That past few weekends, we’ve made great progress on our kitchen! Here are a couple things that we’ve knocked off our to-do list (the things in italic are items we just finished):

Kitchen (see inspiration here)

1. Paint walls a green/blue/gray color
2. Add MDF board trim to create shaker style cabinets
3. Paint cabinets white, paint trim white
4. Add knobs and pulls to cabinets
5. Create larger island and use as table (like this)
6. Tear out ceramic tile and replace with dark wood floors
7. Get new countertops, probably laminate but would love a solid surface
8. Replace sink & faucet
9. Get new bar stools and spray paint yellow
10. Paint a chalkboard wall
11. Add curtains
12. Accessorize
13. Add pendant lights, under cabinet lighting and swap out sink light
14. Add light grey penny tile as backsplash

So we thought we’d share some updated kitchen photos, and make sure to check out the progress: re-painted the walls, installed the wood floors and swapped out the light above the sink!

Even our cat is loving them!

The floor we picked is an engineered click-lock hardwood floor, sold at Menards in a Vintage Hickory finish. We love it because we know a few people who have installed it recently and it’s held up great for them so far! The click & lock feature was awesome and made installing them a breeze (we installed 98% of it in one afternoon/evening). Here is a close up of how it looks snapped together where we didn’t install a transition yet because we’ll be laying tile down in the bathroom this winter.

The light above the sink was a clearance find at World Market – I love the detail in the metal shade. It was originally red, but I spray painted it yellow, the same color as I did our stools. PS check out my little photo bomber.

And the new wall color is Benjamin Moore Palladium Blue. We lived with the original blue we had picked out for almost a year, but after awhile we decided we wanted a less bright hue, so we repainted it. It only took me one Saturday morning and a little less than half a gallon of paint, so a small price to pay for a way more loved color. PS our cat just love to get in these photos…

Crazy to think this is how our kitchen looked just under a year ago…

Next up… creating island legs, installing some pendants for over our large island and then countertops!

When we bought our house last September, we knew our roof was on it’s last leg. It’s the original roof (23 years) and usually these types of roofs (three tab shingles) only last 20 years. We’ve been fortunate enough to not had any leaks, the only issue we’ve had is a few missing shingles. So besides the fact it brings down the curb appeal a tad, our house was ok.

However, I don’t think we should wait for our roof to leak in order to fix it. We’ve been putting away money for a new roof, knowing it would need to be done soon. So with getting a new roof, the other questions that come are: what type of roof do we want to get and what color roof do we want to get.

We’re going to go with the dimensional/architectural roof shingles, basically what most of the houses have if you’d drive around in any suburban neighborhood.

Then when you ask us the color, well that opens up a whole bunch of what ifs. Our house currently has wood siding. While it’s nicer than the traditional vinyl, wood siding has a few drawbacks. 1. Woodpeckers, trust me, they are not good news for wood siding. Just ask our multiple holes around our house. 2. Maintenance – it needs to be repainted over time. 3. Rot, wood siding can rot unfortunately.

Since we’ll be needing to replace our siding in about a year (probably with vinyl for longevity) we have the options to spice up the color on our house. Our house features brick in the front but the rest of the siding plus the trim is a light beige. Not my first pick for color choice, but it really goes well with the current brick. And while I love painted brick, I feel if we paint over this brick, our house would loose some of it’s appeal and look flat. So if we decide we want to go a different color route, we might also want to adjust the color of the roof too.  Seriously, does it have to be this complicated?!

So to get some ideas, I did a little pinterest browsing (view my exterior home pins) and drove around a few expensive neighborhoods to see if any houses had similar brick and if so, what did they pair with it for the color of the siding, trim and roof. Here are a few pinterest photos I was loving:

So then like any person would do, they’d try to imagine their house with different paint colors. But to get the most realistic effect, I went to photoshop and tried a few quick options (quick is the key word). Here is what I came up with:

What’s your favorite? Surprisingly I’m liking the same siding color, but with the tad bit darker trim option (the last one). Or maybe I’m just nervous because I’m used to what it has been. So seriously, tell me which is your favorite… since it’s not your house and you aren’t used to pulling it up to it everyday.

