Well clearly 2012 was a big year of small changes at Hawthorn Drive, and we aren't slowing down in 2013! When I first met Greg he was on to me. As we sat in his kitchen one night after only dating a couple of months he caught me longingly looking around his kitchen and said, "oh the things I could do in here!". Needless to say I was thoroughly embarrassed but he was right, I was already dreaming about renovating his kitchen. I told him how I thought white cabinets, white trim and wood floors would look. He laughed at me stating his distaste for rooms that are "too white". Fast forward two years and a marriage later and guess what those dreams are coming true!
Hawthorn Drive is your typical builder grade 1990's home, chock FULL of GOLDEN OAK! Gag me. Now don't get me wrong, I love natural wood, if it's done right, but the golden oak in our house is leaving lots to be desired. We also have a very open floor plan with essentially no doors between our rooms on the first floor. However, we have 3 types of flooring, frieze, linoleum and berber. The frieze is in the best shape of them all but it's still nothing to write home about, the linoleum has pulled up in several corners and the berber, well it's berber and a pet hair magnet. Now Murph and I had initially decided to wait on the floors but one day last week he thought we should just see what was out there, so we casually began looking. After a few stops we stumbled into Nebraska Furniture Mart (which does not sell furniture at their Clive location) and found a deal to end all deals. While we lusted aft $13/sq. ft. hardwoods we saw something unbelievable. A handscraped dark laminate marked down to $1.59/sq. ft. Um what?! Were we seeing this correctly? And the answer was yes! After speaking with the staff and taking some quick measurements and home we found they had exactly enough left in stock to cover our ENTIRE first floor. So that's what we are doing!
They have come to measure and Murph and I are beginning the demolition process as he also agreed there would be too much "wood" if we left the golden oak cabinets, so I get to paint those a creamy white color now too. So here is the plan for what I am guessing will take us at least a month:
- Demo floors. This means rip out carpet, linoleum (which we found was not even glued down, just held in place by the quarter round trim) and kitchen subfloor to create a level surface for the installers.
- Remove all of our furniture (I think we will have a full basement and garage)
- Paint cabinets
- Have floors installed. We thought about doing this ourselves but the price was too good to say no to, plus since this is our entire first floor, we thought the pros would wrap the job up faster and we would save our marriage by not doing it ourselves hehe.
- Install new vanity and toilet in bathroom. Buh bye nasty ivory and weird vessel sink, hello something crisp and white
- Install all new baseboards and quarter round. We are going to white trim too!
- Paint existing door casings, doors and window frames. These will eventually get replaced when we need new windows, that day is not today.
Of course it would have made more sense to do this before we painted but we weren't planning on doing this reno so quickly. Can't wait to continue to share our process with you all! And maybe we will actually take a break after this project ... or not ;)
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