The Big Reveal

Well here it is... finally! The walls are still what you might call a blank slate. It's been such a busy couple months that I still haven't figured out exactly how I envision the finished product. For now I'm happy to have a functional and beautiful new kitchen space.

I tried to take the before and after pictures from close to the same angle, working all the way around the kitchen. The first picture is coming from approximately the old entrance to the kitchen from the living room. What used to be an unused eating space is now home to the refrigerator, microwave and deep pantry drawers, as well as the only remaining upper cabinets.

The old peninsula was removed and the dishwasher relocated to a much more convenient space alongside the new apron-front farmhouse sink. The outdated tile and its grody grout was replaced by quartz counters and simple subway tile backsplash. 

The old wall between the kitchen and dining room was cut down to open up the space considerably. I love being able to see all the way into the backyard from the kitchen, and taking out the upper portion of the wall lets in even more light. The pony wall is topped by a narrow counter for serving plates and dishes to the dining room. We traded in the old electric oven for a fabulous dual-fuel oven with gas burners.

The biggest and best change was the removal of the wall between the living room and kitchen. The entire layout of the house has changed and it is so open and airy. Entertaining is so much more fun when everyone can gather around the island and the cook can actually be part of the conversation!

A close-up of the old and new sink area shows the size of the farmhouse sink. I really love the single bowl and the extra space it allows. I can easily clean any pot or pan without making such a mess around the sink. We chose to undermount the new sink so you can just sweep any mess from the counter right into the sink. It's so much easier to keep clean.

Finally here's the view looking from the back corner inward. I'm so happy with how everything turned out. The white cabinetry makes everything feel lighter and it flows better into the rest of the main living area. Even though a deep wood stain on the cabinets would have been beautiful, it might have made the kitchen feel like a dark corner when the whole purpose of the renovation was to open it up.

There you have it. We planned and planned and now we are really enjoying the result!

Rushing Ahead

I walked into Target today and was greeted with large signs shaped like pencils covered in school-related slogans. Say what?! Does Target not know that it's only July 5th?? Our local schools finished the school year less than three weeks ago. Do they honestly think anyone is ready for back-to-school shopping? Who wants to buy school supplies when they just got summer started? NO ONE.

Trust me, I know this is nothing new. Doesn't it seem to be getting a little out of hand though? Obviously it would be inconvenient if they didn't start selling school supplies until the day before school starts, but we're not even close. We've just barely started to enjoy the summer and they're packing up the bbq tools to make room for spiral notebooks. Why are these stores in such a hurry to get to the next season??

The worst part is that the stores force your hand by setting up for the next season so far in advance. You can't wait to shop for stuff like backpacks or lunch boxes at the normal, reasonable time to purchase school supplies because all the good stuff is gone already. It's the same with swimsuits and winter coats and boots. If you want new boots for the fall you have to buy them in August. Here in southern California you might not even get to wear the darn boots until November but if you try to buy them then you're up a creek because no one sells boots in November. That would be insanity. Think about it. Why on God's green earth would you sell a product during the season when people actually use it??

I wish that we could focus on what we need right now and not have to worry that if we aren't planning months in advance then we won't have a prayer of finding what we need. That's my rant for today. I'm done now and I feel lighter.

Summer (School)

Baby Girl (L) recently finished her first year of preschool. She only went two days a week but this is our first official summer break. In an effort to ward off insanity boredom, I started working on a plan to keep L busy during the summer. I signed L up for some day camps staggered throughout the summer at our local community center and I made a list of things that she seems interested in these days. While we definitely have more than our fair share of princess business around here, L has a pretty wide variety of ideas for pretend play. I just started jotting down themes that came up like pirates, cowboys/girls, camping, etc. Then I did some searching around the homeschooling blogs (there are a billion you know) for activities or learning packets based on these themes. L is pretty enthralled with the idea of homework and workbooks... probably because she doesn't have any real homework yet... so I knew activity pages would be a hit.

One of the best homeschooling blogs for preschool-aged kids that I found is called Homeschool Creations.  The rockstar mama who runs this show makes up all these awesome packets of age-appropriate work pages and activities surrounding a theme and then also outlines how she uses them with her own kids. She turns the whole packet of materials into a DIY workbook for each kid, which she calls a lapbook and puts together using file folders. Oh and all the pages and resources are FREE. I said she was a rockstar!

The first unit we did in honor of summer was Gardening/Flowers. I know that's probably more of a spring theme but it's not like flowers don't grow in the summer too! You can find the materials from Homeschool Creations for the Garden unit here. It's a big packet with lots of printables so I didn't use all of it, but just chose what I felt would be most appropriate for L.

The front of L's Garden lapbook.

The inside of the lapbook at the beginning looks a little sparse but we did other pages that I just slipped inside the folder. There's a garden words mini-book and a flip-book of garden pictures where L circled the letter that starts each word. I glued in the envelope to hold the story sequence cards that go along with the book Jack's Garden. 

We used Jack's Garden by Henry Cole, as well as a few others that we picked up at our library. We also read The Curious Garden by Peter Brown, which was my favorite. Both L and her little brother really liked Seeds Grow, which was a very simple explanation of how seeds become flowers.

