We’re Back!

After a whirlwind trip to Baton Rouge to drop mom back off at home, we are back up in the mountains and back to work! There are a lot of exciting changes happening and I can’t wait to show you!

While we were driving back from BR, our handyman Kevin was busy drywalling the fireplace and closing up the superfluous side door. Our fireplace is now starting to look like a fireplace and I’m so happy to be rid of the side door! Take a look at it both from the inside and out!

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Once we were back up here, Kevin and Daniel (his assistant) got to work on another big project replacing the kitchen window. Today, the kitchen is not centered in the room because there are two closets to the right of it. Since we are (eventually) demoing those closets and replacing them with pantry cabinets, we were faced with the dilemma of an off-center kitchen window. Because we had to move it anyhow, we chose to go a LOT bigger with it. We now have a 48″ square window in the kitchen and we love it! It wasn’t such an easy task to do, but Kevin was up for it. As a reminder, here’s the “before” of the kitchen window.

It’s crazy to think how much it has changed since we closed just a short 3 months ago. None of that pantry or wall is there anymore! That’s where our kitchen table is now! Back to the window. It wasn’t tiny before, but when you see the new one you’ll see what a huge difference it makes! In addition to removing the old window, we did have to go on and remove the upper cabinet to the right of the window since that’s where a lot of the new window went.

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Before I get to the big reveal, I thought I’d show you what we found in the wall when we opened it up. GROSS! Thankfully this is a very old hornets nest which is not active. If it had been, we might all be goners!

Now, back to the big reveal. I present to you our new kitchen window! Eventually it will be surrounded by a new kitchen once Ikea gets cabinets back in stock!

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Let’s jump back to the fireplace for a minute. We are getting ready to start tiling and then build the mantle. This will be our first time to tile, so we picked an easy tile (1″x2″ tumbled travertine on mesh). We have it laid out but will wait until we have more energy tomorrow or Tuesday to actually put it up. We’re excited but a little nervous too!

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Next up for progress is that I am finished painting interior doors. Let me repeat that. I. Am. Finished. Painting. Interior. Doors.!!!! Woo hoo! We had waited until mom was gone to pull the hall door to the guest bath down for me to paint, so I wrapped that up yesterday. Don’t worry … I’ve got plenty more painting in my future. Just not interior doors!

We are in the midst of the guest bathroom makeover now. Just as a reminder, here is a “before” picture. We will not miss the rose colored formica or the coordinating wallpaper!

So far, we have taken down the mirror (more on that in a future blog), Keith has added two more outlets (there were only two to start with!?!?) and we raised the junction box for the new light fixture. It’s not so exciting so I won’t bore you with pictures of it, but I have been busy with drywall mud covering up all of the holes from the old towel bars and the giant hole from where we moved up the junction box for the light. While we wait on that to dry and get perfect, we stayed busy working on the vanity.

As I mentioned in my last blog, we decided to just use the current vanity and make new doors for it. Keith has pulled off all of that rose-colored formica and we will reuse the plywood under it for the base for our new counter. We will be making a counter out of walnut plywood and we are so excited to see it come to fruition. Look for photos and more of an explanation in next week’s blog.

Now back to what we have gotten accomplished. Initially we were intending to make new drawer fronts too but decided to reuse the existing ones. I sanded down all of the face frames and prepped the vanity for painting.

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Once it was prepped and I cleaned up the sanding mess, it was time to get to painting! Because the face frame isn’t that big, it didn’t take too long. I managed to get three coats on this afternoon.

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Additionally, we kept ourselves busy with making the new doors for our old vanity. Stay tuned for a demo video that we made, but in the meantime I’ll give you a sneak peek at one of the new door fronts! Needless to say, it still needs to be sanded and painted, but we are super pleased with how they turned out. Good thing since we plan to build all of our own doors and drawer fronts for out Ikea kitchen!

Last but not least, we finally wrapped up our railing project outside. I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out! We are waiting on a final quote for painting the exterior of the house, but we are ready to get it painted now. Once it is painted, it is going to look amazing! But I’ll leave you with a final look at the new (old) railings! Until next week….