House Tour: Kitchen (Before) and (Now)

Today’s installment of the house tour features the kitchen. The kitchen is even more in the “now” state and way farther from the “after” state than the living room. Basically, not a lot has been done in the kitchen except a few things that were absolutely necessary so that I wouldn’t cry every time I looked at my kitchen.

You see, I’m a cook. I’m a baker. I am a kitcheneer (yes, that’s a thing). So, funny that in my new home, my kitchen is my most hated space, right? Yeah, it’s hilarious, really. When we bought this house, the kitchen was actually one of the main selling points for us. Hello, potential. But, as it stands right now, it’s in bad, yucky shape.

Here are a few shots of our kitchen that I took the first time we walked through after having our offer accepted.

And just for fun, here’s a shot taken from the living room looking into the dining room and kitchen just a few weeks before we moved in. Yikes.

And here  is where’s it at today. Well, on Thursday at the tail end of Gwen’s morning nap after I spent a good thirty minutes cleaning, if I’m being entirely honest. It’s quite a lot messier today.     As you can see, not a whole lot has been done at this point. But, if you look carefully, you will see that some things have been done. Evan replaced the floor. This floor is possibly temporary. It may stay when we renovate, it may not. But regardless, it was necessary. The existing floor was very, very bad. The room was also painted. This included transformed the sea foam green ceiling (!!!!!) to a clean, crisp white. The walls were done the same color as is in the living room, dining room, n=nursery and master. We like to keep it simple. Or cheap. However you like to look at it.

We went close to four months living here without a dishwasher and when we finally purchased one, Evan added an extra few feet of counter top to accommodate it. Don’t you think the hunter green ties in so nicely with the rest of the look? (Sarcasm font!) This was just a piece of counter top he had laying around so for now, it will do. I must say, despite the huge eyesore of the mismatched counter top, I feel so much less frustrated and more settled since it was added. It may look horrible, but the extra few feet makes all the difference in the world. Before this piece of counter top, and the dishwasher, there were constant dishes piled on either side of the sink, and often on the cook top as well. There was not a natural or ideal place to serve as the work space. I felt like I was on top of myself all the time and so cluttered and cramped. If you remember our apartment, you’ll know that I’m used to a large, spacious kitchen with a lot of counter space. Getting use to a less functional space was tough.

The cabinets are in bad shape. Really bad shape. Many people have asked if we’d consider painting them for the time being to spruce it up. But honestly? All that work is just not worth it. There’s only so much covering up you can do, you know? The sink and above the sink window are super grunge, too. As well, the oven is tiny. It’s smaller than a standard oven so that has posed some difficulty for me, but I’m adjusting. Lastly, the cook top is horrific. It’s old and dirty and nasty. It’s way less dirty and nasty than when we got the house but again, only so much you can do. Only one burner works entirely well. Two work so-so. One doesn’t work at all. I don’t think I’ll be able to put up with it for too much longer. I was trying to hold off to see if I could just make do until we renovate, because I’m not sure whether or not I want to keep the separate oven/cook top kind of deal, but the idea of sticking with this piece of junk until I get a brand new kitchen is getting less and less wonderful as the days go by.

I have big dreams for this space. Big. I can see the potential. Every day I come up with new ideas of how to make this kitchen my own. That right there is another post all together. I know that once we scrape together enough pennies (ugh, pennies? More like dolla dolla bills, y’all) and my husband works his magic in this room, it will be my dream. My absolute dream. It is spacious. And open. It will be perfect.

Until then, I just keep truckin’. Or, erm, cookin’.

House Tour: Living Room (Before) and (Now)

Like I’ve said a few times, this whole home tour thing is going to have to be a “before” and “now” series as opposed to before and after because despite the tremendous amount of work my husband has done in our home, it is far from being in the “after” state just yet. Aside from the bathroom, which I’ve already shown you, the rest of the house is still in a state of progress.

This is the living room as it looked the day we took possession of the house. Nasty, dirty carpet. Crumbling walls. Beautiful (read: hideous Grandma style) window coverings.

Here are a few pics of the process.

Hours, well, hundreds of hours, of work. Some blood, sweat and tears. Perhaps a choice word or two. And my husband transformed the space into this….

(The doors off this room are the kiddo’s bedrooms)

And just for fun, a side by side comparison of the before and now from the same angle.

So, what’s been done and what’s left do?

