I've been a bad, bad blogger. And I've maybe been a lazy homeowner. Since we got our kitchen to a usable state, we stopped. Nothing much has been going on around here - in the home improvement area anyway. We have been enjoying a bit of a break from the work we do around the house. It been nice to have a break because the kitchen had been such HUGE project, and while it's not *done*, the bulk of the inconvenient/messy/frustrating work is over. YAY!
The break is over and I've switched gears to something completely different. The living room.
Meet the living room as it was when we bought the house in 2007.
A few things we did first: Mirror, Wallpaper & Carpet = Gone. That table is gone too (although it did hang out in the basement for a long time). The front door and windows have been replaced. And we painted. The paint color I chose was called "Coastal Sand". It's a neutral brown, sort of a medium toned tan. It's the color in my parents' family room. It worked because it went with everything. It was fine.
Fast forward to a few years after that when we painted our bedroom a color called "Kindling Wood". This was before this color family got trendy and got the name, but it's a shade of "greige". I remember as i was rolling it on, I said to Jason, "I really wish we had put this color downstairs because I love it." And I do still.
Truly, ever since we painted the greige in our bedroom, I've hated the color in our living room. Hate is a strong word, but maybe I knew the tan color just wasn't it.
So last week while I was procrastinating writing a paper for an education class I'm taking, I decided it would be the best time to paint the living room. And since the Home Depot guys convinced us that we would need 5 gallons of paint to do one bedroom, we have had 2.5 gallons of this paint in our basement. So I did it. I shook the heck out of that can of paint, grabbed a brush and cut-in cup and went to town.
Here's where we are now:
I LOVE IT. It's so much more the feel that I was going for. This angle is the same as the last of the 3 living room pics from 2007, just so you know what you're looking at. And sorry for the weird shot - I"m trying to shoot around the Christmas tree :)
Here's a peek at this year's tree compared to last year's tree so you can see the old and the new colors side by side.
And is it crazy to decide to repaint the living room a month before Christmas? I guess a little crazy, but it's totally worth it.
Ok, so one of my personal issues seems to be the inability to come up with funny/punny blog post titles. I'm not even sure why I think this is an important thing, but there it is.
In case you might not have guessed, the kitchen has been PAINTED.
I can't even explain how excited I am by most kitchen related stuff. This project has been LOOOOONG and somewhat painful/inconvenient so now that we're starting to do stuff that's part of the final product (like paint, tile, etc), I feel like we're finally seeing the light at the end of this tunnel. It's so awesome.
Painting falls into my realm of responsibility and that's totally fine by me. Jason handled bedtime with the kids for a few nights while I got it done.
For the ceiling, we went with "Whisper White" from Home Depot (this is our standard white here for ceilings & trim) and on the walls I used "Gentle Rain" from Home Depot. It's a warm-ish gray color. I had considered a lot of options for paint colors including blues (which I loved) and various shades of gray. The gray won out in the long run because of 2 things - I am in love with a colored back splash tile and because I was worried that I'd be "over" a bold wall color really fast. So I went with a neutral and am very happy with the result.
So here's the "before"
And here's the "after"
I really like the color. I was a bit nervous that the color would be too dark (since we don't get a TON of natural light), but it's really just right.
Check out the floor! We've got cement backer board down to get ready for the next step in this project - FLOORING!!! Yeah, I'm excited!
So we're back! After some time at the beach (and away from the house) we were ready to roll and really make some progress when we came back. As always, even small tasks seem overwhelming when you just don't want to do them.
Case in point - sanding drywall. It's a simple thing. Put sanding sponge in hand and rub on wall until smooth. But as simple as it is, it is also unpleasant. The person doing it gets incredibly dirty. It's exhausting work. And it's a pain to clean up. Jason was the sole sander this time (we've done it together on other projects) and it's finally DONE (can't tell you how glad we are that it's behind us!).
After sanding the drywall comes priming. Priming fresh drywall can be pretty time consuming. The walls seem to really soak up the primer, so it really seems like you're only getting about 2 square feet of coverage with each load of the roller. It's a lot of up & down the ladder (especially when doing the ceiling), but it's a super important step that you really shouldn't skip. I've seen places where I've accidentally missed the primer and the paint doesn't even stick. BIG mess!
After priming, I spent a day or so in different lights looking for places I missed or that have a drip. Sometimes that can be tough to see when it's all white-on-white. So after a little work with a brush, the priming was DONE and we were ready for PAINT!!
Here's a quick before & after:
OK, I know it's not that exciting, but it is a step in the right direction. I like this phase of the project because the work becomes a little more visible. We're finally getting to parts of the project that we'll see when we're done!
We have lived in this house for about 6 years now and the kitchen has been this one big ugly eyesore. It's a bigger renovation than either of the bathrooms, and yet as ugly as it is, it's been "serviceable" - meaning that we got new appliances and there's basically enough storage for our needs. Only not really.
Let's take a look at it and talk about the problems - keep in mind that these photos are from our first day in the house.
Stove/oven - We got a new stove about 5 years ago and we really like it - it's black/stainless (not that awesome brown one in the picture). Pretty much everything else you see here will be removed. Yeah, we don't really dig the brown hood/vent so we'll probably replace it with a microwave vent. It will cost us a bit of over-the-stove storage, but we'll make up for it in counter space. Also see that sweet brown plaid backsplash? Yeah, that's gonna go too.
Sink/dishwasher - We will be replacing the dishwasher - we replaced the brown one shortly after moving in, but it's had a happy life and the interior racks are rusting. I'll put it on CL and maybe get $20 for it because it does work. We may be relocating it to the opposite side of the sink though. In its place we'll have a nice cabinet and/or bank of drawers. It'll be good.
Fridge - We will also get a new fridge. We got a new fridge - a stainless side-by-side and it is only 6 years old so we'll be CL-ing it for sure. The fridge is great but it's just not working for us. The position of the fridge next to the wall makes it so that the fridge door doesn't fully open. It's really annoying, actually. The best decision we made so far was to relocate the fridge to the other side of the room and to have the cabinets wrap around the corner. We'll get more cabinet AND counter space. But we'll need a different fridge.
Back side - To add functional space in our kitchen, we got a butcher-block island/counter from Ikea. It's really great, but our new kitchen design puts the fridge - a new counter-depth fridge over here. And we'll have tall pantry cabinets on either side of that.
Sliding doors - NEW! The current doors are in rough shape. The handle falls off, the lock doesn't work, the screens jump the tracks and are all ripped. The best way to go is to just do a full-on replacement.
So what's it gonna look like? We're thinking white cabinets, probably a blue/green tinged composite counter, a dark cork flooring, and some to-be-determined tile backsplash. We don't have much paint, but that will be a light color that will coordinate with the counters or tile. Floors are still a question - maybe dark cork?
I'm pretty excited. We are in the very early stages here, but it's going to be great!
