Demolition

Now for the fun part.  We started this project after Christmas 2010.  We have purchased all the materials, now we need to start tearing out.  The wallpaper that was one of the main reasons for this project is gone.  My children thought that is was very outdated.  It covered approximately 1/3 of our house, it was the same from the Laundry Room to the Dinning Room.  When we built this house, my father-in-law was in a bit of a hurry to hang the wallpaper, we were expecting our first child.  We moved into this house on my birthday in 1977, our son was born on July 22, of that year.  One of the reason we were in no hurry to change this wallpaper is that we he installed it, he did not prime the walls and we knew pulling this down would tear up the sheetrock and would require a lot of patching.  Below is picture of the demo. The people in the pictures are my husband and my son.

We have also opened us the dinning room a little also.  Below are pictures of the new opening.

Making Big Purchases

 

 In order to do a renovation to your home, you must spend some money.  Just like  the game of Monoply, if you own property, you have to improve that property.  That means Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, Target, here we come.  The first thing to think about is you probably will want to buy new appliances.  We did, I researched what I wanted in appliances.  The color, Staintless Steel, the brand, KitchenAid.  I bought a single wall oven, a 4 burner gas cook top, an over the cook top microwave, and a french door refrigerator, and a dishwasher.  The appliances arrived January 5th.  Below is a picture of the Fridge.  The others are still in boxes waiting for a kitchen to be placed in.

The next thing we decided upon was cabinetry.  After looking at cabinet's in magazines and at the Home Improvement stores and thinking of building them ourselves, we choose Woodmark Cabinets from Home Depot.  We went and let the designer design our new kitchen.  My husband had drawn a diagram of what we wanted to do with our space.  The designer took over from there.  We ordered 17 new cabinets, which arrived January 27th.  We have inspected them and they are in boxes in our garage waiting also to be placed in our new kitchen along with the new appliances.  Below is a picture of my garage with the cabinets.

The next thing to think about is the type of counter top to add to these two purchases.  Let me tell you, shopping for these things are a lot of fun.  We decided to go with granite.  I went to several places and we went with East Coast Granite.  I was unaware of all the many colors of granite.  I finally choose the one in the picture below.  When our cabinets are in place East Coast will come out and make a measurement and cut this  and install the counter tops. 

We are planning on wood floors in the kitchen and dining room.  Below is a picture of the flooring.  We purchased this at Lowe's.

We also are going to use a backspash which we also purchased at Lowe's. 

I know I mentioned it before, but I just want to thank my wonderful husband for his ability to do all of this for us.

Kitchen Before

 The following pictures are of our kitchen before the way it has looked since we built our home in 1977.  My children call it The 70's Show.  It is a L-Shaped Kitchen  and very small.  We have celebrated many Holiday's in this kitchen.  We are going to totally change this room, hoping to increase the size and  create more room. 

The Laundry Room

We started our project with the Laundry room.  Some people would call this room, the back porch.  We decided to paint the wallpaper and put ceramic tile on the floor.  I am blessed with a great husband who can do anything, I know that some of you would have to hire someone to do all of this, but that is where we can really save money.  This part of the renovation took only a long weekend.  I hope you feel we have made an improvement to this room.

The Beginning

After living in my home for 33 years, we decided to make some changes to our Laundry Room, Kitchen and Dining Room.  These three rooms have had the same wallpaper for these 33 years.  That is long enough. 

We built our house ourselves with the help of my husband's father.  We were given the land it sits on and we were very young.  We raised two children, who have taken mates and we now have four grandchildren.  Our lives are very full.  The reason we are doing all this work is because my mother passed away in November of 2009, we sold her home.  That happened in November 2010.  I wanted to take the money from the sell of her house and make something that I could remember her by.  She lived in a four room house all of her life and always dreamed of a beautiful kitchen.  The following is a blog about the work that we are in the process of doing to our home.  Maybe some of the things in this blog can help you if your are thinking of doing a remake or a redo.