[[ There are definite foot-in-mouth moments from me on this blog.  Like one when your mother calls you to tell you she went to go show some friends of hers her daughters blog, telling them about the recipes and such.  And the first thing that  pops up …. “sex tape” from my post last week.  I’m fairly certain she nearly fainted – and thought Dan and I really did make a sex tape.  So sorry mom! I definitely know  how to make people uncomfortable – but like to keep it real 🙂 ]]

I can’t fight this feeling any longer.

Everyday – all day, I stare at my kitchen and feel like I have been sucked into a time machine back to the 70’s and I cannot get back to 2014.   The orange countertops!! While they may be fitting for this past Halloween season, they are a fright to be standing next to.  The cabinets are old, and each one has their own unique grease-induced fade to them.  We’re stuck with the orange tiled flooring – there is not enough cash on our money tree to take those out just yet.

I spend a TON of time in my kitchen.  Like any mother – breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks in between – and add to that a girl who likes to bake and experiment with new recipes, it’s is my most lived in room.  I need a space that I WANT to cook in.  A room that I do not want to whip something up and rush out of.  A kitchen I want guests to hang out in and not always ask us when were renovating it next.

With that said …

We have a few things to fix – and a tight budget to do so.

 paint cabinets

resurface the countertops

 create custom shelving

window treatments

add decor 

 Those are the projects to tackle on our list before the holiday season – fingers crossed this can all happen before Thanksgiving.

For those of you who are interested in giving their kitchen an affordable facelift, this will surely be one you’ll want to be checking in on!

 Our goal? A fresh new look that will hopefully last 5-7 years until we are ready to do a full-blown renovation.  I think it will be the smartest decision since we are far too impatient to let the time pass – and it will be good to live here a bit longer until we know how we really want to put money into this space.  Plus – let’s face it, kids wreck things.  So putting in finishes that will likely be colored on, broken and banged up is just not the smartest of choices right now.

  I have always loved the look of two toned cabinets.  Mainly in the form of the island being a different color than the cabinetry.   In our kitchen we have that “L” shaped counter space that sticks out – therefore we would have to paint the entire base of cabinets a separate color to achieve this look.  Whether it be navy or taupe base cabinets, and white on top – I am always drawn to the dual look.

The cabinet to the left of the window, along with that odd scroll going across tempted me each day to tear it down when Dan was not looking.

We started to unload the cabinets to prep for the renovation –  and thankfully Dan jumped right on board with ripping those two pieces out! I didn’t even have to beg or bribe, he seemed to finally realize how much losing a bit of cabinet space would open up more options for that area.

The spot to the left of the window will now be the new home for our custom shelves.

As soon as those two pieces came down I felt SO much better.  I cannot explain to you how much they drove me crazy.  The bulky cabinet blocked so much light, and as you can see – it is a dark kitchen already.

Next we have our nook – you can see how much brighter the room feels after we knock out the cabinet.

I LOVE this area – I am looking to add a fresh coat of paint to the base of our table + chairs – and add a lot more decor to the walls and window treatments [leaning towards getting new roman shades like we had in our old home].  We spend  a ton of time in this space, so I want to it feel cozy!

As you can see we already tested the wall color + the base cabinet color a smidge.  We really just went with our gut on the color choices – tried to not over think it.  Which, I do all the time.

ANYTHING will make this space look better and more updated than it is now – so we just jumped right in!

I spent the entire weekend taking the cabinet fronts off – deglossing the surface- and painting coat after coat [4 on each surface and 4 more to go]

I have so much more painting to do – and we have an extremely exciting collaboration to share with you all in a few weeks for the BIG reveal!

Any projects you want to tackle before the holidays? Big or small? We are hosting a small gathering for  Thanksgiving and a much larger one for Christmas Eve – I am SO anxious to get this done and have a fresh new space for everyone to celebrate in!

We introduced you to our jungle

here 

where you saw a cluster of trees in our backyard that looked like this …

The funny thing is, in the picture above we actually had grass.  Barely 2 weeks after taking this picture – due to the lack of sun from our ever-growing trees – that grass quickly died and our yard turned into a pile of dirt.

Anyone with kids knows that cleaning them up after playing outside for hours requires loads of laundry and cleaning the floors – and with our yard it was 10x that.

We had multiple companies come out and give us a quote for our backyard, all of which were far off the price range that we wanted to spend – or even capable of budgeting for at the moment.  So we sucked up our hopes of having a large grassy backyard for the boys + faced the music that one tree would have to go at a time, giving us years to separate the cost.

Lucky us we have insane family members that wanted (literally they were excited) to help us tackle our backyard in

ONE day.

Here are some of the before pictures to give you a better idea of what our front/backyard looked like prior to our lumber jack experience.

Yuck – am I right?

This outdoor area was progressively getting worse by the hour.  With each leaf falling we knew this back yard was one that we needed to tackle before the winter came.  The trees were tall – really tall.  Like “Um, are we going to hit the fence when they drop?” tall.

