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Our Kitchen Reveal!

WOW WOW WOW I cannot believe it’s finally time to reveal the completed kitchen space with you all! It has been a long nine months since we first became aware of the water leak in our kitchen and began making a plan to renovate (more on that here).

First, a quick walk down memory lane. These photos are so bizarre to me, after four years of living with this kitchen, it’s an unrecognizable room to me now.

This was the original plan, I always find it helpful to put my ideas in one place so that I can get a visual of how everything is working together. Now that it’s done, it’s interesting to see how this compares to the reality!

I pulled inspiration from historic kitchens like The Elms in Newport, and Biltmore House in Asheville. I knew I wanted to nod to the history of our home c.1895, but obviously couldn’t take that too literally. I made tile selections based on what tile houses had at that time period, and salvaged antique light fixtures. I wanted it to be not a true “restoration,” but a historic-ish rehabilitation.

We worked with a contractor who we loved, and was willing to go above and beyond with some of our asks. The biggest thing was the flooring. I studied historic floor patterns, and fell in love with this particular pattern that of course doesn’t come pre-made. I also noted many Victorian-era homes the tile had a contrasting border that went around the room. We chose a one inch hexagon tile that came in 1x2ft sheets. We ordered in two separate colors, and the tile crew did an incredible job laying the black border, and then filling in the rest of the floor with white tile. I then carefully measured and counted where exactly I wanted each black tile motif and marked it with a pencil. The crew was so gracious to carefully remove each one inch tile that needed to be replaced and switch it with the correct color. It was a huge ask, and the whole thing took over a week, but I am so pleased with the result.

For reference, this is the same angle before!

I thoughtfully decided to remove all of our upper cabinets so that we could run the tile all the way up to the ceiling. Traditional white subway tile is always a classic, no matter what trends come and go. With the addition of a bookshelf to store our daily dishes, one shelf made from a board from our home’s interior, and a large hutch with baskets, I have more storage now than I did previously with the row of cabinets up top.

I originally intended to use an antique sink, and I coulnd’t find one that met the specifics I needed, so I ended up ordering a simple black undermount sink, which I love. I think it makes the counter top (Negresco Granite, by the way, the poor man’s soapstone) longer since it doesn’t break it up visually, and it allows the gorgeous faucet to shine. A win-win!

Although we technically lost square footage by closing in the laundry, it feels more spacious. With the closing in of the laundry room, I knew we would lose some light because we would be closing in two windows, so I wanted a door that would let some light pass through. I found a french door on my local buy nothing group, and it needed some work to make it shine, I stripped the paint and stained it to make it look and feel older. Lace curtains on the inside obstruct the view of the washer and dryer while still lighting the stove area. With the walled in laundry room, it also gave us a little alcove for a breakfast nook.

I found the bench and the chairs on Facebook Marketplace, and the table for sale on the side of the road in my neighborhood. It’s a high quality antique I bought for $20! I sewed some cushion covers myself, which I do not recommend if you want to keep your sanity, but was helpful in saving several hundred dollars.

The only thing that was moved in the layout aside from building a wall around the laundry room was the stove. It works really well here, so I am happy with the decision to move it. Plus, it allows for our antique worktable in the center of the room. We purchased it at an antique store, and it is quite literally the most expensive piece of furniture I’ve ever purchased, but it was absolutely worth it. It helps bring a feeling of antiquity to the space.

We painted the pantry fridge cabinetry Sherwin Williams Billiard Green, to match the fridge. Which, by the way we love. It comes in several different colorways, and you can switch out the front panels to match your style. We also bought a dishwasher from the same line, but Ethan made the panel for it himself. We’ve had the fridge six months now and really like it (how’s that for an adult-sounding sentence?)

The paint color and all the trim and cabinets is Clare Turbinado, and the walls are Clare Timeless. I was super impressed with the coverage and love the colors! Of course I looked to historic house museum kitchens for color inspiration. Drawer pulls are these from House of Antique Hardware in unlaquered brass. They are already starting to get a slight patina as we’ve been using them, and they’re a nice solid quality. For the knobs I used simple wooden knobs and painted them to match. I also placed them about 1/3 of the way down the cabinet rather than in the corner, which I’ve seen in more English kitchen design.