Obviously, the nasty carpet was replaced with gorgeous hardwood flooring. And let me just say this, these floors were a labour of love. I cannot even tell you how many days and nights and weekends my rockin’ husband spent installing this floor (with the help of his uncle, my uncle and a few pals here and there). The walls were repaired and room was painted – including ceiling, window trim, doors and door frames. Can I tell you the huge difference that painting the trim made? I remember coming into the house shortly after he finished the trim and my jaw hit the floor. It was like an entirely different house. It brightened the room up so much and makes the windows look like they’re in a lot better shape than they actually are. We also added the wall sconces as there was no lighting in the room and I didn’t want to rely entirely on floor lamps. Hello, monkey children climbing all over them!

What’s left to do. The big one? Baseboards. Although he just painted the existing window and door trim in the rooms, the baseboards were not worth saving. They are high on our priority list, we’re just still deciding exactly which direction to go. Also, poor Gwendolyn still needs a doorknob. It’s been sitting on my dresser for months. MONTHS! Problem is, house stuff usually starts after the hour of 7pm, once she’s in bed so it keeps getting pushed to the wayside.

Eventually, we might take a few feet off the living room and add a hallway so that the girl’s bedrooms aren’t directly connected to the main living area. We’ll see, though. So far, I haven’t minded it but as they get older it may be more ideal to have a little bit of separation. We’d like to do something with the little alcove beside where our (prehistoric) TV sits. My vision here is built in book cases with a small bench seat. A little reading nook, if you will. Maybe a fireplace with a TV mounted above it in. The kid’s book slings and toy corner will also see some revamping and relocation in the very near future, just as soon as the playroom is up and functioning (it’s close!!). The sofa table needs some desperate attention. Eventually, the windows will be replaced and I’ll add some type of curtains. Although, I haven’t decided just what yet. The decor is less than stellar. Basically, I’ve just recently unpacked my boxes of decor so I have haphazardly placed my existing decorations around our home. Nothing really has a “place” yet and I have some ideas for new looks and new directions I’d like to go in but alas … it’s all about finding the time and money to browse and shop and add to my collection. Sigh. All in due time, right?

So there you have it. This is the area of our home we spend most of our time. It’s not nearly as cozy as I’d like it… but we’ll get there.

January Goal Review – February Goals

So apparently I need to ease myself back into this whole public monthly goal setting thing. Because, well, I did not do so great this month. I blame Pretty Little Liars. I got hooked. So hooked. As in, I watched every single episode in less than three weeks. I’m now finally caught up so life can resume as normal. Also, you are all now free to post spoilers without ruining my life. (Immalookingat YOU!)

In my defense, however, for every goal on this list I did not complete, I did get some other things around the house done that I had not intended... I (finally) unpacked the remaining boxes from the basement, got out more every day decor and reorganized our bathroom cupboards. So that counts, right?! RIGHT!?

Put away and ORGANIZE Christmas – done and dusted. Everything was purged, reorganized and put away during the first week of January. I win.

Select photo book photos: I rocked this one as well. Along with picking all the photos, I got them uploaded to Shutterfly as well. That there is half the battle. I find the actual making of the book to be super quick and easy. So much so that I finished uploading my pics yesterday, started the book last night and am already up to Gwen’s birth.

Blog about our holidays, Gwen’s 6 month update and two house before/afters: Here’s where things got dicey. I didn’t blog about the holidays. I decided to forego it and just include my blurbs in the photo book. I did get Gwen’s 6monther done and posted one home reno post (our entryway). I failed at getting a second one posted. I was going to post about the $5 and 5 minute bathroom reorganization but, well, who wants to see pics of lady products and my toothbrush?

Organize and purge toys:  I can only say this was half accomplished. I did get rid of a lot. And I started organization. The girls got organizational stuff for Christmas. This is what I have set up so far …

Evan’s working on the playroom so that will be a big job this month.

Deliver donation pile to Goodwill: Fail. Triple fail fail. There are 2 garbage bags and one large box sitting on the pool table downstairs waiting to go. That darn pool table!

So … on to this month:

1. Reorganize pantry/food cupboards. Seeing as we’ve lived in our home less than 6 months, this really shouldn’t need to be done but seriously, I cannot believe how quickly these areas get overrun! Plus, now that I’m in my groove in my new home and I have a second little person who is eating and has food to be stored, I can better decide where things should go.

