House Remodel

We started this remodel toward the end of June and it was finished up by early September. Greg and I are both very indecisive so all the selections took us quite a long time to think and research and ask friends and family. But once we made our decisions the major work got done rather quickly. We had a great contractor and we are very happy with the end results.

When you first walk in you see the stairs. We love the look of wood stairs but were nervous about them being so hard with kids and potential falls (even with baby gates). We were going to keep the existing carpet but then at the last minute decided to change it because it was pretty worn and dirty. I'm sooo glad we did. I love the herringbone pattern. The walls are all painted a lighter color than they were previously which really helped brighten things up. And all of the slate floors were taken out downstairs and replaced with wood. One of the little things I love is that the floors are SILENT. I loved the original hardwoods in our old house but boy were they squeaky. Take one wrong step and 1-3 children could be awake. But now we can sneak around our new house like ninjas.

For the living room we had the fireplace step taken out (aka the chin buster), the stone redone, added cabinets on the left to make it symmetrical, added wood paneling above fireplace and behind shelves, and added trim and molding all painted white. This made such a difference! Now I need to buy some pretties to put on the shelves. And I need someone to tell me what kind of pretties to buy. Hello Houzz and Pinterest.

The kitchen was the biggest project and we are so happy with the final results. The kitchen is always the room of the house where people congregate and we spend a lot of time here (especially me), so I am very thankful to have such a nice, big kitchen. I am really enjoying it. Everything was taken out and we started from scratch. We have way more cabinet and counter space than before. The subway tiles look almost white in the pictures but they are a light gray with a touch of beige.

This house didn't have any closets besides bedroom closets (no coat closet, linen closet, etc). So we had a nice big storage closet built at the top of the stairs where previously there were just cabinets (strange, no?). Storage space is invaluable.

We haven't put on the door knobs yet.

Overall the remodel was a good experience. It did take a considerable amount of time and many trips x 1000 to home depot, stone yards, tile places, and flooring places, It also took 2000 man hours of googling things like best greige paint color and where to place cabinet knobs ("in the corner" really has multiple options). But it was mostly fun and now I kinda want to do a remodel on the next house. Although I also kinda never want to move again because of ALLTHETHINGS.

I will probably post pictures of other rooms later as they are decorated. That could be months and months though!