we didn’t even have to install it. Score! The breakfast area will be home to this table set from our old place. We are thinking of painting the legs white so that that dark wood top is more of the emphasis. I’m not a fan of the black so I’m sure the legs will be painted some color at some point.

The area above the microwave some how got missed during painting… and we have been busy working on other projects to break out the paint in here. It will get painted when I attack the pantry door this weekend 🙂 Look no more nasty old fridge!!

My OCDness in pantry form. Eventually I want to get rid of all boxes and get the cans a bit more organized, but I’ve been busy putting in floors, painting, and running a business to get to organizing cans. Whatever, there has to be a line somewhere 🙂

And the full kitchen as it is right now. So much better!

Here is a little look at before and after to see how far it really has come:

And that my friends is our little kitchen. It was a journey to get it all white but we love how it turned out! We’ll be sure to post when we get the new cabinet door fronts on.

Savannah and Philip

The Kitchen: The room full of surprises

And time to get into the interior work. Holy cow looking back on these images really shows me how far the house has come. When you are living in a remodel it seems like you haven’t done anything at all. You tend to forget what it was like before you started pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into the house. And believe me, plenty of blood, sweat, and tears have been shed so far (don’t worry, we’ve sanitized where we have shed blood).

As soon as our bid was accepted for the house we started a game plan for the renovations. Ok renovations might be a strong word for what we are doing. I like to think we are being filmed for This Old House and turning a dump into an amazing place. Truth be told our place just needed a little love and not a whole lot of love like most the homes on This Old House. Side note, since we have been married we have spent our free Saturday mornings watching This Old House. We absolutely love that show and it was a huge inspiration to us in this adventure. We both grew up watching it with our parents and we neither of us appreciated it until we were married. 🙂 Back to my original point. We both agreed that we had certain things that we wanted done on the house before we moved in. For me one of the must haves before move in was the kitchen needed to be redone. We took about 2 weeks of solidly working on the house before moving in and it took every spare moment we had to get started on our projects. And we shot a wedding in the middle of that…

I am so glad that we went ahead and got a huge jump start on the kitchen because this room was full of surprises. When I say surprises I mean one things, lots of extra work. 😦

We knew for sure that the kitchen would be ALL white. And by white I mean Brilliant White. As white as white can get on the Pantone chart. Everything but the tile and counter tops were going to get covered in white. And this made me very happy. If I had my way the entire house would be white but P likes some color so no all white house…

The day that we started on the kitchen we were blessed to have Philip’s parents helpings us out. Philip and his dad started on the wall painting and his mom and I started cleaning the cabinets and prepping them for paint. I knew that we needed to sand the cabinets before painting but I thought it would be a quick little chore… But we have learned that nothing is quick in this house.

The cabinet drawers got pulled out and look what we found:

Yep lime contact paper. We thought it was paint and then we tried to sand it… Nope 1980s contact paper that was nearly impossible to get off. You would get a little bit coming off and then it would snap because it was so old and brittle. I got a nasty bruise on my arm from pulling this stuff and it snapping with me pulling full force. Bless my mother-in-law’s (Cindy)  heart! She was such a great sport about helping with this stuff. It nearly had me in tears.

More of the evil green and the nastiness that was the pantry. Boy it was so gross!

P and Doug painting. I think P started to hate our choice of white after the 3rd coat of paint and we were still seeing the original green…

Close ups on the cabinets before attempting to start sanding. They were a funky cream and covered in other people’s grime. I’m not a fan of gunk on my cabinets, especially when I am not sure what the gunk is, so a good sanding was in order.

And then I started sanding… and the paint started falling off in chunks. Not what you want to see when you are planning on doing a light sanding to just get the surface rough to accept the paint.

So I had to go down to bare wood… 😦 not an easy task nor a short task.  The heat gun and electric sander became my best friend on this project.

Come to find out there were 6 coats of paint on the cabinets. Yep 6 different colors. When you are going to paint cabinets that were originally stained and sealed, you need to sand the wood or strip off the sealer and prep the wood for painting so that the wood accepts the paint. Take a wild guess as so what they didn’t do before putting 6 coats of paint on these cabinets… yep they were never sanded. So that was why the paint was peeling off. BOO! People come on don’t cut corners! It will make the next owners’ lives miserable 🙂

Remember that green contact paper… yep I found more of it in the cabinets! They had painted over it! So more ripping up contact paper. Moral or the story, never ever use stick on contact paper. It is from the devil. The end. Oh yeah forgot to mention that it was on the pantry shelves too! What we thought was blue paint on the shelves, nope contact paper. And under the bright blue paper, more green!! I think the lady found a huge stock pile of it on sale some where and decided to cover the whole kitchen in it. I hate that stuff!

The drawers with one coat of paint and a section of the cabinets down to the bare wood, properly prepared for painting.

Friend Whitney and my sister and mom helping with the kitchen.

Painting the insides of the cabinets. These suckers were really deep and it was really hard to get the backs. We were really technical and laid down on our backs with legs flying in the air to get the furthest part.

Putting cabinet doors back on. The old doors got sanded and painted in the white (high gloss) and are going back up for the time being. We are having custom door fronts built in the near future and I cannot to wait to get rid of these. They are really bulky and most of them don’t close properly… in due time.