I had grand plans of building my own replica of a light fixture for the island, and I eventually just ordered this one, and have no regrets. All the other light fixtures are antique or thrifted.

I really had this vision of an upstairs/downstairs vibe. Historically, “downstairs” would refer to workrooms, or servant’s living and working quarters in grand manors. Usually much simpler in their design than the upstairs public rooms. If you watch tv shows like Downton Abbey or The Gilded Age, you’ll notice this. I wanted to give a nod to the time period when kitchens were not the entertaining center that they are today but more the workhorse of the home, while mixing it with some glam that would have been reserved for the upper rooms. Hence upstairs/downstairs. It’s the mix of simple ladderback rush chairs with brass faucets.

This being the first kitchen I’ve ever done a single thing to, I learned a LOT. Made some compromises and didn’t get everything I wished I could have added (hello very normal budget), but I’m very proud of what we created. We are so so happy with it, and so so happy to be completely finished. It’s far and away the nicest room we have in our house now, which just means we have a lot more work to do.

That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

House Progress

We’re Renovating Our Kitchen!

Eeek! I’ve been waiting four years to say those words out loud. And honestly I thought it would be a few more years before I did. We had plans to work on some rooms downstairs this year that would be smaller budget items.

But then a leak in the kitchen ruined the subfloor under our kitchen cabinets, and our plans changed. Due to extensive water damage, we are having to replace floors, cabinets, countertops, etc. So since a kitchen renovation was on the long term horizon anyway, we are diving in and going for it. It’s been pretty stressful up until this point, trying to work through finding the source of the water (it took three different specialists!), and trying to get contractor recommendations on an unplanned timeline. On top of things, our fridge died. It’s like the kitchen just decided it was her time to go, and she all went at once!

But now that we have wrapped our heads around the initial shock and urgency behind the situation, I’m getting excited about the design.

Our kitchen is currently a timestamp of the year 1997. The kitchen that was put in almost 30 years ago is dated, but I’m grateful to have had solid wood quality cabinets that have lasted. They’ve served us well until this point.

The only thing I did in this space was paint the floors before we moved in. I’m super excited to have the kitchen feel a bit more like the home it resides in, a Victorian built in 1895.

Of course we won’t have a truly period appropriate kitchen, we believe our home was built without plumbing, so there goes that, but I don’t want visitors to walk into the kitchen and be able to pinpoint an exact date. I’ll be using modern reproductions of historic materials, and adding free standing furniture pieces to contribute to an unfitted look. (Fitted kitchens where the cabinets are mounted to the wall were popularized in the mid twentieth century, whereas before that kitchens were a collection of different tables and shelving pieces.)

I plan to find salvaged and antique pieces to help contribute to the overall feel of the room, so although I have some photos listed below, they are general ideas and the actual execution will depend on what I’m able to find.

I’m calling it the historic-ish kitchen, because that’s just what it’ll be…ish. I’ll be sure to share updates here as things get rolling (demo is happening soon!), but if you want more up to date information, be sure to follow along on Instagram where I share much more in real time.

Now, I’ve got to get back to scrolling Facebook Marketplace incessantly in between planning the next antique store to check out, but I will keep you updated as soon as I have more! That’s all for today, friends! Have a wonderful day!

House Progress

How Painting Our House Black Affected our Electricity Bill

From the moment we uttered the words, “we’re planning on painting our house black,” the questions and comments started rolling in. “I would love to go dark, but our electricty bill would be outrageous!”You must live in a northern state where you don’t have hot summers.” “How high is your electricity bill going to be in the summer?” We took all of these things into account before we made our decision about painting the house black. We ultimately decided that it was worth it even if we ended up having to pay more for electricity in the summer. Texas summers can best be described as “hot as blazes for months on end,” so we definitely use our fair share of power in those hot summer months.

But I was curious. Even though we decided we didn’t care if we were using more energy, were we actually using more energy now that our house was black versus when the house was a pale yellow? I had to find out. I went back into the archives of our electricity bills and did some quick comparisons. This summer we’ve been dealing with record breaking heat, so I knew we would really be putting the black house to the test. Thankfully our electricity bill shows the average temperature that it was on any given month, so rather than doing a straight month to month comparison, I looked for months were the average temperature was as close to the same as possible. Unfortunately this year with our record breaking heat, I didn’t have quite an apples to apples comparison, but I still wanted to share the results of my findings.

