The Big Reveal

The time has come!! We're ready to share the official before and after photos of our kitchen. After it being such a long process, we are so incredibly happy with the final result. It truly is our dream kitchen (and home).

When we first compared the before and after pictures, we were soooo amazed! Of course I remember what the kitchen looked like when we bought it but comparing the before and after makes it's hard to believe that they are the same house.

Click on the photo to make it larger.
Pictured on the left: Our kitchen on December 11, 2012
Pictured on the right: Our kitchen TODAY :)

Everything in the kitchen was chosen by us. We picked the stain and style of the cabinets, hardware (knobs and handles), appliances, floor stain, recessed lighting, backsplash, etc. When you're picking a bunch of individual items, it's really hard to imagine what it will look like when it comes together and it's stressful because you want to make sure you've made the right choice. We spent a lot of time on Houzz looking at example kitchens and figuring out what we liked and didn't like.

Here's another view of the kitchen:

One of my favorite parts, we have a little heart in our hardwood floors!

Have you ever remodeled a kitchen before? Did you experience any setbacks? What's your favorite part?

All the Juicy Details

Home Sweet Home :)

Prepare yourself for a novel. We decided to keep track of the ridiculousness of our house process and talk about it after it was over... so here's what we went through.

Our kitchen when it was under construction (and the termites were discovered)

1. From the date of our offer to the closing date, it was a little over 3 months. According to our realtor, this was the longest closing he's ever experienced. It started with it being an estate sale so we had to wait for the probate court date which ended up happening two months after we put in our offer. The original court date was scheduled for a month after but the judge got reassigned so instead of them just letting the hearing happen, they rescheduled it for a month later.
2. We were preapproved and underwritten at the time of our offer, but because it took so long, we got reassigned a new underwriter who was just out of training. Because of that, the whole process started over again and took 3 weeks to close when it was supposed to take 2 days.
3. We started work on the kitchen and discovered termites. The home inspection company missed it so they offered to pay for the mistake but it would have been nice to know that beforehand. 
4. Someone, we don't know who, called the building department on us and because of that, we got "redtagged" and doubled the construction time. We then had to file for a permit and go through several inspections to get approval on the work. Someone really had to have no time on their hands for that to happen because they have to jump through hoops to file a complaint. The craziest part was that we weren't even at the stage where a permit was required.
5. Our contractors showed up to the house one morning and the garage door was wide open. All of our kitchen appliances were still in the garage but that gave us a heartattack. What they think happened is that, since it's an old garage door opener, that someone has the same code as us. My dad said that sometimes one of my parents old garage doors used to spontaneously open so it could have been that too. Needless to say, the door got bolted down and the garage door opener got replaced.
6. We had an island built for the kitchen and then decided to get rid of it. After bringing it into the kitchen, we realized it was just too big for the space and instead had the cabinet guys build a china cabinet. It was a good hiccup because we absolutely love the new cabinet.
7. Our contractor opened up the wall in the back room for the TV mount and found more termite damage. Luckily, there weren't any live termites so he just replaced the damaged wood and continued on. CJ, on the other hand, had to take apart the brick planter box in the backyard that was built against the perimeter of the house. We also called the home inspection company one more time and complained about them not finding this either, so they offered to spray the entire house for free. 
8. Our heater broke. From the time that the heater broke to when it was fixed, it took 2 weeks. It got so cold in the house when we walked in that we could see our breath. It also delayed the floor refinishing process by 2 weeks because the wood was too cold to get finished. We had to let the wood heat back up after it was fixed so that all the moisture was out of the wood. If we didn't wait, there was a possibility that the hardwood would bow in the future.
9. Our heater "broke", again. After the motherboard was replaced, it started working just fine. Unfortunately, a couple weeks later the heater started making weird noises when it turned on and would shut itself off after a minute or so. After having the technician come out again, he found that the filter was so clogged that the heater couldn't take in air which is why it was shutting itself off. So, luckily it just required a new $7 filter and we were back in business.

Moral of the story is nothing ever goes as planned so you just need to find the silver lining in everything and learn to enjoy the process because, in the end, it will look beautiful and it will all be worth it.

TV, Couches, & More!

Our entertainment/family room (we can't decide what to call it) is slowly coming together! Our TV was delivered early last week and installed at the end of this week and it's AMAZING! It's 55 inches of pure beauty and fits perfectly above the fireplace.

On Valentine's Day, our couches, coffee table, and side table were delivered and it finally feels like a room. The furniture fits in the room so perfectly and looks amazing!

