Outside Before-2006/2007

Here are a few pictures of our home before we started the outside renovation 2 years ago, it's still not finished but it's getting close-we hope to fix the porch stairs and finish some shingle and detail work this summer. Also, my brother (who is a landscape architect in Los Angeles-score!) will be coming ini June to design our front yard scape!

Pictures include:
1. House Prior to move-in-note aluminum siding (Fall 2006)
2. Removing aluminum siding-gotta love all those lead paint chips falling (Summer 2007)
3.Stripping paint off of side board and prepping to remove all shingles and replace-we completed all of the paint stripping, shingle replacement and prep and then hired the painters
4. back of house before shingle work began
5. Just before paint began, notice crumbling chimney, new side board where we adjusted height of window and new shingles that we hand nailed....me not so happy after spending most of our summer evenings doing work (October 2007)

Kitchen In-between

I describe this as our in-between kitchen because while it looks "1950s cute" to me, we hope that this will only be our kitchen for several more years before we remodel. We spent a couple hundred dollars painting, changing out hardware (purchased from a salvage store for next to nothing), putting up curtains (I sewed myself) on rods purchased from seconds at Rejuvenation. The light was purchased from seconds at Rejuvenation for the fixture and the shade a full price shade which I hope to use again when we remodel. In the full kitchen shot, you will see an oven that we borrowed from a friend and then sold when we found a 1946 oven (pictured) at an estate sale for just $50. The scale was given to me by my mom that she no longer had in her kitchen (year is 1911) and the paper towel/saran dispenser ($3 estate sale) which has since been replaced by one that is nicer (~$8 estate sale). We also found an old "ringing" nickel door bell for $0.50 at an estate sale to replace our 26-song electric version that came with the house. We could not live with the look that was there when we moved in so updating was well worth the cost and time for the in-between.

The kitchen may look great from afar, but don't look too close as we have no water pressure in our sink, no dishwasher (I am not such a purist that I permanently want to be without one), our 70s vinyl floor is peeling up and our gray laminate counter top is coming apart and worn. In addition, one great love of our old kitchen is frequently finding wood shavings in our utensil drawer from the drawer above rubbing on the "tracks" (good source of fiber, right?).

We love our kitchen for now but will be glad when the day comes that everything works, we are not going up and down the basement stairs for all food except spices and cereal and we are not the only dishwashers, let alone won't accidentally be eating wood shavings from time to time. Kitchen dreaming includes a dishwasher, gas appliances, more storage, red walls, white cabinets, water pressure and some sort of solid surface countertops.

Kitchen Before

Here are a few pictures of our kitchen from before we moved in and when we started the transformation. As you can see, the colors, wallpaper and hardware were less than desireable

$13 Built-ins?

here are more pictures that have inspired our current and close to most expensive to date design project. We are currently having some amazing fir custom built-ins made for our living room/dining room divide and around our fireplace. Along the lines of picture #2. It is so fun to come home almost everyday this week to something new in our house and work with the cabinet maker to problem solve design dilemmas that seem to come up 1-2x a day. Just thought I'd share some of my finds of cool pictures that have and continue to inspire...

Dining Room Before

Just a few pictures of what we were able to see past (wallpaper, paneling, aluminum windows, oh yea, and more wallpaper) when we moved in-the built-ins sold us on the house!