Kitchen Renovation Reveal

We have been sick AGAIN. This always happens when David starts teaching at a new school. We end up catching every strain of every virus that goes around. It's like we have to get use to new germs or something. Does that happen to anyone else? Am I making this up?

Here's how it goes down:

David goes to school and teaches all of the children about science. The children have the nerve to breath in David's classroom and touch their papers with their little germy hands.

David brings the germs home. Ford gets sick. I sleep with Ford while he is sick. I get sick.

It's vicious cycle. I blame the children. Enough with education. It only leads to strep throat in my book.

Anyway...

The last room on the tour of farm house is the kitchen. It's also probably the most dramatic transformation of the whole house because we essentially gutted the existing kitchen and started over. We toyed with the idea of refinishing the existing cabinets to save money and then come back later to do a full kitchen overall, but in the end we thought it would be most prudent to just go ahead and bite the bullet.

Biting the bullet, however, caused quite a bit of stress on my part.  I was nervous about the expenses. I was worried that it wouldn't be functional (it's a small space and I'm no kitchen designer!). I wanted to buy quality kitchen cabinets, countertops, sinks, appliances but not break the bank. We were also working fast so I had to make a lot of decisions quickly. Yikes. Holy anxiety attack.

For all the worry, I think it turned out great. We love our kitchen and are amazed at how big and functional it is now compared to when we first laid eyes on it. Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

***All the pictures of the house are taken with my phone. It's the only way I can get a shot in the small spaces. Carry on. ***

And here we are now!

Unlike the rest of the house, the kitchen needed to be drywalled, simply because we needed to hide all of the electrical and water lines that had to be reworked to make the space more functional. Three of the walls are drywalled and the ceiling.

The walls are painted Sherwin Williams "Sea Salt." It's hard to get a good read on the color because of the lighting in these pictures, but in real life it's really lovely and subtle.

The floors are the only thing that we left alone. They still need some repairs, but we've put that off until another day. In hind sight we probably should have just pulled the tile up and continued with the laminate that we used in the rest of the house. 

We decided to go with cabinets from Ikea. It was a lot of extra work to go to Atlanta and then have to put the cabinets together (Thanks Daddy and Jon Jon!) but in the end I'm really happy with them. Ikea has a great price point, lots of style options, and a pretty good quality product. I want the cabinets to last and be durable, but I knew I wouldn't be happy if they didn't look good, too! 

I used Ikea's online program to design the kitchen, which is equal parts entertaining and maddening. I was terrified that everything wouldn't fit, but it did! Victory! 

The cabinets, sink, and countertops are all from Ikea. 

The countertops are Ikea butcher block. I liked the look of butcher block, but I felt like for them to be functional for our family they needed to be sealed. I also liked the idea of having a little bit richer color and I found a few tutorials on Pinterest about staining butcher block, so despite the inevitable anxiety attack it would cause me, I gave it a try. 

I mainly referred to THIS tutorial. It was so helpful. I changed a few things, but I love the end result. They are not perfect, but I think they're charming and so far they've proved to be very durable. I love that they warm the room up a bit. 

I've managed to get a few things up on the wall. (This picture is probably the truest representation of the wall color, FYI). 

Here's the back door, just to orient you to where we are in the house. 

This is a close up of the penny tile that we used for the backsplash. It was an inexpensive tile option and we saved major bucks because I LAID IT MYSELF!! That's right. 

As with the DIY countertops, I was nervous to try this myself, but I found a tutorial and just dove in. Just to be safe, since I had never done this before, I used a very light colored grout matched with the white tile. The tone on tone result is subtle. It just adds a little textural interest to the room. The white on white was also very forgiving of any mistakes that I made! 

In this room we still have a few things that we'd like to accomplish:

- repair the tile floor

- touch up a few paint spots

- arrange the shelves and cabinets for maximum functionality and pretty-ness :)

So that's it! The full tour. 

I'm thankful for the fast and furious way we were able to work and accomplish so much in such a short amount of time, but I'm also looking forward to taking my time decorating and thinking about what projects we want to tackle next. I like being able to live in a space and see how it feels and how my family uses it and then letting that dictate how we decorate and organize. 

This house is starting to feel like home. Thanks for following along our journey. 

mel

{Before Pictures} {Living Room and Dining Room Reveal} {Bedrooms and Hallway}

Some Fall Plans For Greener Grass

When we finally moved into our house last month and decided to take a break from the remodeling biz, I was finally able to go back to work at Greener Grass. Not only did I have the time (and the wireless internet, holla!) to return to blogging, but I also set up shop to start sewing again. I'm so very excited to show you what I've been working on over the past weeks…It's something I've been dreaming of for the past few YEARS! It will be a thrill to have it all finally come to fruition in just a few short days. 