You can see that in the first two side by side comparisons where the temperature was almost the same, the energy usage was relatively the same. The final month where our average was 101° we did use more kilowatts, but I think it is still pretty relative to the amount of kilowatts used during a month with an average temperature of 97°. So the short answer to the question of whether or not it’s costing us more to cool our house in the summer because our house is black is, nope. Not really.

Which is a welcome relief, seeing as how we had anticipated an increase and didn’t end up seeing one. But for anyone who might be considering painting their own house a dark color, I wanted to share our experience. I’m sure there are certain factors that would create differences, like how much shade your house gets (we have a lot of mature trees), or what direction it’s facing (ours is facing southwest) , or the quality of your insulation (ours is terrible). But this has been our experience, for what it’s worth.

I hope this was helpful to you, and maybe helps in your house painting decision making. Or, if you were just curious, now you know. That’s all for today friends, have a fabulous day!

House Progress, Room Tours

Shared Toddler Room Reveal! – Spring One Room Challenge Week Eight

I cannot believe this room is finished! It’s been eight weeks of super intense working on making over my son’s room for my son and daughter to share. Their gender neutral, English country inspired room is just what I envisioned and I can’t believe it’s come to life! Or that I did 90% of it by myself! As a quick reminder before we dive into it, let’s just take a look back just eight short weeks ago:

Boring and basic, the floors had been refinished when we first moved in, and the walls painted white, but that was about it. The room itself didn’t have a “design.” Now, hold on to your hats people, because I cannot believe this is the same room.

We added the beadboard, chair rail, and picture rail ourselves, and I used a stencil that was generously gifted by Stencil Revolution to give the upper portion of the wall a faux wallpaper look. The green is Equestrian Green, the tan upper portion is called Windswept Leaves, and the stenciled color is called Split Rail, all by Behr. The walls alone really make the space and give it the antique, English, equestrian vibe I was going for. The white was necessary for a quick move in timeline, but it’s time it got some character.

The beds were my launching off point for the rest of the design. I found them on Facebook Marketplace almost a year ago, and I’ve been storing them in my garage until now. I bought them from a sweet retired couple who used them when their children were small. They had bought them at an antique store in the 1980’s, but they believed they were from the turn of the century. It was meant to be because so is our house!


Most of the art and decor was found secondhand at estate sales and thrift stores. I reused but reworked the curtains by adding blackout liners and drapery pins. The dresser is also the same dresser that was in here before, but it looks much more fitting now. More on the dresser in this post.

Dresser Before

The pillow shams were from a basic set, but I had them embroidered locally. I had a hard time finding someone who could do exactly what I was looking for, but the ladies at The Perfect Pair were so helpful and worked with me to get exactly the look I was hoping for. I think the monogrammed pillows give it a touch of class (as classy as two beds made up for toddlers can be).

The light fixture was a $50 Amazon find (I know!) which worked well to replace the old shadeless ceiling fan that was there with something that looked like a cute vintage light but came with the ease of modern wiring and installation.

Because most of my items were found secondhand, they aren’t linkable, but what I did purchase new is linked below.

Thank you so much for stopping by and checking out the kids new space. This is a room that I’m really proud of, and is something that I truly feel is a reflection of our home style. I worked on this solely during naptimes and after bedtimes for the last two months, and every time my oldest woke up, he would immediately go to “the new room” and check on the progress. Both of the kids love the space, and they can’t wait to spend their first night in the newly made over space. I wanted to make the room feel sophisticated but also fun and whimsy, and I’m so pleased with how it all came together.

Now, remember this? This was the original moodboard for the design. I am so thrilled to see it in the flesh. It’s honestly the nicest room in our house now.

And last but not least, just one more for the road. I truly cannot believe this is the same room.

I would love to hear your thoughts! And after you’ve let me know what you think, be sure to go see some of the other great reveals happening today. That’s all for today, friends! Have a fabulous day!

House Progress

Spring One Room Challenge Week Five: Paint Diaries

Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four

Another week, another post from the depths of paint despair. I always start off optimistic about a paint job, and then end up becoming slowly disenchanted with the work as time goes on. As I mentioned before, the paint in this room is pretty involved, and from the outset, I budgeted myself two weeks just to paint. As of the time of this writing, it’s been exactly two weeks since I put the first coat of paint on a surface, and I probably have one more day of painting before I’m officially done.

