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!!

The backyard reno with 47,000 pictures

Not a lot of words but a TON of pictures.

This all started WAY back before Miss Maddie was born.  That was the first time we started talking about this potential project with a contractor.  We were getting the itch to make a more family-friendly backyard and one that we could and would want to use more that just the simple slap of concrete that was so small out there.  We were completely spoiled with our backyard in our old house...two patios, lots of green space, etc.  We talked to him but that was it.  The main reason was that where our house is in the neighborhood we get all the run off from the rain, sprinkler systems, etc on one side of our house and it has no where to go.  It would just sit there and get hot during the summer and the bugs were HORRIBLE.  Then, our sump pump pipe had a crack in it and made the standing water even worse.  For a quick fix, Jimmy took an extra long sprinkler pipe that we had and ran the sump pump drain out to the street.  We were curious how long that would last in our neighborhood because they have rules and someone always complains :)  It actually lasted longer than we thought - all through Fall and Winter of 2014...then we got the note that we couldn't keep the pipe.  Which we understood.  

But where would we send the water??  Well, enter in teh professionals to tell us what to do.  They thought they would be able to just run the pipe into the storm drain on that side of the house..but per the city, we couldn't do that.  So they were going to have to dig and run it back behind our house and then to the other side.  SHEESH.  When we found that out, we started talking bigger.  Our current retaining wall wasn't fall down, but the concrete was starting to crumble for sure.  And it just wasn't the layout we wanted.  We talked to multiple folks and got bids on what we were thinking.  we talked about doing it in phases to space out the expenses...but then each time we did a phase we would have to deal with the pain and expense (buying sod or planting grass seed) of the yard being all torn up.  So we decided to go all out.  Bite the bullet and have them do it all.  At least so we could start to enjoy it.  

This is the before:

They started this at the end of April.  They said it was supposed to take 5 days to dig and bury the pipe, take down the retaining wall, put a new one up, pour the two new concrete patios AND level off the top for a playset.

Looking back, I should have KNOWN it was going to take more than 5 days of work.  More like 10, right?

HA.

The above right picture is what our yard seriously looked like for a MONTH.  I'm not kidding.  It rained SOOOO much in KC this spring that they were so delayed and were always giving excuses as to why they couldn't be out working.  I got some of them, but others I did not.

Needless to say, it was frustrating.  And our dogs were with my parents because they permanently removed part of our fence for their tractors to come in and out.

My dad was out at our house what felt like all the time supervising the project.  He's the best! Just wanted to make sure they did everything just right.  He also helped A TON when it came time for all the finishing touches.  He's quite the skilled electrician so he don't lots of time running new electrical outlets and wires all around so we could plug stuff in as needed. As well as helping jimmy put down a crazy amout of sod.  We ended up buying the sod from the contractor but Jimmy and my dad laid it all down because their timeline just didn't cut it. It was delivered on a Friday and then they spent all Friday and Saturday laying it down- even through the rain!! Like I said. They are the best.

Because the freaking project took SOOOO long, I kind of quit taking pictures (oops).  So this is after the wall is mostly up and the concrete patios are poured - but then there was like another month delay after that because it was never "dry" enough.  Anyways, they missed our deadline (that had LOTS of leeway) of Maddie's birthday party on June 28 - so I told him it HAD to be done by Charlie's party on August 2.  Yeah, the rain sure didn't help.

And yeah, that was a slight set back to the project when Charlie found this "waterfall".  HA.

But finally, the ground was leveled out and the playset arrived.  Jimmy and Casey, my sister's fiance, put it all together and it was SOOO hot.  Needless to say, they are troopers and it looks amazing!!!

The kiddos freaking LOVE it.  We are out there every night!!!

After the hard labor was done, it was my turn to style it.  I found some great patio sitting furniture at www.hayneedle.com that we actually got on a great sale because it was so late in the season (I guess that was the one upside of having it so delayed!!)

See the awesome outside of the play set area to keep the pea gravel in? My dad (per usual) spent so much time working outside to get that all just right.  He had to level it all off and measure it like 40 times.  The pea gravel is awesome though!  I recommend it if you are looking for something under a play set!!

Then I went to Kohl's and found all this outdoor decor on MAJOR sale.  Maddie and I looked crazy walking through the store with it all - but our receipt said we saved $400 and I believe it!!!!!!!!!!

Our dining furniture was from IKEA and we had bought forever ago.  I love it so much and the bench is just great!

We have had two parties now at our house with it and we just love it (besides the minor setback of the sprinkler line busting underneath our river rocks during Charlie's party - yeah - that was too bad for our guests that walked in that moat!!!).  There is enough space for people to sit and eat and then to sit and chat in the 4 chairs.  Our house is a great position because the sun is blocked from the house on the eating party of the patio at about 4:30PM...and then we have an umbrella for the seating area side too!!  We talked about putting on a roof and having a covered patio, but that was a MAJOR expense that we weren't ready for...but maybe someday, right??

For now, we are absolutely loving it and so glad we also upgraded the stone on the retaining wall because it looks amazing!!!!!

Keeping on making our house our home!!!!!!!  And looking forward to some cool fall nights out here with our fire pit as well!

Thanks to all that helped with this project!  It was frustrating because we rarely hire people to do things and when they take way longer than expected- it's super annoying but my dad helped out so much to get everything done in time for Charlie's party!!!