I've also been able to work on my fall calendar and I'm happy to say that we will be offering sewing classes in Fitzgerald AND Macon. Most of the classes will be in Fitzgerald since this is our new home. The Fitzgerald Ben Hill Arts Council has generously offered to play host to these classes, and it will be a treat for me to be able to teach them at the Carnegie Center. I will certainly miss hosting them in my home, but since we are in a smaller space now, I think this will work much better. I have a grand "one day" plan for classes at the farm (sewing weekend, anyone?) but that's in the slightly distant future for now. 

The first class we have scheduled for Fitzgerald is a Sewing 101 class. It's a 7 week course that covers all the basics of what you need to know in order to begin sewing on your on and we make 5 very cute projects! Yay! We'll publish the dates for that class on Monday, so dig out your machine and get ready to sign up…I can only take 4 people MAX!

Enjoy your weekend, friends. So far, our weekend has included a cross country meet, visiting a fall festival with friends, and trying out a new restaurant and being served pizza by some pirate looking fellows.

Tomorrow holds a family reunion here at the farm and, incidentally,  Ford has learned to sing "We are fam-i-ly. I got all my people with me…." Nothing like a little Sister Sledge to get a party started. 

Later Gators. 

mel

Bedrooms and Hallway Renovation Reveal

Friends, I have good news and bad news. 

Firstly, everyone at my house is sick. We all have sore throats and are tired and grouchy. Bleh. Bad news. 

I did, however, manage to get my act together enough to at least sort of put things away in the bedrooms so that I could take some pictures for you. Good news!

Sadly, because of the dreary weather and my slightly diminished (due to maladies and medication) capacities, those pictures turned out poorly. Bad news. 

However, I'm too lazy to do it again so I'm going to show them to you anyway! Good news! Huzzah!

Alrighty. Here's a quick glance at what the master bedroom looked like before. (For the full "Before" tour of the house CLICK HERE.)

And now here we are. I need you to push past the crazy lighting in the pictures. Can you do that for me? Thank you.  I've pointed it out for you to help you see that it is making the room look very very green, which it is not. 

The ceiling is bright glossy white and the walls are Sherwin Williams "Oyster Bay" that I had them mix at 50% to lighten it up just a bit. 

In the bedrooms we used two more of the same white ceiling fans (that is what is casting the strange glow in all of these pics) and the same flooring that is throughout the house. 

The biggest change in our bedroom is that behind the bookshelf that needs to be organized, there use to be a small closet. To make the hallway a bit larger and to get rid of yet ANOTHER door in this room (there were 5), I decided to have the guys rip out that small closet and close up the wall.  You can't see it here, but there is a fairly large walk-in closet that is right behind where I was standing to take this picture. It gives us plenty of room for all of our stuff and I'm really happy with how removing the closet  opened up the hallway. No regrets from what felt like a bit of a risky move. 

That's all the crazy light pictures I can bear to show you. 

Let's move on to the hallway. Here's a before pic. Small and dark.

And here's the same view now. Yay! When we ripped out the closet that stuck out into the hallway (the one that had a door in our bedroom) it made room for a little landing area. The hall was tiny and narrow-- probably only 2 feet wide, but now it feels much more open, serves a second purpose (which is VERY important in a small house), and this allows me to use my lockers, another piece of furniture that my dad and brother built that I love. 

The other thing I love in the hallway now is this little school house pennant. It adds a some charm to the small space. The paint color is the same as the living/dining room, Sherwin Williams Repose Gray. 

Ford's room is across the hallway from the master….not too far for his little feet to pitter pat to get to Mama and Daddy at night. Which they do. A lot.

Here's a quick reminder of what we were dealing with. 

And here it is now. Pay no attention to that blue painter's tape in the window. It's on my "to do" list.  Also please don't feel too bad for little Fordycakes that he doesn't have an actual bed frame. He's new to the world of big boy beds and so keeping his mattress on the floor makes it more accessible and safer for his tiny two year old body. 

The paint color in his room is called "Elephant Tail" from Benjamin Moore. Is that cute or what? It's the same color we used for his nursery at the old house.

Remember I told you about the awkward exterior doors in both bedrooms? Yeah, here's the one in Ford's room. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with them until we have the time and money to take them out. I'll keep you posted.

Construction zone sheets and Bla Bla friends have been the keys to big boy bed success.

Ford loves his room, which makes me so happy. He's spending more and more time playing in there each day. I like for everybody to feel good about their space, ya know.

We still have some projects to work on in these rooms. Here's the short list of what still needs to be done:

- Replace cracked window pane (or at least use clear tape instead of blue to fix it)

- Figure out a plan for the doors in the bedrooms (temporary and permanent solutions)

- Curtains

- Hang Artwork

- Better organize and arrange furniture (especially the bookshelf of chaos)

- Buy/build Ford a real bed

Ok, I'm going to go take some more medicine and go to sleep, but thanks for checking out the pictures and thank you so much for your kind words about all of our work so far. I haven't been able to get back to each person yet, but know that your encouragement has been felt and appreciated. 

And now, Nyquil. 

mel