Friday, November 20, 2009

Kitchen Reno: Chapter 2

Currently in the kitchen there isn't much counter space. If we left everything the way it is now, our oven would be right next to a wall. Being right handed I gravitate to the right stovetop eye when cooking, but its a little hard to cook anything on the stovetop because you have this awkward wall on the right side of your body and your elbow is constantly hitting it. Dave did some investigating in the attic and below in the garage to see what we could do about maximizing our space in the kitchen. We want to take a little space out of the living/dining room area to add more counter space in the kitchen. Turns out the part of the wall that we wanted to move was load baring. Dave spoke to a few "experts" and they say it should be fine, so we decided to goes as planned. Dave did add more support in that area of the attic. One of his co-workers has built houses before and came over as a favor to help Dave out on our kitchen renovation. It isn't completely done yet but we are getting close. We need to finish sanding, patch the ceiling and possibly do a few more things dealing with "construction" that are way over my head. I'll come in when there is a paint brush involved, I try not to deal with "heavy machinery."


 



 

As you can see, we have a little bit more work to do. I'm crossing my fingers that we can get the construction part done with before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is at mom's so its not like I have anything to worry about but it would be nice to have that out of the way. Here are two little sketches to did on a slow day. Its a very quick rendering of what I would love for the kitchen to look like. Another I can't decide on what would be best for countertops. Any suggestions out there? Lovely aren't they...



Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Christmas Came Early!




Christmas came early for David this year! We couldn't pass up the opportunity to purchase one of these handy things with one of our super great coupons from Lowe's. Dave has used it already, just think all that crown-molding we are going to get to do! Merry Christmas! 

Kitchen Reno: Chapter 1

So we have painted the den now. I have recently learned that I hate painting ceilings and everything that goes with it. Its a major arm work-out and the paint drips everywhere. We are going to have to paint every ceiling in our house so its a good thing that I'll probably have awesome guns now so I can show them off. While we were finishing up the paint job in the den, we were discussing our plans for the kitchen. Well one thing led to another and we started the kitchen reno just a pinch earlier than we had planned, oops. Here are some photos of how that came to be.




 

 

We were so proud we some what finished one room, but then we looked at the kitchen and began discussing what we wanted to do about that doozie of a project. We just started ripping up things, removing cabinet doors, even removing the old dishwasher.





 



We didn't really stop there either. After removing the board above the cabinets we investigated underneath the sink. Dave and I had a minor mold situation so that led to removing the bottom part of the lower cabinets.

 

Look at that nasty, disgusting mess! Oh the horror...oh the mold! Crap.





We were able to fix that little mishap. Look at Dave's handy work.

 

Thursday, November 5, 2009

More Ideas and Plans

So before you saw plans for the first part of the house, now its time for the back part of the house; this includes two bathrooms, hallway, and three bedrooms which one we will make an office. Both bathrooms are in good shape but do have wallpaper. We have already stripped both coats of wallpaper in the hall bathroom and we managed to rip down some of the sheet-rock too so we are going to have work on the first bathroom a bit more before we are really start decorating it. Here are some pictures of our bathrooms.


   

Bathroom plans...


  • Standard design needs for both Bathrooms: 
    • Since the tile in both bathrooms seem to be in good shape we decided to keep the tile. We would like to replace the vanity or raise it some how and paint it a solid white to match the tile better. It is very short standard and isn't very useful. After the wallpaper disaster  Dave and I thought it would be the most economical to put up "wayne scotting" or that wood-paneling with a chair molding to finish it off. I'm not sure what you call this technique, maybe David can shed some light on the subject for me. I was thinking that I could find some sort of textured wallpaper, like a linen or something, so that we wouldn't have to do so much preliminary work on the walls. I would like to raise the shower curtains in both bathrooms pretty much to the ceiling so they will look larger and using a solid white, waffle-cotton shower curtain will complete the polished look.
  • The Guest Bathroom color scheme will be white, yellow and black. I think I might add a small chandelier to add a bit of class.
  • The Master Bathroom will be a little more casual. It will still have the same wood-paneling, molding and textured wallpaper but since the tile is blue, it would be best to pair it with chocolate browns, white. I will need to add some kind of shelving because right now David has no place to keep his q-tips and other manly grooming products! Well who am I kidding, the shelving idea is for me and I'll make David put what little stuff he does have there.
Our Master Bedroom...


The plan...

  • Color Scheme: Blue, white/ivory, brown and coral. For the walls, we chose a light blue color called Tropical Mist by Valspar with white trim. Our bedding is from Pottery Barn, its called Audrey from their organic collection. I love it because it isn't a solid color but it isn't so busy it gives your a headache. We'll be pairing it with the Sandalwood Pick-Stitch Quilt and Sham. I have also ordered special euro shams too. I have to make our headboard since I wouldn't let David keep our previous headboard which was from his childhood bedroom. The headboard will be a upholstered with a light brown fabric with small gold dots which will contrast well with the Audrey bedding. I'm pretty excited about decorating our bedroom!
Our Guest Bedroom...
 


The Plan... 


