Before & After

Who doesn’t like a good make-over story?  We recently “refreshed” our kitchen and living room.  (By refresh, we mean that we didn’t replace everything…just the stuff we couldn’t stand any more!)

If we rewind five years ago, this is what the kitchen looked like when Jer bought the house:In December of 2005, we finally got around to painting over the wallpaper and making the home feel a little more like “us.”This fall, we decided to finally pull the trigger and make the changes to the kitchen that we’d been planning for years.  Here’s the BEFORE:    And here’s the kitchen AFTER: The project was:  new granite countertops…new backsplash…extended the island by adding a bookshelf on one end and an overhang to eat at…new under-counter lighting…new refrigerator & oven…new sink…crown molding & new paint.
And of course, one project leads into another…

One big problem we’ve always had with our living room is the weird shape and that there is no good place for the TV and having the room feel open to the kitchen.  This became a bigger problem when Reid came into the picture!  So…in classic “while-we’re-at-it” fashion, we asked our contractor to give us a bid and his ideas for mounting the television over the fireplace and removing the Greek-style mantle.  (And also wiring for surround sound…while we’re at it…I mean, why not?!) 

Living room BEFORE:Living room AFTER:The project was:  update existing fireplace and mount TV over new hearth…build in speakers to fireplace and also in ceiling for surround sound and crown molding to hide the speaker wires.We still need to hang things in the living room, get a few more barstools, get blinds for the kitchen, and (I hope) replace the light fixture over the table.  But for now, we are LOVING having a nice open space between the two rooms we use most often.