Faux Brick Backsplash

Phase one of our kitchen project is to get it feeling clean and less dated while we save our pennies for the kitchen renovation project we want to do next year.  This phase includes painting the cabinets, ripping out the plastic tile backsplash and installing a faux brick backsplash, switching up the lighting and freshening up the walls with a cool-warm gray.
We painted the cabinets.  I'm not going to go into extreme detail on that because there are so many tutorials out there.  To make a long story short, we cleaned them, lightly sanded them and painted them in a cabinet paint. Darker lowers, one shade lighter uppers.  So far they are holding up pretty decent.  We painted the inside edges and I've noticed that some of them are peeling, but it's not the end of the world.  *Make sure to keep all the hardware for each cabinet together, mixing them up can cause major headaches when trying to reattach them.* We labeled all of the bags and had coordinating letters from bag to cabinet.

The *faux brick* backsplash I've seen floating around on Pinterest.  I wanted something that was not going to be hugely labor intensive, relatively inexpensive, but would make a difference.


This did the trick.

I was a little nervous at this point, but figured "what the hell" and continued on.  Anything can be fixed with a little *lot* of caulk...

and a boat load of paint.

 

We had this light over our sink.

I wasn't a fan, so I found this one.

and ended with this:

Light and Bright

The door leading down to our basement and the door right next to it leads out to the garage.  I cannot even begin to count how many times people have opened the basement door all like, "okay I'm leaving, see you later", until they realize they would be going down to our basement.

I'm guilty of doing that a couple times myself. The entire time the hubs and I were sprucing up our basement and stairway leading down to our basement I knew that I wanted a different door for that reason and I feel like it would open up our kitchen area.  We did the same thing with our old house and loved how it turned out, so we figured why not?

 When we were thinking of a paint color I knew just what I wanted.  I wanted to bring a little bit of the basement up to the kitchen so we decided to use the same color that we painted the basement ceiling.  After some hesitation from the hubs, I took care of it like I do most of our painting projects....while he was at work and it turned out great!

We bought a pre-primed, pre-hung door (this one, but primed) from Menards and brought it back home to get it painted and installed.    It was relatively easy to put up, the hubs managed to get it done by himself without any causalities.  We would totally recommend going with a pre-hung door, especially if you plan on switching out the trim or repainting only because then your almost guaranteed for a perfect fit.  That was our mistake with our previous house was not purchasing a pre-hung, and we noticed that as the house expanded the door would not stay closed.

**FYI we had to special order this door and it took about 10-14 days to have it delivered to the store**

This is what the door looks like before I got my hands on it...The panes of glass have plastic on them and the entire door is primed, which made it easy for this project to be done without a lot of hassle and cutting in!

I got the door finished, two coats on each side, and once it was installed the hubs installed the door knob.  We just got a standard brushed nickel knob.  We are slowly but surely changing all of them out too!

From there we were ready to rock and take off the paint coated plastic.  We recommend using a sharp knife or blade and to go around the edges of each pain.  That will prevent the paint on the plastic from chipping EVERYWHERE and the sheets come off almost in one piece.

Needless to say we love how it turned out and it opens up the kitchen way more than we thought!  Now all we have to do is replace the other doors and paint 1,000 miles worth of trim...

Settling In

The day we moved in was crazy.  Boxes flying, newspaper everywhere, furniture randomly all over the house.  We manage to get our bedroom and the living room the most functional, and over the past few weeks we've been unpacking, putting away and trying, TRYING to get things in order!  We are loving the layout of the house and totally loving how our furniture works with the flow!

While we still have to figure things out, here is where we're at so far!

Our office was red, had a decal on the wall and seemed kind of bland.

And after a little paint and furniture:

When we moved in we had this:

After some paint and getting our things in place we have this:

Painting the soffit made a HUGE difference with making the room look SO much bigger and it feels good to have a starter kitchen that we don't HAVE to completely gut right away!

Here is our dining room before we got our hands on it:

And all we have done is paint, but it seems a lot less "brown".  The crazy thing:  Our dining room is all the same color, no accent wall, that's just how the lighting works in our house.

Here is our living room before we painted and added our furniture:

We have been spending most of our time in this room and after moving things around managed to get it functional.  We love how comfortable this room is now!

Our bathroom.  Here is what we started with:

We have SO many plans for this room but while we figure out our game plan here is our bathroom once we added our little touches to it:

The same goes for the half-bath:

I threw down a bath mat and called it a day. Bam. Done.  At least for now.

I had big plans to get all the wallpaper down and get this room painted in time.

But that didn't happen and now this room is our catch-all room.  We haven't done anything and I just close the door and pretend it looks done inside.  Maybe one of these days I'll have the energy to tackle it.

Our bedroom was kind of bland.  We didn't like the color and even though the curtains worked for the previous owners, they weren't really our style.

 After some painting and some blinds, we did manage to get our room together and love how cozy it is.

I was NOT digging the "blue horse room".  The first thing I peeled off the walls were a bunch of horse decals that were everywhere...

And after a few coats of paint and our attempt to get something kind of set up:

The finished portion of the basement is a hot mess.  Totally looks like a tornado went through but we have plans to figure out what we're keeping, donating and tossing.

Moving on to the hubs' work area in the basement, we pretty much just dumped our boxes and moved on.

 I haven't seen any zombies come out of the crawl space yet, but I'm still on guard...

Right now my sweet fur baby is trying her hardest for me to take her out so I'm off to enjoy the beautiful weather!!

House Tour

Current House:

First House:

Our Current House:

When we walked through this house we LOVED everything about it. The layout. The fact that it has an attached garage (no more walking slipping on ice to bring the groceries in). The location. And most importantly, the potential!

One thing we learned from our old house was to take pictures as soon as we moved in, or even before. We didn't do that with our first house and seeing the before and after wasn't AS dramatic since our house was a completely clean slate. Without further ado here is the newest addition to our lives:

Exterior (Before):

Front Entry (Before):

Kitchen (Before): 

Office/Bedroom #1 (Before):

Dining Room (Before):

Living Room (Before):

Bathroom-Full Bath (Before):

Bathroom-Half Bath (Before):

Bedroom #2 (Before):

Bedroom #3 (Before):

Bedroom #4 (Before):

Hallway (Before):

Basement (Before):

Basement-Finished Area (Before):

Basement-Laundry Area (Before):

Basement-Work Bench Area (Before):

Basement-Creepy Crawl Space Area (Before):

Now the hubs and I are going through the 8,153 (or so it seems) boxes and trying to see how our furniture will work in this house, which is exciting and a struggle at the same time!!