  • The Guest Bedroom color scheme will be black, tan, orange, green. The one word that I am thinking for our guest room is BOLD. I want this room to be fun and happy because we want our guest to be excited that they are in Auburn for the weekend and they are staying with the Simons, what wouldn't be better than that?! 
    • We are going to reuse the Churchill Hotel Wheat again because I think it will go nicely with the bedding that I have picked our for the room. Its colorful and will contrast well with the black furniture. The bedding is of course from Pottery Barn and its organic...
    • I would like to paint random images on small canvas using the colors from the fabric in the bedding.
    • window treatments: I can't decide if I should put up white roman blinds or if I should have some sort of drapery. 
The Office...



The Plan...

  • Color Scheme: Green, brown, creams, Florida Orange and Auburn Navy. A sage/moss green color for the walls. Our furniture will be a collection of hand-me-downs, the desk which is maple brown was from Dave's moms house, love seat is apart of the living room furniture and a maple brown bookshelf from Dave's apartment. We have these vintage Auburn and UF calendars that I plan to frame and create a collage. I would like to buy more wall shelves from Ikea to mount above the desk for better organization for our random assortments of nick-nacks and my art supplies. 
As you can see we got a lot of work to do.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Its Time for a Plan, a Design Plan

Since I work all day on design projects or anything else that Liberal Arts might need, I decided to come up with my own design projects. I told David that we weren't going to do whatever we wanted and whenever we wanted it do it (just in terms of home updates-I'm not Kate Gosselin here!) but we were going to have a plan, a design plan. So I took room by room and came up with design boards on what I might want everything to look like.


The Kitchen, currently.








The Plan....





  • The Kitchen
    • We want to replace the countertops, update the cabinet doors, plus paint. We also need to install new flooring, solid hardwood flooring would be ideal. I would really like a darker color like saddle or mocha, so I am constantly searching websites like Lumber Liquidators, but finding good quality for the right price is getting kind of hard to find!
    • The walls will be painted a medium tan color called Churchill Hotel Wheat from Valspar and the kitchen cabinets will be painted an off-white or Linen. As for the rest of the color scheme, we plan on coordinating with our everyday china which is robin's egg blue and chocolate brown. Depending on the season, I'll use pop-colors like burnt orange, spring green, red and/or tans.
    • Dave and I want to move some things around in the kitchen too because there just isn't enough counter-space especially in a galley kitchen. I think we have a plan but I'm just not sure if I can explain it in words.
The Den, currently.





The Plan....



  • The Den
    • New hardwood flooring to match the kitchen, recessed/canned lighting and new ceiling fan. We are well on our way to painting, it is the same as the kitchen, Churchill Hotel Wheat with other accents of orange, green, brown and a dash of red to complete the color scheme for the den.
    • David has a sectional in storage which I would like to get re-upholstered. Know any affordable companies or independent upholstery "workers"? I did find a great site that you can get your fabrics for a good price.
    • As for other decor elements, I'll figure something out. I do know that I want to take most of my current picture frames and paint them and arrange a photo collage, which I'm really excited to get to that stage of the game. 
The Living Room & Dining Room, currently.


 

The Plan...




  • The Living Room & Dining Room Area
    • Remove carpet and install hardwood floor. Since we only have 4 stairs in the entryway, I thought I could come up with some geometric design, like in the example above. There is a great coat closet to your right once you get up the stairs but I still would like some sort of bench or "welcome area" for us and friends to put their belongings instead of possibly forgetting them in the coat closet. 
    • Color Scheme: the walls will be a lighter shade of tan in comparison to the den and the kitchen, I believe the color is called Lovely Buff by Valspar. Accent colors will be black, brown, white, cream with a pop or green and blue.
    • If you notice the hutch above, we have a hutch that David's mother gave to us and I would really like to turn it into a bar. I would like to paint the interior of the hutch to add depth and so that our glasses and other pretty little things will show up. Once I saw that picture I knew thats what I wanted to do to our hutch.
    • Furniture: For the time I will design around our cream soft leather sofa and chair. Its great furniture but just a bit bulky but comfy. We have a decent dining table and chairs that I will paint black. I want to find a bench to put on the other side of the dining table so that it will still look like one room but so that guest wouldn't feel cut off from the other conversations if they were sitting at the table. I found most of my design inspirations from Young House Love. I am a bit obsessed now. I also loved their solution behind the dining table, wall shelves from Ikea which I plan to copy, and yes I'm stealing their design. Its a compliment, and it isn't copy-righted anyway!
Well thats it for now. I have a few other plans constantly rolling around in my head, but as we told ourselves when we decided to buy the house, "One room at a time." well I'm trying to say the least. 

Demolition Baby!

Time to knock down walls baby! We've removed those lovely but not so great bookshelves that wrapped around the entire den and we are ready to open this place up. So with a some help from some friends...Dr. Alex, oh he's not a "real" doctor that slices and dices, he gives you those precious pills. Alex is a pharmacist and a great one too! But with Alex's help, the three of us took down the wall that was in between the kitchen nook and the den. 


Before....
 


Down comes the wall. It didn't take very long because the panelling came down in strips. We decided to keep the wood panelling and paint it rather than experiment with dry-wall. There weren't too many issues since it wasn't a load baring wall but David did have to get up in the attic and work on some rewiring.



  


Success! First there was a wall and now there is no wall.