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 back when I gave a quick tour of the house before we moved in and before I owned half of Sherwin Williams.  Well I only posted pictures of the ones I had of rooms with no paint yet, does that make sense?  I only had pictures of half the house unpainted, shame on me for getting so excited.  So today I’m going to give you a quick run down of the rest of the rooms before I dive into more before and afters for each of them, yeah more projects to come.

Our house has 4 bedrooms and a ridiculous 6 bathrooms.  Here is the second bedroom on the main floor.  Nope, I don’t own two of that Pottery Barn duvet this was before I moved it into the first floor master bedroom.

And here is the 4th bedroom situated on the lower level.

The Den looks similar to its before picture, we just managed to get rid of said husbands dirty craigslist couch and set our selves up with something a little more adult like.

Here’s the adjoining sitting room until I find something else to do with this walk through room.  I’ve actually posted on this room way back, I painted the ceilings to match the wall and added some wall clings, check out the afters here.

And the famous husbands office, don’t mind the mess it’s the cleanest it has ever been.  His office is the 3 season porch that I had shown you earlier how we added a couple french doors for a little privacy.

And last but not least our beautiful kitchen, don’t get me wrong it’s a great size and has lot’s of potential but several of the cabinet doors are missing, I would paint them if I could but they are laminate and several of the appliances don’t work.   And lets be honest, 80’s laminate cream isn’t my style.

So I will leave you with that today, I skipped the six bathrooms and will save for another post before I dig into the fun stuff.  Have a great day, leave your comments below.

Inside that is, I didn’t do a great job did a horrible job taking pictures during the first year in our house.  Therefore some of the before pictures are not available.  Like you saw in my last post the house had gone down hill, good news is the bones were good.  So structurally we didn’t have any issues we were aware of.  The interior had some nice upgrades but it really needed some color and personal touch, exactly what I was looking for.

The kitchen was pretty functional, just missing several of the cabinet doors which eventually lead to some expensive vet visits when the dogs got into items they shouldn’t.  You can’t really tell from the pictures but all of the windows throughout the house leaked and had become fairly fogged up so visibility wasn’t great.  At one point several upgrades had been made, the pine ceilings and this new gas fireplace.

The homes huge open space was great, it’s kind of hard to tell but the last three pictures (kitchen and two living rooms have just one small wall in between them.  Making the entry and the first level of the home very open.   As you can tell the carpet just needed a solid carpet cleaning ok, new carpet those stains were way past their time.  The wall paper wasn’t outrageous overdone, in fact I am pretty sure the bank or someone had come in removed most of the wall paper and painted the entire house white, making my life a lot easier.

This is a picture of the old master bedroom on the main level, yes I know the mirrors are a little spooky.  The house is a rambler style with 4 bedrooms and a ridiculous 6 bathrooms, that’s a lot of cleaning to do.  But with carpet in only 3 bedrooms and the rest of the house covered in new hardwood you couldn’t beat it.

A new addition was added on at some point moving a bigger and better master to the basement, having the room in the basement with a little odd however if you can’t tell it doesn’t feel like it’s in the basement at all.  It has a great vaulted ceiling and 3 walls covered in windows that we would hopefully some day have a great view out of.

These are the last of the pictures I have before we moved in, our den and rec room which would soon be my office.  I know it’s not much now, but feel free to leave your comments.

I’m going to back track for the next several weeks and catch up on a long time goal of mine and a personal passion.  We bought our house back in 2007, it’s been 3 years already.  We moved in during a huge snow storm, I was so organized I fit my 3 bedroom home nicely into a small moving truck with room to spare.  My husband, who is not as organized didn’t think it was necessary to pack, the use of boxes was simply a waste of time.  So we got his TINY 1 bedroom town house moved in 2 truck loads in the middle of the snow storm.  2.5 years later he finally rummaged and cleaned through his last couple of storage boxes. Yahoo!!!  But lets get on with things.

When we bought our home we hadn’t really been looking, in fact this was the only house we went inside of and new we had to put an offer on it.  It was built in 1982, good bones but needed a little TLC.  The neighbors have told me the original owners were very meticulous, while the most recent had let the house fall into shambles in a few short years and eventually their foreclosure became our new luck.

Here’s our beauty when we bought it.

I know you can’t see much, right?  Well that’s one of the best angles and the only grass left for the entire two acres.  The rest of the yard like I said earlier had been meticulously taken care of with boat loads of landscaping.  It must have been to much for the second owners of the home because when we found it, it looked like this.

See that basement door down there, talk about walking straight out into the wilderness, and this door wasn’t even better.  In fact I feel right through our trusty deck.

We were so excited though, I couldn’t wait to get my hands dirty.  To give you an idea of what can happens with lack of attention or care for that matter here is a picture of the front of the house right before the most previous owners had bought it and then again when they went to sell it 7 years later.

Pretty crazy what can happen with new owners and 7 years.  Even take notice of the once lush trees in the back yard that now look like a scene from the end of the Lion King, dry deserted and dead.  Wait till you see what the inside brings tomorrow.  Then I’ll get started on the transformations that have taken place over the past couple of years.

Following the Miller, the second project happened during my Junior and Senior summers of High school. This story is actually best told through the eyes of my sister, for a school assignment shortly following the project. Word for word, enjoy:

Double Summer Job

About 3 years ago (1995) my parents approached Jordan and I to talk about a summer job.

They brought us to a house and showed us around. We were both trying to figure out what the job actually was.

They finally explained to us what we would be doing. I could see for myself that the house needed a lot of work. I could hardly breathe just standing there, due to the smell of the old place.

Jordan and I decided to buy the house after figuring out what most of the expenses and other financial situations would be. It was a lot more complicated than just this, but that would take a lot of explaining.

