We Are In....and busy!

It was an awesome day in January that we sat down at the table with some pretty cool people and put our pens to A LOT of paper, and signed for our new house.  Miss Sunset was ready and waiting for us when we got there and despite an epic meltdown from KB, we got most of the essentials moved in that first night.  We couldn't wait another day to get in and be in our own home again.

We wasted NO time start to tear down, rip out, and rearrange all sorts of things.  The ridiculous chickens in the kitchen came down on the first night!

We knew we wanted to start in the kitchen, it's the heart of a home after all, and it was the worst room!  Friday night we were just hanging out at home and after dinner I'm handed a hammer with the direct order to "have at it".  And with that, the tiny partition wall started coming down.  I got to take the first few swings, but then I went to occupy KB while Kurt handled the rest.


The entire thing came down in about a half an hour and completely changed the room.  We then got to work on taking the rest of the wallpaper down and what was left of those darn chickens.  By the time KB was ready for bed, we were just about done.

We also got to work on pulling down the decorative railing along the top of the cabinets and getting our new (to us) stainless appliances into their spots.  We ran into a few issues with the microwave, which is now only temporarily mounted as we wait for some cabinets for above to be made.

We plan to add a little decoration to the top of the cabinets and allow for some extra storage by building back up and adding open storage, kind of like this:  Source

Our final project for the weekend was to hang our first new light fixture.  We picked the Hunter Meridale fan and we couldn't be more excited about it.  It is beautiful and is very quiet.  We can't wait to add another to the playroom and eventually get some upstairs in our rooms. (Pictures to come soon!)

The next items on our list for the kitchen include a new light above the table, new cabinet pulls and knobs, and the ultimate question - Do we paint the cabinets?  Stay tuned for those updates!

Open Concept

One of the things the Hubs and I want to do is keep the traditional feel of this house while opening it up a bit.  In this picture you can see the main living room wall.  On the other side of this wall is the refrigerator and some cabinets.  While we would love to take the whole wall out, with all of the electrical, vents, and the refrigerator being on the other side we know we are limited.  What we would like to do is take out part of the wall to make it more open to the kitchen, add a nice header beam and open the living room up to the kitchen.



For visualization sake, let's just say we are going for something like this:

A Fixer-Upper Dilemma: Classic and Traditional vs. New and Modern | HGTV's Fixer Upper With Chip and Joanna Gaines | HGTV:
Picture via HGTV Fixer Upper

Below is a picture of the current stairs, which is very closed off and I'd love to open that up as well like my TV BFF's Chip and JoJo did here above.  We also plan to paint this room and add different fixtures, but for now our big project is the wall.  And man, we can't wait to start hacking into it!

The Kitchen

Oh, the kitchen.  This one is up for a lot of debate and a ton of renovation at some point.  My wonderful Hubs is a big fan of open concept houses, which Ms. Sunset is definitely not.

So we have been back and forth about a way to make the kitchen and living room more open, while maintaining the traditional Cape Cod feel.  The main wall separating these two rooms is most definitely a load bearing wall, so once we get in and get settled we will probably bring a contractor out to tell us more about a header and some really awesome chunky wood beams to keep that upstairs, well upstairs.


First thing is first, the appliances will be replaced upon moving in.  Our hope is to sell those older ones to help pay for the new ones and to be on the look out over the next month or two during all of the great Holiday sales for some good deals on appliances.  We are going with stainless, of course, and hope to move the microwave above the range in place of the more country looking hood vent.

And then it escalates real quick.
From the beautiful Jenna Sue Design (one of my favorite blogs) comes this amazing kitchen that we have decided to somewhat copy, of course in our own unique way.  We will be going with a nice green/gray color - currently I'm loving Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay and will probably try and get it color matched to a Behr color.
Our Current Home | Jenna Sue Design Blog


We will replace the drawer and cabinet pulls with a nice simple look from the Home Depot that we found in a convenient contractor "value pack".  And to keep things consistent, we will take these pulls and knobs into both of the bathrooms as well.

I am searching for my coveted Farmhouse skirt sink.  I've found a couple viable options, but we need to wait and measure before I go making final decisions.  But boy am I excited for a farmhouse sink!

When it comes to the lighting, I have a million and one ideas.  I want something that will be bright and will have a farmhouse type feel, while still being somewhat modern.  We found an awesome light fixture at Lowe's that really does look awesome, so I'm hoping we can secure one of those.  And a complimentary one for above the kitchen sink, which will get an awesome new faucet!

Once we decide what is going on with the wall between the living room and kitchen we will make final decisions on flooring.  Most likely, we will go with a laminate hardwood, knowing how well it stands up to our two fur babies.

Here's the design board for the kitchen:

We Bought A House!

That's right, folks, we finally did it.  We picked a good one, too.  The outside and structure of Ms. Sunset is on point, but the inside looks like it's stuck in 1990 (when Ms. Sunset was built).  This little blog will be a fun way for us to remember what Ms. Sunset looked like before we got into it and changed things up.

Let's start with some background:  Ms. Sunset isn't unfamiliar with my side of the family.  My uncle bought her for his family in the early 90's from the amazing contractor who built her.  As their family grew, Ms. Sunset quickly became too small, and my uncle and his family moved on.  But, I've always had a thing for her, a small girl crush if you will.

I knew that Ms. Sunset found her Mr. Sunset after my uncle had moved on, in the form of a 50 ft by 30 ft pole barn.  This just made the house more attractive to me, as the Husband is a huge car guy and could really get on board with a nice big pole barn to store all of his toys.  So, as we continued the search for our perfect home I longed for this one to go up on the market.  And then, a couple weeks ago, after I had promised we were going to take a break from looking again and move on, I checked one more time online and wouldn't you know, Ms. Sunset popped right up as "Just Listed".

I got so excited I could have screamed, but I stayed quite while KB was napping.  Two days later we were going to look at Ms. Sunset and a few days after the offer was officially accepted.  It happened so quick, but it is contracted to be ours in just 3 months!
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)