First floor transformation!

Ready for a seriously transformational house project?  

I'm not kidding when I say that we LOVE it.  So much.  I had no idea what to expect the outcome to look like and just how much it would literally change our house.  To give a little bit of background...we got a bigger than expected tax return back this spring and I briefly mentioned to Jimmy how I thought it would be awesome to paint our cabinets.  Like nothing serious, but you know, just get a few bids and see if it was WAY out of our price range (because you know this pregnant lady wasn't about to take on that big of a DIY project...).  We got a few bids and they were in fact, WAY out of the range we were thinking.  Enter Leo.  He is my friend Molly's go-to painter and she said we had to get a bid from him.  He came over, we talked through the whole project...he had some great ideas that the other few people we had got bids from and his bid was (YEAH!) within our budget.  So we said...yes, let's do it. 

And that was the beginning of this massive project.  Which when it was all happening and we had to literally take everything out of our kitchen, pantry, desk, built ins...and then move into my parents house for two weeks - I literally thought we were crazy.  Seriously.  But now...ahhh....I'm just so happy we did it.  Our house feels so much more like our home.  That's what I love about doing these projects - each one of them we do and each paint color that we pick, it just slowly but surely makes the house we live in truly feel like our home.  And that feeling of home is just priceless.

Without further adieu...here are the pictures.  Before and afters are the best aren't they??

I think I mentioned this before - I struggled at first with the aqua island.  Our realtor (who I love so much - and seriously cannot thank her enough for coming over to help me pick out all these paint colors) suggested that we do a pop of color.  In addition to selling houses, she buys and flips houses and has just the best taste.  When I first started talking to our painter, Leo, he said - you just pick the colors and let me know.  I was like WHAT?!  There are like 50,000 different colors at Sherwin Williams (which is where he likes buying his paint) so I literally had no idea where to start.  We originally weren't going to pay to change the wall color, but he mentioned regardless if we changed the color or not - it would be easier for him to just put a fresh coat of paint on regardless so he didn't have to spend all the time covering the walls.  Given that we didn't really like the wall color or the fact it was flat paint (the bank repainted all of it), it was a no brainer.  But where the heck to start?

She was awesome and brought over about 6 different colors - suggestions for a little whiter color on the cabinets, a few different wall color ideas and then a few different and fun aqua colors for the island.  So I went with a few of her suggestions.  So nerve wracking though because as you watch it all come together when we would come over to see how the progress was going you just question it.  

But seriously, so happy with the results!  I love the pop of color so much and in a couple years if we aren't into the blue..we can always change it!

In addition to our kitchen, we had him paint all the walls and trim in our mud room area - including the bathroom and pantry (will show you those later...that was also a Roger project!)

This was another expansion of the kitchen.  Our first floor is so open and literally the rest of our house has the off-white colored trim on it that we just carried it into and onto everything that was the oak color.  I love this look so much.  It just makes SUCH a difference in how open and big and light our downstairs feels!

Ok - here are a few more fun pictures, hopefully you get the idea of the flow!

Next small project - I'm looking for some single lights above the island that match our light above the kitchen table!

The bathroom is already pretty dark - but the lighter paint and off white trim makes it so much brighter!

A view from the mud room!  And I struggled with our new bar stools (got them from Target) and now I LOVE them.  We had some old stools that we brought from our old house and have been painted like 6 times...our kids loved to climb on them and it made me so nervous.  I love these, but what makes me nervous is the upholstery!  So I bought two cans of scotch guard - haha! So far so good.

Ok - now for the pantry!  This was a last minute thing (typical me).  But since we were taking everything out of the cabinets (because, yes, Leo is a rock star and all the insides are painted and all of the drawers - they literally look like brand new cabinets from inside and out), I got the itch to upgrade our pantry a big.  Here is the mess of what it is before (so embarrassing!) and then after we ripped out all the wire shelves.  Bye bye!

Then I laid out some ground plans for my dad on what we were looking for - and of course, he got to work!  Working his magic!

And ta-da.  An amazing after. My dad got all the shelves in (most purchased from IKEA and then the rest boards).  He used a Pinterest post I sent him (fancy guy right?!) and put the 1X4s underneath the shelves.  Of course he also measured everything exactly so we could fit cereal in certain ones, cans in others, etc.  He's the best!

I love that we have these big shelves - I moved a lot of all the pans that we don't use very much into these awesome bins from Target.  And then I moved the colored crates from one of our closets into here.  This is where I keep all the kids stuff (baby #3 got the orange one!) and files.  You know, all the doctor stuff and then all those awesome paintings and work from daycare/preschool!  Love that they are so much more accessible too.  And the mason jars?  We use those for smoothies and then freeze them - so it's nice to store them here!

Love it all so so much!  It was quite the work for Jimmy and I getting everything out in the first place (it all just stayed in our dining room) and then even more work getting it all back in, but what was awesome (and felt so good in a nesting exercise) was we purged and got rid of so many things and gave to Goodwill that we didn't need or use anymore!

So there you go - we love it love it love it and looking back I'm just so glad we did it before baby arrived than after for sure!  Leo was the best - did such awesome, detailed work (it was even approved by my dad - which he's very picky).  And while it took about 2 weeks (just a few days longer than estimated), it was worth the whole time being out of our house!!