DIY Kitchen Remodel

I want to start off by saying thank you to Mrs. Miller for giving me basically step-by-step directions on how to complete this kitchen remodel.  I also want to thank Ashley for coming over and helping me sand (you really got me motivated to finish it).  Thank you Carl for watching Hunter and for priming and painting the top half so I didn't have to tape it off.  And thank you Kelly and Harry for letting me borrow your sawhorse.

Our kitchen is not a big area.  Add to that dark hardwood floors and dark wood cabinets and it makes the kitchen look even smaller (plus a poor choice of paint color when we first moved in... but I have matured in my paint selection).  We couldn't afford to have someone else come remodel nor did we want to put that much money into this house.  What is a family to do?!  DIY!

Here are some before pictures.  

I've talked before about the brick backsplash.  That was the first thing I completed.  Bricks are not as easy to paint as you may think.  Carl actually found the bricks in the attic when he was cleaning it out this month.  We promptly threw them in the garbage can!

Ashley came over last Friday and we sanded everything.  We took all the cabinet doors off and the hinges and knobs off (and threw them in the trash).  We numbered the cabinets and the spot with corresponding numbers.  I'm glad we did this because there would be no way I would have remembered which door went where.  Carl is still debating with me that one is out of place, but I assure you it isn't.  Ashley was also kind enough to let me borrow her drop cloth so I didn't get paint everywhere (because I literally get paint everywhere.. my hair, my legs, the floor, some how on my face).

Next I primed everything.  I've never worked with oil based primer, and let me just say I hope I never do again.  It took two coats of primer to make sure no wood was popping through.  Killz is really the best.  The guy at Lowes told me to get the odorless can (this is my first major project, so I went in there telling them that!) and I'm glad he did.  The fumes still got to me.

Just some advice... don't try to prime in the 90 some degree heat!

Then I painted.  It only took 1 coat of paint to cover.  I had to do some touch ups after everything was put together, but putting two coats primer on was really worth it!

Once everything was dry, I attached the new hardware we purchased.  The cabinets had goldish color hinges and white knobs.  We purchased brushed nickel knobs (from Target) and and dark, almost brushed nickel looking hinges (from Home Depot).

Old hinge

I then reattached the doors.  The drill and I as well as the cabinets and I had a few fights, but in the end I won (or will win once Carl fixes some of the doors.. the ones that have no space between them are overlapping, so he needs to drill new holes on the doors, I don't trust myself to do that).

I'm also putting in adhesive covering in all the drawers and cabinets.  I found them at Target.  I don't feel a rush to get this done, so I'm doing a little at a time at night.

Here's the finished product:

See the yellow on the right?  It will be that light green hopefully by next weekend

Don't let me fool you, my countertops are not that empty.

We used Valspar paint for everything.  The brick and the top portion of the wall I painted Panacca (well, I haven't gotten to some of the walls yet).  The cabinets are Drumskin.  The bottom of the wall is Paris Mint.  I really like that one!

I'm super excited because we are getting rid of this thing:

And replacing it with a ceiling fan!  Thank goodness!  It gets hot in the kitchen without a fan.

Oh, you know what else a remodel is good for?  Making you clean out your junk drawers.  You know you have at least one.  In our case we had two.  I made one into another utensil drawer and the other is more organized.  I threw out a bunch of stuff!  I used some office organizers from Target to organize the drawers.  If it doesn't fit in the baskets, it doesn't belong in the drawer!

*Carl did do the top portion of the cabinet structure.  I would have had to tape everything (remember, I get paint everywhere) and to save me time, he primed and painted the top.  I didn't get out of doing the cabinet doors though.

Oh and Koal tried to help paint.

Progress

Kitchen DIY "Remodel"

I've posted about our ugly our "in need of updating" kitchen in the past (here and here and here).

I've been slowly painting the bricks.  They were a little more time consuming than I originally thought.  I completed them last night along with a small wall in the kitchen.  I'm hoping tomorrow to paint the bottom portion of the wall (the red wall) tomorrow.  I think I can have the walls painted by the end of next week (or at least that is my goal).

Before

After

This is the color of the knobs I purchased for the cabinets.  I really like the look against the color of the wall.  Do you think I need to also try to find the inlay things (technical term there) in that color, or does it look okay like this?  Again, we are just trying to make everything look more appealing for a buyer.

This is how the original ones look against the wall.

It's a start

I would say this is a third of the brick back splash.  I also painted around the window.  It took about 30-45 minutes because of all the touch up on the brick.  The bricks need 1 more coat.

P.S. It is not sea foam green.

P.P.S. (that's correct, isn't it?!) Carl and I purchased paint for the bedroom.  Currently it is a super dark hunter green (because we don't like any light in the room at night).  Obviously, that is not a "neutral" color.  My projects list for the summer just keep getting longer.

If I blog about it...

I will have to be held accountable, right?

I'm not sure I've ever shown many pictures of our house.  I think I have of some things that make you ask, "What were they thinking?!"  Well, if you walked into our kitchen, the color would make you ask that very question... but not about the previous owners, about me!

I swear, I had this pictured better in my head.  But it turned out looking like a box of Crayola Crayons.  That's what you get when you don't put paint swatches up on your walls for almost a year a few weeks.

Yes, I did have paint swatches up for probably almost a year until recently.  I finally went to Lowes and purchased the paint.  But the paint was not the exact color as the color swatches I originally had up.  I couldn't find those and I had cut the numbers off when I had cut the swatches apart.  Ugh.  Hopefully the colors I picked out will not turn out like my original attempt.  I think I picked some more home-buyer friendly colors.

