Let the Renovations Begin

Before I show you some pictures, I just need to complain for a minute. I spilled half my coffee this morning (over some students' quizzes- oops!) and so I haven't had my full cup. I'm very sad. :( Hopefully, you've had some, though, and are having a terrific Friday.

Note- as I wrote this- one of my students, who works in our school's coffee shop, just brought me a cup as a thank you for something else. Hooray!

Anyway, a while ago I wrote about how Rachel Anne inspired me to make my Home a sanctuary. Since then, I've been doing my minimal maintenance as often as possible and really, overall, having a great attitude about the house. I've also been reading at lots of other people's blogs about what they do, too, and getting very inspired and encouraged.... isn't bloggie world wonderful? (I only wish I had a little more time to spend visiting!)

Well, Husband and I have been talking, and as we think we're going to stay in our townhouse for several more years, we're going to put some time into making it a little bit nicer and have a little investment- nothing too big, just enough to add to the house. We have decided to start with the kitchen and dining room, giving them a face lift.

Dining Room, pre-floor face lift

notice the boxes of laminate flooring waiting to be installed

Kitchen- alas, we can't replace the counter with the broken laminate, but it's minor

our white cabinets without handles show EVERY bit of dirt and yuck you can imagine.

We're taking the 1985 linoleum out of the kitchen and the carpet out of the dining room and putting in wood-laminate floors, we're painting the cabinets and adding hardware so that not every smudge of yuckiness shows on them, and, the coolest of all cool things, getting a new sink to replace the old yucky ceramic white one that has chips and rust and is impossible to keep clean.

our 1985 linoleum kitchen floor that has gouges in it and is impossible to keep clean

But money is tight. So all we asked for for Christmas was the Home Depot, which is what we got- well- gift cards, anyway.

With that money, we've already bought the floor, which is in boxes in the dining room to be installed after the painting happens, and Husband just started working on taking the cabinet doors off and removing the old paint. We're still working on picking colors and hardware, but that will happen soon. The sink, although I really wanted one, was at the bottom of our list, because we couldn't really afford one and ours works fine, but Father-in-law, a contractor, found us a new stainless steel single basin (what I really wanted) $500 value sink for $90. Can you believe it!!!!! Thanks, Father-in-law, and God!

Back to my original point. I've been trying to make my home a sanctuary. Right now, it's anything but a sanctuary, and I can only imagine it will get a little (or a lot) worse before it gets better..... but I'm going to be pretty excited about the end result.

When I came home from work yesterday, Husband had already started the project- tomorrow I'll put away all my "trinkets" so they don't get yucky.

Will keep you posted!