Den: After!

Note: I've updated this post with a few pictures of my decorating attempts.

About the same time the kitchen was finished, the den was done. As a reminder, here's where we started:


And here's how it looks now!

(Actually, right now there is a Christmas wreath
hanging above the mantle.)

Fall 2012 decorating attempt

The other view, before:



Aaaand after (slightly different angle, but same idea):

 Decor #1

 Decor #2: Fall 2012 decorating attempt

 
The work's done; now I just have to figure out how to decorate!

Kitchen: After!

When we bought our house in March '11, the kitchen looked like this:

(Click photos to see larger versions.)

 

Note the brown cabinets and paneling. Also, note the geese-ridden wallpaper below the floral wallpaper adjacent to the checked wallpaper! 

 

In the picture above you can also see that the range was an electric cook-top, and the gas oven was set into the wall to the left of the fridge. What you can't see is that the range hood was broken.

Breakfast nook

You can see the brown rubber "baseboards" in this picture.

The view from the breakfast nook back into the kitchen. 

Those cabinets above the range really blocked line of sight and light. The kitchen felt very small, dark, and cramped.

About two weeks after we moved in, I spent my Spring Break following the tutorial on YoungHouseLove for painting kitchen cabinets (so very helpful!) and put on all new hardware (hinges and door/drawer pulls), and we ended up with this (forgive the mess):

Definitely an improvement, but there were still several things I wanted to change!

Just to the left of the oven was the pantry:

That pantry, while better than nothing, was cramped. However, I wasn't sure what we should/could do to use our allotted space more efficiently. (In this picture you can see our walls after we hired a company to come in and remove the 3 - yes 3! - layers of wallpaper we had failed to budge, fix the damaged dry wall, and paint.)

After living with the kitchen in that state for about 6 months, inspiration struck. I told Gus that I wanted to rip out the cupboards above the range to make the kitchen feel more open; rip out the electric cook-top and replace it with a gas range/oven combo; rip the gas oven out of the wall to the left of the fridge and expand the pantry into that space; repaint; get real baseboards; and get new counters, a deeper sink, a better faucet, and a garbage disposal. Just a few tweaks, really. ;)

In November, we hired a local handyman we knew to do the renovations for us at a steal of a price. 

Here are the results: 

Granite Uba Tuba countertops with Travertine tile backsplash

New island range hood, gas range, deep sink, awesome faucet, and garbage disposal

Breakfast nook

View from the breakfast nook through the kitchen

No more cabinets over the range!

 

Pantry after:

There is 3x the storage space now!

So, there you have it - our new and greatly improved kitchen! What do you think?

Kitchen: More progress!

Here's how it looked last night:



Note the awesome under-cabinet lighting! It's on a dimmer switch. :)


And the paint swatch sitting on the window ledge is probably the color we'll be going with for both the kitchen and den walls. It's Olympic's "Gray Beige".

Kitchen: Mid-renovation

If you recall, this is what the kitchen looked like when we moved in:

Note the geese on the wallpaper in the background.

Over Spring Break, I painted the cabinets:


After failing at removing the wallpaper ourselves, we had a company come in and strip, repair, texture, and paint the walls. We also hung new blinds, and we bought a cool bar-height table and four tall chairs for the breakfast nook. It's been perfectly fine and functional.

But this week, along with having the den re-done, we're having the kitchen updated! The impetus behind this was the need for more pantry space and the desire for a gas range and oven. For the last 8 months, this is all the pantry space we've had:

Next to the (very shallow) pantry is an unreliable wall oven. The cooktop lives on the peninsula that separates the kitchen from the breakfast nook (as can be seen in the first and second pictures).

I've had a vision of replacing the cooktop with a gas range/oven, and using the wall space that would be created by removing the wall oven for an expanded pantry.

So on Monday, this happened:


And by this evening, here's what we had:


The builder is going to build in shelves and (at some point) hang doors. It can't really be seen in this picture, but he also ran wiring for an overhead light in the pantry!

And since we're going to all this trouble, this is also happening:


No more cooktop! We've ordered a gas range/oven from Sears, and it'll be installed tomorrow. We also had him tear down the hanging cabinet from above the cooktop. Having that monstrosity out of the way has really made the room feel much bigger and lighter. (We'll have an island-style range hood installed over the stove next week.)

Note, also, that the old white peeling countertop is gone! And what do we now have in its place?

Ubatuba granite and a beautiful, deep new sink!

Tomorrow the builder is installing a travertine tile backsplash. It is going to look so beautiful when it's all done! Oh, and since the blue walls look terrible, I need to pick out a new paint color for the kitchen. Any suggestions?

I'll post more pictures as things progress!

