New Post: Our Den Renovation - Dark and Dated to Light, Bright, and Airy

You know those Fixer Upper Reveals where they pull the canvas back and let you see the beautifully, finished home before the family moves in?  Yeah, that won't be our home project!  Seven months later, we have finally finished our second room!  It takes time to paint, buy furniture, and decorate, but I am so proud of our den and I'm excited to share before and afters photos!  

This is where we started back in November 2015. 

We were so fortunate to buy this home from a wonderful family that we knew.  They let me have a key months before we actually closed on this property and allowed me to bring contractors, designer friends, and family in to dream with me about the vision I had for this space.  The house had been well taken care of.  It just need to be updated.  From this angle, I'll share a few things that were on my mind.  

I decided to remove the built in shelf dividing the rooms.  We actually painted it and repurposed it as our TV stand!  The hardwood floors were original and in great shape so we added wood to the kitchen and had the floors refinished.  Next, lighting was on the list.  We removed the ceiling fan and my dad helped me add recessed lights. Then, we removed the door from the foyer and created a cased opening and replaced the door leading to the hallway with a glass paned door.  All of these changes allowed us to brighten this room dramatically.  Finally, we painted the brick fireplace and the wood paneling to give us the light and airy feel we were hoping for.  Here are a few more before photos.  

Let me just tell you, painting is hard work.  I had no idea what we were in for, but the finished product was worth it!  We primed our paneling twice and then added two coats of paint.  The paint for the paneling is Benjamin Moore Gray Owl.  I am a big fan of Sherwin Williams so they color matched it for me and it was much cheaper.  I used their Duration Paint which is not user friendly and requires more coating, but with small kids that color on the wall...this is an amazing product.  Duration paint in a matte finish is super kid friendly and will allow you to scrub and clean without ruining your paint job!  The fireplace also required a lot of prep.  We spray painted the doors, chipped away messy areas of mortar, primed two coats with a masonry primer, and then finally painted it white.  White is tough so I'll share the color that has been a winner for me.  Benjamin Moore Cloud White is what we used for the fireplace and our TV shelf.  Its a nice clean warm white.  

After weeks of painting and long nights of remodeling, we admired our lovely paint job and realized we actually love the texture of wood paneling!  I'm also very happy with how bright the room feels with the glass door and the recessed lights.  

I can not take all the credit for how the room is designed.  I have a hard time seeing shapes and how to correctly fill a space, but after all my design savvy friends as well as the nice lady at Sprintz advised me to put a sectional in this den and create a gallery wall of eclectic shapes and photos, I decided to give it a shot.  Turns out, they were all right and I love this room.  I was initially worried that the room was too small to have enough seating, but the sectional actually fit the space really well and balanced the room perfectly!  Here is another angle.  

A lot of friends usually ask me how I am brave enough to choose such a light color pallet and have any white furniture with small kids.  So here are all my secrets, because obviously I love white! 

* buy matte paint that is durable and washable

* fabric protectant.  I scotch guard small things.  We bought our couch from Sprintz and they spray their fabric with a professional grade protectant that has a warranty

* Buy slip cover pillow cases that you can wash or use outdoor weather resistant pillows.  

* we don't let the kids eat and drink on the couch.  Having an open floor plan makes it easier to keep them at the island.  

My window seat in the kitchen also has light colored pillows.  All of them have fabric protectant on it except one which is actually an outdoor pillow. 

My couch looks whiter in my pictures than it really is, but here is a close up of the fabric and color.  We were very pleased with Sprintz.  They will send a designer to your home for free to make decisions regarding size, color, and fabric.  

The journey has been worth it and even though we only have two rooms finished in our renovation, we love our new home.  I am learning to be patient and I often look back at our before photos to remember how far this house has already come.  For my friends that are starting their own renovations, my advice is to stay on budget and take your time.  Invite people into your home even though it isn't a "finished product".  Allow others to be a part of the journey with you and remember that your home is not suppose to be perfect.  My home is NEVER this clean and staged unless I am taking pretty pictures.  I have developed a love for interior design, staging, and editing photography.  It's a creative outlet and a fun hobby for me, but I promise we do not live in a perfectly staged house.  I guarantee you as I publish this post and my two adorable tornados wake up from their nap it will be destroyed in less than two minutes!  

One last before and after: 

A Tea Party to Remember {Abigail turns FOUR}

Four years ago, I brought home a little bundle of joy with the sweetest little baby cheeks.  Watching her grow into a beautiful little girl is something I will never take for granted.  When Mike and I walked out of the hospital to carry her home, I thought to myself...my life will never be the same now.  There is simply no way to prepare your heart for the amount of love you will have for your child. 

Each year on her birthday, I find myself reflecting on how much she has grown and how she developed over the calendar year.   This is what I love about Abigail at four years old.  

