
On the evening of June 24th we closed on our first home (just barely!) validating all of the blood, sweat and tears thrown into lengthy and complicated paperwork, unhelpful mortgage processors and just a whole lot of stress. But we did it (not to say without complaint lol) and hence became excited first-time homeowners. Note: We did a 203k loan which includes the cost of renovations in our loan which is why I will get to post about our incredible home transformations.
We moved our belongings into the house that weekend and finally moved in ourselves on Monday, June 27th despite not having gas and resorting to taking sponge baths for a couple of days until the gas company decided to grace us with their presence. It was a rocky start but we are now in a fully functional house albeit the mountains of boxes filling each room which will continue to go unpacked until downstairs renovations are complete.
We didn’t waste any time in putting ourselves to work to make our house into the cliched dream home. The first order of business became to paint the wall that the TV was to be mounted on in the living room. I know this seems a rather trivial first task, after all a television is not a necessity, but after I nearly put my foot through the screen of the TV we realized that perhaps we didn’t want to be forking out the cash for a new TV. My clumsiness was reason enough to get that TV out of the way and up on the wall.

In the above picture Jeff is taping off the living room wall. We painted the wall (above the bead board only) the color Frappe from Valspar. I will not show the color just yet as a partial wall does not a room make. You will see what we are doing with the living room in a later post. Let’s just put it this way…we aren’t in a log cabin and we don’t want it to feel that way and so there will be some dramatic color changes going on.
While everyone was enjoying their Fourth of July weekend we were painting (not to say that can’t be enjoyed; it’s just exhausting). Before we have our contractor come in within the next few weeks and install our new granite counter tops we decided that we needed to take care of the kitchen. We worked through Saturday, took a little bit of a break on Sunday and did the majority of the painting on Monday. Monday morning after my 10-15 minute ritual of heaving, I again picked up my paintbrush and went to work on the kitchen cabinets.

Once again you will notice the wood theme continued into the kitchen, the not so lovely green and white striped wallpaper and the outdated stove (the refrigerator is new and thanks to a delayed closing we were able to pay it off through Sears layaway, which can I say I am in love with Sears? lol). Obviously the refrigerator looks very out of place, but that will change in the next month or so.

Already looking better? This vibrant Cream Delight paint color from Valspar makes this kitchen go from drab to fab. It takes four coats (yes a ridiculous four!) to make these cabinets look like they were always meant to be white (ugh…okay off white, but the beige color above, which will be on its way out in the next couple of weeks, makes it look a little more white than it is). First we had to prime the cabinets (coat number one), then add thorough second and third coats of paint and finally what I like to call a touch-up paint coat which isn’t quite so rigorous as the first coats. The doors have yet to be completed (they are on coats two and three) and still need antiquing done to them, which I will also show in a later blog. We also need to do the entire kitchen island which we have not touched, not to mention the shelves and so we have quite a few hours of painting ahead of us. But, in time our beat up old cabinets (literally faded, covered with water streaks, etc. which you could not see very well in the picture) will have a new life to them and we are so excited for that.
Other projects we have completed in a weeks time? We painted the inside of the walk-in-closet in the master bedroom before we moved in our clothes, and steam cleaned the closet floors (who knew a closet could look so incredibly beat up?) We also painted the walk-in pantry in the kitchen (again beat up). Occasionally we also tear down pieces of the kitchen wallpaper. The kitchen walls now resemble something out of a haunted house, but for some reason I just have to tear it off because I dislike it so much lol. I have also found that it feels almost good to tear off the wallpaper. It feels rather destructive which says something about me I guess. Maybe the human race in general has something innate about wanting to destroy, who knows? I won’t get to tear down a wall or anything extreme in our home renovation and so I have to get my destructive zealousness out somehow and tearing wallpaper is good enough for me:)
So that’s week one of our renovations…a little work down and a lot more to go, but the outcome will make it all truly worth it.
Tags: home renovations, kitchen renovations