Sentiments by Denise

Our Kitchen

It's hard to believe that just a few months ago our house was in a constant state of chaos and shambles, mostly.

We were in the middle of a major remodel project from April of last year through the end of August. It was hard living without the convenience of a fully operational kitchen, but it was all worth it...

See for yourselves:

Our cabinets came from Lowe's, made by Shenadoah: Charleston design. We enjoyed creating more space and implementing more storage area than we had before.

This is what it looked like before:

I like the bold color that the red brings to the room.

The countertop and sinks are Corian - which I like a lot. The color pattern of the countertop is called Maui and we had a good friend make and install it. It was one of the last things to finish up the room. And what a relief to finally have a larger workspace to create meals.

You may have noticed that I do not have an automatic dishwasher. That's by choice - I prefer washing/drying my dishes by hand and it's a chore I really don't mind doing. Here's how it looked about an hour ago:

 

Since I like a neat, clean kitchen - I usually don't leave dirty dishes sitting on the countertop. I especially don't like to go to bed at night with dirty dishes sitting around, as I prefer waking up to this:

You may also notice in the photo above that we have under-cabinet lighting installed. The other lighting in the kitchen is recessed and we installed a dimmer, which is really nice to have.

We didn't replace any applicances (which saved us some significant dollars) because our stove and fridge were both only a couple years old and are holding up well.

The pretty towels were embrodiered by Ed's cousin's wife and are a perfect match to the walls. The pretty red teapot was a surprise from Santa this year!

This space is one of my favorites. Moving the refrigerator to the other side of the room not only allowed us to create more counter workspace and cupboard space in the area vacated by the fridge, but gave us a chance to design a full size pantry cupboard, which I love.
The cabinet over the fridge holds all my small appliances: juicer, crockpot, breadmaker, and food processor. The blender is kept in a cupboard at the end of the counter (below) beside the toaster since we use these appliances almost daily. And, of course, my beloved RED Kitchen Aid sits in its designated spot in the baking corner.

Lastly, I wanted to mention our kitchen table which we had made in Shipshewana IN by the Amish.

It seats four comfortably like this, but as you can see it has wings on both sides that can extend the table to seat up to eight people. However, to make that happen in our still small kitchen would make the space very crowded. We normally have no more than six dine at the table at one time. I love the wood - it's brown maple, which we chose to match the cabinets, although the stain is a bit darker than the cabinets. It doesn't look too far off in real life.

The flooring is ceramic tile and the layout was designed by my husband. We had a great guy that we met in the beginning of our remodeling who did some fantastic work for us (I highly recommend him) - he laid the tile, mounted all the cabinetry, and did all our drywall work, which included building a beam across the ceiling to support the load bearing wall when we tore out part of the wall separating the kitchen and living room.
I made the curtain valances over each of the windows. I knew I didn't want full curtains because I didn't want to hide the light (like the curtains I had before did). I found this fabric at Joann's and it matched perfectly with the paint we picked out. I found the brick red oval braided rug that sits in front of the sink online.

The space we've created makes it easier to entertain, create meals, and enjoy togetherness. I hope you enjoyed this little tour of our newly remodeled kitchen.

A Little Color

 
Just a little color often adds the perfect touch to a room.

 
These flowers were "leftover" from a bouquet that I got at the farmer's market last weekend - pretty little wild flower arrangement that I cut down and placed in a votive candle holder.

When I first started thinking about color for my new kitchen, I knew I wanted something a bit bold, as I've lived with country blue and ivory for the past 17 years and it was getting tiring to look at. Our house had been given a little "facelift" before we bought it with fresh paint, wall paper, and carpet, but we didn't really do a lot to it in all these years until recently when we embarked on our renovation project.

I received a new KitchenAid stand mixer for Christmas back in 2009 and I love using it. I had requested a RED one and that's what I was given! So, it made sense (at least to me!) to make it a focal point of my new kitchen.

 
It has a little place of honor in the baking corner of the kitchen counter!

Ed was very leary of a bold statement in the kitchen when I suggested red walls. In fact, he nixed the idea right off the bat! He's one who likes the subtle, neutral colors and most of the time I'm okay with that - but this time we had to reach a compromise (which we did several times in the course of our remodeling project!). Along with the help of some of my dear girlfriends, I was able to convince him that a little splash of color (for at least 2 walls in the kitchen) would be a good thing and would be relatively painless for him.

He's coming around.

(plus, he loves that mixer - it makes great chocolate brownies, which are his favorite!).

 

In The Beginning - It's Simple!

We had been talking about remodeling/updating our kitchen for several years, but for the longest time it didn't happen for one reason or another.

You've heard me say before that we have a small home - it's 3-bedroom with one bathroom, ranch-style. But, I really like the size and especially so now that it's just Ed & I living here. Just the right amount of space. We sort of had that in mind when we bought the place, as we knew we didn't want something too big that it would be difficult to manage day to day. I'm not a big fan of house cleaning and it's everything I can do to stay ahead of the clutter that can creep in, so this house is perfect for the two of us.

 
I found this book - Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider -  not too long ago, that has really helped me see the importance of simplicity in my home - staying organized and reducing clutter. In the coming days I'll be sharing about our remodeling experience and showing some before and after photos (which many have been anxious to see!). Being intentional about keeping things simple helps so much in bringing balance and peacefulness to my life.

I still have some work to do in this area (my craft studio still needs an overhaul!), but I'm moving in the right direction and feel so much more freedom when things are organized and simple.

