Finally Living Up To Its Name
Date: Sunday September 7, 2008Posted in: Honey, domestic bliss, renovating
I have mentioned numerous times that we have been renovating since we bought this house seven years ago. I like to keep it simple and tell people that we have been renovating FOREVER, which is what it feels like.
I highlighted our laundry room a few weeks ago and now that another room is pretty much complete (Go Honey!) I thought it was time to post some more photos.
First, a bit of history.
We moved into this house in the spring of 2001. The first room(s) we thought we would tackle were the kitchen and living room combo. We live in a split-level house (Ah, the Seventies) and so the kitchen and living room are basically on their own floor.
In the kitchen the cupboards were oak, the floors were a nasty linoleum and there was a half-framed-in “dining room”. The living room had blue carpet, faded white walls and some nasty Seventies paneling on the wall dividing the two rooms.
I would scan photos from then but I have more than enough photos lined up for the second makeover we gave the room. Plus, I’m lazy.
We (Matthew) knocked out the wall, built new cupboards and an island. We (again, Matthew) turned the big picture window in the front of the house into a bay window with a window seat (because I had always wanted one of those).
The kitchen/living room combo was now referred to by the official name of The Great Room.
When we first moved here we were huge fans of log homes and so we made the walls look like they were the inside of a log home. After the room was complete, I forbade Matthew from doing the same to any of our other rooms because HOLY WOOD OVERLOAD, BATMAN. We have done wainscoting or wood beams in the rest of the rooms.
My dislike for the wood on the walls grew greater and stronger until I finally beat Matthew into submission Honey saw my vision and agreed with it.
Before I show you the “Before” photos (which are technically also “After” photos), I need to make some disclaimers as to the qualities of the shots:
1. I was walking out the door to spend the day at the beach with the kids when Matthew mentioned that he was going to start tearing the wood down.
2. I was too lazy to set up the tripod and take proper shots because the kids were yelling at me to HURRY UP AND TAKE THEM TO THE BEACH ALREADY.
3. I thought I would add my wide-angle attachment (which I had never used)(which also should have be used with a tripod), and though I could see that the shots were not what I wanted it was TIME TO GO.
4. You will at least get an idea of the old look.
Without further adieu, BEFORE:
That would be Matthew hiding behind Emily’s Little People doll house. That would be Emily on the coffee table. Matthew built it when we first redid the room but he now hates it and plans to build a new one. We will be offering it for free, to a good home.
Take a look at the hearth. The blond brick has to be the most boring shade of brick on the planet. The fireplace itself consisted of some nasty brass and you can’t see from the distance, but there were hummingbirds etched in the glass. Classy.
I should point out that the wood floors are not laminate. They are real wood from a mill, which Matthew installed, sanded and coated. He is amazing.
Here I am panning left.
Wood! Wood everywhere! Nobody light a match!
Now the view into the kitchen:
That’s my Step Mom at the sink. She was visiting to help with the kids as I left for BlogHer the next day.
Are you ready for the “After” photos? I sure was. Here they are:
Matthew bought special paint and covered the brass. He also had new glass cut. Good-bye, hummingbirds!
Matthew did all of that rock work himself. The alcove that was on the left before was completely useless. We bought the shelves from IKEA and Matthew built the rock around it. I need to add a few more photos on the right shelf above the wood but I always take forever to decide what should be included. I do know that I will hang a large print off this year’s family photo above the chair on the left, once we actually take said photo.
Panning left, we have the bay window. Nothing has changed, but thought you’d like to see the pine trees out the window.
We really do live in the sticks.
Panning further left we get the armoire that Matthew built. It houses a TV and other electronics.
I haven’t finished deciding what to decorate the shelves with, but you get the idea. The walls on either side house 16×20 prints of this photo and that one.
Panning left again we have the dining area. The chairs are from Pier One but the table is the oak one we got as a hand-me-down from Matthew’s parents when we moved here. He just bought the wood to build a new table. Woo!
The final pan to the left:
I think that the whole room is so much brighter now that the paneling is off of the walls. It also seems less tacky.
I also think that the room finally lives up to its name of The Great Room.
My favourite part is the hearth. It is no secret that I hate winter, but with the fire roaring, a good book and a hot cocoa (or hot toddy) in hand, I think I could be pretty cozy there.
Care to join me?
Extreme Makeover: Laundry Room Edition
Date: Tuesday August 19, 2008Posted in: Honey, Photography, renovating
Those of you who know us, or who have been reading this site for a long time, know that we have been renovating our house ever since we bought it. SEVEN YEARS AGO.
(Helpful hint: Do renovations BEFORE you have kids, if at all possible.)
Our house is about 90% complete. In each and every room. The only projects that are 100% complete are the exterior of the house (Flickr set here), my craft room and our ensuite bathroom. Emily’s room is done except for the big girl bed and the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. I’m still pulling for a chandelier but Honey wants to use a boob light (not a literal boob, just one of those dome lights with a center circle).