We did a flower craft (loosely) based on this one. I had the foam flower shapes already and let L loose with the glitter glue to make them "fancy." I didn't have any brown yarn for the roots so she just colored them with marker. Truthfully the hardest part of this whole craft was getting the pipe cleaner stems to stay on the paper! We ended up using some tape because glue just wasn't getting the job done.  

Overall the whole experience was a hit. We didn't do as much as I planned during the week because we were just settling into vacation and taking everything slow. But L seemed to like having the activities to do and it gave us something constructive to do during the afternoon when boredom usually hits hardest. We did plant some real seeds and as per my usual gardening experience, they have yet to grow at all despite our best efforts. No wonder my husband laughed a little when I told him we were going to do a unit on gardening! 

This week is pirate week in our house and so far it's a hit! 

Like a Freight Train

Oh boy another month has passed by without a full post of pictures of the updated kitchen. I was waiting for one last light fixture to arrive (a very long story) and now that it has, I just haven't gotten around to taking a full set of 360 comparison photos. Mostly because the kitchen is in full use so there's stuff on the counters a lot of the time. Not that it's always messy, but it's not always picture perfect and when it is, it's usually nighttime and the lighting isn't great. That's a lot of excuses but here's one sneak peek of the sink area for now with the before and after shot. It's an amazing difference and we're really loving it!

You can see a lot of the major changes in this one picture. We removed the soffit in the center of the kitchen ceiling, took out the peninsula and repositioned the dishwasher. We created a pony wall (half wall) where the full wall was between the kitchen and dining room. We replaced the old double-bowl sink with a beautiful and ginormous single bowl apron-front farmhouse sink. We got new cabinetry, new paint color on the walls and a fabulous cambria quartz countertop. I'm in heaven!

Cabinets? Check.

Our kitchen is starting to actually look like a kitchen again. That would be opposed to a vast expanse of nothing with a nice floor to distract you from the exposed wires that your child is speeding toward like a runaway train. The cabinets were slightly delayed but only by a few days so complaining seems silly.

As a side note, I'm finding that renovation is like childbirth (just go with me) because for some strange reason everyone wants to tell you their own renovating horror stories. What is that about?! If you've never been pregnant, be forewarned that when you are carrying a child and birth is inevitable and not any sort of option, people (women AND men) feel compelled to share all the awful childbirth stories they know. For what purpose I have no idea, but they do. Some kind and compassionate souls will tell you nice things about giving birth, but most will not. Consider yourself warned.

Well, renovation causes the same sort of verbal diarrhea. Nobody wants to share about the miraculously efficient contractor or the amazing new room that was finished under budget and on time. They just want to tell you about how long this took or how badly that went. I have to say that our renovation has been pretty smooth and the budget is in tact.

We are very close to the end now. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I haven't taken any good pictures since the countertop went in so I think I'll wait until it's all done to post about those. But for now I put together a couple before & after collages to see the progress. It's pretty fun to look at the before pictures and see how far we've come in just under 5 weeks. Yes only five!

Soon we'll have a real working kitchen again!!

So far, so fabulous

We got home two days ago to the updated backbone of our new kitchen. I was speechless. And so, so happy with how it has turned out so far. Take a look...

Looking into the kitchen from the sliding door in the living room. Remember there used to be a wall there! Love having wood floors all throughout the main area now.

Facing into the end of the kitchen/dining area from the front door, which used to be completely blocked by the living room wall. Also notice the pony wall between kitchen and dining area. (Try to ignore the crap sitting on top of the wall.) That's where the range will sit and there will be a narrow counter-top to cap off the pony wall and act as a serving area. 

This is the view from the corner of the kitchen into the living area. It's also the best example of the actual wall color. The paint color is a light gray-blue called Misty Moonstone by Glidden and it's the same throughout the entire main area now. In the other pictures it looks a little green to me but we don't have power to the kitchen and no lighting makes for bad pictures. Obviously that's not where the couch will stay!

I love it and I'm so happy with how it's going. The next big step is the cabinet installation which happens Monday. More pictures to come!

Just in case you forgot, here's a little comparison.

Kitchen Inspiration

I realized today that I've talked about the general renovation plan but not about any of the specifics. To me it seems that the easiest way to share my overall vision for our new kitchen is to show some of the inspiration pictures.

Love the openness (is that a word?) of this kitchen with the large island. Love the white cabinets and the pendants over the island.

via bestremodelingkitchen.com

Again loving the white cabinets and the island with the extension for seating. We'll have an overhang like that and wide drawers similar to the bottom right of the photo.

via BHG

If we had a similar floorplan, I would have practically copied Lindsey's kitchen below because I love this kitchen! I would love to do the white planked ceiling in our high-ceilinged living room someday down the road.

via The Pleated Poppy

I knew from the start that I wanted an apron-front farmhouse sink. My husband wasn't too sure but I stuck to my guns on this one. After all, which one of us spent more time on Pinterest researching ideas for this renovation? In my book that's a completely valid argument. Case closed.

via TakeJoy.tumblr.com

It doesn't take an eye for design to see there's an obvious theme going on in these pictures. When it really comes down to it, white feels right for our kitchen. It feels light and open and airy in a way that deep wood tones would not in our house. And although there may have been times when I saw beautiful mahogany stained cabinets and gave them a second glance, in my heart I've always known we'd stick with white. We've been dreaming about this redo for a long time and I've been saving pictures and drooling over other people's fabulous kitchens all along. It will be really exciting to see it all come together!