Kitchen Redo In Progress

A small celebration the evening we closed escrow. When we decided to purchase a new house, we didn't realize that the market was going to be so insanely hot. I can't tell you how many properties we looked at and before we could even make an offer, they were in escrow. It was crazy. Then we found the perfect fixer upper in an awesome neighborhood, not too close but not too far, at a fantastic price. Then the inspections came in. Fungus, carpenter ants, might have to rebuild the entire front wall of the house...yikes! The owner was unwilling to negotiate and we ran, scared that our budget couldn't handle fixing the necessary issues let alone make it into the home we wanted.

Back in the hunt. Grrrr...

Nothing else in that neighborhood was in our price range and fit our needs. We didn't really want to live in a different part of town. Sigh...

We sat down as a family and had a heart to heart. Do we stop looking? or Do we reset our expectations? We decided to reset our expectations. We began looking closer to the University, where Miss K would be spending her next 4 to 5 years, and Miss H was likely to follow two years later (that is next year BTW!!!).

We refocused and stumbled across this little guy. 1878 square feet, three large bedrooms, big yard, mature trees, and just enough character that it piqued my imagination. So much potential to be such a cool little house during this stage of our lives.  The photos I have been sharing are a day or two after we moved in. Please excuse the iPhone pics, its all I had available to me. At that point we were still split between the two houses and I was lucky to find anything except the bare essentials. 

I despise moving, but we did finally start to settle in. 

Settling in means projects :)

New appliances were delivered and that meant we had to move cabinets to accommodate the new counter depth fridge. Which meant the granite on that side had to go. I have future plans for that slab. It is sitting in our garage waiting for its next job description.

And then this happened on the other side. I swear I didn't touch it. Come to find out, it was attached with two tiny little finishing nails :( 

So...

Out it came along with all of the paper cabinets in that corner. Already, it was feeling so much more open.

Next up? A fun project for the brick wall. Pretty and functional, what more could a girl ask for?