We remodeled our kitchen during the summer of 2008, one year after purchasing our home, while wedding planning…I tell ya folks, if you can make it through a kitchen remodel your golden.  Our kitchen worked for us, but it had a few issues.  Most of the appliances where on their last leg and some of the cabinet doors where missing.  I had lived in my previous home for seven years and wasn’t until I was close to moving that I remodeled the most used room in the house, the kitchen.   I vowed not to wait until it was time to move again and actually get to enjoy a new kitchen.  Our kitchen is the most used room in the house, not to mentioned one of the best investments and return for your money.

This could be one of the worlds longest posts but this seems so long ago so for the sake of catching up without further ado here we go.

I couldn’t image how to use such a big space in the best possible way, so I hired a incredibly experienced and creative kitchen & interior designer; Brenda Higgins from Kitchen Comfort. Brenda designed a double island kitchen with only lower cabinets.  If you are in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area and looking for a kitchen remodel you must get in contact with Brenda.

I love the open floor plan, separate dining area all of the natural light.  The island areas are great during parties, I don’t feel like I am stuck away in the kitchen and there are lots of great areas for people to gather around during conversation.

If I were a billionaire I would have custom shelving and cabinetry in every closest in the house, my OCD would flourish.  Until then I rely on old faithful, metal shelving.  Metal shelving is my go to for closet organization; I can install it myself easily and quickly, it’s super affordable and I can customize it for any size storage I need.

The linen closet in one of our basement baths drove me crazy every time I tried to put something in it, I had been dealing with it knowing some day I’d like to tear the whole thing out.  I couldn’t do it anymore and really wanted the extra storage space.

The glass doors the previous owners had installed were to big for the opening, which meant I could only open the doors on each side about 8 inches.  It was chaos inside and only housed two shelves, barely reaching from one side to the other.

I took the doors down making some Craigs-lister quite happy with their new find.  I fought with the existing shelving brackets for at least a half hour before giving up and working around them.  I was being lazy and didn’t feel like repairing drywall so I worked my new shelving around the existing brackets.

See the old brackets there, they look like they are supporting the new shelving.  I didn’t need that extra support in this particular closet but they get to stay there anyways.  I filled the closet back up with all our odds and ends towels Diesel’s shower towels and some random baby stuff in storage until needed again.

Hung up a extra set of random curtains and called it a day.  I’ve got room to spare and no more stuff on the floor.  Have you ever used wire shelving?  Do you like it?

I still kick myself every time I wish I had taken more “before” photo’s of our home.  I have a bazillion “progress” pictures, but if I would have just pulled the camera out a few times during the first 2 years in our home.  I’ll just have to change everything again…

We had this hole at the bottom of the original front doors, big enough for the mice to join us over the winter and keep themselves warm and their bellies full. I remember saving for the new front door, it was a big purchase for us. Diesel had jumped through the screen doors several months back when the neighbor lady showed up with treats in her pocket.  Diesel always knows she’s the holder of the good stuff.  Shortly there after I took down the screen doors and our entrance actually looked much more inviting, I just didn’t care for the extra critters.

If you look REALLY hard you can see our old front doors through the big bushes.

If someone really wanted in they would simply need to lean against these bad boys and in they would go.

A inside view.  Dark, fuzzy photo, I know.  You can see where I re-purposed the doors HERE.

So I was pretty pumped when these bad boys arrived.  They shut, locked, there was no longer a draft and my little mice friends could no longer sneak in.  What I didn’t expect was the daylight that streamed through these into our front entryway, nice surprise.

Any big changed in your house lately, any small critters sneaking in your front door?

Remember when we tackled our yard few years back?  You can find it here.  It was weekends of work, in fact I just found these in between photos that reminded me how hard it was to potty train a dog with no grass.

Yup, that’s Diesel…I could carry him then.  But he grew so fast, here’s a few months later.

Lots of change in our little big pup, not so much for our beautiful landscaping.  We did get grass in that summer though, it looked like we rolled out green carpet the day we laid the sod.  We gave ourselves a break for one summer before we resumed full force through the buck thorn in the corner section of our lot. The second half of the lot was not nearly as bad as the main property, we cleared through it in a long weekend with help and a skid loader of course.

