I realize at some point I need to stop referring to the new house as, well, the new house. Soon, it will simply be our house. Now that we’ve sold our current house (and are renting it back from the new owners until after the shoot), I’m starting to distance myself emotionally from it…albeit slowly. Ten years will be hard to walk away from, but the more progress we make in the new house, the easier it is to imagine it as our home. #thatwasdeep
Today’s pictures aren’t pretty by regular blog standards, but they are as good as gold to me. Typically, my rockstar-contractor would be done by now (he really is that fast!), but since this house was so unexpected, he had to shoehorn us in around his other jobs, so we’ve had a few days with no activity. But what has been done is good….real good.
All the plans and Before shots are spelled out in this post, but you can see the foofy cabinet crown molding, and awkward cabinet over the vent, have been removed, and new drawers are going in to break up the row of doors.
He started the beginning of the vent box that will go to the ceiling. It’s genius how he’s framed it out, and how simple the box is…remind me to do a post on it once he’s done. It will get your wheels spinning for sure!
And the most glorious tile that ever was has started going up. Would you
believe me if I told you the tile was Home Depot?! And only
$4.65/square foot!? Yes ma’am, it is (available online only, but ‘ship to store’ was fast and free!). They’ll finish it out with more tile and dark grout.
I can already see how the stovetop area will become the focal point. The Kitchen is large, but there was no area of focus, so your eye just skimmed right over it.
This bank of doors has been broken up with more drawers, and a pull-out trash.
These doors and frame were ripped out so they could be re-installed flush with the rest of the cabinets.
More doors gone. This area says Coffee Station to me…what about you?
Oh, the biggest change of all was ripping up the tile and carpet on the entire lower level. I’ll get a floorplan and house tour post together soon. Or in a few months. We decided when we bought this house, that anything we do, we’re going to do right. So if that means we wait until we can afford the real-deal, then we wait.
Fortunately we scored such a great deal on the flooring by buying it wholesale, we’re able to lay real engineered hardwoods throughout before moving in. (Lumber Liquidators has been amazing, and I can’t speak highly enough on their customer service and patience, as we wade through all the options!)
My job has been to make 87 decisions a day…thank goodness for texting! We’ve decided on SW Mindful Gray for the Kitchen cabinets, and SW Iron Ore for the Butler’s Pantry cabinets. I’m using the same color strip throughout the house, with the exception of Iron Ore. Black Fox was the darkest color on my strip, but you can see in the lower left how brown it reads in the house.
I think the walls will likely be SW Repose Gray. Do you have any experience with any of these colors?
I’ll give you a little peek at the surrounding rooms and what’s going on there…the Kitchen, Breakfast Room and Family Room are basically one open space. Wallpaper starting to come down in the Breakfast Room.
This door leads to the Laundry Room, and since it’s so visible from the main areas, we’re having a little fun in there….here’s a peek.
The fireplace is a little serious for us, so we’ll slap a big TV up there, and say buh-bye to the hunter green tile. Here’s a peek of what’s going up instead.
This view of the Family Room shows the previous tile and carpet divider, along with the broken windows. The outside panes of two are completely gone, so we’re replacing all four with frameless glass for an unobstructed view of the screen porch and backyard.
We’ve only had one goof-up so far, but it was a pretty pricey one! When they called to confirm if I wanted the tile gone in every room downstairs, including the Laundry and Powder Bath, I was like the Queen of Hearts and declared ‘Yes! Off with their heads!’
But I hadn’t taken in to account the Pantry. Which so happens to be (don’t hate me) a full-blown walk-in. We’re talking 72 square feet. The genius builder used every bit of under-stair space for it! So we were left with the decision to either re-tile it, or carry the wood floors through it, as well. I couldn’t bring myself to pay for more tile and labor, since we’d just ripped up perfectly good tile (for a Pantry anyway), and the cost for wood was virtually the same. So we’re going to have a ridiculously overpriced nice Pantry when this is over.
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| You walk in, take a right, and then a left…that’s the Pantry. Basically bigger than my college dorm room. |
I took all these pictures Tuesday after work, but yesterday was an exceptionally productive day…so I’ll have another update soon! Don’t forget you can follow daily progress on my InstaGram and Facebook. Assuming Facebook deems them worthy enough to show in your feed. So tell me, have you used any of these paint colors? What’s the costliest mistake you’ve made in your home?!
