master suite: before and after

One thing we didn't love when we bought this house was the master bedroom situation. On the main floor there were two bedrooms right next to each other. The one that was on the view side of the house didn't have a master bathroom. The other bedroom did have a walk in closet and a small bathroom attached, but it faced the street. When we made our offer we factored into our budget that we were going to have to reconfigure the two bedrooms into one huge master suite. And that's just what we did!

My cousin Hilary helped with the drawings, and we used my dad's construction background to help us figure out what would work and what wouldn't. We wanted to work with the existing window placement, and we tried to keep the plumbing as close to where it was as possible. We reused everything that we could, and craigslisted and facebooked a lot of the rest. 

The beauty about working with family is that you don't feel (as) bad changing things up mid-construction. Which we did a couple of times or twelve. Overall it ended up pretty damn sweet. Don'tcha think?

BEFORE

Looking at bathroom left and walk in closet right in "master":

Panoramic shot of "bedroom". You can see the two reach on closets to the left, and the sun room towards the back:

The "master" was used by previous owners as dressing room maybe?:

DURING

This was when things started getting fun:

AFTER

The hallway to our master was shortened (we moved the entrance door farther out into the hallway):

This is a similar view of the before bedroom shot above. I love my dad's idea to widen the opening to the sitting room and put those cut outs on either side so that when I'm sitting in bed I can still see the view outside, (made even easier because of the NEW WINDOWS!!):

The master bath!  The shower is basically where the walk in closet was before and the "big ass toilet room" is where the small master bath was:

We purchased the double vanity with marble top, mirror, sinks, and faucets through overstock.com. It looks great, but if I had to do it again I probably wouldn't buy it. We've had a few problems with it and by the time we got it installed it was past 30 days and not returnable. We have no door on the shower. Less glass to clean! SCORE!

We call this the "big ass toilet room":

I'm pretty sure this is Chris' favorite part of our whole house. I bought the marble mosaic tile from a fellow blogger/instagram friend and then found the large format tile to coordinate. (The mosaic is on the floor as well):

Looking back towards the bedroom. The full length mirror on the right is from Ikea. And our walk in closet is off to the right:

The former sun room which we use as a sitting room/office:

Standing in sitting room looking back towards master bedroom and bathroom:

I know you're curious about paint colors, right? The bedroom and sitting room are Benjamin Moore | Revere Pewter. Bathroom is Benjamin Moore | Coventry Gray and the ceilings and trim are Benjamin Moore | Chantilly Lace.

If you have any questions about where I got stuff don't hesitate to ask! I LOVE this kind of stuff.

kitchen: before and after

Grace got a new lens. I'm pretty jealous of it, so while she is at school today I decided to borrow it. Don't tell her, OK? It's super wide and fabulous for shooting interior shots. Which is what I did. So I can share with you my newish kitchen.

Remember way back when I showed you how we took out the upper cabinets? They totally closed off the space and removing them was easy for any DIYer (we had my dad do it because we ain't no Petersiks). Removing the cabinets took about 5 minutes. We also lowered that wall to the left of the dining room, which took about another 5 minutes. Trimming everything out afterwards took a couple of months because we did lots of other stuff in the meantime, and we still need to caulk and putty and paint all the trim, but here's what it looks like now:

Remember what it looked like before? Here's a refresher:

I loved that this kitchen really was move in ready. I have wanted white cabinets FOREVA, and now I have them. Other than removing those cabinets, and buying a new microwave (after Camden broke the ancient one), we painted. 

Walls are Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter and kitchen nook is Benjamin Moore Boothbay Gray.

 

I'm sharing at Thrifty Decor Chick today. 

laundry room: before and after

I realize it's kind of weird that I'm sharing the laundry room at our new house before I'm sharing any other rooms, but it's because it has been one of the biggest transformations to date! This is what the laundry room looked like before:

1972 called and wants their laundry room back.

And here it is in 2013:

We replaced the gorgeous textured amber glass in the window with a window that opens (and that is not textured OR amber). We reused the upper cabinets that we removed from the kitchen. Purchased base cabinets stock at Home Depot. Extra deep laundry sink and white laminate counter top are from Ikea. Faucet is from Home Depot. Drywalled over that fancy "wood" paneling. Paint color is Benjamin Moore Boothbay Gray. Beer fridge is from our old house gay-raj. And the floor is the cheapest ceramic tile I could find at Home Depot. (68 cents each. Boom.)

The only thing left to do is paint the window trim white and install a hanging bar above the sink. And find a spot for my ironing board to live.

Insert poop joke here.

When we bought our new house our super awesome realtor MADE us do a sewer inspection in addition to our regular home inspection. I totally didn't want to do, thought it was a complete waste of time and money (around $200). Well guess what? She was totally right. Our house was built in 1972 and our sewer is was made out of an obsolete product called Orangeburg. Basically, its paper mache (ok technically it's layers of wood pulp and pitch pressed together), but either way it's got a life expectancy of 50 years on the high end. Well our 41 year old sewer had seen better days, was collapsing on itself, and had numerous tree roots growing into it (primarily from a way overgrown blue spruce, which I can't say I was sad to see go).

Well, I think you can see where this is going. There were poop jokes ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. for a good month over here. But now we have a brand spanking new sewer made out of NOT Orangeburg so we are good to go.

Our initial bid to do the sewer was hella-expensive and had us almost walking away from the whole deal, but in the end we were able to replace the entire sewer without having to dig up our whole yard using a technique called line bursting. And without having to dig up the street using a cure in place liner. This saved us money AND our yard. If you are local and have a shitty sewer (see?, it's so hard to resist), I highly recommend Howard at Marv's Backhoe Service (not sponsored, FYI). I also highly recommend a sewer inspection if you're buying an older home with an older sewer.

demo day one

So our new house has an amazing view. And we decided to take full advantage of it.

Before, if you were standing in the kitchen you had to duck to see the view, or your friends in the dining and living rooms.

A couple minutes later and ta-da! No more upper cabinets in the way! (We saved them to use in the laundry room when we get to that). This was seriously the BEST impact. And it was immediate. Doesn't my dad look like he's having fun?

And this is looking back into the kitchen from the dining room. I love it. We're going to open it up a little bit more so that "hole" will be the same height as the walkway into the kitchen. And hopefully, we'll get the drywall patched and repainted. ; )

While we were at it we decided that this half wall really served no purpose other than blocking the view when you enter the house (it's between the entry way and the dining room). So we made it shorter. Which was better, but then we made it shorter still. And that's the height it's going to stay. (48" if you're the curious type). I do want to remove that post on the right hand side...but we have to make sure the wall isn't going to wobble without it. If it has to stay I think we'll wrap it with some wood and trim to make it look more like a beam and less like, well, less like it looks now.

What do you think? I think the sledgehammer totally opened up the whole space.

before and after - painted wood bench

I actually painted this bench last year, but since I apparently forgot how to blog until this week you haven't gotten to see it until now.

A light sanding, a coat of outdoor primer (I use KILZ brand), and painted (about a coat and a half) with "Satin Black" Rustoleum. (The same stuff I used to paint my fireplace tile).

I just love doing these easy projects that have such a big impact with so little effort! Have you done any of these types of projects lately? Please tell me in the comments!