Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Small House Big Love - Kitchen Makeover

We recently bought an old cape cod style home and were excited to do some renovations, bring it up to date and make it our own.  We bought it knowing...that the house needed some Big Love in order to make it work for us.

Both of us love to cook and when we first saw the kitchen we were a little unsure of how we would turn this into something we loved.  Neither of us had ever done a renovation before.  Fortunately, we have some great friends who are experienced with this type of work and they were more than happy to walk us through the process and offer advice when we were... freaking out.  
The kitchen was very small and closed off to the rest of the house.  So we decided to take out a wall between the kitchen and the dining room.  Fingers crossed that there weren't any pipes behind them. 
That would have been a major bummer.....and thankfully - there were none.
Seeing the open space was pretty exciting.  But honestly....I was really thinking "dang....it's still going to be a very small kitchen."  I never said anything to anyone but at this point I was kind of thinking... "uh oh.....what did we do buying such a small place that needs so much work?"  Pressing onward, I was committed to the process and wasn't going to let negativity or lack of certainty bring me down.

It takes awhile to order cabinets so I picked out what I wanted and had them ordered as soon as we could map out the space we had available. I knew I wanted a white kitchen. With such a small space, I wanted the kitchen to look as open as possible.  
I chose white shaker cabinets and white beveled subway tile.  At this point, my husband is asking for cherry cabinets and tan or "green" counter tops (yup...he's the adventurous one). He thought the white would be too sterile and lack personality.  Now, we used a white tile in our new master bath with black grout (I will show you that in another post) and thought that maybe a colored grout would soften things up a bit. We chose a color called "oyster gray" and really like how it turned out.  
Up went the cabinets, appliances and the counter tops.


In went the faucet and the tile.
Before we knew it, we had a brand new beautiful kitchen.

It was fun to take a space that had seen better days and turn it into something that works for us.  We love how it turned out and can't wait to start cooking!

I have quite a few more things to show you....stay tuned.

Have a great week.

Paula









Thursday, April 13, 2017

Spring Pots Should Make You Happy

Hey everyone!  I've been so busy these last few months working on lots and lots of fun things to show you.  I needed a break to focus on a few other things and will begin to post as I complete each of my projects.

With the weather getting warmer, I'm all about having pretty flowers around.  They just make me feel good.  You don't have to have a lot of them, just a couple, placed strategically so you can see them when you are out and about.

You don't have to buy expensive pots either.  You can buy inexpensive pots and then make them your own. Spring pots don't have to be boring......you can jazz them up!

This was a simple black pot that I spray painted with an all surface white paint and then added colors that would adhere and last outdoors.  Look for paints in any hobby store marked for all surfaces.

Then create away!  This pot is so pretty it makes me smile every time I walk by.

Happy planting!

Paula