As I sit here at 2:54am, the ideas of improving my house are in full swing. It's been a while since I've felt any sort of creative genious, and I'll admit I was actually attempting to clean the kitchen. I've found it's more fun to sit and day dream (day? or night?) about what I can do to make my not so fabulous house more fabulous.
My house is by no means big, but it's plenty of space for the two of us and our two small dogs. Honestly, the house very well could be big enough for four, if the additional two were children. We wont be growing out of our house any time soon. To say we'd ever grow out of our house would just be silly. My parents raised three children in a 1000 square foot house and even though I shared a room with my sister, our house was comfortable and we didn't have any silly unused space.
Our house was built in the 1970's as a two bedroom, one bathroom house with a one car garage and an unfinished daylight basement boasting about 800 square feet of living space. Prior to my husband purchasing the house 12 years ago, the previous owners finished the basement turning it in to an additional bedroom, laundry room and half bathroom. This gives us roughly 1200 square feet of living space now.
We currently only inhabit 800 square feet of our available living space. We use our upstairs bedroom and bathroom, and the second bedroom is a guest room (and my current closet). Our main floor has a small living and dining room that wrap in to a small kitchen with a bar. There is a door in the living room to the downstairs bedroom (the door opens, and there's the bedroom). Off the bedroom are the laundry room and half bathroom. Right now the entire downstairs is being used as storage with tons of furniture and boxes everywhere.
In June 2008 we started remodeling the house. Nothing had been updated since he had moved in with the exception of a little paint. We've made amazing progress and our house is quite cozy compared to it's prior state but we still have a long way to go. Our space isn't personal by any means. We have new paint, new wood floors, new furniture and that's about it. We don't really have pictures gracing the walls, we haven't finished the trim and we have horrible popcorn ceilings that need scraping, texturing and painting. My kitchen cabinets need to be refinished and need new doors, and my dining room needs a lot of help. I still have a huge hole in the wall I hide with a lamp from when we tore out the baseboard heaters.
I've been browsing blogs like crazy lately, and thanks to Mrs. Southern Belle my creative gears began turning again. She's got a great house, and she's very creative when it comes to decorating. My first house had bead board in the entry way and the living room. I absolutely loved it. I've been wanting to add bead board to our dining room, but I've been nervous because I've never done it on my own and I didn't have a full plan. Mrs. Southern Belle's DIY Pottery Barn chalk board was exactly what I needed.
After seeing this, my vision was complete. My entire project includes the dining room and kitchen. I'm happy to say it will be relatively inexpensive, but very time consuming. But I'm already excited about it.
The kitchen and dining room are one space. I split them by painting them two different colors. I've chosen to paint them the same creamy taupe color and combine the spaces again. My kitchen cabinets are currently black. I thought this was going to be amazing, but I was wrong. I've decided I'm going to repaint the cabinets to a soft white and purchase new doors, drawer fronts and hardware. We really like the shaker and bead board looks, and my first house had bead board cabinets and I loved them.
I have bar seating in the dining room that is hosted by my kitchen cabinets. The blank side of the cabinets facing the dining room will be covered with bead board. The bead board will continue on the wall throughout the entire dining room (like in the picture above) and be painted to match the kitchen cabinets. I've also been wanting a buffet in my dining room for extra storage. It's the biggest thing lacking in our kitchen, and it would be great to have a large piece that I could store some of my nicer appliances and serving dishes in. We plan to build one that covers one entire wall with plenty of shelving. It would be built he height of the bead board, and the back would be left open so that the bead board would be seen through. Imagine the picture above with a buffet lining the bottom half of the wall.
We'd finish trimming out the space, as that's one item we have and haven't finished in the house yet. I'd like to get a bamboo shade for the kitchen window, and I'll move my linen curtains from my living room window to my slider window in the dining room. I'll be sure to document my progress, and of course will post before, progress and after photos. The vision in my head is spectacular, and I can't wait to get working on it.
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