A Week's Worth, v. 5 - The Extreme Home Makeover Edition

UPDATE:  I decided to add some details about what exactly we did, in case you couldn't tell from the photos :)

I didn't really take many pictures of the fam this week, so I thought I'd finally post pictures of all our remodeling efforts...

Here's our cute little 1920's Bungalow

Living Room Before

Living Room After

In the living room, we removed the horrible, cheapo carpet and replaced it with laminate wood flooring.  We also installed all new baseboard (good bye ugly 80's 1/2 inch baseboard!) and new door trim.  We also repaired the paneling, installed crown moulding, and painted.  Originally, I had wanted to use the same blue-grey throughout the entire upstairs, but the grey was too blue and clashed with the robin's-egg-blue curtains, so we ended up doing two different tones of white.  In the end, I think I really like how crisp and clean the white looks against all our dark furniture.

Here are close-ups of two of my favorite new features in the room...

New crown moulding and door trim, and repaired paneling. 

(We used to hate the paneling but now we really like it!) 

And the Wall 'O Photos...

Kitchen/Dining Before

This is what it looked like when we first moved in. 

(I can't believe I took pictures of my kitchen looking this messy!)

This is how it looked before the renovations. (We bought new appliances about 2 years ago.)

Kitchen/Dining After

(It's impossible to get good picture lighting in our kitchen!)

So in the kitchen, we just did some minor changes. We removed the weird trim above the windows and installed a light above the sink. We also replaced our main light fixture with one that has 5 directional bulbs. I like that we're able to shine light in different parts of the kitchen and hallways, but I hate the shadows it casts. 

I think the paint made the biggest difference in this room... We've always had this cute beadboard, but no one really ever noticed it because the walls and the trim were all the same color. We painted the beadboard, trim, and ceiling Swiss Coffee and painted the walls Grey Screen. An interesting lesson learned in painting the kitchen: your paint color will look different depending on the other colors surrounding it. The paint looks totally grey in our bathrooms, where it's surrounded by black and white, but in the kitchen it looks totally blue because of the maple cabinets!

Other things we did... carried the laminate wood floors thru from the living room (this required the use of self-leveling cement because our floors are so uneven), installed door trim on the doorway between the kitchen and living room, and replaced the baseboards so they would be consistent throughout the house. Oh, and we added an island cart for more storage and counter space, and got a new, bigger table.

Upstairs Bathroom Before

Upstairs Bathroom After

(I think this is my favorite transformation of all!)

** I just realized that these pictures don't show off the beautiful tile we installed, so I had to add this pic**

So in the bathroom, we installed new "retro" fixtures in the tub and sink, this retro hexagonal tile and the beadboard.  (I had wanted the beadboard to go up to the bottom of the window and to have just a straight ledge on top, but there was only one kind of beadboard that our contractor said would work in the bathroom and it came with it's own chair rail.  I still like how it turned out, but it didn't turn out quite as I had imagined.)  We also painted the walls (twice... I'm horrible about picking the right color the first time!) and trim, and painted the vanity, storage cabinet, and tub.  When we pulled the tub out to paint it, we discovered it is a 1913 Kohler!  The thing is a true antique!!

We also pulled out the gross medicine cabinet and installed a new mirror with a little glass shelf below it.

Mudroom Before & After

In the mudroom (and pantry, which you can't see), we again installed the laminate wood floors on top of the gross peel-n-stick tile laminate, painted the back door, and painted the walls with the same color scheme as the kitchen.  We also installed the coat hooks and hat shelf.  I still need to make curtains for the windows on the back door and the window above the shoe bench.  I'm going to use this fabric...

Upstairs Bedroom #2

(I'm not uploading pics of Upstairs Bedroom #1 because we haven't really done anything to it yet, and right now it's kind of our junk room!)

First it was an office...

and then a guest room. 

Then it was an office again, but I forgot to take pictures before we remodeled. 

Now it's the girls' clothes and toy storage. (I hesitate to call it their "bedroom" because Gia doesn't have a bed in there and they don't actually sleep there..)

In the girls room, we had a bit of repair work to do to some of the walls and baseboard, but the main changes we made were installing a new closet system and painting.  (I wish I had pictures of the closet before... it was totally NOT functional!)  This room was beige on beige before and so we painted the trim and doors white and walls Spring Green. (I know the walls look kind of yellow in some of these pictures, but they're really more of a pea-green.) 

So that's all the remodeling we have done on the main floor... and we did it all in the weeks before Emi Lou was born!  (I guess you could say I did some EXTREME nesting!!)