Friday, April 30

Kitchen Tile

Thanks to our wonderful friend Corrie who conveniently works for Shaw (flooring) we have ordered the tile for our kitchen floors. To go with the pronounced 'coffee' theme Aaron has so lovely named it, ironically the tile is titled coffee as well. I think they will look wonderful in the kitchen and we might have enough to go ahead and replace the tile in the front entry-way!

Here's a peak of what they will look like, this is a staged room with the tiles:


I'm sure we have another busy weekend in store, we have the kitchen completely gutted so next we'll be sanding the walls, patching holes, and painting! We have yet to begin the staining process on the cabinets but that will likely commence this weekend as well.

Check back for updated pictures after this weekend.

Monday, April 26

Day 2: Kitchen and Basement Renovations

On Sunday we headed back over to the house to pick up where we left off. We continued taking down the kitchen cabinets, removing the backsplash, and I began scraping away at the linoleum floor. Removing the flooring is no easy job! I have about half of it up so far and it took about five hours to get that far.

I also had Aaron take down the kitchen light...no matter how many times I ran into the thing it never failed. a few minutes later I was smacking my head on it. So we are almost down to the bare bones of the kitchen and next comes the fun part, making it look beautiful. I am in the process of looking for a coffee inspired painting in hopes of inspiring tile and countertop ideas. Enjoy
We removed the upper cabinets to make it easier to sand the backsplash glue and paint the walls.
The bottle of wine left in the refrigerator and then we have Aaron making fun of my clumsiness and running into the light.
Putting some muscle into removing that flooring.
Amongst the kitchen renovations Aaron has been removing the paneling in the basement, along with the framing, and ceiling. We need to check out the electrical and piping situation. The basement was also poorly finished and needs to be redone.
Aaron hard at work :) ripping away that beautiful wood paneling. He kept saying he smelled a strange odor in the basement...look what he discovered!
A DEAD SQUIRREL!!
Not sure how long it had been in the wall but there were walnuts all over the place. We discovered its entry way today. Hopefully it didn't do to much damage up in the ceiling.


Sunday, April 25

Day One: Rip and Tear

With a hearty breakfast and plenty of tools, day one of home renovation consisted of kitchen cabinet removal and a few fun discoveries! The kitchen and the bathrooms are our main projects to take on over the course of the next year. The remainder of the house doesn't look as 60's as those three rooms.


I'll start by introducing the lovely kitchen appliances that took way to long to remove...who would have known.

The never seen before, bush button stove by General Electric was nicely hardwired in to the wall. What this means is instead of a plug from the stove into the wall there was a electrical cord 'hardwired' right into the back of the stove (yippee) Aaron gets to learn the electrical trade!

This little discovery led us to a poorly labeled electrical box that thankfully did have the stove range labeled, fingers crossed the wire was removed from the stove. The only problem is a new electrical socket has to be put in for our new appliances once we get that 'wonderful' tax credit from the government!
...and then there was a matching dishwasher. It's hard to believe this is what an attractive appliance looked like in the 60's. I will admit they were made much more durable than the one's we have today, too bad we didn't just paint them a nicer color, like the color of steel. Oh well

Thankfully we have awesome wood cabinets that we will definitely be salvaging. I'll be trying out darker stain colors over the next couple of weeks so be on the look out, I might need opinions.
Taking doors off by hand until Aaron introduced me to the scary handheld drill! (so much easier)
Unfortunately we are not keeping this part of the cabinetry in order to put a big enough refrigerator in.
The clock attached to the cabinets that I wanted to keep...Aaron ripped it right off without a second thought. I thought it was a convenient addition haha.

I think the appliances consumed most of our day, determining how to shut the water off to the sink, as well as electrical safety issues from the appliances, and finally countertop removal. Next we will tackle the back splash, flooring, and electrical sockets.

Day one complete..while Lexi watches on.

Let the renovations begin!

10 days ago we settled on our first home and this weekend we began our first round of renovations. We have about two months before we have to be out of our rental so in the mean time we want to get as much done as we can afford. The first project will be the kitchen along with ripping out the wood paneling in the basement. Here are a few before pictures of the house...it's a bit outdated (build in the mid-60's) but it has good bones and we're excited to bring it up to speed!

Danielle


Front of House
Back Deck
Back Yard
Two car garage
 Entry into the living room, dining room off to the left
Kitchen (first project)...can you tell why?
Lovely guest bathroom
Rear Guest Bedroom
Master Bedroom Bathroom (next project)...byebye pink!