2. Clean Fridge. All I will say is yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

3. Finish 2012 Family Photobook. Really, as I said before, the biggest task is done. The pictures are selected, organized and uploaded. I started actually assembling the book last night and completed up until June 2012. This should definitely be attainable. What’s best is that my motivation is that I will get to eat Chipotle when it’s done and ordered and I go pick it up.

4. Set up playroom. Throughout January Ev has been hard at work. He’s replaced the floor and has been building permanent shelving and storage. If you follow me on IG you will have probably seen some of the progress. Soon he’ll be done his portion and it will be my turn to take the reins. Here is where the super crazy toy organization will happen. I also have some ideas for wall art, craft storage and a small office space.

5. Blog House Tour. The truth is, I’ve sucked at before/after photos. Mostly, because there are no afters yet. Everything is still a work in progress. So, I’m planning to showcasing our house in a Before and NOW series. Showing you what it was and how far it’s come – despite the remaining imperfections and lack of final products.

6. Decorate sofa table. In our apartment, I had a nice sofa table set up in the kitchen that housed my cookbooks, decorative platters and recipe box. Now, it’s in the living room and is sitting fairly empty. I have many ideas in my head. As always. So we shall see how it goes.

That sounds like enough for now. Stay tuned. And cross your fingers I don’t get sucked into any new shows.

Entryway Reno

Rumour has it that in order to have an effective before/after renovation post one must have before photos. I fail. I have no idea how it happened but either I forgot to take before photos or I somehow lost them when the laptop crashed. I am fairly certain I didn’t take any because I know I had all my files backed up. I guess when I took the initial before photos of the house when we took possession the entry way was the last thing on my radar and then when he started working away at it, I didn’t realize there weren’t any. Which stinks. Because it would be nice to show you just how far this space has come.

So will you just trust me on it? That the walls were crumbling and falling apart and that there was a large, open hole that went straight to the concrete floor of the basement? Um, yeah. No joke. Most people would have assumed it was meant to be a laundry chute but considering the house didn’t have any laundry hookups when we moved in (again, no joke) I’m not entirely sure what the purpose was. Except to pose an extreme danger to young children. When we moved in, the “hole” was quickly covered with a piece of plywood until Evan got the space finished.

This photo of our hallway is the only one I have that shows any amount of the before of the entry way. You can just barely see the door to the garage and the hole on the bottom right that was covered by a lovely turquoise curtain.

Anyhow, use your imagination. It was bad. Really bad.

This is the space that comes in from the garage. It’s our primary entrance and because there is no (functional) closet space in this area of the house, we needed to make it more useful for our needs. Eventually we’d like to have the garage at a state where we can put coats/shoes but even in the winter, this is no good because who wants to put freezing cold boots on when they go outside? We have a front door and front closet where we store most of the shoes/coats/hats/mitts but we like to avoid using this entrance, especially in the winter to avoid tracking dirt into the dining room.

This is how the space looks today. Evan replaced the floor, fixed the walls, put white paneling on the bottom half of the walls to even them out and painted the upper portion the same colour as the rest of the hallway and bathroom. He painted the existing door white. He added hooks for coats and transformed the elusive hole to the basement into a permanent shoe storage cubby. It’s perfect for keeping shoes out of the way – and accessible enough that we don’t end up leaving them tossed all over the floor when we come in.

  

On the opposite wall of the coat hooks is the door to the basement and this high (not very functional) closet. I need a ladder – not just a chair – a ladder to get to it. So for now, with a huge unfinished basement for storage, it sits empty. It doesn’t even seem to make sense to put seasonal things in there. Much easier to store them downstairs. Maybe someday I’ll find a use for it.

Because the door to the basement swings into the entry way, there wasn’t enough room to make the coat shelf big enough to have baskets for hats/mitts/scarves and so on. So for now, a few of them are tossed around but most of them are still either in the bench in the hallway or in the front closet. Scarves and kid gloves that are on a string can hang on the hooks. Not the most ideal situation, but I haven’t yet thought of something better.

I try to keep most of our outdoor apparel hanging in the closet in the dining room and reserve this space for our most used stuff so it doesn’t get to jam packed but already it seems that it is becoming the catch all area.

The space still needs a bit of work. The door is painted (and looks 100% better than it did before) but eventually I’d love to see it replaced. The photos in the frame of the key holder need to be updated. And I may need to find something for the wall above the shoe box or maybe some kind of sign above the door. I’m not sure about this yet. It is a small, busy, potentially clutter filled area so I may just want to leave that wall bare to cut down on the craziness of this area of the house. Any suggestions?