The time has finally come. More than 13 months after it first began, I’m sharing the official “after” photos from our kitchen renovation. (If you didn’t see the before pics last night—or last year!—you have check ’em out.)
The majority of the work was done by ourselves, hence why it took so long. Needless to say, with full-time jobs and a toddler, it’s not easy to get big projects like this done in a timely manner. We also suffered from periods of burnout—once we got it to the point where it was not only livable, but functional, it was easy to lose motivation for periods of time. Then we’d tackle something else and again, take another long break. If I’m being 100% truthful, there are still a couple of really little things that need to be done here, but I doubt that you would ever notice unless I point them out to you. So I’m not going to. :)
We enlisted the help of my brother for demo of the z-brick and putting up the new drywall, but then we did all of the drywall finishing work—the taping, the mudding, the sanding—all by ourselves. My mom helped with some sanding and painting for the walls, too. Before we put the new drywall up, while we had all the walls open, we had an electrician come in and wire for under-cabinet lighting, as well as fix a few other issues. I sanded and painted the cabinets all by myself over the course of a couple of months, actually. We ripped up the old flooring ourselves, but hired someone to lay down the new stuff. Finally, my brother helped put up the two types of crown molding—the molding to cover the smalls spaces between the cabinets and the soffits, as well as the molding between the soffits and ceiling.
As you saw in our before photos, the original dishwasher surround (right there by the garbage can) was made of plywood, with the z-brick plastered to it. We ripped that out, and rebuilt the surround ourselves. We also built it out of plywood, but covered it in wainscoting and cut some shoe molding to go around the bottom and used corner molding along the corner seams to finish it all off.
The floors are cork, a plank style. We ordered it from a local company, but it’s Wicanders Scandia in the Sandstorm color. We also finally bought a kitchen table and chairs. It was difficult to find something that was white and didn’t break the bank, but we finally stumbled upon this set at Value City. Go figure.
The countertops are the original ones (well, from when we moved in). They are the only thing, aside from the appliances and a couple of light fixtures, that we did not change. I really want to upgrade them—I’ve been dreaming of some kind of black granite—but that kind of investment is not in the budget right now and these countertops, although laminate, are in great shape.
We replaced all of the doors—including the hallway closet doors and the basement door, seen here—with six-panel doors. I cannot overstate the effect of this upgrade, even alone. It makes an amazing difference.
Our sliding glass door is a nice one—it’s a good quality door, and in good condition, but we couldn’t get over the stained wood look of it. We like all of our doors and trim to be crisp white. So what did we do? We painted it, of course. We did that back in the summertime, thankfully, because to really get into all of the nooks and crannies, we had to take the sliding door right off of the track and lay it down in the middle of the floor. :) It turned out great, though! Definitely worth the work. Those bi-fold closet doors—which hide our pantry/laundry closet—are also new. We installed them ourselves, which proved to be quite a challenge. There was a lot of cursing involved in that project.
Ah, the cabinets. These are our original cabinets—and the same hardware—as what was in the before photos. Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it? I primed them with Zinsser SmartPrime, and painted them with Benjamin Moore’s Advance paint in the color Paper Mache. It is a white that is a little on the creamier side. In some of these pics, the lower cabinets appear to be a slightly different shade than the uppers, but that’s just a trick on the eyes in the photos, perhaps due to lighting. In real life, they are all the same color. I used a brush and a foam roller to paint all of the cabinet frames, but used a spray gun hooked up to our air compressor to prime and paint all of the cabinet doors. What a process that was—one evening for each coat, on each side. One coat of primer + two coats of paint x 2 sides of each door = 6 nights of back-breaking, mind-numbing work. It turned out SO. GOOD. though.
I had never worked with a spray gun before, but was totally inspired by Jenny here. We planned to use the exact spray gun she used, but the popularity of it must’ve blown up after her post made its way around Pinterest, because I could not find it ANYWHERE. I ended up ordering another HVLP gun from SprayGunWorld.com. Their site looks totally ghetto but they are legit and the guys there were really helpful to me. I e-mailed and called a few times to tell them what I was trying to accomplish and with what (my compressor size/type), and they recommended guns that were compatible with my needs.
Our countertops sometimes come off a little pink in photos, which pisses me off because they’re really not. They’re actually very similar to the look of the floor, if you can imagine that. Again, hoping to replace those—just trying to figure out realistically how long we are going to live with this kitchen and therefore, whether the investment in granite (or something similarly expensive) is worth it.
