Kitchen Before & After

In case you missed it, see the living room here.
Next up, the kitchen!!
Here's the before layout again, to refresh your memory.

Looking towards the front door. The doorway to the left goes into bedroom number 1. 

Looking into the kitchen from the front entryway. Doorway straight ahead goes into the garage.

There was a little breakfast nook at the end of the kitchen.

We saved some of those knotty pine cabinets. I actually really love them. Now we use them for storage in the garage.

And, here is what we did to her..

From the front entry way, looking into the kitchen.  Door straight ahead leads into the pantry.

 Said pantry (Hi cute boy!!)

Copper sink, walnut butcher block counter tops.

Standing in what was the bedroom, and now is completely open, and turned into a bar/island.

I LOVE my cabinets. Love them. They do show dirt pretty easily because they are white. But, I still love them.

I also love this range. Funny story. We originally bought a standard range with the high back from Home Depot shortly after we bought the home. It was a nice range, but certainly not this nice, and really we didn't care that much. It sat in our garage for about 8 months before we were ready to put her in. And once we did, the back panel was taller than the bar by about 5 inches. :( Thank GOD, Home Depot returned the stove, even though it was far beyond the return timeline. I was on the hunt for another stove without the taller back panel, and as it turns out, the BASIC stoves like that start at $1300 (!!!!!). We found this one at Pacific Sales in the back warehouse, where they sell the old floor models and dinged up equipment. This one was an old floor model, which was $3400, but we got it for $1500. Boom! And, it is seriously awesome. A mistake I was very thankful for! 

Ummm hi : Living Room Before & After

Wow. I truthfully did not expect to be gone that long. But then life happens, and you  have to cut things out that were taking up more time than you could give.  So a little 30 second update:
1. I am still taking pictures of people, and even some weddings!!!!
2. I had a baby. Most of you probably know that through Facebook and Instagram
3. We love our house
4. I left my job and for an infinitely more important one - staying home with my boys

I am hoping to be a little more frequent on here. There has been a lot of changes going on in my life (when is there not!) and I think writing them down will be a good form of therapy, and I think my family will appreciate it years from now.

Most of you remember we bought a house in 2013, took most of 2014 to renovate it, and now most of the way through 2015, I am finally getting around to hanging things on the walls! Say what?!!

I have a TON of pictures through the process, however, those seem a little silly to post now. Instead, I'd love to show you some before and after.  Here goes nothing. This was more or less how the house was laid out when we bought her.

And here are the before pictures. It is so crazy to look back through these. I forgot how much we changed!

Standing on the front porch, looking in. Kitchen to my left, extra room the to the right.

Doorway to the extra room on the left, front door, and on the other side of that wall to the right is bedroom 1.

And here is the layout after. I wish I had had a wider lens when I took these!! Oh well, you get the idea :)

Standing in the front doorway, looking in.

Large doorway to the extra room, gone.

Blurry, but the doorway to the master bedroom.

Weird half wall removed behind the front door.

More Demo, more framing

After the first round of demo, the layout and our plans for the house changed a bit... as they seem to do ALL.THE.TIME. So, it meant we had to do more demo.  I think we demo-ed for probably 3 months (keep in mind we only had the weekends to work). 

New windows and doors.  Some of the old windows were odd shaped, and would have cost a fortune to replace because they would have been special order. Instead, we modified the size, since we knew we needed to redo the stucco anyway.  Remember the small half bath? We decided to turn that into a hallway into the garage/mini mudroom (mainly just storage and a bench.. eventually) which also had a door to the backyard.  That's the door you see above.

Window into the guest bathroom.

Will absolutely loved being at the house.  There was always so much going on, so much to explore and play with. I love seeing random photos of him in pictures of the progress. He was right there with us most of the time. 

Back bedroom.

Oh hey, cute boy!

Living room

Garage and new electrical

New plumbing

Master bathroom, and William trying to help dad and Uncle Steve.

Master bedroom

The back right corner of the photo above is where the mini-mudroom is.

Will and Papa

Uncle Steve :) Or, as William now calls him, Uncle Stevie.

Looking into the kitchen.

Spare bath, and a pocket door

Windows in! and Stucco patched.