I have shown you guys the green paint that is the majority of the room, but I haven’t talked about here what my plans were for the upper portion of the wall. I am doing a faux wallpaper look (more on that later I promise!) using just paint. I’ve done it with a few different methods in the past, and so I’m lovingly referring to this “wallpaper” as Fake Wallpaper3.0. While I’m not ready to show you what the wallpaper is, I want to share what color I painted the wall as a base for Fake Wallpaper3.0. I’m going for a moody, English country style, and so I chose Windswept Leaves by Behr to help darken the space. It’s not transferring super well in the photo I snapped today, it’s a lovely camel shade and less of a gold, but I think it’ll serve as the perfect backdrop for what I’m hoping to achieve with the faux wallpaper.

Does it not bring some drama to the situation? I’m excited to show you what’s coming next, but I’ll have to leave you in some suspense! Be sure to check out the other ORC guests this week as they reveal their progress too. That’s all for today, have a fabulous day!

House Progress

Spring One Room Challenge Week Four: What Sheen of Paint Should I Use For…?

Week One | Week Two | Week Three

It’s week four of the One Room Challenge and I didn’t officially cross off one single item off the list. I’ve been working on trim painting all week (with a break over the weekend) because there is so much trim. I’m knee deep in paint, and honestly there’s no end in sight. The paint in this room is so much more detailed than just slapping a coat of paint on the wall and calling it a day. There will end up being three different colors (you’ve only seen one so far!) and three different sheens (you’ve seen two so far).

I figured this might be a good opportunity to chat about the three main sheens of paint I use throughout my home and for what purposes. Of course, rules are meant to be broken, but this is a general guiding principle and what I’ve found works best in my own house.

Flat Finish:

Honestly this is good for one thing and one thing only. Ceilings. You can see even in the terrible quality iphone photo above that the paint on the ceiling absorbs the light. It’s dark, but it won’t reflect light, which I guess is helpful for sleeping? I don’t know guys, I’m not an expert. It’s been said that flat paint can’t get wet, and that might be an outdated assumption as paint technology has improved over the years, but I’m still not taking any chances. I’ll leave it to the ceilings.

Semi-Gloss Finish

I use semi-gloss on all of my trim, painted doors and cabinets, and walls in my bathroom. (That last bit might be contentious in some circles, so don’t quote me on this, this is just what I find works for my house.) You can see in this picture that even though the ceiling and the trim are the same color, they reflect light completely differently. Semi-gloss is also much more wipeable, making it a good contender for trim. Have you cleaned the trim next to your doorknobs lately? That gets gross so quickly. Or maybe that’s just my house with toddler granola bar fingers running around. But I digress.

Eggshell Finish

Lastly, I use eggshell finish on almost all of my walls. It falls in between flat and semi-gloss, as it’s somewhat wipeable but it’s also a little more forgiving that flat. I’ll be painting the walls with eggshell finish, although I haven’t started yet, so there’s no visible example of it in this photo. But trust, eggshell is the way to go on *most* interior walls.

Like I said, rules are made to be broken, but this has worked for me. When I rolled up to Home Depot to get my paint order with very specific color and sheen requests, I know the employee was side eyeing me, but what can I say, I’ve painted a lot of rooms!

I probably have about two more weeks of painting ahead of me, as I have some more to finish on the trim (looking at you, windows), and then I’ve got the walls as well, but I can’t wait to see all of it come together. It’s getting so good! Be sure to head over to the One Room Challenge’s Blog page so you can see what everyone else has been up to this week. That’s it for today, have a fabulous day!

House Progress

Spring One Room Challenge Week Three: Trim Finishes and COLOR

Three weeks in and I’m starting to feel like I can *see* this room. (If you haven’t caught up on weeks one and two, you may want to do that first.) You know when you still have so much left to do, but all of a sudden there’s a point in a project where you can start to see your vision come to life? That’s where I am this week.

We finished last week with beadboard up on the wall and that was it. I had to do a lot of work to actually finish out the beadboard so it looked good, and even more to do before I could start getting paint on the wall, but I was determined to start getting color on this week. Thankfully Ethan was home this week and able to help me. I wouldn’t have gotten as much done as I did without him, but we made it with not a moment to spare!