We're going to get blinds for the rooms but need to decide which kinds so we've thrown these $5 blinds up over the windows in the meantime. Those blinds are a lifesaver so if you ever move into a house and don't have any blinds, go to Bed Bath and Beyond (or even home improvement stores like Lowe's) and you can find these for $4.99. We were stressing out over what curtains to buy for our front room because we needed to cover up those windows before moving our belongings into the house but my mom came up with the genious idea of sticking these up onto the windows and Voila! our windows are covered and we can take more time to pick out the curtains we love.

The coffee table is super functional because it has 2 drawers for us to store items in. That was CJ's top requirement for the coffee table and I'm glad he was so insistent upon us finding one with drawers because it's so useful!

Another view of the coffee table so you can see the drawers

The "To Do" list still has several items left before we feel like this room is done:

• Couches
• Coffee Table
• Side Table
• TV
• Colorful pillows for the couches
• Curtains for either side of the TV (this will cover up the plugs to the side of the fireplace and make the wall more dramatic)
• Blinds
• Artwork
• Entertainment Center (so we can remove the cable box, Wii, Xbox, and DVD player from the floor)
• ... and then any other decorative items that we like for this room :)

Closet Organization

As many of you already know, one of our first items that we wanted to have done before moving in was expanding the size of our closet. Not because it was the highest priority, but because it involved breaking down walls which would affect our hardwood floors. Since we were redoing the hardwood floors along with the kitchen, we figured it would be best to do the closet too otherwise you would see the funky line in the closet where the wall used to be and that just wouldn't be acceptable. So, we proceeded to have it expanded to take over half of the guest closet and now it's L-shaped.

We had NO idea how to organize a funky shaped closet so we decided to research companies that did free designs. The first company, EasyClosets.com designs beautiful (and very expensive) closets and will do it for free. So, we measured the closet, submitted our dimensions along with our "wish list" (aka we want X inches of space for long hang, we have X amount of shoes, etc.) and they got back to us with a design the following day. It wasn't that impressive and was way too expensive so we looked at a few more options.

Since I've always loved The Container Store, we decided to stop by there and see what they had to offer. After wandering the store a bit, a lady approached us and offered a tour of their example closets and then a free design. She said that at the end of the tour, the attendees of the tour would be thrown into a raffle to win a $25 gift card and, turns out, we were the only 2 attendees so we automatically won! Yay for us!

She did the free design and we loved what she came up with, not to mention it was 1/2 the price of EasyClosets so that was also a plus. We ordered the supplies from them, picked it up (which saved us the delivery fee), and then scheduled a time for them to install it. If you have a standard closet size, it's fairly easy to install it yourself but since our closet is a funky shape and size, they recommended we have the professionals handle it because the materials needed to be custom cut.

Here's what the closet looked like before the sliding doors were added and the Elfa closet. Notice the beautiful white walls that Lauren and I painted.

On Monday afternoon, the closet installation guy came over and transformed our closet. It looks sooo amazing and is SO functional. We absolutely love it. There are 3 shoe racks, one of which can fit 9 pairs of heels that pull out like drawers. I'm obsessed! All of our hanging clothes fit in there perfectly so now we just need to figure out what to do with all of our folded clothes. :)

View with the right sliding door open

View with the left sliding door open

Of course, my heels had to go in first :)
These open up like drawers and the top shelf can hold 9 heels, the lower shelves can hold 4-6 pairs.

Moving In!

We have been so busy with moving that we haven't had the time to give you a little update on how everything is going (plus, we don't have internet in the house yet). Here's what's happened since we last posted:

We rented a U-Haul on Saturday and loaded it up with all the large items (washer, dryer, bedroom furniture, chair, bikes, surfboard) to bring over to the house. We also had a mini-caravan of my car, my mom's car, and my parent's SUV filled with items. And no, that did not hold all of our belongings. I still have all the boxes in my closet (various items like office supplies, yearbooks, etc) that I need to bring over to the house. I want to wait until the first load is all unpacked before taking over more stuff. We stayed up until midnight on Saturday setting up our bed and then headed back to my parents house to sleep since we didn't bring all of our stuff over.

On Sunday, our beautiful kitchen table, set of 6 chairs, and buffet were delivered!! Oh my are they beautiful. Here's a picture of the table (excuse the iPhone photo).

Missing one chair in the photo but it's so beautiful!

I'll post a picture of the beautiful buffet once we have it in place.

