It’s been a minute…

Hi everyone! I’ve been really bad about blogging but wanted to catch everyone up on the progress we’ve made on our Big Canoe home. Last time I wrote (four months ago, mind you), we were just finished demoing our laundry/pantry hall. Well, we finally mostly wrapped it up this past weekend so I thought I’d share that along with some other projects I’ve been working on by myself.

We last left you with the room looking like this. A hot mess for sure!

We started with replacing the floor. It was slate which I could never truly get clean. Now it is LVT in a nice bright color and very easy to clean. We used Keith’s friend Craig (Next Door Flooring in Alpharetta if you’re an Atlanta person looking for any kind of flooring needs) to replace the floor. SO MUCH BETTER!

Once that was done, we very slowly began the process of building and installing the cabinets. It took a LOT of plywood, a lot of time, and a few mistakes, but we finally got the boxes built. Our plan was to have two broom closets right as you walk in the side door, then stack the washer and dryer in another cabinet, and finally to have a small walk-in pantry on the other side of the washer/dryer cabinet. These cabinets were big! And standing them all up in a fairly small room was some work, but we made it happen! Big shout out to Keith for all of his work building the cabinets. As we always say, I’m design, he’s production, and I’m his production assistant!

Once they were installed, we started working on the insides of them. There was some engineering involved in how we would support the pantry since there weren’t really “walls” to put the side shelves on. But we figured it all out and this is what we ended up with.

Then began the process of building the doors. These are some large doors and there are a lot of them, because all of these cabinets have uppers as well. They took a while to make, but they turned out great. Here are some pics of them unpainted and in progress.

While Keith was building doors, I spent time creating board and battens for the drywall. My inspiration pic shows you the look I was going for, and the actuals show the end result. We are both really pleased with how the wall treatment turned out! We used the same paint color as our kitchen island to provide some continuity with the two rooms.

Once Keith wrapped up making the doors, I spent a couple of weekends priming them and painting them. This past weekend we hung them, put the handles on them and we are both so very pleased with how the room turned out! Notice that I did also add some hooks to my board and batten. They’ll be great for coats once it cools off, but also a great place to put Chloe’s leash, car keys, etc. I also replaced the faux wood blinds with some roman shades.

One note, you may see that we’ve still got to put crown molding up. We’ve discovered something Keith isn’t good at (besides drywall work other than hanging it). That’s crown molding. So we’ll be paying Carlos to come fix that when he comes back to do some other projects we have for him!

I’m not one to sit around doing nothing on my days off, so I also worked on some projects (mostly) solo during the weeks. When we first moved into the house, we had Carlos paint all of the walls a neutral white color. But we knew we’d go back and add some color and life to some of the rooms. The first room I worked on was the downstairs bedroom. This is the “before”. Very vanilla.

Then this is the “after”. I did a slat feature wall behind the bed, took down the faux wood blinds, hung bamboo blinds and some blackout curtains. I love the results and I hope you do too!

We have another downstairs bedroom with two twin beds in it. It’s still a little bland (I’m still in search of some art for the walls). I’ve sewn some new pillows for the beds and swapped out the faux wood blinds for white roman shades.

When we are up there next, we’ll start working on the upstairs bedroom. We’ve got a fun wall treatment planned for up there. Then we’ll start tackling the downstairs fireplace. But you’ll have to wait until next time to see those results. Hopefully it won’t take me four months to get you an update! Until then….