At last, our frozen (gluten/dairy free) pizza days are over =)

When we first began our kitchen renovation on May 10, I never dreamed that it would take as long as it has, or that it would be so mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting. Can you tell that I'm a first timer? :)

Two weeks (and one emotional breakdown -- by me) later, we are now two-thirds done and I'm ready to share some pictures. I still have some touch-ups and wall painting to complete, but I have finally begun unpacking and finding homes for my kitchen items. The kitchen truly is the heart of the home, and it sure feels good to finally to be able to utilize this important space.

Without further ado, here are a few photos documenting our kitchen renovation journey.

Before

Step One: 

Back splash Removal

(Labor time: approx. 8 hours -- i.e. my hubby deserves an award)

 Step Two:

Removing cabinet doors 

(Labor time: three hours -- I did this part, thus why it took so long.)

Step three:

Removing funky shelve molding

(Labor time: one hour -- For this, I got to use a handy-dandy fang tool)

See how the surface along the shelves has indents? 

 

Step four:

Removing ugly drawer and shelf liner paper

(Labor time: FOREVER. Several days and hours of ripping, chipping, pulling, tugging, and sanding is what it took to finally remove everything)

Every one of the drawers and cabinet shelves had a layer of glue, covered by cork, covered by glue, covered by some really *beautiful* liner paper that needed to be removed. This by far was the worst part of the whole renovation. Not only did it take forever, but my hands (and back) got pretty beat up in the process.

Pretty, pretty.

Yes, this is me complete with a face mask, heavy-duty work gloves, knee pads, and safety glasses, sanding the sam hill out of the drawers. Two of the drawers were so laden with glue that it took about two and a half hours to get them sanded down. On the bright side, I got an amazing upper-body workout in that night. ;-)

Step five: 

Sanding and painting the cabinet and drawer doors

(Labor time: four days)

Before, in all of their bathwater-colored glory.

Awful, awful, spray-painted over hardware.

This power drill and I have become very close throughout this process.  Together we have removed, installed, removed again (wrong size hardware!) and installed 70 pieces of hardware.

 Paint.

After laying the doors out in the kitchen and finding we had barely enough room to walk, let alone apply paint, we decided to move our happy little workshop to the garage.

Step Six:

Installing the new backsplash

(Labor time: Several days)

Chris is truly my hero. Considering that he'd never done anything like this before, he did an absolutely brilliant job of installing our new back splash.

Chris figured out the perfect system to cut our glass tiles.

Step Seven:

Painting, painting, and more painting: trim, walls, and interior shelves. Plus, Chris installed the first of two new kitchen light fixtures, and pulled out ugly wall switches and wall plate covers and replaced with bright, shiny new ones.

(Labor time: About five days)

After Photos

(Note: there is STILL so much more I plan to do in the kitchen. As of these photos, I have just put up a few decorative items, and have roughly put out dishes, etc. But, we are so very happy how things have turned out! It's just as we envisioned for a bright, happy, cheerful kitchen space to enjoy cooking and entertaining our friends and family.)

But, just in case you forgot...

BEFORE

AFTER

 I love our pretty, new back splash. Chris did such an amazing job, and I am so thankful for all of his hard work! :)

 I will be painting the rest of the kitchen (breakfast table area) this weekend, and will post photos once it is completed.

I should also have updates on our laundry room in a few days, so stay tuned! :)

P.S. I have new appreciation for you friends who have done major remodeling in your homes. You really don't realize how much work it takes until you begin to tackle a project yourself. Chris and I have certainly learned a whole new level of patience throughout this process. :)

Deck it out

This week's focus has been on the kitchen and laundry room in our house, but I wanted to give you a quick update on our deck. As I explained in a previous post, during the inspection process on our house, we discovered major, major issues with the deck structure -- as in, it was a miracle it was still been standing based on how poorly it was constructed -- and had to call on a contractor to quickly get things up-to-code.

While we were at it, we decided to go ahead and have our contractor do a bit of a redesign on the deck since it was the perfect opportunity. Because we already have a covered screen porch, we decided to open up the deck by removing the pergola covering to allow for more light. We also chose to go from two sets of stairs to one, central staircase leading straight down to the pool, and amp up the heftiness of the railings. The rotting trellis around the sides of the deck were also removed.

Before construction:

 

Photos taken after railing and pergola demo:

Photos taken after new railings and stairs were installed, and trellis was removed. Our contractor also built us custom gates for the deck at the top of the stairs. 

The gates are designed that one or both can be open or closed at a time.

The next step for the deck is to replace all of rotting floor boards. Thanks to a wonderful 20% off discount at Home Depot this past weekend, we were able to purchase all of our needed lumber for this project at an incredible price. This is a project Chris has decided to take upon himself, and is looking forward to tackling next weekend.

I look forward to sharing some updates on our kitchen and laundry room progress later this week as well.   As always, stay tuned, and have a beautiful and blessed day! :)