The oak tree seems to be a good point to find your way through these photos, it’s amazing how much our lot has changed since we bought our property in 2007.  Here’s a good round up of our progress.

Lot’s more for me to mow   That’s the far corner there looked like this for 3 years, most people in the neighborhood leave their lots like this, buck thorn and all.  The OCD in me couldn’t stand it, must clear, must clean, must make perfect.

It may appear we took down several trees but I can count on my hand how many were removed, and they were already dead I promise. Here’s a shot looking toward the house.

It’s pretty amazing when I look back and see were we started, actually hard to believe sometimes.  I’ve got lots of landscaping to put in someday but am waiting for the exterior of the house to be done.  Besides for once I’m not actually sure what to do, it’ a huge lot and I may need to seek out a little help.

It was a show stopper in the neighborhood I tell you, people couldn’t believe we had a pond in our back yard they could never see it before.

If I were to name my least favorite room in the house it would have to be our basement TV room.  It’s decked out in cedar all the way around, it has the fanciest little bar (complete with a few mice in the deep dark corners), the worlds most awkward fireplace set up making for a even more awkward room set up.

Here’s what it looked like the day we moved in.

Here’s the Moved In version, TV check, Couch Check – Everything a man needs.

And I almost forgot, dirty, dirty carpet even after a hundred carpet cleanings.

I’ve wanted to redo this room since we moved in but had other plans for the budget.  So to tune things up a bit I tore a lot out and only spent money on paint and new carpet.  Since we have plenty of natural light upstairs and through out most of the basement I wanted to create a Theater like room so I used this as a opportunity.  I had to use words like “Mans Room” and “Theater Room” to really sell my husband on the idea of painting the cedar he loved so very much.

So I tore out the bar area and the brick/fireplace opening the room up more and making for a better layout.  I also went with dark paint colors for the walls (Sherwin Williams Malarca) and ceiling (Sherwin Williams Bronze Tone).

Let’s not forget my favorite part – New carpet, I’ve waited to replace this carpet since we bought our house 4 years ago.  I finally feel like I can sit on the floor, just in time for out little one

I’ve got plans to put a new bar in the future.  I’ll be working on the tile first and then install cabinets.  We also just scored a Electrolux Beverage Center at a fundraiser for an amazing deal so I can check of the appliance purchase early.

What’s your least favorite room in your home?  What are your remodeling wishes for it?

Husband said I nested through my entire pregnancy, realistically I nest everyday.  I’m a neat freak on the surface (not a germ freak) and love having everything in it’s place.  I had our whole house unpacked and put together in a couple of days if you don’t count the laundry room which seems to be the dumping ground for things that don’t have a home.  If you remember back when we moved in Husband didn’t really pack very well, if at all.  He also needs to get a library card since we don’t have a room we can dedicate to his books.  Here’s our embarrassing room that I usually leave out of our house tour when guests come over:

I don’t remember how it all went down but I made a trip to Ikea to buy new book shelves 7.5 months pregnant and was not able to lift the boxes.    So I had to enlist Husband (who greatly dislikes projects) to haul the worlds heaviest boxes through the house and down to the basement.  But like he says, he can bring the muscle just don’t ask him to put anything together.

Most of the mess really was just a matter of putting back in it’s place, I had put up the long metal shelves when we first moved in and now we needed a better place for Brad’s books.

So I had everything all organized and then Husband needed to reorganize to his specifications, hence room a mess again.

Have you ever used the metal shelving units you can find at Home Improvement stores like Home Depot?  They are a must have in all my closets, easy to install and pretty affordable in comparison to the California Closets of the world.  This awkward space quickly became functional.

With just a few tools you can multiply your storage space.  I also hung a few curtains to hide the clutter (stole the idea from an awesome blog – Young House Love)

Hoping we can keep this room presentable.  What room in the house is your go to room for things that don’t have a home?

I blame it on my pregnancy, but truth be told I’m so busy with projects I can’t always find time to post.  Plus we did welcome out little bundle of joy Bonham Liam Nelson on April 27th to the Family.

