Master Bathroom and Upstairs!

This is the final installment in the 'home improvement series' - the master bathroom.

Here's a reminder of where it all began...remember this house had been vacant for about a year when we were looking at it - it was cleaned up when we bought it but it had a LONG way to go!

The first thing my dad wanted to do was demo that jetted tub to make room for a much larger shower on the other side...

So in this picture, the tub used to be there on the right and the old shower was on the left.

The original plan was to only demo the old tub and shower but somehow that got lost in translation and they took out all the old cabinets, sinks, etc as well.

So then we, ahem - my brother, had to learn to be a cabinetmaker and start from scratch on new ones.

Progress on the new shower...

And this is where the tub used to be - its now a dressing area.

We have countertops!

And paint!

Finally...the finished product!

I LOVE this shower!

The chandelier is my favorite part though!

And here's a few more pictures of the finished rooms upstairs, etc.

Upstairs bedroom #1 aka - my old living room

Upstairs Bedroom #2 aka "The library"

And finally upstairs bedroom #3 - its my old college room! It was during my 'shabby chic' phase. I love having the bedroom set up this way, something about it is so comforting and its so funny when friends come over and see it because they always say "Its just like your old room!"

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Kitchen and Dining Room!

So today we're moving on to the kitchen and dining room....as you can see in the pictures below, we had quite a project ahead of us!

The picture above is of an island that was sticking out into the kitchen and some cabinets that were above it. We felt like it really closed the room off and decided to take it out and open up the wall a little more between the kitchen and dining room.

And the wall is gone!

We also took down the furdown above the cabinets and redid the entire ceiling to accommodate more lights.

My happy brother aka "the contractor"

All of the wood in the kitchen was stripped and sanded. Then molding was added to the tops and bottoms of the cabinets as well as to the cabinet doors and drawers themselves.

Additional upper cabinets were built around the microwave as well as an additional lower cabinet to go on the other side of the stove.

My brother and dad also built this amazing bar/island from scratch!

This is the view from the inside of the kitchen. This is now my 'party cabinet'. I keep all my fun serving dishes, cocktail napkins and WINE right here! Love it!


Now we've got some color on the cabinets!

It was important to us to keep the island/bar looking like its own special piece of furniture so it was painted black instead of the dark brown and also is supported on little feet instead of being flush with the floor.

Almost done! The backsplash was another great addition that we almost skipped. I feel like it just makes a huge statement now and I love having the under cabinet lighting to show it off!

We've got can lights in the ceiling as well as under cabinet lights and lighting above the cabinets - apparently my contractor has a thing for lights!

This garden window was a real eye sore until we jazzed it up with some fun curtains and bright accessories. Now its just my "fun" window and gives me something cheery to look at while doing dishes.
The truly finished island/bar. We also put special hardware on this piece to distinguish it from the rest of the cabinets. You can't tell in this picture but there are little grape clusters on the hardware.

And this is what is lurking on the other side of the kitchen - the breakfast room! We did reduce the size from the original breakfast room but we gained a much bigger kitchen, more counter space and a much more open feel for the whole layout downstairs. I love the stained glass fixture above the table!

And now we move on to the dining room. As you can see whoever choose this floor was either very creative or very indecisive. We've got granite, marble and bamboo going on here!

As I said before, we opened up more of the kitchen my removing part of the wall in the dining room and creating that island/bar into the kitchen. So now the large green wall that you see in this picture is only about 2/3 of that size.

The window above looks out onto the screen porch and really took up a lot of valuable wall space that was lacking in the dining room.

So we closed it in....also if you look back at the picture above this one, you will see another window to the left looking out onto the screen porch...that one was in a wet bar that will soon be a computer nook so it was a goner too.

Here's a view of the 'after' from the screen porch:

And here's the finished dining room and screen porch!


I love love love spending time out here in the evenings and even occasionally eat lunch out here - it makes me feel like I'm on vacation!

House stuff!

So this weekend I had an unveiling/housewarming party at my house! It was so fun to have people over and show them around and discuss all the projects we took on. I loved getting to play 'hostess' in the new place! The company was perfect, the food was great and we all had a really good time.

I know I've kind of been hinting around about a major before and after post on this house project and today I will begin! I had to do lots of cleaning before having people over so it was a good excuse to take some really good 'after' pictures. I do have to preface these 'before' pics because they are a MESS! The house had been vacant for about a year and was just trashed when we first looked at it. So they're all pretty bad! Makes for quite a transformation though...

I'm going to start with the living room and dining room today and then move to other rooms throughout the week and also post about all the yummy food we had at the housewarming party! I had so much fun cooking and planning everything and it meant a lot to me that my friends gave up their Sunday evening to come hang out and see what I'd been up to with this big project. I can't wait to have people over again!

Here we go!

The pictures above are of the living room "Before". As you can see it was quite a mess! The living room was carpeted and sunken in about 6 inches. One of the first things we did was rip that carpet out and fill in the 'hole' with concrete to make the whole house level.

Big change from before! My brother is quite the handyman and did all the carpentry/cabinet work in the house...here's how we got from the 'before' to the 'after' in the living room...

The stairs were another huge undertaking. We weren't quite sure what we wanted to do exactly but we did know that this was not the look we were going for...(I apologize for the dark picture!)

We toyed with keeping the stairs open but then ultimately decided that wasn't the best idea. We were all really pushing for the stained banisters/wrought iron look but weren't sure how that would work out with the budget. One day my dad just decided to go for it though and we walked in to find that he had removed the banisters!

Not long after that, my brother learned how to build a staircase all on his own and started this huge highly detail oriented carpentry project - lucky for me that is what he is best at!

And finally......TA DA!!!

This staircase really added a big 'wow' factor to the house - I LOVE it!

I think tomorrow I will move on to the dining room and kitchen - we did a LOT of work there!