Our Kitchen Renovation 2015

I have honestly dreamed and longed for the day we would begin working on our kitchen renovation. When we first looked at this house, it was one of the ugliest things about the house but one of the rooms that I just knew would be the best part about it when we were done with it. Our bottom floor is about 1700 square feet and our kitchen space alone is a big chunk of that. It is truly one of those "heart of the home" rooms.... or at least it will be.

Let's take a look back at where the kitchen began. I love that this kitchen has evolved so much over the years since it has been built. Hearing the stories from the previous owners about how they changed it and telling them our plans for changing it is so special to me. Is there anything better than thinking about how families grow up and make a home a place they love? Thinking about our peanut growing up like the family did before warms my heart.

As you can see, the theme was blue. Blue carpet, blue sticky tiles, window unit built into the walls of the house, etc. I can smile and be happy about looking at these pictures now because they are no longer there. :)

Notice the bars on the windows? There were bars on every window of our house. We love our neighborhood and definitely don't consider it a barred window type of place. Maybe they were a decorative touch? 

This was the day we closed on the house. Enthusiasm was real high! 

We can't forget the wall heater or the close-up of the nasty blue carpet. Fun fact: we pulled that up and tossed it by the road. Not one hour later, SOMEONE PICKED IT UP in their personal vehicle!

We slowly tore a little bit of the kitchen out and replaced the appliances. We refinished the floors while we were refinishing the rest of the house; however, some of the floor turned out to be plywood.

Fast forward to March 2015, and we are armed with a contractor and demolition began. I could literally hear angels singing when I walked in and saw this. 

We decided to shift the opening to the hallway over a couple feet because in the current layout you could see straight into our bedroom from the opening. Now, we added a pocket door that we can close off for when we have people over and if it's open you can only see into our bedroom from an angle.

After a couple weeks of electrical work and plumbing reconfiguration (in the kitchen and the bathroom, the drywall went up and the mess ensued :) That process took a solid week. This is the part where I get antsy to see some more progress! 

At this point, we have all that flooring ripped out and the drywall is all mudded and textured. In fact, the cabinets go in starting today!!! 

One Room Challenge Week One: Bathroom

Well, it's been forever since I've blogged about our house. We've been on a break of sorts. Right now, we have a full kitchen renovation going on and SURPRISE! we have our bathroom renovation going on as well.

If you're new here, my name is Eris and the short story is that we bought our "pink house" two years ago and have been renovating one room at a time. You can check out our progress in our home tour. Every single room needs/needed work and it's been so fun to update as we go. Up until now, we've done mostly all the work ourselves. Since we have a baby on the way (!!!! maybe I need to blog about that too?), we decided we needed to hire out to get our main bathroom and kitchen knocked out before August quickly arrives. Once our kitchen and bathroom are complete, the entire downstairs will be finished. When is anything ever really finished? We have lots of little projects to do as well before baby W gets here.

When this house was first built in the early 40s, this was the only bathroom in the house. It's a pretty huge space as far as old houses are concerned. The previous owners added on a few times and now we have 3 bathrooms; however, this one sits in the main hallway and will be "our" bathroom as well as the guest bathroom.

When we moved in, our bathroom had blue carpet. We ripped that out and lived with ram board alone on the floor for two long years. It's already come so far in the 5 week jumpstart we've had, but we still have a good few weeks left. Hopefully it's done by the end of this 6 week challenge!

In really bad form, I don't have adequate pictures of the before. But, you'll get the idea. I know somewhere I have pictures of the wallpaper on the ceiling, I'll try and dig them up! Sorry, but my husband and his boxers make an appearance in most of these.

I show you this toilet shot mainly to point out that the carpet was installed under the toilet. 

What you can't see in the pictures, is behind that entry door that swings open there is a big set of cabinets. Those were great, but they're already gone. The layout of the space is changing and the door will now swing open the opposite way. In a nutshell, the vanity is going where the cabinets used to be, the toilet shifted over a smidge, there will be a standalone shower where the tub/shower combo used to be and then a freestanding tub on the opposite side of the shower. Here's a look at the layout.

I don't have any pretty mood boards to show you. My pregnancy brain is just going with the flow on this one. All of our tile and lighting is already purchased, so I'll show you that soon. Next week, I will show you the demolition and drywall! This is my third time doing the One Room Challenge and I'm so excited to be back! I hope you'll follow along. Who knows, I may even sneak in some kitchen posts in between :)