Also if you didn’t notice, I changed the roof color on a few also, since I thought a more grayish roof with less brown would look better with some colors?

So we started off the summer purchasing some new furniture and hanging curtains. It really spruced it up and made our backyard and deck so much more enjoyable. However, we new the deck needed some TLC. So what started as a weekend of pressure washing, turned into a month+ project of cleaning up the deck and weatherproofing and staining it. Poor Drew – at least it kept him busy while I was painting the cabinets for a year. Here is a quick reminder of where we last left it…

And here is how it’s looking now after using the Behr Weatherproofing stain in the Transparent Chocolate color. PS also notice how different the plants look (good and bad)!

Seriously, check out these coleus plants below, I’ve never had them grow this huge… not sure if it’s because they always died before they got this big or what, but I LOVE them!
Oh and our hydrangea bush is blooming – so much beauty to enjoy! Looking at these photos again is really making me wish summer didn’t have to end. I guess when I’m feeling winter depressed, I’ll fill my mind of these summer memories and count down the days until the snow melts.

We are SOOO close! Tonight I finished installing the last of hardware (both knobs and pulls are from Target) on our re-finished cabinets and now can enjoy them in their full glory without worrying about dirty hands touching the new doors. Drew also helped drill and hang the rest of the doors tonight.

It’s amazing that these once were flat, wood honey colored cabinets.

The only thing left to do (for the cabinets) is adding the wood trim onto this fake drawer in front of the sink, which means my dad has to come over and help, and then prime + paint it.

Woot – next up: installing wood floors and then new countertops!

No we don’t know how to play instruments, and we’re not tearing it up musically, but we did tear it up this past weekend. We tore up our ceramic tile floor to prepare for our new wood floors that we will be installing.

I’ve expressed before how the existing tile in our house was not my style. at all. I’ve always had wood floors in our home growing up as a kid and I’ve learned to love them. Yes you have to be a bit more careful with them, but the look is so classic and we knew it would be great for resale.

We originally picked out a dark bamboo wood floor from Home Depot and we purchased it in November. However, a lot of time had passed and as we got closer to installing it, it just wasn’t sitting well with me. I checked Home Depot’s site to read new reviews on the wood, and I was right, this wood was not holding up well to normal daily use. What also didn’t help was my sister sending me videos of my niece playing with toys on their wood floor and all I could think about was our future kids ruining our wood floor. Luckily Home Depot allowed me to return it for merchandise credit and we purchased a new wood floor from Menards. The new flooring we purchased was the same stuff that my sister and another friend put in, and it was holding up extremely well. It’s one of those hand-scarped floors and is also dark in color.

If you know me I tend to worry a lot, so having one less thing to worry about feels great. And we’ll probably just use the HD credit on our countertops anyways.

So back to the tile… it had to go. So Drew borrowed a tool from work that would tear up the tile piece of cake. For the most part, it was a piece of cake. What really helped was that the tile was laid on top of vinyl. That helped for a nice clean removal of the cement board. It took us 3 hours to remove 95% off the kitchen tile. However there was a section in our hallway (connected to the kitchen) that we assume had carpet installed, instead of the vinyl. That 5% literally took us 2 hours to remove – the cement board was stuck like glue to the wood sub floor.

So after cleaning up (well there is still much more dusting to do), here is how our kitchen floor looks. The vinyl is ok enough to live with until my dad has a chance to help us with the wood floors (hopefully soon?!). We removed all the nails we could, and hammered in the ones we couldn’t.

The area that had carpet in previously we laid towels over since it was very bumpy and not nice to walk on. It’s not the best scenario, but we are flexible and can live with it.

Oh wood floor my feet can’t wait to walk all over you! And I wasn’t kidding when I said I still had to dust… oh the joys or home renovations (and no that is not normal dust, that is concrete dust… I’m not that bad at cleaning)!

Let me start off with I’ve NEVER won anything really. Like most people you enter occasional giveaways and contests and pray you win, but you usually don’t. Yup that’s me. Soo because that’s my usual experience, I was completely surprised to find out I won The Tile Shop’s Pin it Contest.

