New House Tour

Hi friends!  Thanks for waiting so patiently as I've been taking some time off and enjoying expecting the arrival of our little girl.  After this much anticipation, it's hard to believe she'll actually be here next month!  We've been preparing for her arrival, but now that we have a new house, I won't be going overboard decorating a nursery in our current home. 

Speaking of the new house... demolition has officially begun!  Our contractor has gotten lots accomplished over the past couple of weeks, and we've already filled a huge dumpster to the brim.

So before the renovation continues, I thought it's time to take you all on a tour!  These are the true before photos, which will give you an idea of what we're working with here.  We love this house, and every time I'm over there I get more excited about its potential.

Here you can see the main, formal living room in the front of the house, which opens up to the dining room in the background.  These spaces won't be getting major overhauls-- just checking the fireplaces (praying they work!!) and a fresh coat of paint.

This library had suffered some water damage from a leaky shower base on the second floor, so its ceiling has come down along with the built ins, which we'll replace.  Instead of the door pictured here, we'll open up most of that whole wall, connecting this room to the family room behind it.

And here's the family room or den, which will be our main hangout and TV space, so we'll live in here.  It used to be a first floor master bedroom, which would be lovely, but we would rather utilize it for more living space and connect it to the rest of the house for better flow.  

You know, for parties. :)

This little room was the former owner's "card room," and I like to imagine her in here playing bridge with her friends.  Since it's connected to a full bathroom and large closet all in its own little wing of the house, we'll be using this as a guest room for visitors.  It's a small bedroom, but I love how the vaulted ceiling makes the space feel airy and open.

Here's the guest bath and closet... These photos really don't do justice to how bright the blue painted trim and wallpaper are in person.  It's tropical in there!  This will all get a fresh coat of paint, and the wallpaper in the whole house will be steamed off.

This house has a lot of bathrooms, and this one was an extra full bath on the first floor that we really didn't need.  Once we realized that the water damage had compromised this room, as well, we decided to go ahead and gut it, dividing the space into a powder room off of the main hallway and a coat closet for the back hall.  I'm really glad we ended up making the call to do it now, since we'll be using the back door on a daily basis, and now we'll have a decent amount of storage for hats, coats, etc.

We decided to rework the kitchen completely, ripping out the cabinets, counters, and even the flooring.  Sadly, none of it was reusable, so we're starting with a totally blank slate in there-- which is exhilarating, but also more intimidating than reworking an existing layout.  There are so many choices for kitchen design, and a huge range of price points out there depending on your cabinets, counter materials, appliances...  We have lots of decisions to make in the next few weeks!  

Upstairs currently there are two bedrooms and a shared hall bath, and we'll be adding to that mix by building up above the family room to create a master bedroom, bathroom and walk in closet.  The existing rooms will remain largely untouched, except for the old wallpaper coming down and new paint everywhere.

How fun is this bathroom?  I love its baby-blue datedness and had hoped to keep it as is for a while, but this shower was the leaky culprit for the downstairs damage, and there was no way to rip out and replace it without compromising the blue and white floor tile, which was my favorite part anyway.  So this will get a pretty major overhaul, as well, including installing a bathtub for bathing kiddos:)

As you can see, this is a LOT of work to accomplish before this place will be habitable again.  We're staying put for now, and we'll bring the baby home to our current house for a month or two before the big move.  Stay tuned for more photos and updates on the process!

xo

Liza

Inspiration: Open Shelving in the Kitchen?

A trend that I see still consistently popping up in kitchen design all over the place is the move away from traditional upper cabinets.  Instead of wall cabinets, designers are incorporating a variety of styles of open shelving or sometimes even going bare and opting nothing at all up top.

Maybe if we had an enormous kitchen with endless base cabinet storage options, going topless would be an option-- it certainly gives the space an open, airier feel-- but for now, I still need a place to put away dishes, glasses and lots of less display-worthy kitchen paraphernalia.  IF we were tempted to turn a section of the kitchen into open shelving, these copper pots on gorgeous antique wrought iron shelves I spotted in a Bavarian castle would be welcome in our house.  

I like the idea of incorporating just a small section of shelving into an otherwise traditional kitchen-- adding just a bit of industrial flair to mix things up.

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Do you have open shelving in your kitchen?  Do you love it or hate it?

xo

Liza

Work in progress

I am not one of those who is afraid to try a new paint color, change up our furniture, or move fixtures around. Lucky for me my friend Ginger and I are always working on "The Rectory." 

Last summer we went for an all white kitchen look. I thought it looked clean and fresh, but did not function for our family of four. We lead busy lives filled with projects, home work, and more. So, our kitchen felt a bit too sterile for our family. 

This is when Ginger comes in.....

Kitchen Update: Casa Smith

Hello Tuesday! Just a little info, Liza is away in Germany for a couple of weeks, so you will be hear a lot from ME! This is my chance to catch you up on all our small improvements around the casa. Do you remember our floors that were in desperate need to be replaced?

 Before they were replaced, our friend Ginger had the BRILLIANT idea to paint our wall. I think we did the right thing!

