Upcoming House Projects

Hey, folks!

I thought it would be fun to document our upcoming house projects.  Kieran and I bought this 1938 tutor style house 2 months ago and adore it.  We’ve been working hard to make this house fit our style.

The true reason I’m bringing you a house post this week is that I tanked 2 recipes I wanted to share.  I made a salad which tasted delicious, but the pictures sucked and lacked artistic imagination.  I’m been yammering about wanting to improve my food photography so I can’t bring myself to post sloppy pictures.  The other recipe I tackled was fried chicken fingers with peach bourbon BBQ dipping sauce.  The recipe was good but not ready to share.  I plan on tweaking it this weekend so I can share it next week!

So, without food posts on the docket, I’ll talk about the projects and progress we’ve made in the house.

This house is a fucking behemoth compared to what we’re used to.  Our tiny Chicago condo was 800-ish square feet.  I could whisper in the kitchen and Kieran would ask why I was yelling.  Our new house is over 2K square feet with multiple levels.  I’ve lost Kieran in the house at least 5 times now.  Shit, I’ve lost myself in the house on occasion!

We adore our house, but it requires a major cosmetic facelift.  True confession time, I’m scared and excited to implement the design into the house.  On a scale of 1 to 10 my design skills are a solid -4.  I’ve never stylized a house so I’m nervous about doing a good job.  Pinterest, Google, and YouTube are my best friends at the moment, helping me conceive an idea, research the materials I’ll need, and learn how to execute my ideas by watching tutorials.

Some of the upcoming house projects are major like remodeling the kitchen, bringing back the garage to its old glory, filling in the mosquito-infested pond in the backyard, and doing a shit ton of weeding.  Other projects are relatively easy like repainting the house and getting the upstairs bedroom ready to rent on Airbnb.

Another large project is adding storage into the house.  We have plenty of room but built-in storage (like closets) is sparse and in other rooms nonexistent.  We have to buy or build our own storage/shelving throughout the house.  In the meantime we don’t have anywhere to put our belongings, we’re still living out of boxes!  I think we’ve unpacked maybe 20% of our stuff?  Lack of closets and other storage can be a major drawback to buying an old house from what I understand.  It’s currently a pain, but we’ll find a way to manage.

So yeah, the list of upcoming house projects is a mile long, we have our work cut out for us. Especially since we’re trying to accomplish everything ourselves.  We not swimming in extra money so everything needs to be done as nicely, yet cheaply as possible.  Which means certain projects (like the kitchen remodel) are crawling along at a slow pace.  I’m happy to report we are making progress in some areas of the house but it’s not happening quickly.   I’ll post the dramatic and fun DIY projects (and hopefully document what we spent along the way) in case you want to duplicate something you like!

The photo above shows our make-shift kitchen.  We tore down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, hence knocking out all the kitchen storage we had.  We need to focus on patching the walls/celling, then refinishing the floor, building a kitchen island, and adding extra storage in the dinning room.  We recently purchased dry wall equipment so we’ll patch up the walls soon.  I can’t wait to show you before and after shots of the kitchen once the remodel is complete!

In the meantime we’ve accomplished repainting the living room.  It’s hard to tell in the photos below, but the walls used to be mint green.  I’m not judging if you love mint green, but the hue is not my favorite for wall color.

The previous owner described the living room like this, That mint green was hideous, like floating in one of those pistachio mystery jello salads my grandma used to make!

The walls in the pics below photographed gray, but believe me, they were mint green.  I tried to photoshop the picture to give a true depiction of the wall color but failed, you’ll have to use your imagination.

The walls hadn’t been painted for years, they were mucked up and dirty looking.  The exterior of the house has a cool medieval look to it so I was excited to paint the walls in the living room a variation of gray colors to make it appear more castlesque.

The biggest painting challenge in the living room was the tall rounded ceiling and the staircase.  I’m in love with our staircase, it’s so freaking adorable, but it was an utter bitch to paint. It took poor Kieran hours to finish applying the painters tape so I could capture the look I wanted.  Once the tape was in place I took over and begun painting.  Ugh, I’m having flashbacks about how painful it was to paint the stairs.  Painting can be hard work, it’s especially difficult when you must lay on your side or stomach to reach certain areas.  Pretty safe to say we consumed an entire bottle of rum after the living room and staircase were done!

However, all the hard work paid off because I adore how the stairs turned out!  I love the contrast between the dark grey and the light gray, it’s gorgeous!

Before…

After…

Once the living room was repainted we turned our focus on decorating it.  Currently, our furniture style is a mishmash of hand me downs.  I swear, we own a kitchen table, some chairs, a couple cheap Ikea lamps, and 15 end tables!!  Seriously, someone explain to me WHY we have so many end tables!!   We’ve also been given an ugly beat up Ikea couch that I’ve been dying to get rid of.  We ordered new couches from Wayfair to spruce the place up.

Before (with our janky beat up Ikea couch).

After (with our new Wayfair couches)…

After we replenish our savings we’ll finish decorating the living room with rugs, new curtains, coffee table, ect.  We have fun plans for the fireplace too, we’ll eventually add a stone facade around the fireplace for a rustic look.

I plan on doing before and after shots to document how we accomplish certain looks/projects.  Hopefully, as we learn to remodel our house I can share fun how-to’s and avoid-making-these-mistakes kind of posts.

I apologize for lacking on the food posts recently, the housework has occupied much of my time, but I do look forward to sharing a new recipe with you soon.

Thanks so much for stopping by,

Christina