Our new old house

Okay, so I finally "really" cleaned the kitchen today and decided it was a good day to take some pictures. We have been in the house for less than two months so there is still lots to do. When it's all said and done, we will have re-done everything in the house except the bones of the kitchen cabinets and the bathtubs. Whew! Today, the kitchen/ den are mostly done...a few more pictures to hang...so I'll show these two rooms first.

So we looked at many houses but when I walked in this house, through the back door, and into the kitchen, I knew this was the house for us.

This is the first thing I saw...

Kitchen Before:

Blue cabinet doors, dated appliances, linoleum floors - everything I was looking for!

So from here, you can see into the den which the previous owners used as their dining room (hence the chandelier). The other doorway looks into the front room (a large room we use as a dining/play area) which a beautiful triple window that looks out onto the front yard.

This is the work in progress...the overhanging cabinets were removed and a large, cased opening cut in the wall between the den and the front room. So it really opened up the two rooms and really let the light in.

I must mention here that I did not live in this house during the work. In fact, I didn't live in the same state during this time. My dear husband did. For the three months after we bought the house, he worked all day and then came to this house and worked for several hours at night. He was amazing! He didn't try to conquer all the big stuff though...we did have some tremendous help. As for me, I got to envision and imagine what the house was going to look like... picking out everything from floors to fixtures, helping with small projects Brad brought home, and daily answering questions over the phone with Brad about a house I was in only three times before we moved. We worked as a great team and really had a lot of fun (most of the time). We are very happy with how it all turned out and proud of our hard work.

Kitchen After:

So here's the other side of the kitchen, the den.

Den Before:

This angle is looking into the den (stove is to my right and fireplace is on left side of the picture). I really debated on getting rid of the mauve carpet that was in every room of the house except the kitchen. I debated it for about 5 seconds.

Most of these before pics were taken before we bought the house. In this one, I'm backed up against the wall that we cut the cased opening...

Once the opening was cut, light from the big window in the front room flooded the den - so much better!

Our very handy man Randy

Den After:

To our dear Decatur friends - we placed the painting where we would see it all day everyday and think of you!

This is looking into the cased opening into the front room and the foyer to the left (that's the front door) More pics of it to come!