Let’s walk through what we did this week.

First thing we did was add the chair rail to sit along the top of the beadboard. It immediately looks so much more professional with just that simple addition. It’s easy to gloss over all of the finish work, but it takes hours to fill nail holes, sand, caulk seams, and clean up in between each of those steps, so I don’t want to negate that work.

Once we completely finished the beadboard, we were ready to install picture rail. A lot of people don’t know what picture rail is, and if you had asked me a few years ago, I wouldn’t have known either. Picture rail is a type of decorative molding somewhere near the ceiling. Sometimes it’s installed right up close to the ceiling, mimicking the look of crown molding, and other times it’s installed 10-12 inches down on the wall. It’s most common in historic homes and in art museums. The profile of the rail or molding is round, and the purpose is to hang a round hook from the top to be able to hang and display art. In older homes it was common to have plaster walls, which are notoriously difficult to hang things from. Enter the solution. You can easily hang things without any nails, screws, etc. It’s super practical!

Since our second floor has nine foot ceilings, we decided to install it a little bit down on the wall, and our laser level came in handy…for demonstrating once again how nothing in this house is actually straight. If you look closely above the window you can see how the top of the window does not line up with the laser. Thankfully once I hang curtains you won’t be able to tell. Remember that because this room is totally crooked, I’m trying to give the illusion of straight visual lines.

So picture rail was hung (that was 100% Ethan, all I did was stand back and make sure it was lined up and pass the nail gun), caulked, wood filled, and sanded. I am so glad we added this, it is definitely in keeping with the historic feel of our home, and definitely helps with the traditional style I’m going for in this room. I also primed all the walls that had been floated last week.

Then, my dear friends, it was time to start painting. I don’t usually do this, and certainly can’t recommend this, but I did not want to waste time with painting different samples on the walls, so I picked straight from the chip and oh.my.gosh. I am in love.

This is after just one coat of Behr Equestrian Green (we love to see a paint color name on theme!). I did paint a second coat since this photo was taken. It’s my first time painting a colored ceiling and I’m wishing I had done it sooner! I also decided to extend the color on the wall above the picture rail as well, which I’m really pleased with.

So, that’s the update. The next weeks will be painting myself into oblivion, as there is so much painting yet to do, but I’m really excited to keep you posted. Make sure you check out the other bloggers who are doing the One Room Challenge, things are starting to get really good! That’s it for today, have a fabulous day!

House Progress

Spring One Room Challenge Week Two: Old House Challenges

I can’t believe we are already onto the second week of the One Room Challenge! If you missed last week’s post with the design plan for the space, be sure to check it out here. I have been hard at work this week, feeling both frustrated and excited.

My first task was to float the walls along the upper section of the room with joint compound. This room has an “orange peel” texture that’s pretty common in homes here in the south, as well as in new construction. It’s not appropriate in a historic home, and I personally just don’t like the look of it, so I decided to smooth it out. It requires a large putty knife and lightweight joint compound, and it’s akin to frosting a large cake.

Once it’s applied I had to sand, which was a serious arm workout. It’s an underestimated task to be sure, but it’s not technically difficult.

Then came the head scratchingly difficult part. In typical old house style, the room is completely unlevel. The floor on one side of the room is two inches higher than the other side, making the entire wall slanted. I wanted to add beadboard to the lower portion of my wall, but it wasn’t as simple as measuring the height from the floor up and making straight cut across. I wanted to give the illusion of a straight line, so that meant each piece had to be cut at a slight angle. I don’t know if this is even making sense. It barely made sense to me. I purchased a laser level, and it was my saving grace for installing these beadboard panels at a straight-looking-but-not-actually-straight height.

For the first portion of the week, Ethan was out of town working, so I was attempting to figure out how to get everything installed correctly by myself. Needless to say, once he returned from his trip and was able to help me, things went a lot more smoothly.

We finished up the beadboard late last night, and although it’s not pretty progress, I do think it will be the most laborious and difficult part of the process, so I’m glad to have it checked off the list during the first week.

