Kitchen photos

I finished unpacking the kitchen yesterday and just wanted to share some photos of it while it's nice and neat.

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had enough money to purchase a new refrigerator. The way that the cabinets are arranged, a counter depth fridge is required in order for the drawer and cabinet door next to it to be functional. Here's our shiny new fridge:

The first project we took on was replacing all the exterior doorknobs. The old ones were a brassy gold color and were showing their age a bit. We are going to be putting brushed nickel hardware throughout the house and these knobs are the first things in the house to introduce that color scheme. 

The second project we did was replacing the brassy-colored dining room light with this more modern nickel one:

The next few small projects we plan to tackle in the kitchen are replacing the light over the sink, replacing the fleur de lis knobs with brushed nickel, painting the walls, and removing the "stained glass" decals from the door.

Of course, we eventually have some big projects we would like to do in the kitchen, including getting new countertops, getting all stainless steel appliances, replacing the flourescent light with recessed fixtures, and probably painting the cabinets. These big projects are not on our radar for a while, but I'll most likely be posting a kitchen inspiration post pretty soon anyway.

Unexpected project #1

The first night that we were here, we noticed a funny smell in the office. We thought it was the litterbox, but upon further investigation discovered that it was, in fact, the carpet. So we paid for professional carpet cleaning in the office and master bedroom (the only two rooms with carpet) yesterday. Today, after the smell of the cleaner wore off...the office still smelled like urine. Boo.

So we ripped up the carpet.

Now what? We don't really have a room's worth of new flooring in our budget, so it may end up looking like this for a while:

Action shot:

Now that we've already ripped up the carpet, we've been discussing what kind of flooring we should put in there. Tile, carpet, and wood have all been mentioned. If we go with wood, we aren't sure if we want to try to match the existing wood in the hallway or get something different. Alton wants a manly, dark, wood-paneled office, so they would probably be a good bit darker than the yellow-y floors in the rest of the house. I think maybe for now we will just tell people we're going for an "industrial" look in there.

Exterior photos

The daffodils are already blooming thanks to our crazy Louisiana weather. They are giving me spring fever.

You can see from this photo what I was talking about in the last post. We need a fence going across the driveway in order to enclose the backyard.

We've been discussing what to do with the covered patio, but that's a post for another time...

We met the neighbors across the street the day we moved in and they just so happened to be cutting down a tree, so we now have free firewood for that inevitable last cold snap before spring.

Master bath inspiration

There is an endless list of small projects that we will be tackling pretty much constantly such as replacing cabinet knobs, painting, etc. However, I wanted to share the few big projects (and by "big", I mean "expensive") that we plan to take on in the future.

The first big project we want to tackle is closing in the backyard. Our house is on a corner lot with the front facing one street and the driveway on the other. Because of this, you have to walk across our carport to get to the backyard. Alton wants to get a dog as soon as we can (another big project in itself, but not home-related.) So we need to figure out the best way to fully fence in the yard, including going across the driveway.

The second big project we plan to do is to transform the ginormously hugegantic triangular bathtub in the master bathroom into a ginormously hugegantic walk-in shower. The master bath currently has no shower and we are not really bath people, so if we are only going to have one or the other, we would prefer a shower over a tub. We could put in a nice tub/shower combo but hey, where's the fun in that?

If you know me, you know that as soon as the words "bathroom renovation" were mentioned, my imagination was going crazy trying to picture what I wanted. I ultimately decided that as the master bathroom, this space should be a calm spa-like retreat and I've pulled together some inspiration photos to share with you.

I'm really loving white cabinets with marble tops.

This one has a more modern feel with the glass tile in the shower. I like that they did a pattern with the shower tile. I think stripes would look good if they were done in the same color scheme, but alternating between marble and glass.

I'm pretty intrigued by this herringbone pattern. It's always interesting when tile is layed in a way that isn't just a grid pattern.

I'm thinking of going with some sort of small tile on the floor of the shower. Either something like this photo or...

A light-colored pebble mosaic. Very zen.

So that's what I'm thinking for the master bath re-do. Of course, it won't be happening for a while, but a girl can dream, right?

Photos found here:
http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/designer-bathrooms
http://www.decorpad.com/photo.htm?photoId=5893
http://www.zimbio.com/Bathroom+Ideas/articles/1/Great+Bathroom+Ideas
http://thegoodsdesign.blogspot.com/2008/08/when-youre-in-bathroom-european.html

Care to join me on my adventure?

My husband and I just moved into our first home on Saturday and my mind has been reeling with all the little things I want to do around the house, so I thought that writing a blog about those things would be a great way to get them out of my head and onto paper (or screen, rather.) I plan to update frequently and include lots of pictures of my inspiration as well as my actual projects. Speaking of actual projects, we've already tackled a few. Our house was outfitted with new exterior doorknobs on Sunday and we bought and installed a new dining room light fixture as well as some new cabinet hardware today. I will be posting photos of those projects as well as some photos of the exterior of the home soon, so stay tuned...