I am also going to repaint the cabinets.  Mrs. Miller has been extremely helpful at giving me guidance on how to do this.  The knobs and hinges on the cabinets will also be replaced.  Carl will have to replace the tracks for the drawers because they are rather old and not working the way they should.  I don't want to be the one who messes that up!

Oh, and coming back to the things that make you ask, "What were they thinking?!"

And it isn't even nice and evenly spaced out brick (you know, like us OCD people love... nice, neat, and orderly).  Like this:

"Why yes, that is an almost triangular piece.  We definitely need to have that on the back splash.  But where to put it?  I have the perfect spot!"

Really?  Anyways, I am going to try painting the brick first before having someone come and tear it out and put new drywall up.  Hopefully it will look good.  I originally picked out a light gray color (or what on the swatch looked like a light gray color).  I came home and painted it on a few of the bricks.  Yep, looks white.  So I painted another brick the same color as the top portion of the wall and it looks better.  So we shall see.

It is hard to see, but this is actually a green color

The bottom two are a gray, my original pick for them, but Carl and I decided it just
looks like we are trying to hide the brick

Now that I have blogged about my kitchen DIY remodel, I have to do it.  It will be completed this summer!

Laundry Room and A Closet

I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I haven't had my bedroom closet since I was about 6 months pregnant. My closet backs up to our master shower and the laundry room.

It all started when we were doing some remodeling in our master shower. Carl noticed the shower was dripping and thought a new shower head would do the trick. Nope, it wasn't really the shower head leaking. So, he took off the part that it on the shower wall that you turn it on and off with (not sure the real term for this). This is when he discovered the pipe was puttied together. Yep, puttied. We had to move all of my clothes into our spare room's closet so he and his buddy could cut a hole in the wall to fix the pipe. Please don't ask why that took so long to complete, lol.

Fast forward a few months. Hunter is born, Carl's work is stressful, I start my job. I notice that the laundry faucet is leaking. Carl discovered it has been leaking for a while. It has soaked the laundry room wall and, yep you guess it, my other closet wall. So still, no closet. Carl researches how to take out the walls, he even had a guy come and estimate the work ($3,300). Carl had enrolled a student who actually did drywall, and he said he would charge $100 to drywall both walls. So Carl removed the wall, removed the floor in the laundry room and the carpet in my closet. The guy came in and was finished in an hour. Carl was able to paint both walls, put in tile in the laundry room, and put up baseboards in the laundry room. He replaced the old washer connectors with nice, metal connectors (the old ones were aluminum and had rusted... the source of the trouble). I think we spent a total of $200 on this fix. After 4 weeks, awww, finally I had my laundry room back (thanks Mrs. Swann for allowing us to do laundry at your house!).

During... I have no before pictures, Carl had kicked Hunter and I out of the house during that process

Wednesday, Carl put my closet together. Yesterday, I put all clothes back in. It is so nice to be able to get dressed in one room. I don't have a picture of my closet because we have to replace the carpet in our room (since Carl tore out the carpet in the closet and some outside of the closet).

Thank you, Carl, for all the hard work you have put into this house.

Progress

I have made a little progress on the weed bed (no, you can't call it a flower bed if it doesn't have flowers). Not as much as I would have liked to have by now, but I'm working on it.

Before

Not done yet

Carl has also made great progress on the bathroom. He is putting me to shame with how much he has gotten done. It is not quite finished, but we were able to have people come over today and use it.

Just a sneak preview :]

What were they thinking?

As stated in a previous post, Carl and I did not share the same taste in house color, decor, etc. with the previous owners of our home. Here are some examples:

Brick is the new tile back splash.

Really? Was it necessary to make the bathrooms appear any small?

I felt I needed sunglasses every time I stepped in this room.

So I sometimes don't use a ruler when I hang things, but not using one to center the bathroom light wires.... probably not a good idea.

This is our shed out back.

This is what our shed sits on. I am scared for my life when stepping inside.

And while on the subject of our backyard... was there a point to those?

Anyways... Carl and I have done a lot to bring up the value of the home. We (Carl) have put down Pergo flooring, Berber carpet in the bedrooms, we have re-done one bathroom and are in the middle of re-doing another. I am going to see if I can't sand down the kitchen cabinets and paint them white (if it doesn't look good, we had planned to re-do the kitchen anyways, just trying to save some money) and then get new knobs and counter tops for them. I have no idea if I'm going to be able to take the brick back splash off myself, or if I'm going to have to have someone come in a do that for us (I just don't want to mess up the dry wall and then have to have someone come and fix it anyways). Any takers on taking it down for us? No, no one? Sigh.

Likely Excuse

"Everyone else is doing it."

Not that I will have interesting things to say. I'm in school so life is not all that exciting. Carl and I are redoing a bathroom and I have started working on what are suppose to be flower beds (but I lovingly call weed beds) out front.

Maybe the people who owned this house before we did may read this, and to them, the rest of the post is for.

Dear previous owners.... I'm glad you thought it would be a great idea to paint the bathrooms sky blue, including the ceilings, because it wasn't. We have most certainly not enjoyed painting two coats of Killz on it before we can actually paint it. And thanks for the beautiful "lawn"... those yellow "flowers" sure do add to its curb appeal.

Such a beautiful weed bed.