House Updates

It's been a LONG time since I chatted about our house.

We bought it for a really good price back in August and didn't move in until Halloween due to some major updates we made.


New floors-
New ceiling-
New paint-
New kitchen- completely new everything!
New light fixtures-

Lots of new changes...I am hopefully going to post about each renovation..if I can ever find all the photos in my archives ;)

Check out our living area before we updated:


The floors were really nice teak wood, but unfortunately they had been installed incorrectly, which led to "cupping".  Because they were uneven, we knew they needed to be changed eventually and it would be way easier to change before we moved in..without kids..furniture...living there.  Yeah, that was a good choice.

 The kitchen had really old cabinets and they also had some mold issues behind them.  Not fun.  The ceilings were popcorn which we changed...more to come on that.

 

And here's the after!!:

 New wood-look TILE floors. This was the BEST decision we made for our house.  In Florida it's always HOTTTTTT and these keep the house cool and are DURABLE and SUPER easy to clean.  Just vinegar and water, and they look brand new! I love the color as well and the cost was affordable as well.  This is the only thing we did not DIY - we hired a very talented tile layer who happens to be our good friend.  He was trained in Italy and is phenomenal at his job.  We did remove the wood floors though and that is something we may NEVER attempt to do again.  It was NOT fun.

We ended up renting 4 different tools from Home Depot to remove these floors and after it was finished, Seth said never again. LOL

My dad helped, our friend Jared helped, Seth helped, and I even did a little bit but remember, I was also 6 months pregnant ;)  Whoever layed these floors used about 132420984 gallons of glue...

 Once we removed all the floors, we had to get the bazillion layers of glue up.  We thought we did a great job until our tile guy came...He had this scraper that removed EVERYTHING and we obviously did not do as good as we thought. ;)

The floor removal took a good  7 days straight but we ended up saving around $1500 since we DIYed it.  We bought the tile at a local store called Floor and Decor and it took our tile guy around 6 days to lay the entire house minus the bathrooms.  It was only him and one other guy.

For the kitchen:  We also DIYed this with two of our buddies:  Cory and Billy.  We are so thankful we had such amazing friends to help us because we had no idea what we were doing.

We ordered the cabinets from a place called "Cabinets to Go" after a friend recommended them, but will NEVER use them again.  I'll have to go into that story when I have more than a few minutes to type.  Let's just say the lady quoted me for 3-4 week turnaround time and I didn't get the last cabinet until 4 MONTHS later.  Yeah, it was NOT FUN.


In the kitchen, we got new cabinets, new appliances, new counter tops, and light fixtures.  EVERYTHING basically.  Our two friends helped install the cabinets and Seth actually added the pendant light above the sink. There was nothing there beforehand.  

We also removed two cabinets above the bar and that helped open up the space a LOT.

So there it is!! I am completely in love with our renovations.  I will go back and try to source out everything in a little while. I am just too impatient to do it right now ;)   Babies are crying and toddlers are hungry!

I will also do a whole separate post on the ceiling too.  Stay tune, friends!


Xoxo,

Kaitlin

Moving along...

So as long as I've been married, I have always told hubby that I wanted a fixer upper one day.  He would always say "okay sure" and then talk about something else. haha.  Well when we bought this house, we didn't realize how much of a fixer upper it was going to be until now.  It's not a bad thing, but I also dreamed of fixing it up when i'm not 5.5 months pregnant. ;)  It's okay, I am making it work, and hey, it got me out of removing 600+ square feet of hardwood floors that took two weeks to finish.

So, let's see a small update on what we've done!  The ceilings have been scraped of the popcorn, re textured/painted, the main area has been repainted, a small part of the kitchen has been demoed, all the floors have been removed (there were FIVE different types of flooring in this house), the garage door and shutters have been repainted, and we landscaped the front.  It looks so awesome and all of our neighbors are so happy we are fixing it up. ;)

So before, the green paint on the house was extremely faded and worn looking.  I repainted the door and shutters with a Minwax Gel Stain.  It was so easy and I love the way it turned out.  It looks like wood and really makes the house pop. We also cut back the trees so you can see the front more.

 

If you look at the before photo, you can see the three big green bushes in the front.  They were not pretty and blocked the porch, so my stepmom and I went to the local nursery and got these gorgeous new plants!

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My dad and her were here for a long weekend and they helped us so much with the house!

They also gave us a date too!  We went to a local breakfast place because ALL i ever want is breakfast food.  For real, I am OBSESSED this pregnancy.  Biscuits, sausage, eggs... YUM. Oh and chocolate milk.  Gotta have a glass every single morning.

 

So this is before the flooring was all taken out..look how horribly messy.  Gives me a headache just looking at it.  We also removed the two foot "head blocker" as I call it, above the bar area.  It looks so much better without it and opens up the kitchen a ton.

I am in love with the paint color I chose.  It's the perfect gray and called Colonnade Gray by Sherwin Williams.  They just had 40% sale and I got paint for the whole house! That's what is next on our list.  Oh yeah, and floors are going in as we speak! YAY! 

Will i survive these next few weeks?  Lots to do, lots to do, but I cannot wait to see it all done.  My new kitchen cabinets should be here next week.  FINGERS ARE CROSSED.

