House Tour

So, it has occurred to me that there have been a whole lot of changes in my house since it has become my home.  I thought it might be fun to take you guys on a little house tour, show ya around, a little 'before-and-after' action...

I'm going to dedicate one post to each individual room so that I don't have one enormous post of mega pic overload.  The before pictures are mainly pulled from a PDF of an appraisal that we had done.  They aren't high quality, but they get the point across.  They pretty well capture what the house looked like at the time we purchased it.  (A disheveled frat den.)

Let's start off with the kitchen!  Just lovely, huh?  Plain, at best.  The only thing you really wanna look at are my beautiful flowers in the window.  Oh, and don't you just love Shaun's hand at decorating?  You can barely see them, but there are empty wine bottles lining the entire top of the cupboards.  Keepin' it classy.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Lighter and brighter, that is for sure.  So far, you can see from this picture that I have added the plate rack, painted the walls in Behr's Granite Boulder, and raised the cupboards about 6".  I plan on adding an open shelf underneath them for small items in the same wood tone as my other shelves.  Really gotta do something about the light fixtures too.  Yuck.

This is my latest addition; my coffee bar.  I've got this baby fully stocked and ready to go.  The basket is filled with various tea bags and Keurig cups.  As if that weren't good enough, I also have the under-Keurig storage drawer for my starting line up of choice K-cups.  My '300' print is just da bomb.

It really is more handy than I imagined it would be.  You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes having all of my "first-thing-in-the-morning supplies" all in one convenient, accessible location.  And it's got that prime real estate, right next to the door.  I literally grab my coffee and GTFO.

Mugs and silver stir spoon kept right out for quick access on one of my favorite pieces.  I've had this old platter for so long and always wanted it out on display.  You can also see in this picture the backsplash of the buffet is mirrored.  The damage is all natural, baby, and I love how it looks!

Oh, hold up now!  Don't even look at this wall.  It's pretty sad.  The worst part is that when you come in the back door, this is what's staring you in the face.  And the big red elephant in the room is the power cord that I'm using to run my Keurig until the outlet on that wall is fixed.  Don't judge me.

The plain white fridge was dated and banged up so I gave it a quick paint job to try and jazz things up a bit.  I now hate that I painted the handle that color, but I don't care enough to re-paint it.  I'm just kinda holding out for a new LG.  The paint is Rustoleum's Stainless Steel applied with a foam roller.  Turned out pretty slick.

Here's my go at chalkboard paint.  I honestly only did this because I didn't want to miss the chalkboard paint boat and I sat around thinking, "What can I put this onnnn....?"  I do love it and it turned out great.  This is my spot for Shaun to write down anything we run out of or that he wants so I don't forget to put it on my grocery list.  Quite handy.  And that is a beautiful doodle from my fabulous friend Bri, queen of all doodlers.

SO YEAH.  That's it.  So far.  I've come a long way, but I have much further to go.  Next post - dining room.