This summer we made the commitment to get rooms FINISHED.
(We also decided to redo our great room (Kitchen/Living Room). It was the first room we finished. Fast forward seven years and our tastes have changed. Figures.)
The most recent room that we can add to the “completed” list is the laundry room.
Last fall while doing a Foto Friday post about White Balance, I used a photo of our laundry room to illustrate the different White Balance settings.
Nothing says “clean laundry” like a concrete floor and drywall dust.
Fast forward to today and the room is FINISHED. As part of the “finishing” process in our house, we are trying to hang photos on the wall. So that our house looks like some people might actually live in it.
When Matthew got the room completed I asked him what photos of mine I should develop. Some photos of scenery? Or maybe of some pretty flowers?
He had an idea that was far more brilliant than I could come up with. He thought it would be cool to get the kids to have a mud fight and take photos of it. Let me show you the end result of the room itself along with the photos we hung on the walls.
The photos on the wall:
(Is it me, or does he look sixteen in this photo?)
See? BRILLIANT. I married up.
More laundry room:
As I was taking the following photo I thought that it might be a good idea to clip a piece of fabric around the shelf to hide the stuff underneath. I’ll get on that. Give me a year or so.
The photos:
Our nasty deep freeze (Hey! It was free!):
The photo:
There are more mud photos that I plan on hanging in the kids’ bathroom. It is the next room on our “to complete” list.
I am pretty happy about how it all turned out. I am also happy to be married to a man who can renovate like none other and can make pretty much anything out of wood.
I am also happy to have one more room done. For now.
Extreme Makeover: Emily’s Room
Date: Sunday March 16, 2008Posted in: Emily, Faith, Family, Graham, Nathan, domestic bliss, renovating
Those of you who have been around for awhile know that we have been renovating this house since we moved into this house. Seven years ago.
Our house is 95% done. What that means in English is that each room is 95% done. It looks good, and is livable, but is missing that final 5%. You know, light switch covers, the occasional baseboard or light fixture.
Sigh.
There are TWO rooms that are 100% complete. My craft room (I love it) and our ensuite bathroom (I love it, as well). Oh yeah! We also redid the siding (Flickr set here) on our house two summers ago.
I have gotten tired of feeling almost complete in our home. Our house did not looked like anyone actually lived here, save for the toys scattered everywhere and the Goldfish crackers strewn about the floor.
As I have mentioned many, many times, we are in the midst of renovations. We bought our house in March 2001, and have been making it our style room-by-room since then.
Last spring, we had a fantastic idea. Get the renovations all done by fall 2005 and have more time as the kids grew to do FUN things. Well, Matthew finds a lot of fun in working with wood, but more along the lines of furniture building as opposed to wainscoting and laying floors.
We have a great room (open kitchen/living room) that we completed in 2002. We also have a family room down half a flight of stairs (we have a split-level house). Once it was full of my work-station, the entertainment unit, my treadmill, a couch, and TOYS, there wasn’t much floor space left. We decided to add on to that room. The added bonus: a big deck off of our master bedroom that one day I can sit on and read/surf while watching my children play.
It was also time to do the inside of our master bedroom. It was completeIy gutted last summer down to the studs.
Then we had the fire. Getting the house back to where it was before the fire was obviously first priority. That took all of last fall. Matthew then completed our room & ensuite. I have pictures of our loo on Flickr and you’ve seen the craft room (it’s off of our bedroom), but I still need to post the bedroom shots.
The push has been on to get the house done (mostly) before Baby D gets here. We could have let the renos drag on for years, but we thought it best to do them while the kids are so small. Once they are bigger (and naps/diapers/etc. fade out), we want to have the time to do cool family stuff. Go to the cabin, the Coast, the PNE, skiing, etc. Thus, we decided to hire my brothers to help us get ‘er done.
She almost is. There are some finishing touches needed on the exterior as well as the clean-up. The family room has been mudded/sanded/primed. Once my brother leaves tomorrow, Matthew will be back inside to paint, lay the floors, put the tongue and groove wood on the ceiling, and put the fixtures in the bathroom down there. The end really is in sight. All of the before and after photos are on Flickr, but here’s a sampling:
Before:
After:
There. Now you know what has kept us so busy…apart from our monkeys. Isn’t Matthew a talented, talented man?
Look what I did yesterday!
BEFORE:
AFTER:
My “Type A” personality felt at peace with all of the organization that I did. A place for everything and everything in its place. I’m still excited about it, but now I’m contemplating my next project. No rest for the neurotic.
Just think of all of the stamping I can do in this great space…especially since I just ordered even more stamping stuff. I might even branch out to other crafty arenas. The possibilities are endless!
