We have been renovating our home since last March, when we finally sold our other house, so I thought I would show some pictures of the renovations so far. Apart from a new furnace, some plumbing and the countertops, we have done all the work ourselves. We have renovated houses before, but this is the most work that we have done to a house - just about everything is new, luckily now we have two adult sons who did lots of the work too.
It is funny how things work out the way they are supposed to, living in the house for so long before renovating really changed our plans for how we wanted to renovate it (we reconfigured a few spaces).
Here are some before pictures -
The kitchen was very small, we had to overflow into what was the dining room space.
The living room was big enough for our dining room.
The best thing that we did was to remove the wall splitting the two rooms, and going around the stairs to the back door and basement (we did have an engineer come in to make sure that it wasn't a supporting wall).
I love having just one big room (we had that in our house in Alberta).
We went with simple wood cupboards because we live in a small farm house with grain bins in the front yard (the cupboards are from Home Depot).
While deciding the plans for the kitchen I had asked a couple of people who had recently renovated their kitchens what they like about their new kitchens.
My sister has a nice wide space around her island, so we did the same. It worked out great, there is lots of room for everyone to work in the kitchen, even space when the dishwasher is open. She also suggested lots of drawers which I am glad we did too. A dear friend said that she was pleased that she had moved things to have more space between the sink and the stove, and I am so happy with that - I would have kept the stove centred on that wall now there is a great work space. One big change that I wanted was a second sink in the island - my family thought it was a bit much when I suggested it, but now they all think it is so handy, I love it. I am glad that we went with a slide in range rather than a freestanding one - it seems like there is more room on the stove top (we had the free standing version in our last house, it can be one large oven or two small ones), also we went with a counter depth fridge - it has the same amount of space as we had before but it is wider and not as deep, making it much easier to reach things in the back.
There are two areas of renovations that are mine - the painting and tiling (I could do the hard wood floors by myself but I like to have some one to help get it started straight). I was really happy with how the back splash tiles turned out around the window - it's nice when measuring works out!
Photos from around -
crayfish holes everywhere
the soybean field around us is flooded (the tractor has been sitting there for two weeks)
we surprised a skunk when we went out for a walk in the rain
the harvested fields have started growing even the bales have growth on top
(there is a hawk on one of the bales)
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| a heart shaped red onion |