Den: Mid-renovation

Gus found a guy who renovates houses and knows how to do pretty much everything we could ever want to have done to our house! Over the past few months, we've had him do a little work here and there, such as installing bathroom vents, moving and extending our fence, and removing the pool. Last week, we gave him the go-ahead to work on our den and kitchen. (The kitchen will be in another post.)

Our den has west-facing windows, so it gets light in the late afternoon, but it had fake wood paneling along with its unusual brick floors, so it would just absorb all light it came into contact with. I've long envisioned ripping out (or painting over) the paneling, in hopes that that would make it brighter.

Here's what the den looked like when we bought the house:

Facing south

Facing north-ish, toward the kitchen and breakfast nook.
This picture was taken mid-day with all of the lights on.

On Monday the contractors ripped out the paneling:

Looking better already!

Wednesday the hung the dry wall, taped, and spackled:

It's so much lighter!
This is at night, with the same lights as the pre-move-in pictures.

Thursday they returned to texture the walls.


Tomorrow (or maybe Monday?) it'll get primed. I haven't figured out what color to paint the walls yet, since we still have brick floors (under the protective paper) and a brick hearth.

Bedroom "Before & After"

Over the last 6 months (!) that we've lived in our house, we've slowly been transforming our bedroom. We've done enough now that I think it's done. For now.

The bedroom we sleep in isn't actually the official master bedroom; that one's downstairs, but we both prefer to sleep upstairs. So the master bedroom is currently the computer room, and one of the secondary bedrooms is where we choose to lay our heads at night.

Here's how it looked when we moved in:

Pale blue walls.

Pale blue closets.
Dark blue carpet.
Dark blue curtains (not shown).

Since then, we've:

• painted
• replaced the carpet
• lugged our 1/2 ton bed up the stairs
• installed a ceiling fan (We actually did this all by ourselves! Well, mostly it was Gus, but still....)
  
• bought bedside shelves
• bought new lamps
• hung light-blocking drapes
• hung some of our art - the rest is waiting for me to remember to do it
  

Here it is now!

Same angle as the "Before"
(drapes open)


In the evening light (drapes closed)

The New Arrival

See what we just got??






It's a Weber 6'1" grand. :) Without me knowing, Gus did a little research and found out that the Piano Gallery in Dallas is a good place to buy pianos. He surprised me with a trip there on Saturday afternoon, and I spent 2.5 hours playing all the pianos in the store and picked this one out! It was delivered at Noon today.

It is such a pleasure to play - beautiful tone, perfectly weighted keys! We are going to get so many years of enjoyment out of this beast. (And yes, I said "we" - Gus says he enjoys sitting on the couch, reading a book while I pound away at the piano!)

Gus is the best! :D

Cats = Progress!

So, if you'll recall, the neighborhood cats have been lurking around our property and have been known to watch us from a safe distance. (See this post for our first installment. Note that the black and white cat in pictures 1, 3, and 4 is not the same as the cat in picture 2; it took us a month to realize that!)

We found out that the two black and white cats are brothers, and they belong to our next-door neighbor. They're indoor-outdoor cats. More outdoor, though.

Over the past few months, we've been trying to woo them, but they've been pretty skittish. We've put out cat food, sat outside while they observed us, and started leaving our patio doors open. Their feline curiosity eventually got the better of them, and they stepped over the threshold and into our den! At the slightest movement on our part, they'd bolt back out the door. But they kept coming back. One day they made their way into our living room. And then our computer room.

Here's what happened today:

That's Boots on the left and Hector on the right!
("Boots" is short for Lieutenant Fuzzy Boots.
Why yes, Gus did name him! How did you know?)

Are they not the most adorable things you've ever seen?? :D

Wisconsin wildlife!

Today, at my parents' place in Wisconsin, we were outside working in the garden when we heard a very strange bird call, which none of us had ever heard before. My mom investigated, and this is what she found!

There are two of them, one directly below the other.

Wildlife

So, about a month ago, we were in our kitchen and detected movement (in the near-dark) in our screened-in sun room. Gus pulled out a flashlight and turned it on, and this is what we saw!

It's an opossum!
It was eating the cat food we'd left out for our friendly neighbor cats

From the front, it was evident that she had a pouch full of babies!
In this picture, a few tails can be seen.
Sorry about the poor picture quality, but my camera was set on "night",
and she just wouldn't sit still long enough for a portrait.

Italy Part 19: Vatican City - Art

Of course, the Vatican had lots and lots of paintings and mosaics, too! Here is a small sampling of my favorites.

On a ceiling:






Why, you might ask, am I so fond of these? Because they are paintings on a flat surface, not carvings or sculptures! Look again! Amazing, eh?


Then there's this floor mosaic:








This one may look familiar:

Raphael's School of Athens

Deliverance [or Liberation] of St. Peter - again, painted on a flat wall!

Amazing source lighting effects!

One of many ornate ceilings

ceiling detail

...and thus ends our tour of Italy!