A small change that we made that makes a HUGE difference was to change the side of our sink that the disposal was on. When we put the countertops back on and the sink back in, we swapped it before hooking everything back up. As you can see, the sink is slightly off-center on the counter there, and very close to the dishwasher. Before, it made very little sense, but the disposal (and therefore the side where we washed dishes) was on the left. We moved it to the right and love it. We also upgraded our faucet.
Oh! And my roman shade. That’s DIY, made out of fabric and a cheap set of blinds. I owe Pinterest for that one. Here’s one of the tutorials I referenced.
The above pic gives you a pretty good look at our crown molding. Love it! It was one of those finishing touches that really helped make the space. We were too chicken to do away with our soffit completely (didn’t know what we might find in there), plus, we weren’t replacing the cabinets, so it wasn’t really going to buy us any additional space. To try to make the soffit blend in with the cabinets, we painted the soffits the same color as the cabinets (as opposed to painting them the wall color, which is commonly done), then added the crown to make everything look more “built in.” To try to make the soffit appear purposeful, if you will. It’s still a stupid soffit, but hey, I think we worked pretty well with what we’ve got. :)
We did it. Is it my dream kitchen? No, but my dream kitchen would be in a house that would probably cost close to half a million dollars. That’s why it’s a dream. :) But this kitchen gets the job done. And now, it’s white, bright, and a place that’s more than fine to cook, bake, and hang out in. I love the way everything turned out. When I look back at the before photos now, I can’t even believe that our kitchen used to look like THAT. We have the added bonus of being super proud of the new kitchen because of how much work we did ourselves.
We’ve come so far.
One more reminder of THE BEFORE
Change is a beautiful thing.
Questions? Leave them in the comments and I will do my best to answer everything.
To see all of my blog posts related to this renovation, click here. And here are links to some of the updates along the way:
- My confession: Our kitchen is really ugly
- Planning the renovation
- The beginning of the renovation
- Prepping for demo
- Demolition: The brick is gone
- New drywall
- Living in a huge mess
- Prepping and priming the cabinets for paint
- Painting the walls green
- Finally making the kitchen livable/functional again!
- A new faucet
- Spray painting the cabinet doors
- Trying to narrow down options for the floor
- About the floors: I think we’re going for cork!
- Ripping up the old floors
What a long journey it’s been! :)
It has been well over a year since I first posted about our kitchen, and our plans to renovate it, mostly by ourselves. What can I say? We embrace DIY.
We started demo in February 2012, redid the drywall in February and March, primed and painted the cabinets in March through May, and got all the cabinets (and doors) back up in May 2012. Then we took a little break while we actually lived our lives for a few months, then ripped up the floors and had them redone in August 2012.
At first, I updated on our progress relatively regularly, but once we took that break between May and August, I just never got back on board. I always meant to post about our floor installation, but the truth is that it was such a nightmare, that I couldn’t even bring myself to blog about it. Let’s put it this way: Our original contractor started putting the floor down, and it just wasn’t right. We tried to talk it through with him, but he stood by his work, and we stood by the fact that it was sub-par. He said we were at an impasse and ended up walking off of the job. Thankfully, we hadn’t paid him a penny. My cousin’s husband thankfully came to our rescue to get the job done, and then Michael’s grandfather passed away, we had Nora’s birthday, I had a miscarriage, and then we were several weeks removed from it all and I couldn’t talk myself into reliving the whole situation for the sake of a blog post because it sucked so badly.
Things were pretty stagnant again in September-November, but all we really had to do were the finishing touches. After Thanksgiving, I convinced my brother to come give us a hand with all of the cabinet molding. We had to do two different types of “crown”—one to cover the gap between the cabinets and the soffit, and we chose to do some traditional crown between the soffits and ceiling to make it look more finished and “built in.” That was done in an afternoon, but then required several evenings of finishing work—caulking, wood-filling, sanding, and two coats of paint. But a few weeks before Christmas? It was finally done.
Anyway, three months later, I finally got around to taking some official “after” photos of the space. And I really, really want to show it to you, even though if you’ve been reading here for a while you’ve seen lots of unofficial peeks at what it looks like from other photos I’ve shared.
