a kitchen reborn

In the pending birth of our first child, I am spending my evenings being large and slow on the couch, eating pretty much everything in sight, and cruising through Friends seasons on Netflix. 

I thought I'd finally share some photos of the house, namely my favorite room so far, the kitchen!! This remodel has been taking place since September, and our dear little kitchen has been reborn in 5 months!

BEFORE:

DURING:

AFTER:

I cannot say how thankful I am for my husband who has put countless hours into make this space so amazing! (Even as I am typing this, he is working on another project until dinner is ready!)  

It has been such a fun transformation to see an outdated and cramped kitchen turn into a modern, open, and functional space for cooking/eating! 

There are other fun projects happening right now, including redoing the addition with the fireplace, putting in baseboards, and adding french doors. 

Until those are projects get posted, I imagine we'll have a new little family member to take up just some of our time! 

Anyone else have some fun projects going on they'd like to share?

happy tuesday

House update and some news!

I am sitting in a Panera right now, trying to purposely take a break from working on the house.  It is slowly morphing into a dwelling that we call home....  We've taken all of our ideas (that seemed so simple) from the past few months and started to actually make them happen- its a slow go, but it's going! 

I've taken a stab at patching drywall holes. 

My selfie here truly represents how this whole process feels.

 The whole process of patching one hole was much more timely than I expected.  I thought if I just slap some drywall mud in there, it would dry and could be sanded to smoothness. But of course nothing goes like I think, and the hole had the braced by supports (2x4's), patched with a small piece of drywall, and then coated with several. SEVERAL. coats of mud.   I thought the bathroom would be painted weeks ago, and it's still currently all spotted up. But man, those walls are smooth, and a fresh coat of paint will hopefully hide all the evidence of my work!

Next onto carpet.  I don't know about you, but moving into a new house, especially one that hasn't had some good TLC in a few years, I daydream/nightmare about the disgustingness of the carpet.  I picture skin flakes and cut toenails from the previous owner's feet positioned in the fibers, like a defense left from him for the new owners.  Gross. So, in one grand attempt, with a hearty meal in my belly, I pulled up the carpet in the hall way and 2 bedrooms. Here is the glorious outcome! 

The carpet was the easy part. these little rascals ^see tack strips above^ were a bear to remove from the hardwood under the carpet. There were many a grunts and a swear words thrown around during the process of prying these up along the perimeters of the rooms. 

I'll throw in Seth's main project because, let's be real, what I'm doing has nothing on his work!

Seth is in charge of the kitchen.  I'll give you a little taste of the work so far, which I'm sure later I'll highlight this amazing project in greater detail. 

Before...

After...

^^not sure what happened to the lens of the camera here, but oh well, I guess it rightly captures that everything is covered in sawdust these days!

Seth has been doing an awesome job of opening up this whole space for our vision of an open floor plan concept.   We are both so excited to see how this comes together as we start putting in cupboards and counter tops soon! 

We have been so blessed by this house,  And of course as I sit here in Panera, sort of not wanting to go back and be surrounded/annoyed by the mess, I am reminded what a gift we have to have a house and to really make it our own. And I'll share one of my favorite and most grounding bible verses for this past year since it popped into my head while sitting here. 

"Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains."

James 5:7

This verse reminds me that bit by bit, we will get our home put together, It won't happen overnight. Anything this big is totally worth the wait and worth taking our time to do it right.

AND

Announcing our biggest alteration....

We are happy to be bringing a new baby into the world into February 2015! 

^the Gamechanger^

Thanks for stopping by!

a tray

I have found a great way to re-purpose the drawer from the little Richmond Table that I destroyed a few weeks ago (see that post here).  The drawer was perfectly intact and is still a pretty blue color- it would be ridiculous to get rid of.  So, it now serves as a tray to carry food (or anything, really) out to the deck for the summer dinners outside!

**happy monday**

a table from richmond, virginia.

Have you ever seen something (anything) that automatically attracts your attention and you can't stop looking at? Whether this is an item of food when you're ridiculously hungry, an article of clothing that is fabulous, a hair hanging off the sweater of the person sitting in front of you- you get the idea. 

I was in Richmond five years ago for a church conference with my mom. We had an afternoon off and decided to check out downtown Richmond and came across a flea market. For some reason, there was this delightful little table I couldn't stop looking at.  It was just a small end table- no bigger than 2 feet wide- but it had charm, and even after walking out of the flea market and heading down the street, I asked my mom if we could go back.  For whatever reason, I was attracted to this little table wanted to have it.

I bought it for $35, which as a minimum-wage-making barista, was a stretch. But I bought it nonetheless. I hauled it back to Winston, where Seth just looked at me with those are you kidding me? eyes when I brought it through the door. But I loved it.

 

I changed the color choice to better suit our home decor, and over the years, it has been moved from room to room to suit whatever purpose we had for it.  

  

Two summers ago, the little table was spray-painted a sweet blue and placed on our deck, topped with flower pots during the warm months. Finally, about a month ago, I discovered the table wasn't built for the outdoors- it was rotting and needed to be "put down".  

So, because Seth has had no attachment to the table, he helped me see a good way to put out of its misery and let off some steam because my dear table was rotten. 

The bits of the table now rest in a dump somewhere and I was sad to see it go. But I will say that it's a good example of something that I loved from the beginning (for some reason) and through the years reinvented to suit whatever need I had for it. 

I wonder what will be next?

**happy sunday**

perfect storm weekends

I had an epiphany regarding my nasty little shopping habit today. You see, as a nurse, I am off four days a week.  Every now and then, this beautiful thing happens where I happen to have a four or five day weekend, and to sweeten that deal, it sometimes falls on a pay week- which we can ironically, or not so, call the perfect storm.  This happens to be one of those weekends.  

This morning I balanced our checkbook, cleaned the house, mowed the lawn, etc. and then  found myself feeling like I needed a "reward", or simply needed get out of my head and out of the house.  This is often where shopping plays a role.  I suppose I have historically used shopping as a crutch to find something to do on these days when most everyone else is working, and I am at home with no agenda and no structure.  And on weekends like this when I see a "surplus" in our bank account (that of course we won't need in the days to come on staples, like gas or food), it's especially easy to talk myself into spending time looking at pretty things and then oops! I am bringing those pretty things home!

This nasty little habit can happen once in a while of course, but today I wanted to try to do something else productive with my time when I finished up with my usual "house work". So, I dug an old magnetic board that I found at a flea market in PA years ago and decided to give it a facelift.  Thanks to a can of spray paint and a dry, sunny day, I now have a little chalk board sign that I'm feeling pretty pumped about.  I haven't decided where I'll put it yet, but I've tried a few things out and I'm sure in time, it will find it's home!

**happy weekend folks**

Arcadia

This past weekend, Seth and I made the trek to Pennsylvania. Our weekend started the typical way, 8 pm on a Friday night with coffee, soda, and candy in the console, while the boys slept in the back, heavily permeating the car with their bad breath.

It quickly filled with visits with friends, hiking around Ohiopyle, and endless cups of Keurig coffee around the table, chatting. On Saturday night, Craig and Mary took us to the Arcadia, a charming theater in Windber for a night out.  This theater was built in 1921 and in spite of surviving the Johnstown flood in 1977, it had the ability to jump you right back to its originality, with it's picturesque sign on the building to the plush seats inside.  We saw the band called Hotel California: a Salute to the Eagles. And let me tell you, there's nothing like a group of long-haired 50-somethings rocking out on electric guitars with their hair blowing in the wind! They were great and I. LOVED. EVERY. SECOND!

 **You can read more about Arcadia here. Hope you had a great weekend!**