Phase 2!!!!

Like my previous post stated, phase I has been done for about 9 months (I consider 95% done to be done).  We've done a lot of small projects around the house that have taken up a lot of time, but phase II is just about ready to start.  This is pretty exciting people!

What does phase II involve?  Pretty much everything outside.  As you can see from this picture below, this is what we started with. We love the look of this home because it has beautiful bones, but I think we can all agree it needs a little TLC.  Maybe not just TLC- more like lots of money.  Yeah, money- that fixes everything right?? :/

Problems you might not be able to notice, but we sure do:

First thing's first, that horrible metal awning.

Yes, very ugly, and doesn't really stop much water anyway.  That will be coming off.  When you look at that awning from the first picture you can see a little bitty peak sticking out from behind it.  Originally, this house actually had two peaks.  The image below is the original house rendering and it gives you a good idea of what it used to look like back in 1929.

We're a fan of bringing this home back to the way it's supposed to be, so this second, smaller tier, will be restored back to its original state.

The second thing, and likely the most important thing, deals with all of the wood on our home.  Every  soffet, facia, window trim, really any piece of wood on this house will be carefully examined, and either fixed or replaced.  Some areas have some SERIOUS wood rot and although our lovely squirrels think these holes are just DANDY so they can crawl into my walls, we're not as keen....really hard to get a good picture of this because it's behind that metal awning, but when it comes down I'll be sure to snap a photo and show some progress.

Here are a few examples of the windows we're working with.  They need a lot of TLC, but nothing some professionals can't handle.

When I mentioned windows above, it's because besides the common LAYERS AND LAYERS of paint and wood rot that takes place over 90 years, we also have a few windows that have dropped a little.  We don't see the point in replacing whole windows when they work fine, but we are all about fixing them to make sure they seal better and don't allow any water or critters into our space.  This window below is a good example of this "dropping" we're talking about.

Once we fix/replace all of this lovely wood work around our house (and there is a lot- 36 exterior windows just to give you a good idea of what we're talking about), it's all going to undergo and even bigger change.  Giving that trim a little update with some color!

Seems like a good way to make enemies in our neighborhood....so no, (darn...)

Yeah, nothing crazy, but we wanted to do something besides the previous black and white.  Something that was a little darker, but still stayed true to our home.  I headed down to Sherwin Williams and got 5 test colors.  I felt a little crazy walking out with 5 test paints, but figured I would feel a lot sillier if I picked a color blindly based on a color strip and hated it on my house.  The extra money for the sample paint was well worth it.

I decided to test these paints out on our front porch one evening.  Yes, it was the evening, as in dark outside.  Not my brightest move(but my flashlight was very bright), but we're in the middle of T-ball/Coach pitch baseball for 2 little boys and have an amazing amount of evening commitments every day.  When the sun goes down is basically my only time to actually DO things.

So here were my samples.

SOOOOO glad I did this, because some colors that I thought I would LOVE, I HATED, (yeah, talking to you #1 & #4).  And others that I really didn't think I would like at all but decided to try something different, I really liked.  Our winner was #5!

I liked this color because it's not exactly brown, and not exactly gray, and do I see a bit of green?  Why yes you do.  It's just faint enough of all of those colors that it easily pulls out some of the existing brick and ties in well.  It will also not show a lot of dirt from our huge trees that loom over our property. And also, don't worry about how dirty that brick is, it's already been cleaned but I'm too lazy to go outside and take a picture because I do this stuff in the evening.

Other than the wood trim, we're also cleaning the heck out of our brick.  I've already come through recently and pressure washed all the parts of the concrete and brick that can handle pressure washing (not all of our brick is so lucky....) Pressure washing is by far my favorite past time. No joke. Just look at that, it's amazing.

Also, our yard looks pretty different as well.  Here are some photos from when we first moved in of what our property looked like.  A little overgrown...

But my boys have worked pretty hard!

They basically cleared out all of the bushes around our house.  In the middle picture above you see a lot of brush on the right of the fence, including some pretty large limbs that have fallen.  Yeah, we took care of those too. Just imagine George driving his truck into the neighbor's yard (with their permission) and connecting a strap to his truck and that limb, and driving.  Pretty scary, but pretty effective.

Here is a good photo of some progress  we made one day.  You can see in the background that a lot of that brush from the picture above is totally gone! Brand new lovely little bushes and fresh mulch also warm the space up a good bit!

Notice the dad giving a thumbs up while sitting on the porch while one child waters the new bushes and another digs up some roots.  You will never see pictures of me doing yard work, not because I don't do it, ha, on the contrary.  I think even husband will agree that Laura does the majority of work in the yard, but he's not taking photos of the action and neither am I.  Just know that I have scars from countless greenbriar run-ins.  Worst plant in the world.  I don't think I can even drive into that neighborhood anymore...Greenbriar, why would you name a lovely neighborhood after such a miserable thorny plant... If you are not familiar with the plant, it's a very thorny vine that grows with a vengeance.