A lot of the tallest trees were directly up against the back of our house.  So, if your thinking we are cruel with cutting these trees down – trust me, it was more for safety + preserving our house than anything.  We’ve put a pretty penny into basement work already + we’ve been told SO many times that the trees and lack of sunlight are just making everything worse.

We had 17 trees total to tackle – we assumed it was going to take a few weekends to get it done.

Little did we know Dan’s Uncle was actually the Incredible Hulk – and let me tell ya, that guy sliced and diced these trees like a butcher.

These guys were glowing over the chance to get down with their tools.

The day came and went faster than the trees crashed to the ground!

Our driveway was set with leaf blowers, chain saws, a four-wheeler for hauling + plenty of supplies – these guys were the real deal.

We were so fortunate to of scheduled this day on one of the amazing 70* October days!

Each tree that dropped to the ground made the loudest bang – stopping everyone in their tracks.  Besides the guys that had to pull and guide the tree down into the right direction!

One by one the trees were cut down – each tree than chopped up and tossed into a pile, later to be cut into fire wood.

Thank goodness for this because we having fires in our family room all the time lately!

I’ll jump straight to the good stuff — the final results! ALL 17 trees were tackled that gorgeous October day.

I was FAR too excited to see this yard take a turn for the better (it’s a process)

Even the clarity we have above our garage is a HUGE difference.  I cannot begin to even explain the difference we have in sunlight that pours into our house now.  I told you guys before how our house felt way to dark around the clock – we no longer have that issue and it has been amazing!

We have PLENTY of cleaning up to go – Dan and his dad spent this past Saturday with a wood chipper tackling the massive branch piles you see above.  Next weekend we will grind the stumps and the entire yard down – so that in the Spring, we will be ready to plant grass!

WAHOO!!!!!

After everything came down – this beauty right behind our fence stood out – and I could not be happier to have this one sticking around.

One more before and after, shall we?

It’s like a fresh pair of shaved legs after going days without.  I’m feeling fresh –

A massive thank you to our family who helped and hung out that day.  There was not enough food or beer or hugs that could show our gratitude to what you did for our family.

WE LOVE YOU GUYS! 

“Abby!” knock. knock. knock. “Abby!” knock. knock. knock.

Watch Big Bang Theory? If you don’t, you won’t get that line ^^ and you must start!

I feel like Sheldon is just minutes away from knocking on our front door to protest how ugly and uneven it is.

We know the facts though — this poor door has faced way to many paint brushes over the years trying to find just the right shade.  We put this door through 3 colors in 5 months!

First I fantasized about a jade green door against our navy/charcoal toned house.  I still think it would look fantastic but the hubby was not impressed with my choice.

Second color I painted on was a “navy” blue – which turned out looking more purple than anything.

Hard to see in the picture above mid construction – but the blurple door was an eye sore.

Last, out of sheer frustration I jumped back to our door color from our previous house that we adoored (ha).

That color has been on for a few months, I did not hate it.  I did not love it with the rest of the house though.

 The light blue showed all of the layers of paint from prior applications and it looked awful!

See the warped lines around the right and left bottom half of the door?

Dan removed the door to start the sanding process.

We used the same sander we used for our stair case – it has been one of the best purchases we made in a long time.

Our first step towards a better door was to sand off all of the uneven layers.

Look at that concentration in that mans eyes.  Love a serious sander – seriously sexy.

 This actually was an extremely easy step – I say this because I sat back and took pictures 🙂

This is what we were left with – it looks awful, but the door was as close to even as it was ever going to get which left us very happy!

In between painting a few coats of paint on, we had to turn our attention to our storm door.  It far surpassed a hot mess.  Rusted and filthy dirty!

We took it off of its hinges and gave it a fresh coat of white spray paint –

We wanted a front door color to accent the fresh crisp new white paint on the storm door – one last coat that hopefully we would not be tempted to change, that could go with any season and help us achieve the look we wanted.

In hopes to help the wreaths we choose pop + to tie in the porch rockers and lighting we added.

Back to the basic we went – a black front door.

The high glossed black front door, with a squeaky clean white storm door – new lighting and rockers has turned our front porch from frumpy to fantastic.

I guess this is the very first picture of the finished front porch that you guys have seen too huh?

We are totally head over heels with having this porch complete.

 The rockers we found on clearance at Lowes for $40 a piece really made us squeal!

We had these hideous lights that we planned on just spray painting – but we could not handle the look of them any longer …

They look spooky do they not?

Our new fixtures were just the right touch to go with our new door!

The new lighting is from Lowes – clearanced for less than $20 a piece.

They have been siting in our garage since we moved here and thankfully painting the door gave us the kick in the butt to put them up!

Oy.  For the first time in MONTHS we have sunshine at our house.  We had a massive, and I mean massive tree cutting day over last weekend and the sunshine has finally found its way to our home.

I’m deLIGHTed.

The look of the door inside of our house when open has a better feel overall too.  I added a birch wreath that I could not keep my eyes off of for weeks from target.

Anyone else have the urge to paint and re paint until the right shade is achieved? With our kitchen cabinets getting done over the next two weeks – I am hopeful that my guessing game stops at paint can number one!