Slumber Parties

As much as Eric and I sometimes wish we still lived in the city (to a point where we even considered renting a room in SF so we could crash there anytime we wanted instead of driving/training back home to San Mateo), we definitely appreciate having a HOUSE.

This past weekend, we really took advantage of our space when we had out-of-town friends visiting, and we had a big slumber party with four couples and a baby :). It was definitely a chill weekend -- lots of catching up and hanging out in our sunny backyard, drinking beer/wine and playing cornhole. You can't get too crazy with a 16-month-old in tow, but we all enjoyed the relaxing weekend.

Part of our slumber party crew:

The cutest houseguest we've had so far:

haha that yogurt pic cracks me up.

Back to blogging about the kitchen and more on granite and backsplash next! Exciting, I know ;)

Before and After

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, we unfortunately don't have many "before" photos of the kitchen for various reasons (lost our digital camera at Bay to Breakers, lost my iphone with photos on them, etc...)

But here are some photos that Eric had taken of our house/kitchen on the day we first saw our house, at the Open House event. Side note: the house was staged to be sold, so the decorations in the "before" photos are not ours!

The BIGGEST and most obvious change we made with the remodel was to tear down a wall that previously stood between the dining room and the kitchen. The kitchen had a door entryway, and if you closed the door, you would be completely enclosed in the kitchen. Here is a bad-angled shot of the doorway into the kitchen, with the wall enclosing it:

We tore down the wall and made it into a counter/bar top. We also closed up the window you see in the above (and below) photo. I would normally hate to decrease natural light into a building, but since we were opening up the kitchen to the dining room (which has a big sliding glass door), we didn't really need the extra light, and DID need the extra wall space.

The two photos below face the same wall, so you can see where the window was removed (our new fridge now covers that area).

Beyond those two structural changes, we changed/replaced EVERYTHING else. Our original kitchen was clean and usable, but seemed like it was almost the original kitchen the house was built with in the 1950's.

We changed out the laminate(?) countertops with granite. The floor was some sort of plastic-y thing that looked like it was glued on, and we replaced that with oak hardwood floors that matched the rest of our house. New custom cabinets. Stainless steel appliances (which Eric briefly blogged about here). New sink, faucet, etc.

One of my favorite decisions that we made was regarding the backsplash (quartzite stone tiles that our contractor cut into smaller strips, with a glass mosaic accent). I'll blog more about that later.

 

Knocking down the wall opens up the whole house so much more. And the counter/bar top also gives us a place to stand/hang out/converse while others (usually me haha) cook in the kitchen :).

Our first guests to have dinner with us in our new kitchen:

I <3 my family :D

Finished!

Two photos for now... more detailed commentary to follow.

Isn't it awesome? :)

So close to the end!

My first post! :)

I asked Eric to share this blog with me because I thought I was going to blog real-time about all of our remodeling efforts and updates. Well, after about two months of eating out and otherwise living in a mess of a house, our kitchen is ALMOST finished -- and I haven't blogged at all yet!

I had been taking photos of the progress religiously when the remodel first began (and even before that, when we were making various decisions for purchases), saying "I'm gonna blog about it!" Well... A) I got lazy, and B) my phone got stolen so I lost a bunch of the photos I was going to blog about :(.

But fret not... for the few friends we have that would care about the details of remodeling and house stuff in general... I'll be blogging in the upcoming weeks about all of the details that went into our wonderful new kitchen, and all our lessons learned :). And for our other friends... you'll thank me someday down the road when you have your own house too! :)

Current state:

This photo was taken a few days ago, and all that was left were some final touches on the cabinets (handles, alignment, etc.), backsplash, and paint. Almost done!!
 
I'll do a full "before and after" comparison in a week or so when we're really done with everything! Can't wait! I miss cooking and eating at home!