House Renovation: Progress Report 2

We've been busy bees over here! We've been in our house for almost two months now, and we're excited with how much we have gotten done... but are even more excited for when we'll be completely done with this space. The kitchen and living room and downstairs bathroom are our focus right now. Once we finish these (our plan is to be done in the next month), we'll move upstairs, as time and money permit.

For the most part, I am the designer and painter while Ben is the builder and installer and demolitioner (how's that for a word?!). We have done most of the work ourselves with help from a few friends with the floor and cabinet installation, and we had a guy come and do the mudding.

Here is a picture from a week ago. We were so excited to be at this point- cabinets and appliances installed and flooring down!

BUT, we're even more excited about where we are at after this weekend! Ready for some BEFORE and AFTER pictures? I always LOVE before and after pictures, so I wanted to make sure I had them for our house renovation. So, here are some with the progress we have so far (but we will have more in a month or so when we actually finish the space completely). 

Here is the entire kitchen view. We knocked out a wall and moved the half bath/laundry room, so the kitchen in the "after" picture is bigger. But I also love how the color white really brightens and opens up a space!

Side view of the kitchen. The angle is jut a little different, but look how much bigger the kitchen is!

View of the kitchen from the living room. We took out a half wall between the kitchen and living room and put up a beam, and I love how open the space is now! I also love the new floor.

And one more picture from a different angle...

Besides working on the inside, Ben worked hard on the outside of the house as well. We learned that the guy who lived here before us probably only ever did lawn work (including mowing) twice a year!! So, needless to say, the lawn was quite the mess. Ben did a lot of raking and mowing and planting new grass seeds, and with the rain that God has poured down on us these past couple of weeks, the lawn is beginning to look much better!

Below you can see the dead grass and part of the huge pile of sticks and limbs and leaves.

It's really easy to find where our property line is between the different color of grass! This was after Ben had done hours of work to fix the lawn.

Things we still plan to do in the kitchen/living room:
-Install light fixtures
-Install open shelving to the left of the sink
-Hang side panels on cabinets
-Build three doors (pantry, bathroom, closet)
-Finish a little bit of painting
-Repaint kitchen table and chairs
-Put up trim and crown molding
-Put sink, toilet, and shelves in bathroom
-Plank one of the walls
-Build entryway bench and coat hanger
-Get or build island stools
-Decorate!

So we still have quite a bit of work left to do, but thankfully the space is livable now!

Thanks for following our house renovation journey. Hope you enjoyed this progress report!