Life lately

Hi! It's been a while! I'm still here, just very busy. While I really enjoy blogging it's been nice to take some time off. Id like to say I'll be around more often but I can't promise that, especially because we have no computer and this is really hard on my phone. If you're wondering though,  here's what you missed this past year: (50 first dates-anyone?)

We finished up our kitchen remodel almost a year ago and I apologize for keeping you hanging (if you don't follow me on fb or Instagram). 

Halfway through our kitchen remodel we got some exciting news! 

Morning sickness + no kitchen + sharing a bathroom with contractors (even if they are really good friends) was not as exciting though!

A few months later, in July, we found out that baby # 4 was a little girl. After having three boys, most everyone thought we'd have another. I, however, knew from the very beginning that this baby was a girl. Not many people believed me and to say our family was shocked when she was in fact a she, is an understatement. We made our closet into her nursery since we're running out of bedrooms upstairs. :)

In August for my 30th birthday, my parents helped pitch in for some built ins in the living room. We bought the base cabinets, plain old upper kitchen cabinets, on a local garage sale site. My brother in law then built the top/shelves from a sketch I made. 

They turned out amazing! I've rearranged them a few times now but I think I'll be sticking with this most recent neutral palette.

On December 7th, after a very long and complicated pregnancy (that included many late night hospital trips and bed rest) we welcomed our daughter Jemimah.

We've had a long road the past few months with complications from my third c-section and issues with breast feeding. Things are finally starting to settle down and we're finding a rhythm. She is such an easy baby and has all of us wrapped around her finger!

Right now I'm working on updating our master bedroom. It's true what they say about that being the last room you work on! I painted one wall three years ago in preparation for moving the older two boys into there together and haven't touched anything since then. Now our  oldest has his own room and we switched rooms with the younger two boys. They have the actual master bedroom since their bunk beds fit in there better and we took over their room. Last week I finished the painting, trim on the curtains and yesterday found a great carpet remnant we'll have bound. I wasn't planning on doing this room anytime soon but we made a big adult purchase (new mattress!!!!) and figured why not do it all now. Here's the rug, curtains and trim and beautiful Suzani I got to recover our headboard. We also snagged these night stands and dresser (which is in the boys room) on Craigslist. They're vintage Thomasville and in pristine condition. We've never had matching/nice night stands so I'm really excited about them!

I'll be posting bedroom and life updates  on Instagram if you care to follow along, sorry if this post is all screwed up, trying to do this on my phone is a nightmare!   

Kitchen floor plan

I finally got around to whipping up a floor plan for the kitchen. 

DW-dishwasher

F-fridge

Stairs lead to the basement and back door.

I really think this lay out takes advantage of the space best, especially getting rid of that stupid peninsula and moving the stove!

Present lay out, sorry for the horrible pics!

Kitchen plans:Calling an audible

Things are plugging along here and soon I'll need to make some actual decisions about this kitchen.

(I'm still working on getting an actual floor plan together from my last post.)

 If you don't follow me on Instagram then you didn't see this Sciolari chandelier that I scored for free a few weeks ago.

I had most everything planned out for the kitchen until this beauty came along. 

I would LOVE to use it above our dining table but I'm at a loss about what other lighting to use. I was planning on using a big lantern for over the table, oil rubbed school house lights in the kitchen and a pair of those white sconces (all pictured below) on either side of the window above the banquette. All pretty different but they work together. 

The Sciolari on the other hand does not play well with others, she's a diva!
What other light fixture (in my minuscule budget) could I possibly hang within 10 feet of her!? 

This is not a rhetorical question so if you have any ideas please let me know!

The only thing that I could think of was to do recessed lighting in the kitchen and nix the sconces.

I was also planning on doing either bead board or tongue and groove vertically on every wall (see in above pic). Clean, simple and relatively inexpensive. I'm not sure that I could still do that with the Sciolari. I would probably end up doing subway tile similar to the below picture.

Thoughts?
Suggestions??

Talk it out peeps......

Kitchen plans:New layout

The layout of our kitchen sucks.

Like I said before we have next to no counter space. 

I HATE having the stove up against the wall and the fridge sticks out suuuuuper far into the dining area/walkway. Wasted space in the dining area and hall china cabinet and a peninsula with a dishwasher that makes using the cabinets next to it impossible.

So here is the plan so far, courtesy of my awesome brain and a pen and paper:

All soffits will be removed.
Duh.
Upper cabinets raised and crown added up to the ceiling.