Then, my superhero best friend Lauren and her fiance Danny came over and helped us start to unpack. Lauren and I worked on the kitchen while CJ and Danny worked on setting up the washer/dryer, moving some furniture, and breaking down boxes. We made a HUGE dent in the boxes thanks to them. After they left, we cleaned up the entertainment room, vacuumed, set up the bedroom more, washed our sheets and towels,  and ran a few loads in the dishwasher. Sunday was our first night sleeping in the house (exactly 2 months after we closed!) and it was glorious! It really feels like a home now and it feels so natural to be there.

I just love the house SO much that I can't wait to get home every night to set more things up. Tomorrow the couches will be delivered and hopefully the cable and internet will be set up. Woo hoo!

I'll try to post about our magical new closet tomorrow, I'm pretty obsessed!

Step by Step

Because the house is ready for us to move in, I've been loading up my car and dropping the items off each time I stop by the house. It's so exciting to start bringing things in! I'm really starting to imagine everything in the kitchen and can't wait to unpack all the wedding gifts and to FINALLY start using them.

I'm madly in love with all of our wedding gifts (particularly the KitchenAid mixer, thanks Mom! Such a dream come true) but there are a few items that are especially meaningful because they were made for us. Normally, I'm not a fan of receiving home decorations as gifts because, as most people who know me well would testify, I'm very picky about style and would rather pick things out for myself. But these items are the exception to the rule and I really can't wait to find a place to put them on display in the house.

The first one is the most beautiful painting I have ever seen. Our family friend is an incredibly talented painter and painted this scene of CJ and I on our wedding day. It's amazing how he was able to capture our feelings on our wedding day and make it look exactly like us (even down to the flower on my sash)! This was given to us at our reception so he painted this all even before seeing us. He had a little help from my mom so he knew what my dress was going to look like and I'm so glad my mom showed it to him. This is something that we will keep the rest of our lives and can't wait to put it on display.

The second one is an adorable cross-stitch (I think that's what it's called) of a wedding dress, our names, and our wedding date made by my lovely mother-in-law. It's SO cute and I love that she personalized it with our names and wedding color (purple, duh). I'm still brainstorming where to put it but I'm thinking that maybe we can do one of those picture collage walls (like this one on Young House Love) and include this in that medley of frames. It really depends on how everything looks when we move in but I think that would be a fun way to incorporate it into our decorations.

Scrub a dub dub

The time has come! We will officially be moving in this weekend!

I'll be posting some before & after photos of the kitchen after the stove vent (or whatever you call it) is replaced. Somehow, our contractor ordered one that is 6 inches smaller than what we expected. When we first walked into the kitchen after all the appliances were installed, CJ and I both paused and stared at it thinking to ourselves, "Hm... not exactly how we envisioned it to look", mostly because there were several inches of space on either side of the vent. It was not intentional so our contractor plans on exchanging it for the right one. You will not believe the difference between the before & after photos! It literally looks like a different house. We can't wait for you to see!!

To help get the house ready for moving everything in, I came over to the house tonight to clean the sawdust off of every surface in the house. It got on everything! When Lauren and I were at the house last week painting the master closet, I went into the bathroom to change into painting clothes and placed a shirt on the bathtub. When I picked the shirt up, I could see exactly where it was placed. A clear sign that the house needed to be dusted and scrubbed down before moving in.

Here's a close-up of what the bathtub looked like:

Gross! So much sawdust.

After using a magical Swiffer duster, the bathtub ended up looking like this:

Squeaky clean :)

It's amazing how much better it looks!! I almost forgot that the bathtub is white!

Needless to say, the house is sooo much cleaner now and I feel a lot better about moving things in. I may start bringing stuff to the house each night this week and start unpacking. It depends on how exhausted I am after work each night. :)

Have you ever refinished your hardwood floors? Did you get sawdust everywhere?

Preparing for Move In Day

We should be able to go back into the house on Sunday as the last coat of stain on the hardwood floors was applied yesterday and the smell should be aired out by then. Sooo that means that we could possibly start unpacking things on Sunday!

Tomorrow we're going to head to The Container Store to look at different closet options and maybe shop around at a few other stores depending on their pricing. Lauren and I painted the master bedroom closet on Wednesday evening so it's ready for all the "fixin's" that come along with having a functional closet. There's a company called EasyClosets that will design your closet for you for free if you provide them the dimensions. We sent in our dimensions earlier this week and got a good idea of how we should set up the closet. Obviously, EasyClosets' intention is for you to buy their closet supplies but we're going to try to save some money and do it ourselves.

We'll also try to run a few more errands tomorrow to get ready for moving into the house. We don't need to go crazy with prepping because we won't really start moving until next weekend. CJ will be traveling next week so not much will be happening in between this Sunday and the following Saturday but we can't wait!!!

We're sooooo close to finally moving in!