House Remodel - Kitchen, Dining Room and Living Room

Here is the remodel post I know at least a few of you have been waiting for.  We started remodeling the kitchen by demoing walls and tearing things out back in January.  We were completely without a kitchen for about 6 weeks, I think, back around March, but then there has been quite a bit of finish stuff since April or so once we had a functioning kitchen again.  Paul did all the texture, trim, crown, baseboard, electrical (there were maybe 6 lights total in the whole kitchen/living room when we bought the house), wall framing and painting.  We hired out the cabinet install (cabinets were ordered from Lowe's, just like with our last house - they are KraftMaid brand), tile install for the backsplash and quartz countertops, and hardwood floor installation (which was a nightmare).  I tried to match up before and after angles as best I could. You can see in the first two photos that the old kitchen was kind of a boxed in little compartment with a hallway and laundry closet on the left (which we relocated to another part of the house near the guest bathroom in order to expand the kitchen and use that space for the refrigerator and pantry space).

 

The walls weren't load bearing (hooray!) so we just knocked them down ourselves and opened things up and reorganized where appliances went.  The new sink is where the old stove was.  The new stove is in between where the old fridge and ovens were.  And I love that we have bookshelves in the island to hold my cookbook collection and make the island look even a little more like a piece of furniture to flow between the kitchen and living room.

The picture below is just of a wall with a doorway, but I'm posting it to show the change we made by tearing that wall down and opening the dining room into the kitchen which you can see in the following picture.  Oh, and you can also see the old door to the garage and the new white one.  Paul installed all the new doors in the house except for the front door and the double French doors in the living room.

Here is another angle from the old kitchen, followed by a really similar angle in the remodeled kitchen to better show the difference in some of the appliance configurations.

Oh, and that beautiful wood paneling was actually TWO layers thick.  It was beastly to rip it out and haul it away (I helped with a lot of the brunt labor of carrying out spiky chunks of that disgusting paneling to the backyard and then we had a bunch of help from friends in our ward who came to cart the trash heap from the backyard to a dumpster in the front one Saturday morning so it could all go to the dump).

Our furniture in the living room is a little embarrassing - its mismatched and the couches only cost us $50 at a garage sale down the street shortly after we moved in and had this empty room where we were just sitting on camping chairs for the first couple of months.  We plan to get a rug and new couches at some point but we are just going to have to wait on that for a while.  Also, you can see around the window that the trim hasn't been totally finished and we plan to paint the dark wood trim white because there are a few other windows in the house with various shades of brown trim that should all match.  Again, that's a project that is just going to have to be put on the backburner while we tackle other more pressing matters.

The fireplace before was so blah - it just blended in to the wood paneling too much.

But without ANY changes to the fireplace it looks so much better just by being surrounded by the clean grey walls and having one of our favorite Yosemite pictures decorating the mantle.  I'm just realizing that I really need to organize that bookshelf though.

There are garbage and recycling bins in a pull-out drawer on the far right and a lazy susan in a corner to maximize cupboard space.

And that is pretty much it for the remodel pictures for now.  Paul still has a little baseboard to install in the family room before we can replace the carpet and finish that area.  But here are the rest of the pictures I took of the kitchen/living/dining room this morning of some different angles that I don't have matching "before" photos for.

And that's it!  Hats off to Paul for all his hard work!  I am LOVING the new kitchen and making good use of it. 

House Remodel - The Girls' Rooms

After being in our house for a little more than a year (we bought it in May 2014), we are finally nearing the end of the inside remodel!  To the point where I can finally start posting some photos!  Bear in mind that there are still lots of projects that need to happen in almost every room - we don't have any closet doors, there are nail holes to be filled and trim to be caulked, blinds need to be installed, etc.  But things are feeling more or less done now so yippee!

 

Anyway, for starters I have pictures of the girls' rooms.  We love how they turned out. 

Here are a couple of before pictures from Rose's room.  I can hardly believe how little Clara was just a year ago!

This was texturing Rose's closet.  It's the only texturing I did in the house so, you know, props to me.  All I can say is that Paul is a champ for doing all the work that he has done to make our house look as nice as it does.

 

These aren't of the house as much as just cute shots of the girls playing together while I was taking pictures of their rooms.

 

And here are some before pictures of Clara's room.

And one "in progress" photo.

And now the after photos.

Hopefully in the next few days I will get the kitchen properly cleaned and take photos so I can finally post about our kitchen remodel!