Here is the L-shaped main run of cabinets which includes sink and stove......

Dishwasher flush against the wall, get rid of the peninsula and open it up!!!
Also planning on taking down the lonely upper cabinet and putting in some open shelves.

Round that corner and where we removed the counter cook top (second pic from top) is where we'll be relocating the stove.

As you can see from the before photo there isn't a ton of room but I would rather move the stove than have a big base corner cabinet. We'll be gaining a bunch of storage elsewhere and we're already used to living out of 7 cabinets so I'm not worried. I refuse to have a freestanding stove (vomit) so this will most likely require a custom cabinet built on the outside, possibly open storage for cookbooks like I drew. 

We'll see.

On the wall where the stove is now we will have this:

Framed in fridge and four feet of uninterrupted counter space!!! :)

So those are the plans and as you can see I already have all the measurements written below each cabinet. That is because we already have the cabinets, they're stacked tetris style in our garage until spring.

My Aunt and Uncle recently bought a condo and after gutting the kitchen, generously gave us the cabinets and granite counter tops. 

How awesome is that!?!

The cabinets are really, really nice oak and will look really, REALLY nice once they're painted.

This ^ run of cabinets just so happens to be 48" inches and will fit perfectly beside the fridge. That also means one less cut of those granite counter tops-kind of the straw that broke the camels back for moving the stove.

Granite looks like this close up:

Along with the base and upper cabinets there are also two pantry cabinets-24"ish wide by 6ft-ish tall. 

One of them will be built in at the end of the hallway and the L shaped banquette will run from there under the window to the dishwasher cabinet. 

Also planning on ripping out that china cabinet in the hallway and putting in a real pantry with a single door.

Stay tuned for a million inspiration pics and plans!

Kitchen plans, part one of many

We've been dreaming of gutting our kitchen for three years now.

The day we moved in the oven didn't work, thankfully my parents were in the middle of their kitchen reno so they were able to give us their old one.

Over time almost everything else has fallen apart.

The cabinets are original to our 1950's ranch and had birch door fronts back in the day. Back in the 80's the previous owners thought it would be a good idea (side eyes at them) when they put in new pink laminate counter tops to add laminate to the door fronts too. The doors are so heavy that they're pulling the hinges right out of the cabinets. I gave up trying to put them back on so we have a majorly ugly open storage look going on!

The (empty) soffits are covered in pink wallpaper, the switch for the disposal (which doesn't work anymore) is on the front of the sink cabinet (water and electricity are best friends right!?), the back splash tile looked like an 80's McDonald's bathroom, there is next to no counter space, the dishwasher does not wash dishes-it needs to be fired (Office Space printer scene style!), some of the counters are actually loose in places, the faucet only works if you don't turn it up too high otherwise the water shuts off AND the kitchen and laundry room (directly below the kitchen) are on the same breaker so we can't run the microwave or dishwasher and the washer or dryer at the same time because it trips the breaker.

#longestrunonsentenceever


These pictures are from our first showing with our realtor.

Yikes.

It was overwhelming but I could see through all that CRAP to the potential!

We haven't been able to do a lot with it over the years but stripping the wallpaper in the dining area and  painting the soffits and the tile white was a big improvement

We also removed the cook top that the previous owners had, you can see the piece of plywood below covering the hole in the counter top.

This coming spring we will finally be tackling this beast!

So, so, SOOOOO excited!!!!!

If you've been reading for a while now you know how budget conscious I am. 

This reno will be done as cheaply as possible and I'm excited to share it all here!

Over the next couple weeks I'll be sharing some of our plans here so stay tuned and follow along if you want to.

Checking in

Random stuff I'm loving right now (all via Pinterest)....

This ^ bread is to DIE for!!

As sad as I am to see summer go (we had a great one!), fall is my absolute favorite! It's already gotten quite cool here in MT, down into the 40's at night and jacket weather most days. I just saw the recipe above for white chocolate pumpkin snickerdoodles and I'm planning on making them this weekend. I love anything pumpkin, except Starbucks pumpkin spice latte of course. 

Was anyone really shocked by that!?

The boys and I started school on Labor Day (we home school) and we are all so glad to get back into it! Last weekend was the mad dash to get the school room organized and ready for the year, it's not much to look at but it's such a blessing to have it all in one (big!) space!

It seems like blogging every two-three months is going to become the norm around here but follow me on Instagram for almost daily ramblings....if you so desire. 

Happy fall!