READ MORE

Friday Flooring

I just wanted to give you all a sneak peek into my new kitchen flooring and walls.  Last week Ginger stopped by and within a few hours my kitchen was looking a little different, in a  GREAT way. I can't wait to share more next week. Until then, enjoy the sneak peek. 

BEFORE

La Cocina

Hello on this freezing Tuesday morning. 

I don't know where you live, but if you are in New York, you are freezing. I am really OVER the cold weather. I dropped H off to school this morning, mustered up enough energy to buy stamps, then wimped out and took the subway ONE stop (I am a walker, I rarely take the subway) to return home.

Thankfully, I have a fun project up my sleeve and I am dreaming up flooring ideas.  Yesterday I went to Home Depot with our handyman. He broke the news to me the only choices I had involved laminate. Now,  we just ripped out the fake wood laminate, so to think I just had to replace the fake flooring with more fake flooring did not sound appealing. I would rather have dyed concrete poured, which our handyman did not seem to think we could do either. So, I went home and began searching the web for attractive laminate. I sort of gave up and thought I would try again in the morning, but happily the contractor stopped by last night and gave me some fabulous news. Turns out we can lay out ceramic tiling or dyed concrete, YEAH!!!! 

I just about hugged the man. 

Then I shared some of my ideas of what I have been dreaming up.  I could tell right away they did not quite get it. That is alright, because they are sweet and are willing to just go with it. "You mean you want subway tile on the floor with dark grout... are you sure?" A statement like that is a vote a confidence, and probably means I am doing the right thing! 

Here are a few of my inspiration photos

Low Cost Flooring

We had a fantastic weekend around here!  Mel's husband, along with another of our best friends, came to Louisville to speak at a conference our church hosts annually, and these two did a dynamite job.  I know I'm biased, but they're both full of insight, humor and wisdom, and I was on the edge of my seat.  And it doesn't get much better than having old friends in town for a visit-- except if their wives had been able to come, too:)

Mel stayed back to hold down the fort at home, and one project she's managing at the moment is ripping up their kitchen floor and figuring out a replacement.  Her post on Friday got me thinking, and I've been trying to come up with some options for her new kitchen look.

Flooring is one of those home improvement investments that has a pretty wide cost spectrum available to you.  So if you have money to burn, you can find some unique, wow-factor options with gorgeous design and beautiful materials-- but if your budget is microscopic you can still manage to come up with *something* to cover your subfloor.  As much as I love hardwood floor and beautiful tile, I wanted to see what's out there for low cost, good looking flooring options.

You could pick up a few boxes of black and white vinyl stick on tiles and lay a classic checkerboard look, or go with bold, graphic stripes.

Design Sponge via LGN

Domino

Check out this fabulous low budget transformation using stick on tiles from Hazardous Design-- great before and after photos (always inspiring!).

In the house we owned during our seminary years we replaced a nasty lolled linoleum floor with new stick on, 1 foot square tiles, which looked clean and crisp-- not at all like the idea I had in my mind of what all vinyl flooring would look like.  Home Depot and Lowe's sell these tiles at around $1 per square foot, and they are super easy to install, with no messy cleanup like ceramic tile.

Home Depot

 And if you already have the rolled out kind of linoleum floors and want a low budget, instant gratification option-- paint!  When in doubt, always paint it and see what happens:) 

UglyDucklingHouse

LGN

xo

Liza

Friday Projects

Hello!
 Last week flew by. The Rev. was away speaking at Liza's church in KY for a weekend conference. I wish I could have been there, but as always we were busy bees here in NYC. We have spent lots of time at home working on a few projects. When the Rev. arrives tonight this is the kitchen he is going to find.

Turns out our flooring is coming up because of water damage. We thought we could just pull the lamenate up, sand the original floors, and put a new finish down. Sadly, the floors are badly damaged, so we are onto plan B, which we did not prepare for. So, I am looking through Pinterest for some inexpensive flooring ideas. Do you have any fun inspiration photos?? Send them my way. 

As for now I will continue surfing the web while the kids and I watch the Olympics. We really do love cheering on Team USA!

Besos

Mel

Kitchen Update: Before & After

Remember this post? The kitchen is ready for our re-paint reveal.  Painting the cabinets was a lot of work, but soooo worth it. Check out the newly painted cabinets and new hardware. 

Happy Corner

When you have several spaces to complete at once, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Before we left for the country a few weeks ago, I was hitting the wall with ideas for our kitchen. The flooring would benefit from a paint job, newly painted cabinets (check!), and we have a corner in the kitchen with limited lighting. 

Before leaving town, Jeremy Coleman and I walked through the space. He suggested knocking out a wall or adding a bar to the space. Sadly, I had already selected a pedestal table and blue mod chairs and didn't feel like I could scrap it all and start over. I was feeling a little defeated and lost for ideas. So, before I left I cleaned the kitchen and I hoped upon return I would be full of ideas. 

Happily I found two items I knew were a MUST-- the hutch was marked at 13.00 and the barn window was marked at 15.00. You cannot beat, that and I knew these two pieces would pull our look together without having to make and major changes.