Driver, Move That Bus!

Well, I know that I have been the worse blogger this year. I hope to make up for that now that life is a little less crazy. This year has been full of life consisting of necessary busyness. So I hope to post 3 times to catch you up with what our life consisted of for so long. This is the first one. It is a reveal of our remodel of Poppy's house for Ben and Grace. It was a hard job, a trying job, but still a labor of love for them. I had the pleasure of painting all the walls, doors and trim in the house during the day. I love painting. A new coat of paint makes everything so fresh and clean. All the doors of the house were the dark paneled doors and painting them white really made a big difference in the updating of the house. I am going to show you a few of the before and after photos of what we did. Next post, I will do the wedding highlights and then do a post on the get-away that Michael and I had after the wedding. Then hopefully, I can get back to some of my newest knitting and patterns!

This is the kitchen, before the remodel.  We tore out all of these for the new cabinets that Ben and Michael would build together. Notice how low the cabinet over the bar is. Michael made the new cabinets higher, so that the view to the living room would be more open. He, also, worked it so that the counter top would go out further and made a bar for bar stools and extra seating.
I just love my clever man!

We took out the ugly back splash, ugly cabinets, ugly border!

Although this pantry was great storage, it took up a bunch of floor space and you had to move the table to get into it, so it came out, too. 

This is the "before" view from the living room. See how the upper cabinets block the whole kitchen off?

The kitchen gutted! New drywall ready!

Notice the back door, can you say ugly?

Here is what Michael did to it! I just love my clever man!

This is the new height of the upper cabinets. Ben did a great job on choosing the type of cabinet for their kitchen. I am sure that Grace helped him with that. This is the dry fit for the cabinets, next comes painting.

Michael put bead board on the upper and lower face of the cabinets that face the living room. I adore bead board!

Michael and Ben laying the new floor. Henry P. was so helpful in giving insight on how to start it and loaned us all his tools to do the job right. What a blessing that was! Thank you Henry.

Here is the kitchen finished. We still have the back splash to do, but we are all resting up for a while before tackling that. Grace did a really lovely job of choosing the counter top. 

This is the view from the back kitchen wall. I love the new height to the upper cabinet. It makes it so open. 

Here is a view from the island. The floor is lovely and the space for the table is so much better with that pantry gone. 

Here is a view from the living room. Notice the crown molding! I adore crown molding and was thrilled when the demolition of the kitchen required it to cover up some issues. Michael was not so thrilled. I talked him into doing the whole room, including the living room. 

A close up of the crown molding and the bead board on the upper cabinets. Grace and I painted the ceiling in the living room and kitchen! Thankfully, it was the only ceiling that we had to paint!

The raising of the upper cabinets required some creative solutions for this corner. Michael did a little shelf for displaying.
I just love my clever man!

Here is a "before" of the bathroom. We took down the shower doors. They were kind of dated looking. 

The bathroom is a really small one and Poppy built this vanity just for this corner. It was a perfect solution for making it more functional, but the tile color and wood color just wasn't the taste that Grace or I liked. Thankfully, my clever man knew how to fix both of those issues!

Grace and I sanded the vanity finish down and put a lovely bombay mahogany finish on it. It would not fit through the door. Apparently, Poppy assembled it in the bathroom. We had to put it up on the bathtub to fix the floor.

Michael had to reinforce the floor in the center. Notice the tree stump under the joists. I found that kind of cool for it to be there. 

My clever man tiling his first floor. 

The tile that Grace picked out. It really made a lovely floor!

The new tile job on the counter and new sink. 

Now we are ready for the new color on the tile of the shower. 

From Tea Green to white. We had Surface Renew come out and spray an epoxy finish of the white over the old color. It was a good choice and saved us a gut job on that tile. 

I just love the results! I kept going into the bathroom just to look again. I love the kitchen remodel, but to me the bathroom was just beautiful. It was a dramatic change. 

The new medicine cabinet and light bar. 

My clever man did a great job on the tile work on the vanity. 

Just a lovely job on this room!

Now you know why I have not had the mental energy to blog very much this year. I am so thankful that God bless us with our Michael. What a blessing to have a man that is so talented and capable of all these tasks. 

Thank you for letting me share our remodel with  you. Next, the wedding!