Bathroom break

The weekend is here, which means we might get some work done on the house. We have to buy hinges for the cabinet doors, so a trip to Home Depot seems to be in our immediate future. I thought while we're preparing for a home improvement weekend, I would share some pretty pictures with you.

Iron flowers

My mother sent us flowers for Valentine's Day and they still look amazing. Too bad our ugly backsplash is in the background...

Floors!

Maybe this kitchen will be done someday...

We have chosen the pulls for the kitchen drawers, and again Ikea has given us what we need. The Ikea pulls were so similar to the Restoration Hardware ones, and they cost half as much, so our choice was made for us, really.

Now I have to go back to Ikea and return all the other knobs and handles we decided we didn't like--and buy more of the ones we do like. The handles for the doors are still a little up in the air. I think we're going to go modern-ish rather than traditional. I'm going back today, so there will be an update later. I know you are waiting with bated breath.

Satan's floors

The floors in our kitchen are hideous. Sent to us straight from the DIY curse that descended upon this house 20 or 30 years ago. This is the same curse that brought all kinds of weirdness in the bathroom (a badly installed vanity, horrible tiling job, weird plumbing). The linoleum floor in the kitchen is not just ugly--it's disintegrating. Here is a picture, even though pictures do not do the horridness justice.


I want it gone. Now. But we have a problem. We don't want to pull it up and replace it, because that will just be a waste if we're going to remodel and reconfigure the kitchen at some point in the not-too-distant future. Our best option is to use some sort of rug or carpet. To Keith, this is kitchen blasphemy. Carpet in the kitchen!? He acts as if I said, Let's skin our neighbors and use their dried flesh to cover the floor--it'll be like Silence of the Lambs. Ignoring his shock and horror, I ordered some FLOR samples that are for high-traffic areas. They're not even really like carpet. They're more like rubber.

My favorite is the Fedora Charcoal, which can be seen in the picture below.


Is it crazy to put carpet tiles in the kitchen?

Thoughts on the cabinets

Deciding on hardware for the cabinets has been a problem. Hardware is expensive--and I'm indecisive. Restoration Hardware has a lot of dreamy knobs and pulls, but they are not cheap. If the snow ever goes away, I will be driving an hour to the RH outlet to see if I can get some hardware on the cheap. Here are my favorites:

Progress

The kitchen is changing into something livable. We know we don't have the money to gut it and start over right now, so we're doing what we can with what we've got. First was the built-in cupboard. We painted it a brighter shade of white and painted the counter a very dark navy. I had planned on painting the counter black, but the black paint we bought was really brown, so we made do with what we already had. I think it turned out alright.

Before:
After:
Next, we started painting the cabinets. After far too much research, I decided to paint the lower cabinets gray (Benjamin Moore Wolf Gray) and the upper cabinets the same white as the built-in (Benjamin Moore White Wisp). We still have to paint the cabinet doors and get new hardware, but it's already looking better.

Before:

After:

Finally, we're having the downstairs floors and the stairs refinished. The floors are the best part of the house by far, so I'm excited to see how they look when they're finished. The job is not done, because another huge snow storm has hit our nation's capital, making it impossible for the workers to get to us. As I type, there is a blizzard going on outside our window. The pictures I have are just of the sanded floor, but it's fun to see the progress that's being made.

Before:


After:

More kitchens

Since our floors downstairs are getting refinished, I have been trapped upstairs all day--and I am thoroughly bored. So here are more pictures of kitchens I love, because posting them is something to keep me occupied.

Kitchens

We're painting the kitchen cabinets to bring a little life to our sad, sad kitchen. It's starting to look better, and I will post pictures soon. Until then, I realized as I was looking through all my home decorating photos that I have a lot of pictures of kitchens. Here are some of my favorites:

New Additions

The house is slowly--very slowly--coming along. We stumbled upon an original mid-century mustard yellow sofa that we bought to replace our icky futon. It is 9 feet long and is perhaps the best napping sofa ever made.

Also, we finally installed the Ikea light in the dining room, replacing the fake-King-Arthur chandelier that was there. Do you remember it?

Oh, it was awful. It had a matching gold, plastic medallion, too. But now, something much more beautiful lights our dining room. (If only Keith had moved so I could have gotten a better picture.)