Kitchen Reveal

I loved how my kitchen looked all decorated for Christmas, so I finally got around to taking pics of it since we remodeled it. To remind you, here it what it looked like after we moved in...

and here it is now. We replaced everything--the cabinets, countertops, floor, backsplash and all the appliances. Adam and I did all the demo and tiled the floor and backsplash. We closed the window on the back wall so we could add cabinets, a countertop and some open shelving. It's so much more functional now and it still gets plenty of light from other windows!

Before:

After:

and the other direction...

One of my favorite features is the open shelving. I love the focal point they bring to our small kitchen and it's a great place to display some cute things. And it sure makes it easy for me to unload the dishwasher!

Before:


and After. One of my must-haves was a farmhouse sink. I love the casual vibe and that I can fit lots of dirty dishes in it!



Before:

After:

Before:

After:

and a view going to the basement, if you turn left you'll head downstairs to our basement...

Before:

and After. It's hard to see from the before pic but we added more cabinets here (it was just a pony wall before) and lowered the countertop to one height (it was choppy with the pony wall being at bar height).

love the little Christmas touches of tinsel garland, pinecones, and vintage ornaments!

A view of the kitchen from the dining room...

So that's our updated kitchen! I love how light and bright it is and that we added more cabinets (it was really lacking storage) and more countertops. I think we really maximized the small space and made it work so much better for us!

        

Home Updates: Curb Appeal

This summer we finally tackled some much needed updates to the front of our house. We replaced the shrubs, got a new light fixture and replaced the flower boxes. The wood was rotting on one of the window boxes so we had to get new ones.

here's what they look like now and I love how the new black light fixture ties in with the black flower boxes...

 

 And to remind you of what our house looked like when we bought it...

I think we've made some good improvements to the curb appeal! 

Home Updates

This summer we made a few updates to our home. First, we changed the paint color from white to gray. The white had gotten really dirty over the years so we decided to go with a color that wouldn't show the dirt as much. Here's the before...

and after! We also added shutters and changed the door color to brighten it up!

 The next project was replacing the tile on our fireplace hearth. It was old and dingy and we just didn't like it. Here's a pic before...

 Adam helped to demo the old tile and I did all the new tile myself. Here's some progress pics...

 

 and after...

I think it makes the room feel much brighter and fresher :)

Kitchen Remodel

We remodeled our kitchen this past August and September. It was a big job that took about 6 weeks to finish but it was worth it! We have a small kitchen and so we needed more storage and counter space. So we decided to close off the big window that's behind the cabinet in this pic so we could add more cabinets and a countertop...

We did all the demo ourselves. We took down the old cabinets (and sold them) and removed all the tile from the wall and floor...

Here's the floor with new cement board, all ready for new tile (which we did ourselves)...

floor tiles done, and the window has been closed off too...

We used IKEA for the cabinets and countertops. Here's the cabinets getting installed (we hired someone to do this)...

We also did the penny tile on the wall ourselves too, or I should say I did most of it while Adam was at work!

Penny tile going up, this kitchen finally feels like it's coming together!

So that's all the pics I have for now. The kitchen is 99% done. I still have some minor paint touch-ups and decorations to finalize so I hope to have full reveal pics up soon. Stay tuned! :)

Home Tour: Bathroom

Our Bathroom is done for now. Eventually we want to replace all the tile and remove the beadboard but that is sometime down the road. It's hard to see from the pics, but the beadboard just isn't that nice. It had a lot of gaps and cracks that I filled in with caulk. So with a few updates and fresh paint we are making the bathroom work for us now. Here's what it looked like BEFORE:

I didn't like the dark brown color on the walls, it just made the bathroom feel smaller. And when you have a small bathroom to begin with... well it just wasn't working. I knew that I wanted to use yellow and grey so I first painted the walls a light yellow. #EpicFail #WhatWasIThinking

As you can see, that color was not working at all. It just dated the room and made it feel dingy. So I painted it again and this time went with White Dove by Benjamin Moore. Here's the AFTER:

With all the white going on in the room, it needed some contrast. So I decided to paint the medicine cabinet grey to break it up a bit.

The yellow and grey towels are from Restoration Hardware and are so nice and soft (fyi, they have a great color selection). The restroom sign is from Schoolhouse Electric and so is the towel hook.

The shower curtain is from West Elm. I'm a big fan of stripes; stripes are always welcome. :)

I wanted to add some wood to the space to warm it up a bit so the crate shelving was a perfect solution. I bought the crates from Home Depot for about $13 each and stained them.

The accessories are from Home Goods and West Elm and the Fox Print I got here.

Another update I made was to the grout. It was yellowed and in need of help. I did some research and found out about Grout Renew. You basically paint over the existing grout, which took a day a week. But for only $12 it was well worth the time spent. Just look how icky our grout was...

Here's a BEFORE shot:

And AFTER:

I made the yellow felted billy balls and put them in a vintage milk glass vase that was my grandmothers.

I also made the curtain using this fabric. The pattern tied the yellow and grey together quite nicely. :)

So that's it! It is a small bathroom, but since Adam and I get ready at different times of the day it works for us. Eventually I'd like to change out the sconces so let me know if you have any ideas! Hope you enjoyed the tour. :)