Can't wait to share more with you!

Take a Good Look!

Tomorrow all of this will disappear!

 
The cabinets and sink will be removed tomorrow. We've already ordered our new custom cabinetry, but they won't arrive until May 27th or so. We're going to have to be creative if we need to use the kitchen, which I don't anticipate doing much. The gas stove will still be hooked up, but who wants to mess with cooking when nothing is within reach.

 
All of the carpet in the kitchen, living room, and hallway was removed last weekend and

 
we are in the process of removing all the wallpaper in the kitchen - such a time consuming job - and messy, too! There are two rows of border (one at the ceiling and one at the chair rail), plus the bottom third of the entire wall in the kitchen had a country blue paper. This was all in the house when we moved in 17 years ago. It had been newly decorated by the previous owners back then and I was satisfied with it and decorated around it. In all these years I have not changed much in the way of decor. My kitchen had lots of things hanging on the walls, little things to catch dust, and much "eye clutter" - everywhere you'd look there was something else.

That will all change.

Here's what we did to open things up in the house about a week and a half ago when we had the wall between the kitchen and living room partially removed:

 
Things are a mess here - we have a card table and chairs in the kitchen (easy to remove when needed), things not needed daily have been moved to the garage to store, things used daily (food, dishes, microwave, coffee pot for Ed, water cooler) have been moved to the back bedrooms, the washer and dryer have been moved to the garage and I'm going to the laundromat once a week.

We have a lot of wall prep to get done before the cabinets arrive: stripping of wall paper, patching holes, priming/painting walls, ceilings, and trim. The laundry room is completely gutted and Ed had to tear down two walls - one to install our new furnace
 
and another to do some rewiring of the electricals in the house. The furnace "room" has been painted since this photo was taken. The green/blue color you see in the top right of the photo above is the painted wall that was behind the cupboards we removed in the laundry room! What were they thinking using that color!?

This weekend will be a busy one - besides all the remodeling work here at the house, I will be participating with the musical team at our church for four services over the weekend (two on Saturday evening and two on Sunday morning). We plan to have Easter dinner at Emilee's apartment on Sunday, as it will be too messy/challenging to try to put together a meal here.

Have a blessed Easter weekend as you celebrate our Lord's resurrection!

Home Renovation

There is a lot going on at our house these days! We're starting a huge renovation project that involves:

• Completely new kitchen --> new tile floor, freshly painted walls/ceiling, new cabinets, new counter tops, new sink/faucet, updated plumbing, newly designed kitchen table, new window treatments (that might just involve RED!)
• Open concept between the living room and kitchen --> we are taking down part of the wall that separates these two rooms to bring a more open feeling to the space
• Living room updated --> freshly painted walls/ceiling, new carpet, new furniture (sofa sectional), new window treatments
• Other --> updated furnace and air conditioner, freshly painted laundry room w/ new cabinets, updated electrical wiring throughout the house, new patio in the backyard

Lots to do and lots of decisions to make! I'm so fortunate that I have a very organized and thorough husband who researches/budgets/bargains/and is very handy himself - he definitely keeps us on track with everything from the financial end of things to the sequencing of what has to be done when.

We live in a relatively small house (built in 1959), but really prefer it that way for several reasons - the number one reason right now is that we're empty nesters and this house is the perfect size for just the two of us! Also, it's affordable. And since it's smaller, it's much easier to keep clean...or should be!

 
(before  -kitchen with original cabinetry and counter tops...notice how little space there is to work!)

Cleaning is not my strong suit and I have found lately that the things I own and collect have really become more cumbersome than enjoyable. This year during the Lenten season I decided that I would start purging items that I no longer needed/enjoyed/wanted so that life would become more organized and simpler. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is a sacrifice for me (much more than I'd like to admit) because I like to hold onto "things" more than I really should and they clutter up my life so much.

I will share a few pictures of the renovations going on now and then, but I really want to save the before/after photos for when the project is completely done. Our goal is 6-8 weeks to completion, as we are doing many of the updates ourselves (with help from Ed's cousin, Clayton, and our daughter, Emilee and a few others we've contracted to help).

 
(Ed and Emilee ready to knock out the wall in the laundry room to remove the furnace!)

You are welcome to stop by to see how we're doing, but you might be handed a scraper or a paint brush and asked to help out!
When we moved into this house 17 years ago, it had been recently updated with new carpet, paint, and wallpaper. Our children were young and we were a busy family with not much time and money to do any other updates (except a necessary bathroom remodel project and a couple bedrooms painted). This home renovation project has been on the back burner for several years and we decided that it is now time!

I'm looking forward to the process, but even more so to the finished product! So far we've had the wall partially removed between the living room and kitchen, torn out all the old carpet, emptied all the cabinets (my craft room is now my kitchen pantry!), selected and ordered new kitchen cabinets, decided on paint colors, carpet, floor tile, countertop, faucet, started stripping the old wallpaper in the kitchen, new furnace has been installed, removed cabinets from the laundry room, relocated the washer/dryer to the garage (where I won't be able to use it during this renovation, so it's off to the laundromat once a week for me! -don't be jealous!), and we've moved items to new places in our home that are not the norm - microwave in Ed's office, freezer in the living room (it will eventually go to the garage), using a card table in the kitchen (something easy to fold up and move when needed), all the food/dishes from my cabinets are now in my craft room - and I'm continually looking for something I can't find!

Lots to do but the result will be good!