Enough gibber-jabber, on to what's going on with our house! As many of you know we're working on the kitchen! (YAY!) We're waiting on a visit from a contractor friend to tell us, "yes, you can totally move this wall by yourself" or "you're gonna need some help with this." I'm so proud and amazed that we're seriously considering professional help, it's been 11 months of all do-it-ourselves! I hope we can do this wall moving ourselves, because, damn does to cost some serious cash to hire help! I want a fancy sink and I won't get it if we spend all the money on a wall.
Sooo... for the time being we're working on our kitchen-nook. After weeks of back and forth indecision of wether of not we should knock down the wall and make our kitchen super long, we decided to keep this wall. (There's a different one needing to be moved) I grew up around a kitchen table, it's important to me to have. So leaving the wall up helps create a perfect little spot for eating dinner, reading the news paper, doing homework and all the other kitchen table things.
Somewhere in this room was where the servants staircase landed. Sadly the stair case is gone and is now just a closet that holds our Christmas tree we never figured out how to shove back into the box. All the old layers of laminate flooring has been pulled out. About three fourths of the floor is save-able. The floor boards are two and a half inches wide pine. The rest of the house is two and a quarter inch oak. We run into the problem of finding easy replacements. We start our hunt this weekend, and may have to just steal the floor boards under the cabinets and use those as replacements.
Eventually, swinging doors will be restored and put back in their original homes for both the door ways you see here. Cabinets will be gone. Hopefully a totally awesome, beautiful, long, long, buffet against the window. Hopefully a mid-centry danish buffet will be found. It is my one piece that isn't Arts and Crafts or Craftsmen Style and I don't care. I LOVE mid-centry and I will find ways to tuck little treasures into our 1907 house. Then finally a corner nook! Benched seats and a pull out bench sitting in the corner, not the corner you're looking at now.
Whew!
Tons of people tell me, "I would LOVE to own a fixer upper!" That's sweet and awesome you wanna save an old house. But, I have finally found myself with one word of advice... before you dive into a project that will last you years and cost you many college degrees, ask yourself if you truly believe you can survive the time, energy, money, mess and oftentimes unusable rooms.
I nearly lost my passion for this house and this project because the kitchen is such a war zone. I love being in the kitchen and lately my counters are filled with tools and dust and I seem to have a great skill at stepping on the rouge nails sticking out. I see why so many fixer uppers are left half done or sold off to house flippers who do quick fixes and cheap short cuts. Those are the houses that break my heart.
I refuse to let that happen to this home.
Lastly, greetings from our snow filled second floor porch. Oh you were not fun to shovel off!