But before I hit you with the “after” photos, it seems only appropriate to remind you first of what it looked like before. It’s been so long, I think it’s necessary. Truthfully, I had to remind myself of what it looked like, too. Brace yourselves. It was ugly.
Here we go… First, the pics of what it looked like right when we moved in (August 2011):
Wallpaper, z-brick, parquet. It was a mess. If you’re interested in some explanation about what you see in these photos, I talk more in this post about the state of the kitchen and the work we did shortly after we moved in—but it wasn’t much.
And here are photos I took right before we started demo in February 2012. They were all taken at night, so excuse the exceptionally bad lighting. But it really was THAT dark and gross:
Tomorrow, I’ll be back to share the afters. I promise. :)
Sorry for my silence so far this week, my friends. It has been a crazy busy one in my work life, so I was spending evenings putting extra hours, unfortunately. But at the end of the day today I was able to heave a big sigh of relief and hopefully life will return to some semblance of normal now—at least for a little while!
This past weekend, I did manage to take some time off of work to refresh and recharge. Which was wonderful, considering the weather was great. For March, anyway. We had what we call a “thaw,” which really just means that it was warm enough so that it wasn’t unbearable to go outside. :) I instagrammed a photo of Nora playing outside and my friend, Niki, commented—”I love that we New Yorkers were out in full effect today because the temps broke 45!”
So true.
On Saturday afternoon, we had a playdate with our neighbors in our driveway, and we all looked forward to the upcoming days when we’ll run into each other and get chances to talk on a far more regular basis than we do right now.
Nora is so awesome right now, you guys. I wish I could bottle it—her personality, the funny things she says, her demeanor and the way she views the world—because it is literally impossible to record it, photograph it, or write it all down. Does she have moments (days?) when she absolutely makes me want to rip my hair out? Yes. But overall, what an amazing age. Seriously.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that we have been potty training (it’s going really well—maybe I will blog about that soon). We have been giving her a small reward for every time she has success on the potty. The prize? A single fruit snack. She is so motivated by these freaking fruit snacks that she will start requesting “Snack? SNACK?!” before she is even done peeing. A few nights ago, I was giving her a bath when I had to pee myself so, of course, I went. No big deal, because hi, moms never get any privacy anyway. :) After I peed, Nora looked up at me from the bath with a huge smile and excitedly exclaimed, “Mommy!! SNACK!!” She was psyched for me that I earned myself a fruit snack. Hilarious.
Last Friday, my mom and brother brought take-out dinner over to our house. As they were leaving, I was looking at Nora and the under part of her eye looked a little purple. I said, “Aww, Nora, do you have a black eye?” And she said, “No, Mommy! White and blue!” (For the whites of her eyes, and the color of her irises, obviously. Duh, Mommy.)
She has also been “faking sick” lately. She’ll dramatically put her hand to her forehead and say, “SICK, Mommy. SICK.” I don’t know what that’s all about or where she picked that gem up from. But I can already tell I’m going to be the “suck it up and get your butt to school” type of mom, just like mine was. :)
This morning, she had one of her every-six-months check-ups for her ear tubes. I couldn’t go because I had an important work meeting, so Michael took her. As I was putting Nora in his car this morning, I told her, “You’re going to go the doctor!” And she said, “Tessa’s doctor? Mommy’s doctor?” (We’ve taken her with us to both fairly recently, and she loved these visits.) I said, “No, YOUR doctor!” And she pointed to her chest and said, “MY doctor?!” as if I just told her we were taking her to somewhere really fun. At the appointment, Michael said she was fantastic, letting the doctor look in her ears and mouth without issue. I guess her only problem was that she wanted him to look into her eyes, too. :)
Oh, and don’t even think about using any adjective to describe her except “BIG.” We cannot call her “sweetie,” “tootsie,” or any cute nickname. We can’t say “you’re such a smart girl,” or “Mommy’s little girl,” or “you’re so cute!” or anything of the like. She will correct us nearly every time, saying, “Noooo… BIG girl!” Alriiiighty, then. She is obsessed.
It’s a fun time to be a parent to this little girl. And it’s nice to know that spring is drawing near. I can’t wait for more warm temperatures, sunshine, and fresh air. It makes me feel alive.