Next, I will need to fill nail holes and sand the beadboard to prep it for paint, then install the chair rail that will sit on top of the beadboard, and the picture rail that will sit higher up on the wall. Those will hopefully go much quicker than my beadboard install (and I really hope I don’t come back next week completely regretting these words)!

Now, I have to get back to work, but be sure to check out some other projects being completed this season over on the One Room Challenge Blog. There are some projects that I really can’t wait to see come to life! That’s it for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

House Progress

Spring One Room Challenge Week One: The Plan

They say necessity is the mother of invention, right? So here I am once again, changing a kid’s space to make room for another baby. My youngest is getting booted out of the nursery, so we will be having our two children share a room for the first time. To get them excited about the transition, I knew I wanted to do something special in the room. The trick here is that our almost four year old boy and our almost two year old girl will be sharing, so I didn’t want it to be too boyish or too girlish. I also wanted to take into account my kids’ likes and interests while blending them with each other and still fitting in to the rest of the house.

I’m excited to share the design board for the space, which will be along the lines of a “traditional-English Country-but-still-sophisticated-for-a-toddler” space. Our home was built in 1895, so you know I just can’t bring myself to anything too trendy.

This room is actually my son’s current room. It was his nursery which we hastily threw together in the few weeks between the time we moved into the home and the time he was born. As he got older and transitioned out of a crib, we brought in a bed, and took out the rocker, but that was about it. We never did much to make a “big boy room.” The light fixture is still a broken ceiling fan that was there when we moved in and never replaced. It’s long overdue for a makeover, and since it’ll soon be housing both my son and my daughter, I figured this was the perfect time. I’m super excited to be working on this space over the next several weeks and finally bring this room to a fully finished space.

As you can see, it just kind of looks like a collection of things that got added slowly over time, and not in a good way. It’s haphazard instead of intentional. I do plan to reuse some of the things in the room, but a lot more is coming.

Be sure to follow along as I make this room into a room I hope both my toddlers will be excited about. I also can’t wait to see what other DIYers are doing in their spaces, and plan to follow along with them too! I’ll be sharing lots of real time updates on Instagram, and weekly progress reports here too. That’s all for today, have a fabulous day!

House Progress

Our Black House REVEAL!

After almost four years of living in this house, it finally has a fresh coat of paint! It’s been a long time coming, and we are so excited to finally have it done! I talked about different ideas we had here, and shared what we decided on here.

I wish we were further into the spring season, because these photos will really pop against lots of fresh greenery. We are in the drab brown of winter still, but I just couldn’t wait to show you guys the new look!

We used Sherwin Williams Black Magic for all of the siding, Tricorn Black for the trim, and Aleutian for the porch floors and ceilings. Everything was done in a satin finish, as was recommended by multiple painters for a couple of reasons. One, it will hopefully collect less dirt and dust than a flat finish, and two, it will give some reflection against the hot Texas sun come summer time. We are anticipating some warmer temperatures from the dark color come summer, but it was a risk we were willing to take to get the look we were going for. Now, let’s get to those before and after photos, shall we?

From my best estimates, the yellow was done in the early 90’s, and routinely touched up until about fifteen years ago. The lifespan of exterior paint in this climate is about 10 years, so it was definitely past its prime.

To have this side porch finally look like a connected and finished piece of the house is so meaningful to us. In the oldest photo we have of our house (1983), the porch was boarded up with plywood. When we purchased the house, it was covered with a thick smoke colored plexiglass as a sort of sun porch. It’s barely visible in this photo below, from the weekend we closed on the house. We tore down the plexiglass and the drywall that covered exterior siding right away, but were waiting to fully restore the porch until we painted the house. It’s been an eyesore as long as we’ve lived here and it feels so good to have it back as it was intended!

There is still a bit of work to do. I need to do some work to repair the front door and give it a fresh coat of shellac (it is dryyyyyyy as a bone but I wouldn’t let the painters touch it). Come spring, I need to get some plants in the ground to freshen up the porch and bring it to life.

Overall, I could not be more pleased with how it turned out. It was certainly a bold choice, but we absolutely love it. It’s a fresh take on an old house that leaves all the historic elements intact, and that’s all I could ever hope to accomplish. Thanks for cheering me on and sharing your thoughts during the process, it’s certainly been a long road to get here. That’s all for today friends, have a fabulous day!