It’s been a little busy being a new mom, props to those other blogging moms out there.  Here’s a couple more from our photographer that was gracious enough to shoot these in our home.

This one is in our sitting room upstairs, I’ll have to get on that update post along with several others.  Here is one last one in the little mans nursery found here.

Now if I could just learn to photograph half as good and Jennie from Jennie Gaskins Photography things would look that much better!!

This post is a little deceiving as I continue to back track chronically as best as I can.  Somewhere after my first 43 gallons of paint we managed to get all the weeds killed and yard prepped for sod.

As a reminder since April of our first summer (2008) till end of September (2008) we have conquered:

- removing about 50 trees
- removing about ½ an acre of 7-foot tall cockle-burs
- removing 360+ 4-inch diameter / 120lb railroad ties
- removing more underbrush

A lot more before pictures can be found here and here.

So spring is not officially here for 20 days (Yay!, just 20 days) but in honor of that great event later this month let’s celebrate with a little green grass.  Oh, I can smell it now after a fresh lawn mowing.

In late August we had both patios and front steps prepped and ready for cement.  We did not pour the cement ourselves but prepared the patios and front steps order to save some dough.  Using my trusty (I wish it was mine) bobcat brought in class 5 and sand.  This allowed us to negotiate the price of the cement significantly lower, they would just need to pull up and pour.

As you can see we instantly had grass to, not really we had over 20 truckloads of dirt to haul in and prep the yard prior to laying the sod.

So late September after laying 23 pallets of sod we could finally walk through the yard and enjoy a good grilling out.  It was definitely heaven though, instant grass!!!  It was a big day in the Nelson household, I had been cleaning muddy paws off Diesel and Penelope for almost a year.  So in honor of Spring around the corner I hope you enjoyed our new yard.

I’m going to dive in to the before and afters since I already gave you a sneak peek of the room yesterday.  Here’s a quick reminder of what it look liked when I got started.

Remember those glass closet doors?  Brad did not want me to take them down, I think because he didn’t want to have to carry them upstairs.  But I did it anyways, sold them on craigslist and replaced with curtains.  I even managed to use my sewing machine to hem them as well as the panels on the windows, big step for suzy homemaker.

I’ve manged to put together all the big ticket items over the past few months.  I also just added more storage with some Ikea cubies a couple of weekends ago knowing you can never have enough storage.

I had my eye on the owl bedding from dwell for a couple months and was super pumped when I found a brand new package on Ebay for almost have the retail price.  I moved the artwork in from our unused sitting room, you can see better pictures of it in this post. The prints are done by Matte Stephens and you can buy his prints here on Etsy.

I love the brightness of the new paint in fact I painted this room almost a year ago already and have been decorating around the colors, not something I normally recommend or practice.  Here’s the info on the paint: Sherwin Williams Honeydew on the walls, Slow Green on the ceiling and painted the trim in Greek Villa like I have been in the rest of the house… So much trimming!

Leave your comments below, I’ve off to snow plow the driveway.

If you read the post last week with a quick house tour of the rooms I didn’t get a chance to snap a picture of before I lathered them in paint you will probably recognize this room.  This is the bedroom closest to our room that seemed like the most obvious to transform for our new little boy.  Since little boy is not here yet and a name has not been decided I’ll have to stick with “baby boy” or something appropriate until then.  Promise to share as soon as he enters this world.

Back to the sneak peek though, I had painted this room early on in 2008.  I had to whip every bedroom into a livable space asap, we were like a Bed & Breakfast at least one weekend out of every month with every room filled with a guest.

We have taken several trips to Africa and this room was the go to with the memorabilia.  Doesn’t really seem appropriate for a newborn and I had become very bored with the neutral paint color.  So I’m not going to share much today, but here’s some odd angled photo’s of the new paint color.

What do you think about those lovely glass closet doors with the worlds largest crack through them.  A little 80’s maybe?  Consider them gone.

I’m waiting on a delivery for the room today and if all goes as planned I will share a finished project tomorrow.  Stay tuned.