We had the appointment this morning to have the fetal echocardiogram performed on our baby. As discussed in yesterday’s post, there were concerns raised from our anatomy ultrasound (at 18 weeks) that our baby was experiencing episodes of bradycardia, or a lower than normal heart rate.
By the time we went today, my nerves were really frazzled. The more the reality of the potential situation kept sinking in, the more scared I became. Walking into the echo lab today, I wondered if the outcome would change the course of our lives in a major way. I was afraid of the news we might receive.
Altogether, the appointment was two hours. A sonographer did the full scan/echo, which was about 30-40 minutes. Then we waited a good 40 minutes for the cardiologist to become available to take a look himself and meet with us. He had been called into a surgery to take some images, so we were at the mercy of his schedule. Still, I didn’t mind waiting for him because I figured waiting minutes was better than having to wait days. I was just happy to know that we were going to have answers today.
The sonographer who performed the echo was really friendly. And although she’s not supposed to give patients results, she ended up making several comments throughout the scan that put us more at ease. In fact, just a few minutes into it, after taking a few snippets of audio of the baby’s heart (both of which revealed heart rates in normal ranges—150s), she said, “A lot of times things will be detected during the scans in the OB’s office, and by the time the patients get here for us to take a look, it turns out to be nothing.” At another point, she said, “This baby just wanted to show you who is going to be running the house in a few months by causing a big commotion now, before it’s even born.” She wasn’t really telling us that things were going to be fine, but at the same time… she was telling us that things were going to be fine. I kept thinking, Why on earth would she say things like this to someone if there was something wrong with her baby? And come on: she wouldn’t.
Since the sonographer definitely put us more at ease, it made the 40-minute wait for the cardiologist a lot more bearable. Otherwise, it may have been somewhat excruciating. But finally, he came in.
He did his own scan—an abbreviated version—to get his own look at the baby’s heart. While he was doing that, he talked to us quite a bit. I can’t really explain what he said because I didn’t even understand half of it, but the gist was this: The baby was not actually having bradycardia, but does have a very minor arrhythmia that is not at all uncommon in unborn babies. Most of the time, these arrhythmias are not ever detected because the sonographer has to be looking at the heart and its rate at exactly the right time.
For instance, the entire time the sonographer was doing the scan—30-40 minutes—she never saw anything abnormal. But during the 5-10 minutes the cardiologist was looking, he once said to the sonographer, “Ah! Right there! Did you see that right there?” Apparently the baby’s heart appeared to do a momentary “pause.” And I’m talking a split second here, because I was watching the whole time and didn’t notice anything. It’s not as if our baby’s heart actually stopped beating.
The way the cardiologist explained it (sort of) is that while the baby’s heart is still developing, it has the tendency to experience arrhythmia. He said that the “pause” was not actually a pause at all, but actually an indication of an extra beat. Something about the atrium initiating a beat but the ventricle does not follow. So if you are viewing the heart beat pattern or timing it at that moment, you might see beat-pause-beat instead of what is really happening—beat-half beat-beat. So the baby’s heart beat can appear to be slow, when in reality it’s not. Anyway, that’s the best way I can explain it based on what he said.
The bottom line is this: According to the cardiologist, our baby has a healthy heart. He said the anatomy of it is fine, and that there is nothing for us to worry about. In fact, he didn’t think that the “problem” even warrants a follow up. If my OB happens to notice something else in any of my appointments, I can go back for another look, but otherwise, we’re good. He said he expects that the arrhythmia will resolve on its own, either sometime during my pregnancy, or within days—or at most a few weeks—after he or she is born.
Needless to say, we are extremely relieved. It was like a huge weight was lifted off of our shoulders. We thank everyone for all of the positive thoughts and prayers sent our way, and are so glad that we are a couple of the people who get to walk out of the hospital with that kind of news.
What really happened here is that we were victims of the advances in our technology. I mean, seriously. Just a handful of years ago, we would have never even been aware of this. While medical technology is most certainly a blessing, it can also be a curse, can’t it? Making people worry over nothing? At the end of the day, all we are is thankful, but it’s interesting to think about. The cardiologist told us that it wasn’t that long ago that all OB sonographers looked for was four chambers of the heart. If the heart had four chambers, it was deemed healthy. But now, they look for a lot more, and as a result, there are a lot more referrals to pediatric cardiologists—some of them completely warranted, and some of them false alarms.