I couldn't find a cartoon of a mean vine of greenbrier, so this crazy mean cactus will have to do.  

You get the picture though. #Ouch

Anyway, big changes are coming your way on the outside of our house in the next few weeks!  Feel free to drive by and stare in awe of the transformation! 

Yes, our kitchen is done, I'm just late to the party...

Everytime I leave my house to head to the store, or church, or work, or really anywhere where I might come in contact with people, I always hear "So how's the house coming?!?!".  My response is always "great!  Phase 1 is pretty much completely done- but we still have about 15 phases to go...", and that is very true.

When we embarked on this home buying journey we knew we had a HUGE reno at the very beginning that would suck up a large sum of money (but not as near as much as some people guessed!).  The biggest project was the kitchen, BY FAR.  

To remind you all, this is what we started with.  

Yep, pretty impressive space that absolutely scared away a dozen other potential buyers before our crazy brains came around.  This kitchen was quite the ugly duckling, that took quite the transformation, and I think is absolutely, at least a very pretty goose, if nothing else.  Not sure we're up to swan level, I mean, we have no big beautiful island or marble (we chose quartz), or gold...but you get the drift.  

TaaDaaaaaaa!!!!  Look, it's like a whole kitchen!

Life changing right here: 

OMG- look at this side by side of me standing on the counter to get some real perspective of the change.  It's so much more than just the finishes, but the space.  Still not HUGE by any stretch of the imagination, but wow, big difference!!! Yes, I'm a wierdo that I have to stand on my counter so you can get a real glimpse of this space.  I'm not sure how my huge pregnant self was able to squeeze into that kitchen before.  I mean, look at that ridiculously small entry on the left....think skinny people.

This kitchen has pretty much been in this state since August.  I know that is a long time ago, and I apologize, I really do.  We still have some very minor items to do like put the glass in the cabinets and hang our two floating shelves on our giant backsplash wall.

But here we are.  Kitchen 95% done.  We're loving it. And we use it, case and point below:

A lot of people have asked me about specifics of our kitchen.  Where did you get the cabinets, countertops, drawer pulls, FLOORS, all that jazz.  I figured I'll give you guys a short run down of a few of these. Just cabinets for today.

Cabinets: We didn't want to spend an arm and a leg on cabinets because let's be honest.  Nobody keeps kitchens around for 30 years anymore.  I've seen people come in and rip out perfectly great cabinets because they just want a change, so why should I spend BANK on putting in super nice custom cabinets that by themselves cost me over 30k?  Yeah, no thanks.  We talked about some other options like Ikea and a few other inexpensive options- we have friends who have used some of these brands and have been VERY happy with them so we were willing to look into them.  However, one late night of watching HGTV at midnight I saw an ad for kitchen cabinets from a company called CliqStudios.  The commercial had really nice looking kitchens, and one kitchen in particular in the add caught my eye.  "I want THAT kitchen!  Right there!".  These are just a couple examples of their kitchens:

A google search later and I was on their website, as well as a few others looking for honest reviews.  Everything I found was GREAT.  Especially the prices.  There is a super inexpensive set up fee to sign up and get a designer.  This designer literally called me on my cell phone the next day to chat.  He was great.  We talked about what kind of feel I was looking for in my kitchen, the size, and layout, really everything. If I had an idea he was very supportive, but occasionally would say- "So I know that sounds great, but have you thought about thiiiis......" and his ideas were way better because he does this for a living.  I am a big fan of giving people that do things for a living fairly free reign.  You want to talk about retention and student persistence in higher education?  Yeah, I'm your gal- but remodeling kitchens- I basically have a far fetched pinterest page full of crazy ideas and no idea how much they cost or how to execute them.

Anyway, because were were BUILDING the space we couldn't officially order cabinets until the space was complete.  We had drawn up an initial plan based on what we THOUGHT the space would look like, but who knows what we'll find behind walls and what we have to work around in a 90 year old home.  Turned out that the day our contractor tore down the walls and built them back up, we ended up gaining an extra 7 inches more than our original plan.  I'm not complaining about the extra space- however- this created a bit of a panic because 7 more inches in a kitchen plan will throw things off.  I called our designer to tell him the news and he took it with ease.  "No problem AT ALL- I'll have you three new options within the hour." and he did.... Just look at these renderings he throws together so easily.

These cabinets have been GREAT!  Really, all of our bottom cabinets are actually drawers so it makes organizing SO much easier.

We were able to add in a large pantry as well and that pantry is full of drawers as well so you can easily slide out everything.

The lazy susans in the corners are super nice and wooden as well.

I honestly have zero complaints about these cabinets, and because they were such a great price we were able to devote part of our budget to nicer things like the appliances we wanted, the REALLY nice brick floors, the quartz counter top and our wall of backsplash that will soon have two beautiful hand made wooden floating shelves to house all of our jars of beans, pastas, and baking supplies!!

Until next time, happy kitchen cooking!!!  We know we are!!