Every remodel enthusiast lives for this moment. The moment where where you have finally finished tick-tick-ticking up the reno rollercoaster and are finally ready to tip right over the peak and race down the track towards the finish line. All of our demo & prep work is complete and now the fun of putting it back together is happening. It’s finally happening! If you remember the pictures of our kitchen in its before state just over a month ago… …you can definitely see that things are a-changin’. All base cabinets have been kicked to the curb and the upper cabbies that are staying put are patiently waiting for new doors. A new french door was installed to give our little June dog plenty of backyard [&hellip
Over the past month, the fiancé and I have thrown ourselves headfirst into a kitchen remodel. Correction. We have thrown ourselves headfirst into living through a kitchen remodel. Any homeowner with even the slightest sliver of remodeling experience will tell you that “undertaking” and “living through” a kitchen remodel are two totally different animals. At the end of November, we are now officially halfway through our dream of turning this kitchen… into this kitchen… The past month has made us more than a just a little thankful for our must-have list of survival tools for making it out of a kitchen overhaul alive. #1. The Crockpot All hail the most ingenious kitchen appliance that doesn’t actually require a kitchen. We’ve dished up quite a [&hellip
Yesterday I promised you pretties, and today pretties you shall receive. I’m cranking open the design inspiration vault and dishing out a sneak peak of what this kitchen of ours will soon look like. It’s high time I stop scaring you with pictures like this… and persuade you to pick up the notion that I’m not completely nuts with encouraging pictures like this… I’ve been drooling over these charcoal & white cabbies, classic white subway tile and open reclaimed wood shelves for months. Fortunately for me, all three design elements will be finding a home in my kitchen very soon. Stay tuned as we keep putting things back together…our sanity included
Basically we have been living in a tornado. Skipping from room to room demo-ing everything in sight. Paneling. GONE! Cabinets. SEE YA! Wallpaper. LATER! Let’s catch up on the current state of the construction site. In the upstairs hall bath, wallpaper removal is in full swing. The upstairs office is primed and ready for painting. And the kitchen…oh yes, our pride and demo joy. One of the biggest projects on our demo list was to open up the wall between the upstairs living room and kitchen & dining rooms. Remember the tiny opening complete with sad little bi-fold doors that originally separated the two spaces? No more! Our contractor friend has been hard at work widening the opening and hanging drywall where the wooden paneling [&hellip
Remember this perfectly intact 1960s kitchen/dining area I showed you a few days back?… Well would you just look at that progress?! The living & dining rooms are already feeling much more open. And yes, that would be a lawn mower in the living room. Stranger things have happened around my construction sites. From the living room, you can really tell a difference in the flow.  
Guess what, pals? I’M BACK! And it feels oh so good. Over the past couple of weeks, the fiancé and I have been hauling boxes to our new constructions site. We are officially out of the old house (for one more glimpse of those before & after beauty shots, click here) and into the new house. If you missed the before shots of the new house, click here to check out what we have gotten ourselves into. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been debating on just how to break down all of our plans for you. We’ve got a lot, I mean A LOT going on, but they say the kitchen is the heart of the home and since most of the serious action [&hellip
We closed on the new construction site a couple of weeks ago and are P-U-M-P-E-D to get down and dirty with plans for the new casa. Here begins Chapter 2 of Live The Home Life. Before we swan dive right into the remodel, take a deep breath and soak up all of the 1960s paneling-packed before pictures. Living Room Dining Room & Kitchen Scary Stairs Master Bedroom & Bathroom Upstairs Guestroom #1 Upstairs Guestroom #2 | Office Upstairs Hall Bath Downstairs Living Room | Man Cave Downstairs Guestroom Downstairs Bathroom Laundry Room Just two weeks into the reno and it already makes me giggle looking back at these before pictures. Stay tuned. We’ve got big plans…and lots of paint.  
It’s fall, y’all and that means two things: my favorite season is in full swing and football has taken over my house five days of the week. While the fiancé is sucked into touchdowns and QB sacks while screaming “Seriously?! Come on ref!” and “Ruuuuuuunnnnnnn!” at our living room TV, I have been spending and unhealthy amount of time with my iPad and Pinterest. Fortunately for you, this means I’ve rounded up a killer group of Pinterest inspired do-it-yourself finds. Check out these fabulous fall projects. Holy, glitter gourds. These bling-ed out pumpkins from Twig & Thistle are ridiculously adorable and will keep you sparkling from now until Thanksgiving (assuming you follow the rules and use styrofoam pumpkins). Nothing marks the change of a [&hellip
Want to know what we’ve been up to the past few weeks? We’ve peen painting and pruning and sprucing our house. Why? Because it’s time to sell that bad boy and move on to another house-child in need of a serious overhaul. That’s right. Michael and I are packing up and moving out! One morning a few weeks ago, I was just sitting at my office minding my own Realtor business when the biggest diamond-in-the-rough house I had ever seen popped right onto my computer screen. Holy smokes. I couldn’t help but sneak a peek. Well, I snuck and I loved…but it was seriously in need of one heck of a cosmetic overhaul. I was sold but Michael would never go for this. I was [&hellip
Front Living Room Dining Room Kitchen Den Master Bedroom Master Bathroom Guest Bedroom Hall Bathroom Laundry Room Patio Backyard
This little ranch house of mine sure does have a lot going for it, especially after all of the paint and polish I’ve put into fixing it up over the past few years, but no amount of elbow grease on the inside could ever hide how miserable my outdoor entertaining options were. Cue the sad before pictures with one tiny little concrete slab for a patio. Imagine 20 friends in folding chairs squished onto a 6×12 space and you can pretty much envision a backyard cookout at my house. This situation had to change, and with a little measuring and marking… …a ton of digging… …and a ridiculous amount of heavy lifting… …this DIY patio project was complete. Room to dine, room to relax and [&hellip
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. After a sold week of digging. Another week of hauling gravel and sand from point A to point B to form a solid base for the patio pavers, we were rolling into the home stretch. Still lots of hauling, but this time bringing in loads of patio pavers gave me hope that this patio vision of mine was finally coming to an end. Starting at the bottom of the steps, we started with a Muster K pattern which looks a little like this cross-of-rectangular-pavers-filled-in-with-square-pavers concoction… Working a few feet at a time, once the pavers were in position, we used a rubber mallet to make sure these bad boys were not going anywhere. And sure enough, little by little, [&hellip