Kitchen Cabinet Project

We had an opportunity to have the Home Depot kitchen contractors come in and rework our kitchen cabinets. Phillip and I were not planning on having the kitchen worked on in a while, expecting it to cost a ton of money. We assumed that we would need to replace these ugly, pathetic cabinets. The contractor came over and gave us great news though. He told us that, with the exception of the doors, the cabinets were in great shape because they were solid wood. He informed us that we could keep all of the bases and replace the doors for much less than what Phillip and I were expecting to pay. I wanted white cabinets to lighten the kitchen (a coat of paint on the walls will help that too. Ugh! The Miami Vice green on the walls is horrible!).



Our ugly cabinets before:














I had them bring the cabinets all the way to the ceiling to match an old built-in that is in the kitchen as well. Doing that really accentuated the height in the kitchen. The workman informed me that he had never made doors for cabinets that tall that weren't for a pantry (some of our doors were over 4 feet tall!). In the pictures below, you can see how they added the additional framing around our existing cabinet bases.

They faced all of the cabinets with a white veneer that is easy to clean. The work man then had to cut out all of cabinets shelves in the veneer.

I must say, just changing the cabinets made a huge impact on the kitchen! They are so easy to clean too. I love it! Next, Phillip and I need to decide (agree) on the counter top. We ran into a bit of a speed bump on that one. I wanted Carrara Marble (which he says will stain too easily...maybe we wouldn't have too worry about it if he wasn't so messy when he mixed his Kool-Aid.) and he wants Granite (which I don't like the color selections that I have seen so far). I think I might have to give in on this battle.

Obviously, I am not planning on keeping the horrible color palette the woman picked before we moved in (what was she thinking?). However, I am considering going for an unconventional color in the kitchen...a super light, barely able to tell, lavender. Originally I was thinking light grey, but then I worried that it would make the kitchen darker. It all ready doesn't have good natural light, so I thought lavender might help brighten it up. Besides, I have a red chandelier that I want to hang in the kitchen. I think lavender would compliment it nicely. We will see.

Cabinets completed:

Before I can paint, we have a lot of prep work we need to do on the walls. The previous owner did a really shotty job at drywall and such. It all needs to be fixed. We also have to replace all of the baseboards and the back doors. It will take some time. We probably won't get to the project again until winter, when we are locked up in the house again for another 8 months! I will keep you posted.

New Family Room is Completed!

Phillip has finally completed the dining room to family room remodel project. He took down all of the box wood panels on the wall, painted the dark wood beams on the ceiling and baseboards. He insulated the wall with all of the windows, cleaned the wood (it was a real mess), repaired the windows, painted the radiator, sanded the walls and touched up damaged areas. We hung up the wall paper and put a decorative molding around it. I think that about covers it. It went from this:


To this:

It definitely is a lot brighter. We no longer feel that the space is some great big dark hole that is waiting to swallow us up. I still have some decorating to be done. I still have not found a chandelier that I like and can afford. I need some end tables and accessories (though I don't know where I will put the accessories since Parker can reach EVERYTHING). I am also working on making some drapes for the window behind the couch.


Some die-hards might want to pee their pants when the find out that I wanted the wood plate rails (above) taken down. Yes people, I do understand that respecting the house's age is important. But I also think it is important to decorate a house that reflects your family's personality. Create a room that you will actually enjoy and live in. If not, you might as well flush money down the toilet.


Phillip really wanted his big TV downstairs. Unfortunately, we only had one option as to where to place it. All of the walls had big windows or built-ins that would not accommodate his giant TV. This wall was the only full wall I had. I hated having to give it to the TV (I envisioned a huge painting on it), but fair is FAIR is guess (I say as I have my bottom lip pouting). I certainly did not want a big, black square screaming "Look at me, look at me!" on my only wall. This wall paper certainly helps take away some of the attention to the TV. Plus the print on the paper (Designer's Guild) is so french glam and modern at the same time. I love it! I am trying to decide if I want to put up some artwork on the wall as well - some vintage portraits or something. I also am trying to decide if I want to place a big animal head on the upper corner (of course not a real head. Don't you know me at all? I have a big bull head that is black plastic that was once a head to a bull you can ride on for practice. It is the coolest thing and by far my best garage sale find EVER!! Phillip thought it was silly to buy it, but I tell you that bull has started more conversations than anything else.)


