Kitchen Makeover has Begun!

Kitchen on move-in day

One of the worst rooms in our house was the kitchen. Eventually, if we do purchase the house a complete rip-out of everything and all will occur, but for now, I want to make the room look better. Right now, it's downright hideous.

Built-in cabinets

The previous tenants seem to have wanted to do the same, but either ran out of patience, skill or money along the way. The insert part of several doors and the built-in cabinets were painted with navy/black chalk paint and the hinges were spray painted dark navy.  They did a REALLY bad job with this, letting the paint run and it looked horrible. They also started to paint the counters with a Rustoleum product to re-do counters. Granted painting counters IS a way to save money when you are doing a small makeover, but you have to do it right. Not only did they not really do it correctly, they gave up halfway through the project, so we had half blue and half tan counters. The flooring is very old and ugly vinyl tiles and the cabinets are dark brown 70's style cheap ones with outdated hardware. Oh, and the appliances are beige and old, probably 80's or earlier.

Basement door with a HORRIBLE paint job

So I wanted to do something to make this space a little more pleasant. We replaced the dishwasher last summer when the other one wasn't quite getting the dishes clean. We also added a garbage disposal. Jay attempted some painting of the built-in cabinets, but had only got most of the ugly chalk paint covered. I got permission recently from the owners to paint all of the cabinets white. So I dove into that project last week. There are 3 doors, not including the back door, that needed painting and a set of built-in cabinets, all with what seems to be original hardware. The hardware has been painted over many, many times. I started by removing doors from the cabinets and then removing the hardware from the cabinet doors. I spent a significant amount of time on this project, trying not to strip the screws. I've been laboriously cleaning the old paint off this hardware. Turned out that it was mostly brass-plated and has tarnished and corroded pretty badly, but some of the pieces are better than others. I really want to keep the old hardware, so I did some research and found that a metallic paint (not spray) and an acrylic clear coat could work to bring the hardware back to life and hold up fairly well. So, I'm slowly getting this done and starting to paint some of the cabinets. More pictures to come of the progress as it is made!

A Diamond in the Rough

Yeah, that's a phrase that really applied to the house when we first saw it. (Still does for the most part!) The previous tenants were a young couple that apparently had no pride in the place they lived. The landlord had hauled a couple tons (literally) of trash out of the place, after the tenants had moved their stuff out. The living room carpet was not only stained and filthy, it reeked, which of course made the entire house reek. Many other places in the house were dirty or damaged. An attempt to paint some rooms left paint spots on the hardwood floors and trim. The bedroom walls had touches of artwork from small children. The list just goes on and on.

Living room prior to the carpet replacement

It really is a gorgeous house though. The hardwood trim is original, as is much of the hardware for the doors. Some changes have been made by other owners throughout the years to modernize the home. Enough of the heart and soul of the home remain though and with a little TLC, this place has so much potential. So we are going to try to find a way to balance out the cost and effort to make it nice, even if we remain renters. Downstairs we have a foyer and formal parlor, both with french doors leading into the living room. Also, downstairs is the formal dining room, butler's pantry (with built in china cabinet), kitchen, laundry, half-bath and the study (which has an exterior door leading to the front porch as well).

Parlor French Doors

Since last summer, we did a few improvements, such as replacing the dishwasher and adding a garbage disposal in the kitchen, adding a security system and upgrades to the exterior lighting at the back of the house. Prior to us moving in, the nasty carpet in the living room was pulled out and replaced. We've painted a couple of bedrooms and we have been working on color combinations for other areas of the house. There are a couple of other projects lined up, ready to start as I find time.

Looking into the dining room.

So we have our work cut out for us. I decided to have this blog to show off pictures of our progress to our friends and family who are interested in seeing how it goes. As those that know me, I'm far from the decorating type and I have very little background in doing any kind of home improvement. I just have a love of history and beautiful homes like this one. So join me in my adventure, watch me learn and laugh at my mistakes!

Built-in china cabinet in the "Butler's Pantry"

What Have I Got Myself Into?

Ok, last summer, the Army sent me and hubby (and our combined six kids) to upstate NY. FAR upstate NY, almost in Canada. The area has lots of rentals for 2-3 bedroom houses. The Army post has plenty of housing of the same. However, with our large family, we required a 4+ bedroom house. We weren't quite ready to purchase, so we did some searching. We found an awesome house, about 16 miles away from the post, in a quaint little New England village. It was 5 bedrooms, 1.5 baths and massively large, around 3000 finished sq feet. The large, high ceiling attic could easily be finished, adding another 1500 sq feet.

The problem, the house was for sale by owner. I contacted the owner and asked if he'd considered renting the house. Well, they had been renting it...with really horrible results. The prior tenants were not nice to the house. Some of the stuff they did was mind-boggling. We talked back and forth some and with assurance from us that we were much better tenants, they agreed to rent it to us. We also told them that we would do some improvements, with their approval to make the house better. We would pay for some of them out of pocket and other ones, we'd split costs or take a break in rent to compensate. We may also look at purchasing the house in the future, but we have to look at how financially feasible it would be since we aren't expected to be here more than 5 years.

So.....the adventure begins!

The house prior to the previous tenants.