When we took the old microwave down we found evident of some of the old paint colors 🙂 See that nice shiny wood… yeah it shouldn’t be that way if you are painging it. Sorry I’m still bitter that they didn’t properly prep the cabinets… What can I expect though, we did buy a foreclosure that needed lots of work… 🙂

P installing the new dishwasher. We got all new appliance for the kitchen and I am so thrilled! We have never had matching appliances and it is so nice to have new things in our little fixer upper. 🙂 Bonus we bought them Memorial Day weekend and people we got a killer deal on the whole set! Basically what we would have paid for just the fridge and microwave we got all four during the sale. SCORE! And we got all stainless. Pretty and something that doesn’t need work! Can I get an amen! And the other image is the cabinets all painted and stored open for a couple days so that the high gloss could properly cure and the paint wouldn’t stick or peel off when the cabinets closed. High gloss needs lots of time setting without contact and I am so glad we took the time to leave everything open and let it set.

 

 

A much cleaner and fresher pantry! The door got replaced and a new paneled door is in place of the flat old door.

A little out of order but I had to include this of P sanding. He wasn’t planning on working on the house this day and he was in his suit for playing for our church services. I love is make shift work clothes 🙂

The old microwave. Doesn’t look bad but I love that the new one matches everything else.

More cabinets after being painted.

P painting the laundry closet

And a much brighter cleaner kitchen!! This was before the appliances got installed. The full after is coming in the next post 🙂

And a before and after 🙂

Doesn’t look like we did much but boy did we! It took so much work just to get everything white. But we love it and now it is done and we can actually cook and eat like normal people 🙂

Cheers,

Savannah

Before: Downstairs

When we first started looking for house Philip and I both agree on several key “must haves” in a house. They were as follows:

1. Open floor plan
2. Tall ceilings
3. A fireplace
4. Preferably a house that was square (most efficient with the energy bills 🙂 )
5. A loft area would be a plus and really nice to have but not a deal breaker
6. A separate area for our offices and client area that had its own entrance

The first 3 were easy to find in houses and 4 and 5 were things we would both like but didn’t have to have. The last component was the hardest and that one was the deal breaker. So many houses would have just about everything but no place for us to run our business. The many reason for us moving and buying a house was for larger office and a dedicated client space. So when we found this house we were thrilled. Not only were we getting what we wanted personally we were getting a full studio space that was completely free of the house! Can a girl get an amen! It literally had everything we were looking for!

To help you get an overall feel for the house here is the floorplan of the entire house:

Look a square house! It tickled me to death to find out that we really did get a square house. The second story of course isn’t square but I’m cool with that. The detached “rec room” is where we will have our office and client space. We are still pinching ourselves that we found this place!

(Here is a look at the exterior if you missed it)

Here is a look at the interior downstairs of the main house, my little square house. These were taken quickly on our walk through with the relator and only on our point and shoot. I’ll share a little about our plans for each space as we go 🙂

This is the dining room. On the right side of the image you can barely see the front door. The front door is actually on the left side of the house if you are facing the house. The entry way is all brick. In the dining room we will be raising the lighting fixture (possibly replacing down the road) and painting to a light gray:

Here is another view of the dining room and you can see the brick entry way and part of the door to the kitchen. Oh and look, we got our loft 🙂

I love that the stairs are split level! I have never liked when a staircase is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door but with a split level it feel less threatening and not as bulky:

From the stone looking into the living room. There is a set of sliding doors on the right that leads to our covered patio and studio:

The living room is going to be painted the same light gray as the dining room and the the half wall on the left is coming down! We really want this area to feel really open since we like to entertain so knocking down the wall is a must!

In the living room and dining room we are ripping up the carpet and doing stained concrete for flooring. We went back and forth for weeks about what to do with the floors and we really think the stained concrete will go well with our love for modern design.

Hey look we got a sky light! The light it provides in the living room is pretty nice! Philip is a huge natural light person when it come to indoors so he loves this feature!

Knocking down this half wall is going to open this area up so much! I can’t wait to see it go.

Our wood burning stove. We aren’t really sure yet if this works but we are hoping it does. Come winter we would love to be able to heat the house with this sucker!

And on to the kitchen. All the walls are going to be painted white. As in super clean bright white. I love all white kitchens and I can’t wait to paint this room:

Eventually we will be building new cabinet doors but these will do for now 🙂

Being a foreclosure we have no clue how old the appliances… These guys are getting replaced very quickly. Joy of a foreclosure, you save money on purchasing the actual house so you can have more funds for replacing the fun stuff like fridges, stoves, dishwashers, and microwaves 🙂

One beautiful thing about this house, even with it being a foreclosure, was that the previous owners spent a ton on updating the kitchen. All the tile is pretty much brand new and they installed granite counter tops. Yeah, you don’t find many foreclosures in this condition; we got lucky!

Oh bless this pantry. I love the space but dear this shelving color has got to go! All white in here too.

All the cabinets are an off white so they will be repainted as well.

The breakfast nook and laundry closet. To the right is a set of sliding doors that leads to the wrap around porch:

New doors and some paint for this area:

Hall to the downstairs bath and guest room:

Bless this bathroom… the paint color is hideous! But it has new tile (and a natural color at that) on the floor and the shower/tub. Can’t complain about that.

All doors downstairs (and upstairs) will be replaced. We think they cut a cat door here… It is a little odd.

Guest bedroom:

And the closets in the guest room. This room will eventually be painted and will serve as a nice little resting place for all our friends and family who come to visit. 🙂

So that is the downstairs. Simple but just what we wanted!

-Savannah