Front Door Area

When we moved in the living room and dining room had dark stained hardwood floors! I love my oak floors. We refinished them with just a clear coat to brighten it up some since we don't get a lot of natural day light in those two rooms. We use our front door all the time. The kids and dog track in water when it rains, snow, mud and dirt all the time! The floor is not doing so well by the front door. It's starting to rot and is breaking in some areas. Our plan is to put in a half wall to divide the front door area from the living room and then tile the floor in that area. Hubby is also building a 7 foot long cabinet to put along the wall by the closet to hold extra shoes, gloves and hats.

 Here is how it looks now and the tape shows where the wall will go. My tape line isn't straight but it was to just give me a visual so I could make sure it was what I really wanted to do!

 

The area is about 5 1/2 foot wide by 12 foot long.

Here's the tile we picked out.

 

I wanted to do a pinwheel pattern after we worked on a clients kitchen and eat in area.  I loved the look.  So we picked up some 12x12 inch tiles and some 6x6 inch tiles.  They were very inexpensive at Lowes.  At first I wanted the real slate tiles they carried but I didn't like how those tiles were falling apart just looking at them in the store!  

This is what the pattern looked like in our clients home.

Kitchen Progress

This has got to be one of the world's longest kitchen remodel projects EVER!  We started buying things to redo the kitchen roughly 4 years ago this summer.   We bought nearly everything like appliances, wood to build the cabinets, hinges, knobs/pulls, drawer slides etc.  Then we built the cabinet carcasses.  It wasn't until the Summer of 2011, specifically July, that we started to gut the kitchen.

This was the picture on the house listing that we looked at before we purchased the house.

The ugly kitchen....and really yes the previous owners used that picture on the listing!!

  We got to planning what we wanted to do:

in the mean time we had painted since moving in.

Then we got to work.  Pete helped a little but most of the demo was done by my younger 2 boys and myself.

Jacob & Nathan taking out the drywall

Remodeling is a messy job!

Just some of the wiring damage we found inside the walls.

After all the demo and clean up, Pete got to work on putting it all back together.   We redid all the electrical, added more recessed lights, wiring for under cabinet lighting, dry walled, redid the hardwood floors Pete installed a few years ago and painted.

Pete mudding and taping the drywall

Pete refinishing the hardwood floor.

Floor is done!

Cabinets are in, although not done.

It's coming along.  That's a granite slab leftover from gutting a homeowners kitchen.

We still need to make the cabinet doors, shelves and drawers.  We still need to make and install all the trim and get the granite installed.

At least for the most part the kitchen is usable!