You might have noticed in the pictures I've shown so far that our new house is a little dated. And rather ugly. But we're slowly making some progress, in the two and a half weeks we've owned it!
But more on the progress in a minute. First, I wanted to share the vision we have for what our family room/breakfast nook/kitchen will eventually look like, so you all can see the potential we see. This below photo was taken Wednesday night. Hooray for painting progress, although I haven't gotten good at photographing the color yet (it's less teal in real life).
And here is a quick mock up I threw together over the same photo, to illustrate what it will eventually look like. One big open and flowing room!
Eventually we will be taking out the breakfast nook chandelier and installing recessed lighting, so we won't be stuck putting a table only centered under the light. The wall color and hardwood floors will flow the length of the area (and the floors into the rest of the house), the ugly dark cabinets in the kitchen will be updated, and we will be covering the fireplace with built ins (which I'm very excited about, because I'm not a huge fan of painting brick fireplaces since it's really hard to take off, in case red brick comes back into style in 30 years when you want to sell. With the built ins, we will not only get extra storage, but will have the perfect place to mount our TV, and hide all of the cords behind a false back in the built ins, and it can always be taken down if we want to see the brick again.). For now, we're keeping the beams natural, at least until we get hardwood floors. They might get painted white eventually, but we don't want to commit to that until we see them with the dark flooring.
So now you can start to see a little of what I see when I look at this room in our house. It's going to be so pretty, eventually!
But back to the progress I mentioned. Our Wednesday night project was to remove this pointless railing and beam, that separated the family room from the breakfast nook. Not only was it really dated looking, but it was getting annoying walking around it, when it blocked so much of your path between the kitchen and family room. With open and flowing our goal with these rooms, this railing just had to go.
Remember this photo from when we took down the kitchen cabinets over the peninsula? Yep, that post and railing were doing nothing for the look of the room, and just getting in the way. I'd much rather define the breakfast nook area with furniture and maybe a rug, than with a fence in the middle of the room.
So my husband attacked it with a reciprocating saw.
He cut out about a 10 inch chunk from the middle of the post, so he could wiggle it back and forth until the nails came loose.
I was told to stand out of the way, so naturally that meant taking pictures of the progress. He continued with the wiggling of the railing, since the bottom legs were just nailed straight into the sub flooring. Also, these photos taken with more natural light are a closer representation of the true color on the walls.
A little pry bar action on the wall side, to get those nails loosened.
And then I got to help with the wiggling, and with both of us holding the railing at either end and moving it back and forth, slowly it came detached from the wall and floor. Goodbye ugly railing!
We are left with some holes on the floor, which we knew we would be. Short term we are planning to patch these with closely matching pieces of laminate, and get a new strip to bridge where the laminate flooring and tile meet. But eventually, as you saw above, we'll be upgrading all of the flooring to hardwood, making the rooms flow together even better.
We also came across a fun surprise when removing the piece of wood from the wall, that the railing was nailed to. A patch of wood paneling. Can you just imagine how dark and dreary the room would have looked back with the dark beams and dark paneling on the walls? Yikes!
So now we get the joy of taking out this sad little forlorn piece of wood paneling that was left behind when at some point previous owners put in drywall. We can pull it mostly free right now, and see the studs behind it, so we'll just get a piece of drywall and hopefully it won't be too hard to cut it and replace the paneling with it. And then I can continue painting the pretty blue into the breakfast nook and kitchen. That neon yellow has got to go!
Here's another look from the family room, looking toward the kitchen.
Such an improvement in the 2 1/2 weeks since I took this picture!
But we've still got a loooonnnnngggg way to go. You know, since eventually we'll end up changing just about everything in this house to fit our needs. I can't wait to see how it all evolves!
Have you ever attacked a post or railing with a reciprocating saw? Or found the surprise of 70s wood paneling hiding behind something? And who has home projects on their to do list for this weekend. You know I do!
7 comments:
We had one of those random dividing railings btwn our kitchen and family room in the house I grew up in as well. So random! I think it looks so much better without it and creates a much better flow between the two rooms. Can't wait to see it all come together!
I really love the idea of the built ins over the fireplace! We had paneling in the den of our old house which my parents had removed before putting it on the market.
You might have a long way to go, but it looks like you've already made a HUGE impact on the space. Can't wait to keep following along with the remodel!
It looks great already!
hooray for demo and progress on your home :)
Wow, the space is looking so much more open now! I can't wait to see how it evolves. Love the blue colour too!
it's so much more open--love watching the progress you two are making!
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