Happy New Year from the Heffrons!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are starting the new year off happy and healthy! Keith and I took a break from projects for the holidays and went to Louisiana to see my family. We came back up here when we got back to Georgia and have been busy ever since! I thought I’d update you on all of our projects. This weekend in particular has already been quite busy, so buckle up for a LOT of pictures of what we’ve been up to. 

You may have noticed from my last post that we are a little short on furniture in this house! I’m trying to be thoughtful about what I buy, but last week we actually made a piece of furniture! Our good friend and realtor, Sheila, had a 40″ piece of tempered glass she didn’t need, so we built a frame for it and made it into a coffee table! For about $25 of solid cherry, we cut a few boards with some 20 degree angles, had an interesting time putting said angles together to make a box, and put two of those boxes together. Then it was time for sanding, staining and finishing! Here it is in progression.

Here is the finished product! We reoriented our sofas and I like the layout a lot better. The coffee table looks great! Sorry for the glare on one of the pictures – I am clearly not a professional photographer nor a professional blogger!

Next up was the kitchen. I had to go back to Atlanta for a couple of days. While I was in Atlanta, I had lunch with our good friend Anna who is the reason I started volunteering at Shepherd Center where I now work. You won’t remember this, but Anna gave us a light fixture for our Scaly Mountain house that she didn’t need. It worked great there. Well, Anna had another light fixture she had bought for their new house and didn’t need. And she generously gave it to me for here. When I walked in with it, Keith was a little taken aback thinking it was huge. But it looks amazing in here! So before we got working on the kitchen today, we hung the new light fixture and hung curtains in our dining area. I LOVE the new light fixture and the curtains! It really warms the room up and I couldn’t be more thrilled! Thank you again, Anna!

Back to the kitchen. The existing island sucked. There’s just no other word to convey how crappy it was. It was a stupid layout, had a weird overhang on one side, drawers that were flimsy and stuck and made horrible noises when you pulled them out, etc. So we spent a lot of time designing what all purposes we wanted the island to have and Keith started building it. We’ve also got plans for the rest of the kitchen but we wanted to get the island done first.

Our goals for the new island: 1) pull out trash can, 2) a deep drawer with dowel dividers where I can store my dishes, 3) lots of drawers for storing cooking utensils, tupperware, etc.

Because we are building this custom, we were able to really make it be whatever we wanted to be. As I mentioned above, there was a weird overhang on one side of the island – not really big enough for a counter stool. So we decided to use that extra overhang to make our island bigger. Because bigger really is better! While I was in Atlanta, Keith built the boxes and bases for the island.

One thing we were stewing over was how to get the granite off of the existing island and be able to reuse it for the new island. It was a conundrum! After discussing it with some friends who came up on NYE, we came up with the idea of jacking it up somehow. We ultimately decided to build some frames out of 2×4’s to support the granite while we demoed what was below it. I’m not going to lie – it was a little scary as we were doing it, but…spoiler alert…it worked! 

Here are a few pictures of the “before” of the island. I even took a pic inside one of the drawers so you can see how awful it was.

So let’s start with how we prepped to get the granite off. First, we took out all of the drawers and drawer slides . Then we used Keith’s oscillating saw (which we fondly refer to as the badass saw) and we cut through the silicone that was holding the granite in place. Once we got through most of that we were able to pull the outside panels off the old island. 

Once we had the granite separated from the cabinet, it was time to put in some 2×4 frames that Keith built to hold the granite. This is where it got a little nerve wracking. Keith lifted the granite (and thankfully didn’t give himself a hernia) while I slid the 2×4 supports underneath 3 of the 4 sides of the island. Once it was stable, we literally demoed the boxes underneath. Scary stuff here, folks! 

And here is the scariest picture of them all. The granite being held up with nothing underneath it!

While I steadied the granite, Keith slid the bases in, leveled them and secured the to the floor. Then he slide the boxes on top of the bases and secured them to the bases, while I stood holding the granite in place! Good times… Because I was holding the granite in place, I didn’t get pictures of the “during”. But here it is with the boxes in place!

Next up was the face frame for the front of the cabinet. We built that this afternoon and set it in place. 

Voila! We have an island. We set the granite where it needed to be and used silicone caulk to hold it in place. Tomorrow we will work on the drawer slides and drawers and it should be functional again either tomorrow or later next week when we come back up! I’ll show more on the inspiration for the kitchen drawers and the rest of the kitchen changes later. But already we are both so thrilled with how it’s looking!

One little project I did yesterday while Keith was working was to put up a new blind in the powder room. Realistically a Roman Shade is probably not the most practical for a powder room, but our house is so low down the hill and private that I didn’t really worry about practicality as much as I did the aesthetic of it! Plus it’s super easy to pull down and raise back up.

Before, I go, I wanted to share a picture of the morning sunrise view we get most mornings. It really is beautiful! Enjoy!