I type all of this out in such detail in the hope that if someone else gets news that her baby showed signs of bradycardia following her anatomy scan at 18 weeks or at any other point in the second trimester, she might find this post when she inevitably googles it. I admit to googling a little bit last night, but I couldn’t find ANYTHING that seemed relevant to me. I couldn’t believe there was not one message board post out there with someone in this same situation. All I wanted was to find an example of someone who had been through this only to have things turn out fine. Hopefully I can be that example for somebody else now.
Again, thank you for all of the thoughts and prayers. So many of you guys have found ways to lift me up with your words in times when I’ve needed it these last five years. I hope you know how much I appreciate it.
I had my anatomy ultrasound yesterday. It was basically first thing in the morning, so we decided to take Nora with us to the appointment instead of dropping her off at daycare first. We thought she would get a kick out of an opportunity to actually see the baby in Mommy’s belly.
Things went well. The baby cooperated, and the ultrasound tech commented repeatedly how “this baby is so good,” and how it easily gave her everything she needed. She even gave us a little treat—she switched to the 4D ultrasound to give us a (somewhat creepy, but also cool) glimpse of the little one’s face.
We also got some good profile shots, and the baby was really showing off his/her hands and feet—with 10 visible fingers and 10 visible toes.
After the ultrasound, I also had my routine appointment. I got weighed. I think I’ve gained about 5-6 lbs. so far. Blood pressure check—110/68, or something of the sort. Then my doctor saw me, and it was super quick. She asked if I had any questions, felt around my belly, and then listened to the baby’s heartbeat via doppler. She said, “Sounds healthy.” She told me that the ultrasound tech had told her that preliminarily, everything looked good, but that she (my doctor) would be receiving a full report in a day or so.
We went on our merry way, texting pics to our families. I happily showed off my photos to curious coworkers. It was fun—a good day.
Today, I was in between meetings at work—had less than five minutes to spare—when I ran back to my desk to get a file that I needed. I saw that I had a missed call from my doctor’s office. I was immediately a little worried about it, because I couldn’t figure out a good reason for why they would be calling me so soon after my appointment. I listened to the voicemail, and sure enough, it was a nurse. So now I was even a little more worried. I had only a couple of minutes before I needed to be running a meeting (not just sitting in), but it was already late afternoon and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to talk to someone, so I called. Thankfully, I reached the nurse right away.
The nurse told me that in the final ultrasound report, the tech had noted that my baby appeared to have episodes of bradycardia—an abnormally low heart rate. She said that I am being referred to a pediatric cardiologist at the hospital, and that I need to go for a fetal echocardiogram. And although it can sometimes take some time to get into the cardiologist for an appointment, she had already called on my behalf and they happened to have an open appointment for tomorrow morning.
Of course, I started freaking out a little bit. I asked questions about what does this mean? Were there structural abnormalities?
I told her I was scared.
She said to not freak out. She said that it could very well mean nothing, and that my doctor had not observed any problems with the baby’s heart rate when she listened to it via doppler (but hey, to be fair, she only listened for a few seconds—maybe a half minute at most). She also said that the tech had made no note of structural abnormalities with the heart.
I tried to stay away from Google, and I’ve been pretty good, but I at least searched “fetal echocardiogram,” because I wasn’t at all sure what to expect tomorrow. Apparently it’s just another ultrasound, but it’s more sophisticated. It can take more detailed pictures of the heart. And, well, that’s when I really started to get scared. Because evidently it can detect abnormalities that a regular ultrasound cannot. Before, I was feeling reassured about the fact that the tech had not seen anything structurally wrong—the nurse said it was a potential problem with the rhythm. And while that is certainly not comforting, I was still thinking that this had to be something relatively minor… right? But now, I’m not so sure. I don’t know what to think. My mind is racing.
I’m scared that there is something wrong with our baby.
Unlike many other conditions or problems, I don’t know anyone who has had this. I don’t know anyone who was sent for a fetal echocardiogram. And I certainly don’t know anyone who was sent for a fetal echocardiogram only to find out that nothing was wrong.
So I also have a real fear of the unknown.
I have always had a really healthy appreciation for all of the things that have to go right in order to end up with a healthy baby. I know what a miracle it is. I know. Now, all I can do is hope and pray that indeed this baby is healthy, and that we will indeed be blessed again.
I want you to be okay, baby. Please be okay.
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
