Before and After

 Now that we have completed the kitchen and majority of the first floor, time for some BEFORE and AFTER shots!

Entry:

Dining room:

 

Main living area:

 

Kitchen:

 

We've been flocked!

We decided to try out the wallpaper look and it turned out great!  We used a foil, flocked wallpaper from Brocade Home.  We also updated the sink, toilet, and light fixture to make it more of a Hollywood Glam feel.  This is one of my favorite projects we have done so far!

The kitchen is almost complete!

We are almost done with the backsplash and then the kitchen will be done!  It was a year ago last June we took it apart and sold our own kitchen on Craigslist.com, we have come a long way.  For the backsplash, we bought 12"x12" Silestone tiles in the same color as our counter tops.  Jeff cut them into long rectangles and then put them on the wall in a straight line grid pattern.  We used a dark grout similar in color to the kitchen cabinets.  It has been a difficult and messy process, much harder than the glass tile backsplash we did in the other two kitchens.  It has come out great, though!  More pictures to come of the completed kitchen (hopefully soon).

We have a real front door!

Our old front door was in bad shape.  The wood was rotted, the handle and lock the bank installed didn't work correctly, and due to the hole at the bottom we had bugs and weather inside instead as well as outside.  Now, we have a new door!  After looking around for quite some time, we decided to go with an iron door from Tuscan Iron Entries.  We designed a larger, double door and removed the windows on the top and sides.  My favorite part is you can open the glass from the inside while the door stays shut!

Old door from the inside

Old door from the outside

No door!

New door from the inside

New door from the outside

Tankless water heaters

Our first water heater died about a year ago, and we finally lost the second one this weekend.  Jeff is in the process of finishing up the installation of them.  Hopefully this weekend so we have water!

Why go with a tankless water heater?
The general premise behind a tankless water heater is to only heat water "on demand" as it is needed. This eliminates the need for a storage tank and dramatically increases energy efficiency. Almost every major shortcoming of a conventional water heater is addressed by a tankless system.

Custom stairs

We pulled up the carpet on the stairs and replaced with hardwoods to match our floors and they look so much better!  Eventually we will pull up all the carpet upstairs, too.

Old stairs

Sinks! Sinks and running water!

The sinks and faucets have been installed!  It has been a whole seven months since we have had running water in the kitchen, or anything in the kitchen for that matter.  Jeff hooked up the water and we made our first meal on the stove/in the oven today!  So nice to be able to cook again!

Main sink with pull-out spray faucet

Island prep sink with articulate faucet