Reed It And Weep: Renovation Parts 2,3, & 4

Regina and Brandon quickly realized how tedious of a job painting cabinets, knocking out walls, installing floors, painting high ceilings, and installing new appliances was going to be. And oh, were they correct.

Soon after finishing their renovations, Regina also realized how tedious of a job writing out every detail of their renovation would be. So she isn't going to. But here are a ton of pictures and some descriptions of progress and problems! Enjoy! And beware before starting your own renovation project!

Hello, innocent kitchen. We will soon rip you apart.

Hello, mediocre dishwasher, sink, counters, and floors we thought we would keep.

Hello, ugly appliances.

Old slide in stove out, so the back counter and the trim on the bottom had to be cut out to fit our new
free standing range! 

Trying to be organized in the obvious chaos, I put sticky notes on the cabinets
so I knew where all the kitchen items were stored. 

Cabinet doors off to be cleaned! The beautiful oven looks like
 a prom queen in a trailer park after a tornado.

Priming!

Labeling for sanity!

Help from family on our makeshift pallet painting station!

Drying station. Coat 1 of 1 billion.

1st coat!

Kitchen still a mess, 1st coat done.

Small wall=gone! Linoleum ruined in the process. Time for new floors!

3 coats later, kitchen is back to kind of normal! Don't be fooled...it took multiple
weekends to get to this stage.

I considered leaving the counters salmon pink because obviously
they look so fabulous with the white cabinets. Please note the missing ugly vent
 hood above the stove. 

We took off and hauled away the old counters the day before the granite came.
Do you know how many times I almost set a glass of water into the top of one of these drawers?

The fridge camouflages itself in an attempt to be forgotten and not
 doomed to the garage

Beautiful granite being installed. Be still, my heart.

*Tears of joy*

But wait! The sink was supposed to be an undermounted! They cut it wrong! WOE IS ME!

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**The above 2 pictures come after the granite was installed on a Tuesday. As mentioned, the hole for the sink was cut incorrectly. We planed and paid for an undermount sink, and that is not what we got. This started a whole fiasco, where the counter people had to cut the hole larger, buy us a new, bigger sink, and very kindly threw in some free granite back splash to make amends for their mistake! Hey, we didn't complain about that. But it did suck not having a sink until they came to fix things on Saturday. I don't care what you say, washing non-dishwasher safe dishes in the bathtub doesn't seem sanitary to me. You'll also note that we painted the kitchen this gorgeous blue/black/gray color that is fabulous.

We lived in the new house for almost 6 weeks without a microwave! Baking? Better put your butter in the toaster oven for 10 minutes to warm/soften it for brownies. In a rush and need to eat some leftovers for lunch quickly? EAT THEM COLD LIKE AN ANIMAL. Accidentally let your coffee go cold? Sucks for you. Forgot to leave some meat out to defrost for dinner? Cereal. Microwaves are the backbone of this country, and you will never convince me otherwise.

Getting ours was quite the adventure. We were told that to hire an electrician to wire an outlet for an above the range microwave would be $300!!!!! So we said, hey, let's just get an on the COUNTER microwave! 

Well, after waiting FOREVER, our counter top microwave arrived. Or shall I say, it sailed in BECAUSE IT WAS AS BIG AS A BOAT. Please look at the picture of the stove--the microwave was literally as big and square as the top of that. No joke, it could sit on the stove and completely cover it. 

We moved it around the kitchen to find a suitable place for it, but the only place that microwave should have gone was the ice age, because it was as big as a mammoth. 

So what did we do? Brandon became an electrician and expertly wired an outlet above the stove so we could get an over the range microwave like every other normal house in America. This also meant cutting the cabinet above there in half. So we now have a beautiful, normal size microwave and a miniature cabinet to store the world's tiniest violin that I would play sad songs on every time something else went wrong in the kitchen. 

Oh--that's the other thing. Once we victoriously installed the microwave, we ceremoniously turned it on and it popped the breaker for the entire kitchen/living area! That's another electrical adventure that we actually resolved rather quickly. For once. :) 

Then we moved on to the floors that we never planned on doing! 

Ripping up carpet!!

So much wall to paint.

Painting the ceilings broke my neck.

Note our pile of flooring yet to be put down before the painting is finished.

You can't tell in the picture, but the entry way of the house is SUPER TALL!
And painting it waaaaayyyyyy up high took about 11 years off of my life. The worst.

Beautiful floors throughout the main floor, and pulls added to the finished cabinets and drawers! 

Done just in time to host Thanksgiving. :)

In the end, all the struggles and work were of course worth it. We have so much--almost too much--to be thankful for. As nice as the final outcome is, we won't be doing any big projects again for a while! My brain hurts just thinking of that. 

Before.

Transformed :)