*She is kind and sensitive and smart.  
*She is growing out of her shyness and standing with a little more confidence and spunk! 
*She is fully potty trained and can dress herself independently 
*She can spell and write her name 
*She is SO tall!!
*She is a rule keeper.  She tries so hard to do what is asked of her with such a sweetness about her
*She can make her bed and clean up her room 
*She loves to bake cookies and muffins 
*Her favorite show is Doc McStuffins
*The sound of her little feet coming down the hall wakes me up every morning and I love it  

It seems like so much changed from year three to four.  I recently toured the Pre-K class she will attend next year, and I cried all the way home.  I cherish the days I get to be at home with my girls and this year hit me a little hard.  I will admit that I am a big baby, but thinking about her starting Kindergarten next fall has caused more than a few tears. She has my heart and she always will.  

This year, Abigail decided she wanted to have a tea party at our new house for her birthday.  Birthday parties are really my excuse to decorate, have friends and family fill my house, and completely spoil my little ones.  I also love all things girly, so her Doo Da and I decided to make a little photo booth with props and have sweet little hats and pearls for her guests.  I decorated the house with tea cups and flowers and Dee Dee made delicious cookies shaped like tea pots. 

I also found little paper tea cups that you can decorate with stickers.  And of course, we offered "enchanted tea" also known as apple juice.  How sweet is this ya'll?

After cancelling and rescheduling her party twice due to snow, she was SO happy to see her friends!  Tea Time was definitely a success!  And of course, the grown ups had the most fun with the photo booth! Mike's parents were out of the country for her party and I'm a little sad I didn't get them captured with their tea party attire! 

Happy Birthday Abigail!

{FOUR}

White Kitchen Love { Renovation post 2}

I am so excited to finally blog about my new white kitchen!  It's not perfect.  It's an old house so don't look too closely at the walls and such when you come over, but I will tell you I think it's beautiful!  We had a certain amount of money for renovation following the sell of our first home and I told my sweet husband that if I could have a pretty white kitchen, I could wait for everything else.  Life happens in the kitchen.  One of the things I wanted in our new home was an open floor plan where we could all be together.  Most of my days now are spent right around my new island.  My girls do crafts there, we bake and make cookies there, and I have a beautiful work space for dinner prep.  I have NEVER renovated a kitchen before and I'm not sure what I expected, but I will tell you that it was a lot of hard work.  Here is where we began. 

 It's probably hard to appreciate from this angle, but I could see that the potential for space was there.  The floor plan was just very chopped up and closed in.  The lighting was also very dim and the two rooms were just dark, dark, dark.  I initially thought I would try to keep the same cabinets and reface them, but as I met with several contractors, it seemed that my intent to save money was a waste of time and money.  As we looked at our budget and decided to gut the kitchen, I started to get really excited about what I thought I could do with this space.  The wall to the left in this shot shows a built in cupboard and you can see that the fridge takes up so much space into the room.  I decided to peel that wall back a foot and gut the cupboard making a nook for the fridge.  There was actually plumbing already there!  Once I could visualize that space opening up and ripping out the built in divider, the kitchen started to make more sense.  

The flooring was an old laminate that was peeling up and I did a lot of research on tile options versus hardwood.  In the end, we decided to add wood to the kitchen in hopes of making the two rooms feel open and connected.  I am SO glad we did!  

When I say this kitchen project was hard work, I really mean it.  Everything, including the windows and the trim, were dark stain.  We removed wallpaper, chipped off the backsplash, and took down the old light fixtures.  We primed and painted all of the windows, doors, and trim work ourselves.  I can not thank my family and friends enough for all of their hard work too.  There was a moment on our first night of reno, that I thought to myself: "Oh boy, here we go".  That was about 9:00 at night when we discovered there were four more layers of floor under the linoleum.  How cute is my dad delivering the news to me?  

I have amazing friends y'all.  I'm not even sure I would stay until midnight tearing out flooring, but our incredible friends David and Nicole stuck it out with us.  Also, my man looks good there with crowbar and mallet!

With a completely blank slate, hardwood floors went down, walls opened up, and we got to work.  Slowly, the vision I had started to piece together. 

For the next two months, we lived with Mike's parents and every night we put the girls to bed and worked until midnight or later.  Every night...for two months.  We saved a lot of money but it was emotionally and physically exhausting.  Here is my sweet mother in law helping get rid of this 1960s wallpaper!

If you know my dad, then you are aware that he would do absolutely anything for me.  Little did I know, he pretty much knows how to do EVERYTHING.  I mean, who knew?!  My dad spent many long nights brainstorming with me, taking me on multiple nightly trips to home depot, and keeping me sane when I wanted to break down.  He moved plumbing for us.  He put in all my recessed lights and pendant fixtures.  He rewired a lot of our house.  And he also installed my stove and vent hood...and dishwasher.  That might be all, but I'm sure he did more.  He is a rockstar and we could not have done this without him.  

Abigail tells people that Granddaddy built our house and in my mind, he did too.  I love my dad so much and working on my new home together was pretty special.  