***Yup that’s my mom there, arms crossed, surely thinking “Am I really going to do this again?”

We finally started to gut the entire house. Mostly to get rid of the smell which was in the old ladies couches, carpet, and clothing.

This was way too much work for just the two of us. My parents helped us out and we hired several friends and classmates.

Adam and Jenny Kramer, Jordan, and I had to take down all of the old rotten wallpaper. There were about 15 layers on every wall and ceiling. Some of it had been on there since 1887 when the house was built.

The four of us also had to strip the varnish off of all of the doors so that way they could be redone. All of the doors were huge with carvings and design, so it took along time to strip all of them.

The whole house had carved woodwork as the trim. It all had to be sanded and filled over and over for the paint.

It took us about one whole summer to get the whole place gutted, resided, plumbed, and heated. We thought that it would only take one summer to finish the whole thing from start to finish. I guess that when you leave your work for vacation and basketball camps, projects take much longer than planned.

The next summer we got back at it again. I was still tired of working from the summer before. Luckily the second summer was easier. This was the rebuilding portion of the project.

We started out by rewiring the whole house. I learned a lot about electricity. When all of the wiring was done we sheet rocked almost the entire house and then mudded all of the cracks and corners.

We definitely built our muscles up when we had to sand down every wall after the mud dried.

It was getting close to start the wallpapering. We started this by figuring out all of the colors. It takes a lot of time to figure out what kind of wallpaper is going to go into every room, in order to match the carpets, and then figuring out how much to buy. Jordan and I let my mom figure this out.

Every wall in the whole house had to be wallpapered. I did one-half of the hanging and my mom did the other one-half. Jordan did all of the cutting, pasting, and running around for supplies. She was our gopher and we really enjoyed it.

Wallpapering is very simple. I was very glad that I learned to do this, because when I buy a house, when I get older, it will be very easy for me to redesign it.

The carpet installers moved in after we were done with the wallpaper. It took about two weeks for them to carpet the whole house. Every floor had to be covered.

It came to a point where we were finally done. We put the house on the market in October. It isn’t sold yet, but hopefully it will be soon. This is something that I will never do again. That is probably the most important thing that I learned throughout the two-summer project. I learned many building skills, designing, financial, dealing with business people, city fathers, and numerous items that I will appreciate when I am an adult.

I’m asked often how I learned my home improvement skills. I can chalk my style and taste up as hereditary I think??? I didn’t really take any design classes, so I’ll thank DNA for my ability to visualize. I do however owe my ability to wire a light, change a faucet and drywall to 2 influential projects during my teen years.

The first being what my family called The Miller. My parents purchased the building in 1992, yes way back so don’t judge the pictures. The original 1908 plans of The Miller included fifty-six hotel rooms plus private offices. Also it had a bar, kitchen, lobby, ladies lounge, salesman lounge, and laundry and furnace room. It was fireproof and totally modern for its time.

Here’s what the exterior looked like:

The building was always a little erry, I remember as a child running past it quickly, fearing who might be lurking inside. The condition did not deter my parents; my mother had grand plans for this building. My mothers love for math and my fathers mechanical inclinations definitely helped as they undertook this project of designing and changing the hotel into apartment living.

Gutting began, with sledge hammer in hands I remember tearing through the lathing and multiple layers of wallpaper. Walls where moved and rebuilt as 56 rooms became 17 apartments. The project took almost 3 years, to make something neglected into a beautiful apartment building. There was a lot of work if statistics thrill you, 350 knobs for cupboard doors, all installed by us children. Count the doors, 100 oak doors, 81 closet doors with handles. What I didn’t mention before is The Miller is located in a small town, so the closet Menard’s at the time was a good 50 minutes away. I recall going to movies on the weekend as a family but making sure we left early enough to head into Menard’s to fill the truck with goodies for the hotel.

It was a family job, and the efforts were soon realized. This had been a longtime dream of my mother, to refurbish and old home which turned out to be a home with 15 apartments. Gee, I wonder where I get it from?

Later my parents were honored for their work in renovating the Miller Hotel at the Main Street Awards at the State Historical Building in Des Moines. They received the first place award for “Best Adaptive Re-Use Of A Building” from the Governor at the time.

Jumping to present time, the family managed the property until just last year allowing us children to learn the ropes of property management.

I’m a little OCD, I don’t like clutter and I like everything to be nice and neat and well, perfect.  So FREE is a word that I like but also find a little scary.   If it’s free, why didn’t they want it, do I really want it cluttering up my pad?

It was early Saturday morning and my husband Brad had just pulled out of the driveway to head into town.  He’s quickly catching on to the things that I like and spotted a Patio set, glass and table and chairs for 6.  He comes back to tell me what he’s found and soon we find ourselves, me in my p.j. hauling the chairs and table back to our house.  4 trips later it’s sitting on the back porch and I’m working on making it perfect for our house.

BEFORE:

Do you remember this Before and After project:

It was Free as well, I just applied some paint.  It didn’t really go with our house and I certainly wasn’t attached to it so Craiglist here I come.  On the same day I scored $200 for this old set.  I set straight out for Home Depot and purchased these new cushions.

Here’s the after:

Now I’m on the lookout for the perfect umbrella.

Staging outside is just as important as staging inside your house.  Step back, way back, across the street if necessary and look at it with a blind eye.  If it helps take a picture and then review your first impression.  Several of the aspects that help the first impression can be done with a little elbow grease.  Today’s DIY is one them.

I feel like I just purchased these Andorak Chairs, but when I think about it they have been sitting in the sun for two full summers.  They look pretty worn out and dull.  I also happen to have plenty of stain left from my chaise project so this little touch was virtually pennies.

Here’s what my chairs look like before I got started.

Staining is a pretty easy project and takes just a few supplies.