Tearing down the house!!!

So one of the things that has always bugged me about my house was my kitchen. If you follow along here, you know that I spend the majority of my day in the kitchen because someone is always hungry in this house. I have this strong desire to feed everyone that comes though my doors.

But my kitchen is an "L" shape that looks into my family room with this set of cabinets right at eye level. It drives me nuts. So you have to bend down to have a conversation with anyone in the basic same room. It feels closed off for no real reason.

These are my cabinets.


So we decided yo knock out cabinets out to give more of an open feel. The cabinets we knocked out were mostly just for look anyway. They barely held anything efficiently and had weird shelves. I kept most of my dry goods out in the garage pantry anyways. So it was really not this big sacrifice.

Well my friends Molly and Carl decided to come over and help us do the job. What it turned into is Carl knew exactly what he was doing and he did most of it himself. The whole cabinet came down in about 30 minutes. It was just screwed into the ceiling. It all came down in once piece.




Then once it was done Molly and I painted it to match the rest of the kitchen. The entire project took all of an hour. It just took 4 adults. It looks so much better though.

Also something we discovered once we started taking them down, is that the vent over our stove was hooked up to nothing. It was just a prop. There is a hole in the ceiling, but nothing was connected to it. It served no purpose. So depending on what the code is, we may need to get another one if we ever go to sell, but since we have been getting by with only the illusion of having one this long, there is no real hurry to put in another one.

I got up this morning and could actually keep an eye on my kids as I made their breakfast. I was awesome! Chaos didn't ensue when I left the room, because I didn't really leave the room. It totally opens up the two rooms.

Now I need to find another project to occupy myself with. How about pulling the house back together after this one :)

The wheels are creativity are turning.

So I got all inspired with the whole flooring thing. It totally changed the look of that room. My next big thing that I wanted to do was paint the back wall a accenting color. I have wanted to paint a wall red since I moved into this house. But the problem was that the carpets in every room were teal green. I have hated them. But with the carpet now gone, I was free to paint whatever color I wanted. So I didn't waste any time. I figured better do it now before I put the floor boards back on.

It came out a little darker than I had planned, but I am getting used to it.

New flooring!! Hizzah!!

Oh happy day!! At long last we got rid of our icky carpet in our family room. It has been a long time coming. It's not something that we could really afford to do, but it was something that we really needed to do. I am not going to go into specifics, but 3 kids, 8 pets over the years , lots of traffic. You do the math. It was time.
Rockstar did it all himself. He pulled up the carpet and padding. Then we had to pull out 10,000 tiny nails and staples.

Then he carefully started cutting and laying out the flooring. It all snapped together like a puzzle. It really is pretty cool.

Then, before you know it, 6 hours later, we have a complete room done. It looks so much better. It just makes the room seem bigger.

We are still getting used to the echo of the room still. Without carpet there to absorb the sheer volume of our family it is a little deafening. But a throw run will help.

But yeah. I think it looks nice and does wonders for the room.

Oh L'Amour!!

Broke my heart
Now I'm aching for you.
Oh L'Amour
whats a boy in love supposed to do?

Alright enough with the sing along. Although that is now guaranteed to be in your head for the rest of the day.
You can thank me later.

Anyhow, with the great and terrible day of the Valentine almost upon us, most red blooded "normal" girls get all swoony and require roses and chocolates. I am not one of those girls. It is in my mind just another day created for the sole purpose to sell something. Rockstar and I have never really made a big thing of it. Although he usually does make a passing remark to note the day.

My reason for living and love of my life is going way better than that this year. We are spending the Valentine weekend tearing up carpet and laying laminate flooring. When most girls would scoff and not see this as exciting, I jump up and down in rejoice. What a guy! What a stud!!

Home remodeling!!! A man after my own heart :)

Seeing as the flooring project pretty much taps us out, I am making his Valentine this year. So I know it is a couple days early, but better early than late.

So Happy Valentine's day!