Just a few little tid-bits. I love my Philippe Starck lamp (the man is brilliant, I swear!). I found this mantel clock at a great junk store here in town. You can not tell in the picture, but it looks like a jello mold with rocks in it. So quirky I had to have it.


The built-in bar before:


And after:
Believe me, I wanted to paint this whole wall white. But I let Phillip win this battle (for now). This built-in, though beautiful and rich looking, is so heavy and dark. It takes up just about the whole wall. Your eye is immediately drawn to it because it is so dominating. I think of it as visual pollution. As a result, we did not do much to it. I might place a paper in the upper cabinets that have glass doors to add a bit more lightness to it. I have not decided yet. Regardless, for as much as we like to entertain, it is nice to have the cabinet in the family room.

Notice the lion's paws on the side table? I love this little table.
The cutest dog, EVER! I love you Pete.

My Birthday, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day and Anniversary present all rolled into one! I love this chair!! Missoni make the best fabric. It has every color I could ever want.


My cabinet and pottery pieces. Don't you just love the big, ugly baby lock on the cabinet? I hate that I have to do that. More visual pollution (Heavy sigh.)

So that is the room in a nut shell. I still have little decorating things I need to do. When I get around to it (and the money for it), I will share it with you.

More photos will come soon of the kitchen cabinets that we just finished as well as the front yard project we are working on.

I swear it is never ending.

Working on it...

I am trying to get my next set of vacation pictures ready for you. I think there will be three parts. I will do my best to get them up this morning, but I can't make any promises. Today is the first day the contractors will be here to resurface and change our kitchen cabinets. Exciting and stressful! I am not sure how I am going to go three whole days with a toddler and no access to my kitchen! I worked all day on Sunday trying to get the kitchen ready...where do we put all of that stuff?!?

Finally Decided on Wallpaper...

Well, it took a while for me to decide, and truthfully and am still wavering, but I have come to a final decision on the wallpaper I want to use for the family room. I went with one of my first choices, the Designers Guild wall paper. Hopefully the print will be big and bold enough that is will help take some of the "eye sore" out of Phillip's HUGE TV that will go on this wall. I think the black and white will look nice with the light blue on the walls. The paper definitely has both a traditional and a modern feel to it...perfect for my decorating aesthetic.

Progress Report on Phillip's Latest Project...

As most of you know, Phillip has been working on the dining room of our house, which we will use as our family room once it is completed. He has come a long way since my first post. He has all ready dry walled most of the walls, patched holes, sanded plaster, primed and even replaced baseboards and began the first coat of paint! He has also changed out some outlets from a two outlet station to a four outlet station. Way to go Phillip!

(To see the before shots, click here.)

Ceiling before Phillip did anything to it.

Ceiling primed and one coat of paint. This ceiling was in pretty decent shape, so he only had to do a little work to the plaster.

Walls have had new drywall. Some insulation is also added.

New baseboard cut and primed. Also a new 4 head electrical outlet.

The walls still need the painting finished. The windows need to get the decorative trim replaced and cut. Phillip also says there are a few electrical things that need to be completed. It looks like I am finally able to order my wall paper!

Wallpaper - What Do You Think?

I mentioned in the post below that I plan on wallpapering the wall Phillip's monstrous TV will be on. Hopefully, the paper will help prevent the TV from looking like one big black hole (or at least not so obvious). I thought that a printed wallpaper would cause a nice distraction to the TV...or perhaps a black background paper to help hide it. I don't plan on papering the whole wall - just framing a large section (maybe 10 feet or so) with picture molding like a large piece of artwork.

It was fun looking through all of the paper books, though I had a good idea of what I was looking for. I have narrowed it down to 6 possibilities.

This was the only paper from a line that I had not heard of before and unfortunately can not remember the name right now to share with you. The picture does not do it justice. The print is actually textured with some sort of foil that changes color as your perspective moves. One moment it is black on black, then blue, then green and here copper. This is by far the most masculine paper I selected. As suspected, it is one of Phillip's top choices so far. I thank the sales guy to suggesting it to me or I would never have found it.

I love this print because it is so busy. With so much going on, the TV will have to "fight the competition"to stand out-plus it uses a lot of the colors I am incorporating in my design on the lower level.

This is one of the papers I preselected before I went to the paper shop. It is from Designer's Guild. I am a HUGE fan of everything DG. Tricia Guild utilizes all of the traditional Rococo styling and mixes the prints and colors in such modern ways. In this paper, the little dots are a light gold. I think this paper would look so crisp against the light blue of our walls. Phillip really liked this paper as well.

