From Garage to Family Room

Well, we really did it! Our one car-1951 size- garage has been re-invented as our new, and much loved family room. Our framer, Luis, did an amazing job.  He framed the new closet where our central AC/Heat now lives. Crucial for us here in south central Texas. No more noisy window units-woohoo. He also framed for our wood burning fireplace. I know-a fireplace in Texas? Hey, we're relocated Yankees, what can I say. The skinny, dangerous concrete steps were framed over. After all that, he installed all the rest of our new windows and the set of French doors! (a later post)

This is the only before picture of my laundry room through the door. Go ahead, use your imagination, it was dark and not very pretty.

I wish we could have kept the ceiling as is, but with the heat here it was cost prohibitive.

 

While we did hire out the sheetrock work, we did the insulation ourselves.

 The floor was not perfectly level. Go figure, a 1951 garage floor not level? Anyway, that meant no wood and no ceramic tile. What to do...I installed a vinyl floating floor that looks like Hickory. So easy and really inexpensive. So far no problems whatsoever and we really like the fact it's waterproof. Spills, dogs no problem!

So, we've painted, tiled the surround, built the mantel and brought in the furniture.  There are still things I want to do and find for this room. It's still a work in progress. But, at the end of the day, we get to sit and relax in front of the fire.  Except there's really no room on the sofa-the three dogs and the cat have dibs on it!

Oh, by the way, I actually opened a shop on Etsy. You can access it from the link on the sidebar. I'm selling pillow covers, shams, duvets and other things not yet listed. I'm also taking orders for custom items.  I've not done an Etsy shop before, so I'm open to ideas and suggestions if you have any. Thanks so much!

ann marie

Our Ugly Duckling Kitchen!

Once again, we have to start with the "befores".  I can't believe that this was a functioning kitchen for about 50 years.  There was only about 3 linear feet of counter space and no real storage.  Here's a few shots of her then...

Yeah, that's rust and nicotine on the fridge.  It still worked just fine, but I didn't want to touch it.  You should have seen some of the expiration dates on items inside.  Not pretty!  So we put the stove and fridge outside and they were promptly picked up-new homes maybe?  Scrap metal maybe?

  Let's see some demo-that's always a lot of fun.  I will say, the old cabinets were very well built.  No taking out a couple of screws and they're down.  Oh no, these babies took lots and lots of sledgehammering-definitely a good workout, but not for me.  My husband and son-in-law took care of them. By the way-what's your thoughts on the color of the ceiling in that last "before".

It's not a large kitchen.  It's not even a medium kitchen. It's actually only 9'4"x10'11".  It works really well for us.  We opted not to put a dishwasher in.  My stove would have been too close to the wall, and the DW could only be 18" wide.  Soooo, we do dishes the old fashioned way.  I have a really pretty view out the windows, so it's not that bad.  Here's how she's looking today-

This is where that 50's kitchen set was in the before pictures.  All of the cabinets came from HD-inexpensive unfinished stock cabinets.  These are two base cabinets-i just took two drawers out, took out that crosspiece, slid in a piece of plywood and Voila!  a recess to put our microwave in.  We only use it to reheat and make popcorn and I didn't want it over the stove.  I wanted a range hood. The doors to the left store all of our small appliances and larger pots and pans.

That's our Electrolux range-we LOVE it!

I used white marble tiles for the countertops and I love them also.  My sink and faucet are from HD.  I actually had them in my last house and loved them so I chose the same for here.

Sorry this is so long, but alot went into getting from the "before" to the "after".