While looking for pin it contest examples for work, I came across the Tile Shop’s contest and figured I’d enter because hey I could use some tile! I’m also familiar with the shop because I bought our kitchen penny tile from them + I’ve seen them on some of my favorite bloggers, YHL, BowerPower and House*Tweaking. So that day, I spent my lunch hour pinning images that were giving me some inspiration for our bathroom, kitchen and entryway. Yesterday, I got an email from Pinterest saying I’d been tagged – only to realize it was The Tile Shop announcing the winner of the $500 gift card. Then I saw my face plastered on all their social media outlets AND the front page of their website. So Crazy – I had to take a screenshot to document it!

To say I’m ecstatic is an understatement. I’m pretty pumped to decide how I’m going to spend my $500 worth of tile. Since we already have our backsplash tile for our kitchen, I’m thinking we will purchase some tile for our bathroom floor and our entry way. Our bathroom needs a lot of TLC, right now it’s got linoleum flooring and the current shower tiles are so 80s. I also have a feeling there is some moisture behind the shower wall since the grout was cracked in a lot of areas when we purchased our home. So, an entire re-do would be awesome! Plus, we have this weird step-up to the tub. I’d love to get rid of it, and to do that we’d also have to redo the floor. Here’s what I mean…

I’d love to do a penny tile floor (I hear it feels like walking on scales!) and add some classic subway tile in the shower. I don’t think this will be our forever home since it’s our first home, so I’m always thinking about how the things we do will help resale value.

Next, our entryway currently has some ceramic tile – but it’s soo not our style. It’s a square rustic-y tile. While it’s great for hiding dirt, I feel like the tile is always dirty and pretty much grosses me out. And since we’re laying wood flooring in our kitchen, we were thinking we’d find similar vintage hickory faux wood tile and put that in the entry way to match. It’s separated by a few stairs, so I think it may work well! Here’s how our current tile looks…

Here are some photos to help you better understand my vision and some photos that show it in action…(via House*Tweaking and Houzz)

Things are starting to pick-up with our kitchen reno and I finally feel like we are making progress! I’ve been snapping photos here and there of the process and wanted to share a little update on what we’ve all been doing and dreaming about! Sorry this post is all over the place…

Cabinet progress: The cabinet frames and 8 doors are 100% done being painted. Another 15 doors are 65% done, and a few others are like 25% done. So we’ve just got to finish up painting, and then attaching hardware (new knobs/handles, but we spray painted the hinges to match the same satin nickel finish on the knobs/handles) and rehanging them up. I am SO excited for that part!

Stool Progress: Our stools arrived! I spent one morning assembling them and then testing them out in our kitchen, then an afternoon sanding and deglossing, and another afternoon priming them. Next up is spraying them yellow!

Floor Progress: While we haven’t ripped out anything yet, my goal would be next weekend is when we tackle that. I’d really like to get it torn out before Drew leaves for China for two weeks (sad face). In other news, I changed my mind on the flooring, no surprise there. We originally purchased bamboo flooring from Home Depot back in November, when it was $1.99/sq foot. It was brand new at the time and thought we’d scoop it up while it was a great deal. Come to find later that it’s not real great of quality (hence the price) and now that it is not so new, the reviews aren’t that great. Soo we’re attempting to return it tonight since it’s un-opened and they still stock it + pick up this engineered flooring that my sister and brother-in-law installed back in February which is holding up great despite my crazy niece.
All else: It’s still a complete disaster in our house, no surprise there! I just keep telling myself that it has got to look worse before it can get better.
Through all this craziness, I keep reminding myself of this photo which shows our goal for how the kitchen will all come together. I LOVE all these bits and pieces so much and it will be worth it in the end!

When we first toured our home during an open house last year, I had spotted the peony bushes and was in love from that moment on. Since purchasing the house and moving in, I’ve been waiting all year for these babies to bloom. Like literally looking out the window each day in hopes for buds to magically be there.

Well it has been worth the wait! Four bushes of peonies in white, light pink, pink and dark pink graced our backyard along our fence for a week or so before the unfortunate rain destroyed them (lesson learned, I need to use tomato planting cages next year to support them better). Either way, you bet I was outside each day taking photos of the new buds opening each day.

I also took the opportunity to enjoy them inside at home and work (see instagram). Totally worth the wait, and I already can’t wait for next year!