Preschool, Gizdich Ranch, and Saturday Projects

Preschool

Clara had her first day of preschool this past Wednesday (Sep. 3).  We are doing a co-op with four other moms/kids I have met through church so her first day was at her friend Molly's house.  They did an introduction to the alphabet, went on a number hunt, and read "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom".  We decided to start out at just 1 day a week from 9:00-11:30 a.m. for the month of September and then up it to 2 days a week for the rest of the year.  We ordered a curriculum called "Mother Goose" and are supplementing with "Confessions of a Homeschooler" materials and whatever else we find on Pinterest or that we think of on our own.  Two of the other moms were first grade teachers and one has a master's in education, so I feel a little intimidated (especially since this Wednesday is my first day as teacher) but grateful that we have support and experience on our side without having to spend tons of money for preschool. 

Clara was very excited about preschool and she did great her first day.  She woke up late actually (sleeping in until 8:00 a.m. is pretty much unheard of for my girls) so we kind of hustled to get out the door but made sure to take a few pictures first.  Then once I dropped her off, Rose and I went to the gym where Rose was one of the only kids in the kids club area since almost all the kids are in school in the mornings now.  After my class, Rose and I hung out in the car waiting for Clara to get done (since it didn't make any sense to go home and pull Rose out of the carseat just to get back in the car 10 minutes later for pick-up) and Rose took a nice little snooze.

The night before Paul gave Clara her first ever beginning-of-the-school-year priesthood blessing and Clara was so grown-up and proper about it, folding her arms and bowing her head reverently while listening closely to the words that were spoken.  We are so proud of her and the big girl she is becoming.

Gizdich Ranch

Last year Paul didn't get to go apple picking with Clara and me so this year we definitely wanted to find a Saturday to go together as a family.  And luckily our friends Johannes & Christine wanted to go too, which was extra fun because it meant Clara got to see her friends Silas & Liesel and Paul and I got to catch up and commiserate with Johannes & Christine about remodeling projects (they have been kitchenless for almost 2 months now because of their kitchen/living room/dining room remodel).  One of the hardest things about this move (and any move, frankly) has been missing our old friends so it is always fun to get together. 

Anyway, we didn't realize they had a strawberry patch by the apple orchards that were still bearing fruit and since the Fischlis were running late, Paul, Clara, Rose and I had fun picking strawberries while we waited.  They were AMAZINGLY good - sooooo sweet and juicy - and Clara loves picking strawberries and is good about only picking the biggest, reddest strawberries and leaving the ones that aren't quite ripe on the plants.  And Rose was content to just hang out and look around and enjoy chewing on the straps of the carrier. 

For some reason there weren't as many low-hanging apples this year as I remember there being last year but there was still enough that we filled a bucket with Pippins and Galas.  Paul helped Clara reach some from the higher branches but frankly, Clara was just antsy to be given permission to finally EAT one of the apples rather than keep picking them.  I'm thinking about making applesauce, applesauce snacking cake (so yummy - it is an America's Test Kitchen recipe and basically just a muffin recipe that you cook in a square pan and dust with spiced sugar), and apple fritter bread with our haul.  Apple picking is pretty much the perfect start-of-fall tradition and I'm so glad we went again this year even though the drive to Watsonville was a little long.

Bathroom Remodel

After we got home from apple picking everybody sort of crashed for a bit before we regrouped and got back in the car to go look at tile for the master bathroom.  Paul demo-ed part of the shower wall last week so that we could have a plumber come adjust the plumbing for the shower and vanity areas.  So now Paul has to finish the demo work on the rest of the shower enclosure, raise the ceiling height, and drywall it off with cement board or whatever that waterproof barrier stuff is.  Then we are hiring out the tilework. 

We found these two tiles that were pretty much just what I was looking for.  The hexagonal marble tile is for the shower floor area and the large greyish tile will be the shower surround and also the floor of the bathroom (we had picked out a different tile for the flooring but when we got the samples home and laid things out we decided that in the end it will just look best to go with just one tile design since the bathroom is still really small).  It still isn't going to be done for a long while but hopefully before Thanksgiving we will have a fully functioning, totally remodeled master bath. 

We also found a kitchen table that we think we like but didn't buy/order it because (1) we are trying to avoid impulse buys (although this is the second weekend we have spent looking for a table and probably the 6th home furnishings store we went to), (2) we wanted to come back home and remeasure to make sure it fit well in our dining space, and (3) the sales lady wouldn't negotiate on price which kind of bugs when making a big purchase like a dining table.  It is on sale through the month of September though and honestly it is pretty much exactly what we were hoping to find (and not completely horribly priced) so we will probably end up doing it so that we can (hopefully) have a real table for Thanksgiving and not just a cardtable like we have been using since moving into this house.

And that was our week!