Our Home Remodel: The Great Room
Thursday, October 06, 2016
It's finally time to wrap up our house reveal!
Today I'm sharing the 'great room,' or the kitchen/dining/living room area of our old home. Looking back on all of these pictures makes me a little sad, because we put so much work into the house and I loved how it turned out.
Then we didn't get to stick around and enjoy it!
But I am glad that someone got to, and I'm just looking forward to our next project.
These rooms weren't the worst in the house, but being a foreclosure, there was a bit of vandalization. There had been a gas fireplace that was taken out and a couple of holes punched into the island. The light fixtures had been stolen, and the carpet had a fair amount of animal pee going on. Overall, everything was very dirty and needed some updating.
One good thing was that some pretty nice laminate flooring had been installed at some point before we bought the house, so that saved us a pretty big chunk of money. That ended up being the only flooring in the whole house that we didn't have to replace.
Here are some progress shots to give you an idea of what we were working with.
Phew! Picture overload!
Some things we did in these rooms were replace the fireplace (we found a really good deal on a used one on Craigslist!), put new tile around it and re-stain the mantle. We updated the paint in the entire room, and put in new light fixtures. I especially loved my dining room light, which I bought from Target. Turns out they sell some very cute and reasonably priced light fixtures online!
In the kitchen, I peeled off the outdated and cracked laminate, and I used Ardex feather finish on the plywood forms. If you haven't heard of this, I recommend looking it up! It's a concrete product that you can use as a skim coat to cover and update your counters. It's so affordable, and it gives the look of a solid surface with just a fraction of the cost. I think I spent around $200 on my materials (Ardex, concrete dye, and sealant), and then I used less than half of it.
I didn't get to stay long enough to attest to the durability of it, but I liked it while I had it and I've read some good reviews. If you'd like to look into it more, I suggest reading some of the tutorials I followed here, here, and here. There's tons of information out there about it, but if you'd like more info let me know! While it won't be a step by step, I could do a post going more in depth if anyone would like :)
Let's see, I think that replacing the front door with something to let in more light, and doing a subway tile backsplash in the kitchen were the rest of the major things we changed. Here's how the finished rooms looked!
Some things we did in these rooms were replace the fireplace (we found a really good deal on a used one on Craigslist!), put new tile around it and re-stain the mantle. We updated the paint in the entire room, and put in new light fixtures. I especially loved my dining room light, which I bought from Target. Turns out they sell some very cute and reasonably priced light fixtures online!
In the kitchen, I peeled off the outdated and cracked laminate, and I used Ardex feather finish on the plywood forms. If you haven't heard of this, I recommend looking it up! It's a concrete product that you can use as a skim coat to cover and update your counters. It's so affordable, and it gives the look of a solid surface with just a fraction of the cost. I think I spent around $200 on my materials (Ardex, concrete dye, and sealant), and then I used less than half of it.
I didn't get to stay long enough to attest to the durability of it, but I liked it while I had it and I've read some good reviews. If you'd like to look into it more, I suggest reading some of the tutorials I followed here, here, and here. There's tons of information out there about it, but if you'd like more info let me know! While it won't be a step by step, I could do a post going more in depth if anyone would like :)
Let's see, I think that replacing the front door with something to let in more light, and doing a subway tile backsplash in the kitchen were the rest of the major things we changed. Here's how the finished rooms looked!
The only regret I have with this house is that I wasn't able to completely decorate it the way I wanted to. I had all of these grand plans of finishing the remodel, styling and staging it, and then enjoying it for a little while during the showing/selling process.
As it turned out, I was putting on the finishing touches while my whole family/tribe/squad came and helped me pack and finish the day before we moved!! To say that it was a little crazy is an understatement haha.
And that pretty much wraps it all up! I hope you enjoyed our house reveal. It feels so good to look at all of the befores and remember how much work went into it. I learned a lot of things during the whole process, including that I'm more capable than I thought that I was! And as much as I don't always love all the work of it, remodeling is something that I think I genuinely enjoy. And now I know what I would do differently to make things go a little smoother.
Thanks for following along, and as always, thanks for stopping by! Have a great rest of your day :)
0 comments
Thanks so much for commenting! I love and read all of your comments, and I reply by email.