That right there ^^ is my current makeshift kitchen.
Hi friends! It’s been a crazy few weeks (or months?) around here and I thought I would give a little life update. This might be a long post, so buckle up. 😉
Last year Eric and I were toying with the idea of building a home. And there were a lot of variables we were considering– do we want more kids? do we need another bedroom? can we find something in our area? do we want to move away from our neighbors that we love?
We ultimately decided that we don’t want anymore children (much to my mother in-law’s disappointment 😉 ), don’t need an extra bedroom, didn’t want to leave our block, or our neighbors. So the plan was to stay in our home, BUT do a few home renovations:
- Finish our basement
- Update our kitchen
We always wanted to finish our basement and make it an area for the whole family to enjoy. Eric and I work out in the basement every morning so we also wanted to have a home gym down there. Work started on the basement at the end of November and it’s about 95% done, just a few finishing touches and I will be able to give a basement tour.
Our kitchen was something I wanted to make some changes to since we moved in. Even though we bought our house new, we didn’t get to pick any of the finishes/lights/counters etc. The countertops were not our style at all and I always knew we would redo them at some point. But then we started having some issues with our cabinets bubbling. The cabinets were very cheap and poorly made and we didn’t want to put new countertops on our existing cabinets if they were going to continue to give us problems. And so the idea of a kitchen remodel was born.
We are not changing the footprint of our kitchen, but we are doing a few new things– putting in a hood, moving the overhead microwave to the island, adding cabinets near our buffet area. Our kitchen also had two structural supports that were just not very nice to look at. We couldn’t get rid of them entirely, but we are slimming them down and making them look WAY better (I can’t wait to show you!). But slimming them down meant we would need to fix the floor where they were. Which meant we needed to get our flooring from somewhere else in the house. And that led us to our third change:
3. renovating our powder bathroom
We decided to renovate our powder room so that we could salvage the flooring from that room to use in the kitchen where we needed it. And also because I wasn’t crazy about the vanity and fixtures in that room.
Have I made your head spin yet? Because mine is.
And all of these home renovations are happening AT THE SAME TIME. And with TWO SMALL CHILDREN, I might add. Am I crazy?! The answer is a resounding YES.
The good news is that the kitchen is moving along very quickly. We have been without a kitchen for about 3 weeks and it should hopefully only be another 2 weeks before everything is done.
I’m not going to lie. It’s been pretty challenging. Having your house turned completely upside down. Having people in your home all day. Not having a kitchen. Being pretty much stuck upstairs with your 4 and 2 year olds. But I just keep focusing on the light at the end of the tunnel. And the kitchen that I am going to love to cook in, the basement I’m going to love sending my kids down to, and the powder room that I will lock myself in to hide from my kids. 🙂 All kidding aside, I know that we are fortunate to be able to make the changes we want.
I will definitely be sharing more of each space in the next few weeks so get excited because I am!
XO,
L
