New Counters Are In

The moment we stepped foot in this house the first thing I thought was how amazing the kitchen was, but also how dark it was. I imagined some marble counters and white cabinets and open shelves and now, almost two years later, the only thing that changed was the lighting. But today its all starting to come together. I talked about our new Formica 180fx counters in a post a couple weeks ago and they were finally installed yesterday! Im not going to waste time talking about it, you have to see these beauties for yourself.

Before

After

You may have also noticed that the cabinet arrangement on the back wall changed (and one cabinet is different color than the others). We decided that, for backsplash purposes, it would look weird run it up around the cabinets on one wall but only under the cabinets on another wall. We also feel that these small cabinets dont get a lot of use from us because of their size so, we purchased a 3ft cabinet that will fit perfectly and allow for all the cabinets to be on one wall and give us more functional space. Confused? Heres the before of that area...

And after we removed the three cabinets...

And after the new 3ft cabinet was installed...

So much better right? And once we paint the cabinets you wont even be able to tell the color was ever different and,when we get around to doing the backsplash it'll run countertop to  ceiling on the window wall and countertop to bottom of cabinet on the stove wall which we think will look much better.

I am so motivated to get those cabinets painted now. I originally though white uppers and grey lowers but I think now we're going with the green lowers, white uppers and a white island. Stay tuned!!

--Jackie

Zacks Office Reveal

We finished up Zacks office fairly quickly. If you remember, we need to add a peg board, a desk and shelf combo, paint the wall and add new curtains. Not too much work at all and Zack did 80% of it. This is how the room looked as we started.

Then, Zack build a wood frame with 1x3 and attached it to the studs.

We had the begboard cut to 3'x6' pieces at Home Depot and we screwed those into the frame.

Next, I painted the accent wall (and the pegboard) my new FAVORITE color, Behr Gladiator Gray. When I proposed a green accent wall I thought Zack would fight me on it but he loved the idea and hes the one that ended up finding this amazing color that I am now putting all over my house, so kudos to him.

Next, Zack build the desk top using a 20in wide by 7 foot long piece of edge glued pine. He used 1x3 inch strips of pine to add an edge all the way around it. The shelf is an 8in x 7 ft piece of pine with 1x2 inch pine trim around it. He screwed them into the studs and stained the whole thing Minwax English Chestnut.

We wanted to use pipe legs for the desk and shelf but couldnt find a place (HD and Lowes wouldnt do it) that would cut and thread them for us so we actually made our own out of dowl rods,floor flanges. I spray painted them Rustoleum Metallic Oil Rubbed Bronze and Zack attached them to the desk and shelf with screws.

All we had left was to decorate which Zack gave me full rein of.
Check out the after:

Zack is so happy he finally has a space to sit down and enjoy his hobbies and I'm happy everything has a place and is organized. I dont think it could have turned out any better!

---Jackie

Changesssss

Things around here have been crazy. I feel like we haven't had a moment to breathe. We are trying to get back into the groove of working after our much needed vacay last month and trying to plan and work on projects at the same time. Speaking of projects, lets dive right into it. Right now, we are working on the kitchen, Zacks office and the Living room. Going room by room, lets talk about everything that's going to happen.

Starting with the kitchen, we finally pulled the trigger and we are getting new countertops. We always said we would splurge for granite when the time came but after checking the homes selling in our area we realized no one, and i do mean not a single home has grainte. It seemed to us that granite just isnt suited for our area and we probably wouldnt get our money back. I knew I couldnt live with our current countertops forever so the onnly options we saw were to paint them, which would take forever and not be as clean lined as i wanted, or purchase a different color formica. We chose the latter. Zack was NOT on board. He didnt see the point in changing laminate for laminate but after I showed him these inspiration photos he was on board too.

source

source

We ended up going with the Formica 180fx In Calacatta Marble (with a bullnose edge), the exact same as shown in the inspiration photos. They'll be here in two weeks and I'm so excited. Once the counters are in the painting will finally commence! We're thinking of doing white uppers and grey or green lowers with a white shiplap back splash and black hardware. I hope it turns out the way I'm hoping it will. Here's the mock up to give you a visual.

Moving on to Zack's office. I may have mentioned before that our third bedroom upstairs has been empty since we moved it. Its become sort of a catch all for junk and really served no other purpose, so when I saw Zack sitting at the island cleaning his guns one night it hit me that he really needed a place (other than on my new counters) to clean his guns, work on his radios and model cars etc. I pitched the idea to him and he loved it and started coming up with all these great ideas that I cant wait to work on.

Here's the mood board we created.

And here's what the room looked like when we started...

We are painting the window wall olive green, adding some thicker curtains, a pegboard for his gun collection and a long industrial DIY desk and shelf to hold all his collected items and give him a space to work. We've already crossed most of the to-do's off the list so we should be wrapping this one up in the next couple weeks too.

Finally, we have the living room. If you've been following me for awhile you know that I don't have the best of luck with sofas. These beige ones served me well for about a year before they completely broke down and got worn and pilly. With three dogs I'm not sure many sofas could hold up longer than that except maybe leather, which is the first big change. We found an amazing faux leather sectional at Furniture Row that's being delivered in just a few days. Its going to allow us more room to stretch out and will hold up so much better to wear. We purchased a five year warranty just in case it doesn't! I also want to do something to the fireplace wall but I'm having difficulty pulling the trigger on that. I was thinking, either to leave the fireplace as is and add a wood wall like this...

or maybe plank it white like this....

OR paint the fireplace white and paint the walls dark grey or green like this...

I cant seem to decide but I am leaning more towards option 3. It seems to have the most dramatic impact and still keeps the feel of the room the way I want it. We will also be moving the current coffee table and end table upstairs and building a new, larger, more open one for this space. I've already replaced the leather chair (that went upstairs in the loft) with a cute little beige one so the room looks like this for now.

With all these things going on right now I haven't had a chance to decorate for fall yet, but as soon as these projects come to an end you better believe the pumpkins are coming out! Until next time!

---Jackie