A beautiful traditional looking paper from Nina Campbell. I thought with the black background, the TV would get a bit lost. Also, the white flowers lends to the crisp black and white feeling,but in a more subtle way than the previous paper. I also like the moss green in the leaves as I intend to incorporate that color with fabrics throughout the house.

Another Nina Campbell paper that I had preselected. This image is from the Domino Decorating Book. (By the way, I STRONGLY recommend getting this book if you spend any time decorating your house, no matter what your design level is.) I like this paper for all of the same reasons as the above paper, except this one has more light blue in it. That is nice since the walls of my living room and the family room are light blue.

This picture is very misleading. The background is black as well, but with more of a brown/red undertone. There is also silver foil in some of the flower leaves. I actually just added this one into the mix at the last minute, but I was surprised that Phillip has this listed as one of his possibilities.

I should get the actual samples in a week or so. Then we can actually hold them up to the space we will use them in with the wall color. Hopefully we will make a good decision. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear them. Email me or comment here on the blog.

Dining Room/Family Room Remodel Project

Since the weather has turned to below freezing mostly at this point, Phillip has been forced to pause the work on the porch remodel project and began working on the room next to our living room. Technically, the room is a dining room, but we plan on making it into a family room since it is the only room in the house, with the exception of the bedrooms, that has a wall big enough to hold Phillip's monstrous 50" plasma TV (really, who needs a TV that big?). During the holidays, he had two weeks off and wanted to start work on this project. Even though he caught the cold that Parker and I had, he still worked almost every day on the room. Before you say anything, I didn't make him...he likes to do this stuff. I must say that I am impressed with the progress that he has made in such a short amount of time.

The first shot in each series is the "before" from when we first looked at the house and considered purchasing it. The bar is just one of the built-ins that Phillip loved about the house. You might think that there isn't really anything wrong with the room - why change it? Well, you can't tell in the photo, but in between each boxed panel on the wall is wallpaper...4 layers of it! It looked awful. We later discovered that it was also covering some major wall damage. This room needed a lot of TLC.

The window wall definitely needs the most work. Once Phillip removed the wallpaper, he found that there was a large whole where the plaster had crumbled behind the radiator under the window. He had to strip the wall to the bare bones. Unfortunately, he got the drywall up and skimmed before I was able to take a photo of how scary it looked. You can get a small idea of what it looked like though in the closest picture above...see the wood peaking out behind the drywall? The whole window wall looked like that. On a more positive note, since the wall was stripped to the bones, it gave us the opportunity to add insulation to the wall (something this house is in serious need of but would cost WAY TOO much to do if we did not need to strip all of the walls down.)

Even though the plate railing is nice, I thought it was WAY too much dark wood in one little room, making the room appear very "heavy". I wanted it to feel a lot more brighter and lively, like a young, active family actually lives here...not a traditional grandma (no offense grandparents!). Phillip removed all of the extra boxing on the walls, leaving one big wall for him to place his HUGE TV. I am planning on placing wallpaper on this wall to hopefully help camouflage the TV a little bit.

In the matter of time that it has taken me to post this (about 3 days after I took these pictures), Phillip has all ready skimmed and sanded the plaster walls, caulked and put up 2 coats of primer paint. Still, he is far from being completed. The wood still needs to be treated, painting the baseboards and the crown molding as well as the boxed ceiling. The window will also need some TLC, and we have learned that those take a lot of time. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Walk the Plank

Phillip takes advantage of the warm weather by working on whatever outdoor projects that need to be done to this "money pit" of a house we bought. The first outdoor project is the front yard - namely the front porch. It is the only part of this old house that was not structurally sound. You can't tell in the before picture, but the porch is not square AT ALL.

Once we received quotes from contractors on how many thousands it would cost us to have a professional redo our porch, Phillip decided that he would tackle the project himself. Now, I have always said that Phillip is one of the smartest guys I have ever known, but THIS??!! I must say, even though the progress is slow, I am impressed. He completely deconstructed our old porch. Drew up plans to present to the city to get a building permit. Dug holes and framed the supports. Removed the old columns and propped the house on some sort of stilt system. And now he has begun laying the floor boards. Yay! All of this time, I have had to literally climb into our house and/or walk some sort of plank to get into the front door. I am so excited to have some sort of flooring in place. I can't wait to see what it looks like when he is completely finished. I will keep you posted on the progress!