The truth about moving.

This will be our sixth move in our five years of marriage.

IT STINKS.  There is nothing awesome about the process of moving...except maybe getting rid of things you haven't used/worn/seen in a year.  Since we closed on our house, we have been up to our necks in projects.

Here's a few big ones we are tackling:

-Scraping the popcorn ceilings- hubby just finished this week.  It was not hard, but super time consuming.
- Priming and painting the entire house.  The owner before us liked dark colors on the walls.  Think: Navy blue and maroon.  NO. NO. NO.  not my style at all. So i've been priming and repainting.  This is no easy task for a pregnant momma with a two year old running around.  I have been painting every single day almost and finally have the living room, foyer, and hallway almost done.  It's no joke getting up and down when you have 10-15 extra baby pounds to lug around.  My back is hurting, my arms are sore...but we have a major deadling (Hello, we have to be OUT of our apartment by the end of the month) so I must go on.  And hiring professional painters is not in our budget.  BECAUSE
-NEW KITCHEN- yes.  I am getting to pick out my own new kitchen.  Which is SO fun! I decided on white cabinets because they were cheaper than gray and it's timeless.  It appeals to more buyers when we decide to sell in the future and I love white.  I did a shaker style cabinet and they have soft close doors. Get out.  Also, i picked out the granite for the countertops, the undermount sink and the old style farmhouse faucet.  I was going to do a farmhouse sink, but the cabinet lady talked me out of it, for reasons I'll share later.  The not so fun part? Handing over the check.  HA!
- ALL NEW FLOORS.  yes.  We tore up the carpet and laminate in the bedrooms and are tackling the hardwoods in the living area this weekend.  They are bowed up in almost the entire space and severely scratched so we decided to choose a flooring that we could put in the entire house to make it look all the same.  Will share what we chose later! I am having 3-4 contractors come out to give me quotes and that is keeping me insanely busy trying to be here and there and everywhere.  Ah, i am tired just thinking about it.
-New ceilings-  As mentioned earlier, hubby scraped all the popcorn off and we are having someone come out to texture the ceilings.  It not only adds value to your home, but it looks awesome and updated when it's done. Hopefully that will be completed next week.
-Repainting all the baseboards, doors, trim, and closet doors.  UGH.  by the time we move in, i will enver want to paint anything ever again.

those are just the BIG projects we have going on right now.  Add packing up our entire apt and the 12038 smaller projects to the mix..and you have a crazy pregnant lady ready to scream.

I will get through it, and it will all get done.  I hope.

I can't wait to document the whole process and show you too!! I took before photos and man, the after is going to look AMAZING.  if it all ever happens. haha.

So. I may be absent a bit these next couple weeks, but I will have my camera handy and promise to update you as much as I can.

Let me share a few inspiraction photos and paint colors we have chosen so far!

So the cabinets you see below are the same ones we have on order. They are shaker style and I just love the white.  I am planning on getting oil rubbed bronze pulls and faucet.  I also used this same photo to pick my granite.  It's called Kashmir White and is so pretty.  It will look awesome with the gray paint color we chose for the main areas.  

We chose collonde gray by Sherwin Williams as our main paint color. I love it. It doesn't really have any blue or green in it, so it is the perfect gray.

 

What's a house project without spilled paint?  I couldn't even blame my toddler, since he was in the other room.

 

So I will be back to update you on our progress,  say a prayer that I dont turn into a nutcase before the end of the month!

 

Bye weekend.

Another weekend in the books.  They always seem to go by so fast.  If you would have asked me about weekends a year and a half ago, i would tell you I hate them.  That's when Seth had to work the most..he was a supervisor at Polo Ralph Lauren retail store and never got many weekends off.  It was no fun, so I am very thankful our move to Florida has allowed for him to be off every single weekend.  We can spend the mornings cuddling and then go to church together on Sunday.  Ahh, it's so wonderful.

Soo...in two days we close on our first Florida home!  Yep! I've not talked about it much because I wanted to make sure the loan went through and all that, but it's official on Wednesday! I am SO excited to have our own backyard and a cul-de-sac to let Winslow run around on.

The best part?

It needs a mini-overhaul.  As in, new kitchen, floors, fence outside, paint throughout...my DIY dream.  So yep, I have 234789 projects to do in the coming months..and oh yeah, have a baby in between!  We are so excited for our little Florida home and it's even better that it's 15 minutes to the beach.  We are spoiled.

So the first thing on the list to do is new cabinets and countertops!  We have a small kitchen and it's bascially a galley style so the good news about that is smaller kitchen means less money to update it.

Here's a few inspiration photos:

















Gray. that's all i can say about that.  i LOVE white kitchens, but this is just LOVE for me.

Pair those cabinets with white subway tile, a farmhouse sink, maybe a couple glass front cabinets or open shelving.  Oh yes.  This is good.  very good.

So the day we close, we are high tailing it up to Lowes and Home Depot to get quotes on the costs and such.

oh yeah, we are also painting throughout, maybe new flooring, and scraping popcorn ceilings.  Lots of stuff and I will be updating and showing y'all throughout the whole process!

Let's take a poll:  Do you like the gray kitchens or are you a white kitchen kind of person?  Or maybe darker cabinets suit you?