The Richards home remodel

Spring is arriving – my favorite time of year. Now that most of our remodel is done, we are taking things slow. We have really been, flat out, just enjoying our home. Many of you have asked us to post pics of the rest of our house. Well, only the front living areas and kitchen are done, but stay tuned! Hopefully I will have photos of our guest bath and Jed’s study to post in the next month or two. The main problem is I think my mind has run out of creative visions for the time being. I was on decorating over-load for a while. Andrew B. Wallace, our fabulous GC keeps asking me about mirrors, lighting, & tile for the bathroom……my stock answer continues to be “I don’t know yet.” We have long way to go with the exterior and landscape too. Maybe we can take baby steps on this when summer begins.  We always love our outdoor projects together in the summer :).

For this front living area, I still need a floor lamp, curtains, plus the “just right” ceiling light, that I have yet to find. Once these three things are found, room done.

In our TV room, I am still trying to decide what to do with the wall the TV is on. Should I do sconces on either side of the TV on the wall, or do a floor lamp on either side?
I guess I will know when I see the right thing.

When designing our all white, shaker-style kitchen, we kept the color options very simple; white, chocolate, and silver with a small splash of blue gray. We did a lot of our shopping online to find just the right thing. Plus, when you shop online most shops offer free shipping and no sales tax. All of our hardware was from White-Chapel – I just feel in love with the thickness and quality! We just used basic white subway tile along with all the white trim color is Benjamin Moore white dove, including the cabinets. White dove seemed to match everything. I have listed below a lot of the other items in our remodel that I found on other websites. Enjoy! Happy Thanksgiving!

Chrome tip light bulbs in pendant lights

Kitchen pendant lights by Roost at Velocity Art & Design

Dining room 36″ chandelier

Pantry barn door hardware by Crown Industrial

White farm house Shaw sink

Espresso Quartz counter tops by Ceasar Stone

Wall Paint

Back of cabinet & pantry wall paint

Pantry shelf paint

All the paint is Benjamin Moore

We have a finished kitchen! These photos where taken at night so they may be a little dark. We LOVE it! Enjoy these photos. I will post all my product links soon, along with other info when I am not so exhausted from a long day. It felt like it was moving day all over again today, but great! Happy Thanksgiving!

After three months without a kitchen, Jed cooked last night (I watched and had a margarita :)) and this morning. Thank you Andrew (our fabulous GC!)! All the appliances were installed, the dining chandelier, along with the Espresso Quartz counter tops that we love! It was a crazy week of little mishaps….faucet valves leak (need to replace all this next week), electrical workers delayed, counter tops were slightly cut to big so stove did not fit, etc. But, thanks to Andrew, it all was completed by Friday night. We still have all the decorative details to finish: tile back splash, pendant lights, cabinet hardware, refrigerator panels, trim, paint, etc. I was off work all week to help get things moved in and moving. I think Andrew knew if Jed and I had to spend one more weekend without a kitchen, we may lose our mind and patience. Anyway, he made it happen! Check out all the progress made this week. Hopefully my next post will be a complete kitchen photo, then the bathroom that may be another month due to the back-ordered tile floor.

Here is Andrew trying to get things finished for us! Thank you!

Wow! What amazing progress in two weeks. The painters still have areas to paint trim that was put in at the last minute on Friday. Our kitchen window should arrive on Monday so the trim and paint will be finished. The rest of the week we will see counter tops, back splash, appliances, hardware, lights, etc….Very Exciting! Regarding the bathroom, still waiting on tile for bathroom floor :(. Uggg! This was my fault for ordering it so late but nothing can be installed in the bathroom until the floor goes in. Once we receive the floor tile, the bathroom can be finished quickly. Stay tuned!

p.s. Thank you Rambling Renovators for our kitchen cabinet inspiration! Visit their site at http://ramblingrenovators.blogspot.com/

Slowly, but surely we will have cabinets! There were a few minor changes and adjustments to be made once the cabinets were delivered and installed. We changed a few doors and two cabinets were a little to long. Anyway, this should all be done by next week, along with painting everything. We are getting very close. Stay tuned.

We have walls this week! It is really starting to look like a house now. We have a long way to go but the kitchen and bathroom are really starting to take shape. Everything is so dusty and our allergies are terrible this week. What a mess! Anyway, trim will continue this week, plus floor will be installed. Really, Andrew is waiting on me for my tile decisions so he can finish our guest bathroom. I have been working so much it has been difficult trying to get tile finalized. Jed has been meeting with Andrew to get things moving this past week – Thanks Jed! Hopefully I will have all tile picked out and purchased by tomorrow. 🙂

Kitchen walls – pantry opening on left side.

Guest bath

Very exciting – we have all new electric wiring and plumbing in the house, along with inspection cleared! We are very excited, plus our house is much more safe. As I have written before, our house was not up to code on the electric. We had to add all new panels and change over everything, which we knew when we bought the house. See the photos below. The empty red box on the left was the original wiring (not safe) from the 1930’s. Anyway, next week we can start getting the walls up and floors in place. It may start to look like a house soon. I will keep you posted!

P.S. Our home phone is still out (waiting on AT&T for the 3rd time!), however, they did get our DSL working so we can work on the computer :).

Here is a photo of the kitchen and guest bath with the new plumbing and electric added. What a mess!

All the demo is complete! See the photos below. As they were taking everything out, an old chimney was found behind some cabinets. We talked about trying to keep this and use this in the design, but it just would not work. The electric and framing start next week. We will be with out electricity for a week or two while they are rewiring the house. I will keep you posted. Have a great weekend!

Chimney found behind cabinet

Kitchen and Guest Bath after demo

No more kitchen! Thank you Jed! Mia, my fabulous niece, packed most of the kitchen for a small fee. Then Jed did most of the demo himself. Here are some the kitchen demo photos.

Wallpaper under all the sheet rock.

Traci pretending to demo :!