Our Kitchen

Hello again!! Sorry it has been so long. I've been busy procreating. Yup. I'm pregnant!! Matt and I are so excited about this next chapter in our lives. We can't WAIT to meet our baby in January. I'm so happy to finally be through the first trimester. It was a serious doozie. I've never been so sick and for so long! Could hardly keep anything down, every smell imaginable sent me running to the bathroom, too tired to function, and the list goes on. It has been like this from about 6 weeks till now (13 weeks). My doctor said that nausea is a sign of a healthy baby so that's seriously the only thing that kept me happy. I know that when I see my sweet little baby's face I won't remember this hard part and it will have been totally worth it. I'm still sick but starting to feel so much better. And I get longer spurts of energy which is awesome! I'll take any energy I can get at this point. I absolutely hate being a couch potato but that's all I've been able to do for months. I have a whole new respect for pregnant women who go to work through this. Needless to say, house work hasn't really been my first priority. Well it has been but my body was like "ummmm not happening." Everything that I had left to do kinda went on stand-by for a while thus my lack of posts.

But I'm here and I'm finally uploading pics of our kitchen! I've been holding off because we still have some work to do. I'll upload pics later when we get to that. We love it. SO much bigger than our last kitchen. It's awesome to make cakes in too. So much room for activities!! 

Major things we changed:

Smoothed the ceilings

New fridge (they didn't measure before ordering the other one and it was MASSIVE. We sold it within seconds on GOL and got a counter-depth one)

Painted all of the bare wood trim (including windows & doors)

Painted the walls Sand Dune by Benjamin Moore

KITCHEN UPDATE

Before:

Currently:

Like I've said before, the previous owner did a TON of work on the house before putting it on the market. They were the original owners (bought in the 70's) and from what we heard not much had changed before now. We're so thankful that so much work and money was eliminated for us. One thing I love about this kitchen is the butcher block. The listing realtor said they had just put it in and it came from The Butcher Shop in Downtown Memphis. Pretty cool!

The thing we're planning on redoing is the backsplash. The current one really really bugs me for some reason. I like the backsplash and I love the counter tops but I don't like them together. They clash pretty bad and it just looks dirty to me. I love the look of beadboard. I told me dad about my plans and he told me that he has a ton of beadboard in his garage waiting for someone to use it. He gets a lot of building materials from his jobs where people don't want things or are going to throw them away. He basically has his own Lowes in his backyard that he so generously shares with me. It's awesome. So that couldn't have been more perfect. FREE! So hopefully that'll get done before the babe gets here. It's the last big thing we have to do. 

Here's a picture of what it will look like. I love the white cabinets with white beadboard. So clean and fresh looking.

We finished this backsplash project and it looks awesome! Visit my kitchen update post for pics.

I already made a post about our table area/coffee station here. Here are a few more pics of that plus more of the whole room.

My dad whipped together this awesome cornice in like 2 seconds out of wood. I covered it in batting and fabric and voila! So easy and cheap! The fabric came from Hobby Lobby. It was love at first sight.

I hung it with 2 brackets and voila.

I sewed my green striped curtains for this big window. I got the fabric at Premier Fabrics and tied the panels back with jute ribbon. 

We did have to get blinds for every single window. I like the faux wood ones. We lived for a few months with sheets push pinned over the windows. Super classy. I ended up getting them all for under $300. JC Penny online is awesome for blinds (with the exception of the ones for this massive kitchen window. It was a weird size and I finally found them for less than $70 on Overstock.com). The ones in my old house came from there (JCP) as well. Cheapest ones I could find by far. I got them on a day there were majorly on sale plus I found a coupon code online and free shipping. Can't beat that! I hung them all myself when Matt was out one night because I'm a strong independent woman. Hahaha. Actually Matt's dad was going to come over and help him do it the next day but I was bored and impatient. Not my best quality.

Like I said in my other post, I found the chandelier at a garage sale for $1 and painted it and it's like new! Go to my other kitchen post to read about that, the kitchen table and coffee station. 

I found the shutters that are hanging above my little table on the side of the road fo free a few years ago. They lived in my attic in my old house till I had somewhere to put them. I spray painted them white and voila!  The other pair I got I put in our upstairs bathroom. The link to that is here. The little table underneath the shutters used to me really colorful but it clashed so I spray painted it as well. 

I saw this cork board idea on Pinterest (what's new). It's a yard stick that I painted the same color as the wall (Sand Dune) with corks glued to it. I used hot glue as well as E-3000 glue (my favorite...holds anything). So easy and cheap. I've been collecting corks for a while but they didn't fill up much. I had some donated to my cause and I also found out that you can buy corks in a big bag at Hobby Lobby for like $5! 

I also have a previous post on the laundry and 1/2 bath off of the kitchen here but here are some more pics for funsies.

I got these brown bamboo roman shades on Amazon for $20 each. They were the last blinds to be purchased.

We love our house so much. It's coming together! My dad made our awesome headboard for our bed today and I stained it so hopefully we will have it set up tomorrow. I'm hoping to post about our whole master tomorrow or the next day. Then the next job: Baby's nursery!!! I have both a boy and a girl nursery all planned out and I get to start on that as soon as we find out the gender in early September. We can't wait!! We're so thankful God has blessed us with this little peach-sized blessing.  As always, thanks for reading!

2016 UPDATE:
http://katiehedge.blogspot.com/2016/01/house-update-2016.html