Dining and Kitchen Reveal

I am going to do these before and afters a couple of rooms at a time.....in part, because I don't want to write one mega long post. Also, because I am not ready to takes pics of some of the rooms yet. Still too many things I want to do.

Dining Room Before: Beautiful arch and wood trim, small door into the Butler's Pantry and another small door into the kitchen.

After: We kept the arch and all of the trim. Opened up the doors leading to the kitchen. There are still some things I would like to do in here. I ordered fabric for window treatments. I may eventually add a rug for more color. (ignore the one dead bulb in the light fixture. Truthfully, I hadn't noticed until I saw the picture).
A little closer. If you have been to my house(s) before you recognize the empty frames. I have been moving them around for 6 years. I considered not using them in this house, but I still like them. There used to be one cream one and two dark brown. I decided to paint them all the same color. You can't really tell in the pic, but they turned out to be different colors, since I only painted one coat and they were different colors before. I decided I like them that way. Maybe I will take a close up before and after of those later.

Remember this? I bought it at a thrift store in Fort Worth.

I really like the way it turned out. I wanted to leave the stained back in order to make my Vietri dishes more visible. I added some of my grandmother's seashell collection and a few of my aqua colored pieces.

Kitchen Before: Remember the exposed water heater?

Narrow cabinets (and I mean narrow. No way we could have fit a dishwasher or new sink). We did love the subway tile, but weren't able to salvage it and add cabinets.

After: We had new cabinets designed that would mimic the design of the original cabinets, but we brought them around to the side wall too. We stayed with white subway tiles and black granite tops.

We had a wall of cabinets built to camouflage the water heater and add storage around the fridge.

I also ordered some fabric to make a cafe curtain for the window over the sink. I really love the simplicity of the white, black and wood. It is so clean feeling.

What do you think?

First Things First

I am finally back online after the move, a week and a half of waiting on our internet, and a week of visiting my parents in OKC. I know you are waiting on pics of the finished house, like I promised. I will get to that sometime this week. They will actually be pictures of the ALMOST finished house. There is still work being done. I will be playing catch up all week, I am sure.

First I wanted to share the pics from Meg's Dance Showcase, which was the weekend that we moved. It was entertaining if nothing else. I told my sister in law, she may never be a Prima Ballerina, but she is definately a show stopper. She loves to get attention whether it is by doing what her teacher is doing or doing something totally different. We have really enjoyed dance this year.

I tried to upload some video footage, but blogger is not really letting me and I don't have the patience to make it work.

Almost there

There are a lot of surprises when you get to work on an 80 year old house. If you watched the video on Chad's blog before and after the foundation repair, you may have noticed this.....

Turns out, that is not an easy fix when it comes to 80 year old brick and mortar. Chad knew that the brick crews he had used before wouldn't be up for the job. The work with new construction. He called companies all over DFW before he found someone that specializes in brick repair and was up to the task. He had 4 companies who say they do repair come look at it and refuse to mess with it.

Thanks to Joe, the bricker (Mason). Here is the brand new arch. He and his crew also cleaned the brick all over the house and it looks brand new.

Apologies again for the poor picture quality. My camera is packed, so iPhone pics are what you get. These were taken before the light fixtures went it, which would have helped a little too.

Paint....I mentioned before how much I stress over paint. You would think that after picking paint for 5 of our personal houses and countless spec houses that Chad built, I would be confident about it. It is seriously one of the hardest things about house planning to me. So many times the color on the wall turns out so much different than you think it will from the sample/colorwheel.

I am completely happy with the master color! I picked a Martha Stewart color called Rainwater and my painters mixed their own Kwall paint to match it. That always makes me nervous, but it turned out great. It is a really nice blue that has a hint of grey/green.

I was wanting to go pretty white with the main color for the house. Funny because I used to have to battle Chad to do a lot of color in our houses. This time, I was saying white and he was saying, "are you sure?". I didn't want it stark white. I am just getting tired of cream/beige. We have used a lot of those tones before because we have done more traditional, old world kind of looks. I wanted a little more classic feel to this. All that to say, I gave in to Chad's concerns and it turned out a little darker then I had originally planned, but I think it will be great once everything is moved in and there is stuff on the walls.

I love how the new desk area (old butler's pantry area) is turning out. Chad took out the drawers in the middle to make leg room. We had outlets added to the bottom cabinets for computer/printer etc. I am either going to paper or paint the inside of the upper cabinets and I bought some really cute vintage hardware to replace what is there.

Below are the kitchen cabinets after they were painted. Since this picture was taken, the black granite was installed....and the subway tile backsplash is currently in progress.

The window frame had to come out to make the cabinets fit, so that is now on the to do list.

Below is a sneak peak of the refinished hardwood floors. The look beautiful.

So....tile guys are there today. Plumbers today and tomorrow and we are planning to move in Friday, ready or not. We are ready...the house might not be.

The next pictures you see will probably be the finished product. There is still A LOT to be accomplished before and after move in.

Unfortunately for us (fortunately for them) our painters got really busy and can't come back to paint the exterior for a few weeks. That wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't painted samples on the front windows of the house! Now, it looks a little silly and won't be fixed for a while.
Oh Well!

Can't wait to share the in depth before and afters with you! The interior decor is the fun stuff.