Old-New Cabinets

The old cabinets that are in our kitchen came from this utility room that is now our dining room. You can see them hanging up on the left.

The set on the left has one more glass door (not pictured) and this is the set that is now below. The one on the far right is sitting in our outbuilding because I don't know where to put it yet!

We were going to repaint them, but after having them hanging up in their distressed state for a while, we kind of liked it. My mother-in-law suggested just keeping it that way and so we did! I just scratched it up a little more, put about 3 coats of spray poly on it and then covered the back with the bronze colored tin backsplash.

I actually LOVE it when people have a pop of color on their backsplash, but I decided to keep ours the shimmery bronze that it is and I might paint the inside side panels instead which I noticed today are kind of a sunny yellow color right now.

Wow. That was rude.

Man. I am so sorry about that. So, apparently when you don't have the internet for 2 weeks you aren't able to use the internet to tell people you don't have the internet. Well, at least you get things done around the house when you don't have a blog to keep up with. Here's a pictoral update of what we've been up to.

I'm also not to proud to post my "not so pretty" areas. There's a garage sale pile in the corner of the sitting room, the hallway in all it's glory and let's not even mention the dresser in the bedroom. Yes, I've heard of photoshop, but this is real life people! :)

In answering a few questions of some commenters:

1. Our living room color is Croissant by Sherwin Williams. Love it and we get a lot of compliments on it.

2. Lady in Arkansas renovating a house- we did in fact go over some existing flooring with the concrete, but we pulled up some vinyl parquet tiles before that and laid down some plywood and some metal screen before the concrete was poured. I'll be in touch. :)

Sampler Platter

You asked for it...you got it. This is just a taste of how the house is shaping up. I don't want you to see all the house just yet but here's how a few of the rooms are turning out.



For starters, we ended up buying this Price Pfister Arlington faucet from Lowe's for a little over $200.00. We needed a faucet with one hole so unfortunately I have no use for the soap pump. I hate to see things go wasted so if anyone has an idea of what to do with it or even if you need it, let me know! And yes, it has the faucet has a built-in sprayer which was a must for me.


Lowe's should pay me for showcasing their stuff. Yes, this wallpaper backsplash is from you guessed it. Back when Adam and I were childless and fancy free we spent our Saturday mornings going to Lowe's sidewalk sales and picking up all of their clearance marked items that they had sitting out in front of the store. Not every Lowe's does this we've found so we'd make a ritual of going to Great Harvest Bread for breakfast, hit up our sidewalk sale with some garage sales along the way. Good days.

Anywho, guess how much I paid for this? Well, I don't remember to a T, but I do remember it being somwhere in the range of $1.00-$3.00 for an entire roll. Even better, I walked away with about 5 or 6 rolls of beadboard wallpaper for $1.00 each.

You like my green dishes too? So do I. I bought them last summer from a guy off of Craigslist. He said his wife wanted a change from these jade colored Pottery Barn beauties and I got a set of 20 of EVERYTHING for 40 bucks!

And here's the living room...

Still looking for a lampshade for that log lamp on the right side of the picture. I bought a set of 4 log lamps at a garage sale for $25.00 and they all came with gigantic lampshades that looked like they belonged around a dogs neck after it'd been neutered.

And here's the gal's side of her bedroom. She'll be sleeping in this bed TONIGHT! We're moving in!

Getting Warmer!

3D Tour

Occasionally when I talk to my oldest sister on the phone about kitchen design she responds with a lot of "uh-huh's" and "hmmm's". I can tell that she's trying to sound like she understands, but then we laugh about how she has no clue what I'm talking about. This post is for her and for people like her. We met with a cabinet guy the other day and I was SO excited to see his drawing for our new kitchen. He is such a stellar guy, you can even see how he drew up the living room and dining room on either side of the kitchen. Step inside and welcome to the future left side of my home. :)

This is what you would see as you enter the living room from the entry way.

This unit of cabinets will serve as a pantry.


This hanging unit of cabinets is something he drew up, but we have decided NOT to go with it. It does limit our storage that much more, but with it being right next to a pass-thru we don't want it to obstruct traffic in any way. The glass cabinets on the left are ones that we are recycling from the old utility room. The island will be custom made from a friend of ours in Raleigh.

The only difference with this picture is that we forgot to include a dishwasher! I know we're living in a 1920's house, but this girl does not do dishes 1920's style. It will be sandwiched between the sink and the fridge. I just bought a matching set stainless, Jenn-air fridge and dishwasher off of Craigslist and I think they will look great next to each other.

Although lovely, I don't think this hutch will fit on this wall with our big dining room table. So, we'll have to nix that also. Yes, that means that even more lost storage, but I think we have a piece of furniture that is smaller and will work fine instead. Once we get our table out of storage and can take true measurements, we may decide later to do this.

Can you see it?

These is a picture of the type and color of kitchen cabinets we're going to order.

These are the old ones from the utility room that we're integrating in with the new ones.

Although cute and bold, this is NOT our kitchen. We did however just buy that kitchen sink at IKEA pictured above those cute little cheery little cherry curtains.

This is an 3D image of the kitchen island that we're going for. We've hired a friend of ours, Ryan, in Raleigh to build it for us. He worked with Adam at his previous job and is very skilled in this kind of woodworking. A couple things have changed though since another friend, Matt, drew this up for us. 1. There's going to be a 2-door cabinet underneath the sink. 2. The left hand cabinet will have a drawer above it. 3. It will have big ol' table legs on all of the corners. 4. AND there will be a bar area behind the sink. 5. And I'm thinking about painting it gray...6. I don't know about countertops yet though....


Lastly, the island really won't be an island at all. More like a peninsula that will jut up to the fireplace and hide that hideous cement job. We are keeping both walk-throughs open to the living room. As you look at this picture, the bar seating area will be the side that Adam is on and the cabinets, dishwasher and sink, will be on the other side. The wall to the right (not pictured, but it's the one with the window on it) will hold all of the other base and upper cabinets, stove, fridge and pantry. It'll basically be a galley kitchen except with 2 walk-throughs to minimize traffic and maximize on open space.