After the drywall work and lights were done, my sink and counters were installed.  I am a bargain shopper and I found my sink at the Big Box store in Columbia.  I wanted a farmhouse sink look so I went with a white composite undermount sink.  It is made of granite but is a composite material with resin so it is stain resistant.  You just clean it with soap and water.  If you need a deeper scrub, you can use baking soda and peroxide.  I'm all about natural cleaners so this made me very happy!  I also picked up my beautiful faucet at Head Springs Depot in Franklin which is another liquidation store.  

My counter tops are Classic Cararra Quartz.  I shopped around several fabricators and warehouses across Nashville and Franklin.  In the end, I found a fabricator in Columbia, TN where I'm from to install them for me.  I got the same slab for 700$ cheaper just driving to Columbia.  Shop around! I chose quartz because I really wanted a white kitchen, but realistically I have two sweet little girls who love to draw on my island and spill things regularly.  Quartz is man made so if you desire natural stone, this isn't for you.  I wanted the look of marble, but something more durable and kid friendly.  You just wipe them down with soap and water.  They are stain resistant and harder than granite.  You also don't need to seal them because they aren't porous.  And in case you were wondering, Violet has drawn on them a few times already and it comes right off.  Win! 

 My cabinets are beautiful, but they have been such a headache.  I purchased them through the Big Box Liquidation in Columbia, TN.  The owners are wonderful and I appreciate their help with my project, but I will warn you that you should expect problems if you design your own kitchen and let them install for you.  In hindsight, I should have gone to another warehouse that had better reviews and a solid team to install.  After mistakes and claims...new cabinets...crown moulding corrections...different contractors...missing kickplates...I'm still waiting to finish this job.  2016?  Here is where we are with the fridge nook.  I love how we utilized this space and allowed a better walk way through the kitchen!

It's been a long journey so I try to keep a good perspective when things go wrong.  When I get frustrated, I go back and look at where we started.  I am learning that renovation is just hard.  My backsplash is A-mazing though.  My co-worker Brad installed this for me and I can't look at it without smiling.  I just can't! In fact, when so many things were going wrong with my cabinet installation, there were nights I just sat and stared at my subway tile because it could literally change my mood.  Thank you Brad!

We hosted our families in our new home for Christmas brunch and I love how open our home feels now.  It was wonderful having a bigger space to work in and lots of natural light flooding through the house.  One of my concerns when we first walked through the house was how dark it felt.  Here is an older shot taken just after our floors were stained.  You can see what a difference lighting and open walls can make! 

By installing recessed lights in the kitchen and den and opening this wall between the kitchen and dining room, we totally changed the space.  Lightening the paint helped as well.  It took two coats of primer and two coats of paint on that lovely panelling, but I actually really like the texture on the walls.  It turned out fabulous! 

My sweet Abigail is waiting patiently to make cookies with me for her daddy.  I am so thankful for my pretty white kitchen and the memories we are making in it! 

Happy New Year!!

Dining Room Reveal {Renovation post 1}

In full transparency, my house is NOT always staged and I have learned a few tricks over the years when it comes to "strategically" framing things out of a picture... That being said, I am happy to finally share some of the progress from our home renovation.  I love to document and take pictures so here we go!  

When we first looked at our new house, there were charming details that I simply fell in love with.  It was certainly unchanged from 1967 with dark paneling and closed off rooms, but the dental crown molding and vintage light fixtures helped me see past that.  I'm so thankful that I had a vision for what this little house could be, because I absolutely love it!  I really wanted to restore this little ranch house and not strip it of all it's charm and character, but I also wanted to update the spaces and brighten it up a bit.  The dining room is completely transformed now and ready for Christmas brunch!

Here is where we began.  The kitchen was closed off to the dining room and the chandelier was not centered with the window.  My first project was to create a cased opening from the kitchen looking into the dining room which would allow more natural light to flood through the house and would create a more open concept space.

Y'all, this was a game changer.  The house immediately felt more open and as I redesigned my kitchen, I loved how connected these spaces felt.  The light fixtures in this house totally speak my love language.  Brass is on it's way back in and I'm riding that wave! 

Next, I was on to the wallpaper.  This wallpaper is fabric.  I thought about taking it down or shiplapping over it, but in the end I decided to paint it.  Turns out, it may be my favorite wall in the house.  The design is beautiful and I feel like I was able to bring that out with a little bit of paint!  

The entry way has the same accent wall and another vintage light fixture. Swoon.  Can you believe I almost covered this up?  

We worked so hard right up until our move in date, so we have been taking a break from all things reno but I am itching to finish our projects!  We finally hung curtains yesterday and I have restored my great grandmother's dining room table from 1964.  It fits the house so perfectly!  I have never restored a veneer piece and it was NOT easy.  Hence the tablescape...  I mean, if you put enough pretty things on a table, you will certainly not see all the flaws right?!  

We are going to have family over for Christmas brunch and I can't wait to enjoy our first meal at this table.  Four months ago, I stood in a very dark kitchen and imagined an open wall where I could entertain friends and host parties. Now, as I stand at my kitchen near our new island, I am in love with the view!

(A shot from our sitting room)

Merry Christmas!