We finally finished our galley kitchen remodel! In the last post about it, it was being demoed. I was hoping to have project-by-project posts, but instead here’s one giant before-and-after post.

We’ll start with the “After”, then the “Before” from the dining room.

From the living room (after):

And before:

Guys…this one tiny room completely transformed our house. It went from a 6′ wide closet of a kitchen to a place where everyone wanted to (and could!) be.

We were finally able to enjoy cooking together again.

There were still some things we didn’t get to, like the backsplash we had planned, which would have really warmed the room up, and replacing the main light fixture, but we’re still pretty pleased with how far we did get!

The layout changes

The biggest change was obviously ripping out the wall. A galley kitchen just wasn’t going to work for us. We built an island where the wall used to start. Not only was it way more open, but we could also now access the kitchen from more than one spot.

We also swapped fridge and stove positions to further open things up.

The cabinets

The cabinets were a huge score. One day we randomly went into a Restore (by Habitat For Humanity) second-hand store hoping to find some art for the dining room and ended up with “new” kitchen cabinets.

They had been the showpieces at a nice cabinet store…which meant they were never actually used, but it also meant that they had all the upgrades like olive wood drawers, amazing slide out cubbies and baskets, built-in spice racks, tiny bonus cupboards on the ends for small items, and more.

They came in a really nice gray, but while I intended to paint them black (and already had the paint), we ran out of time.

So the cabinets were very affordable, and as we love, we opted for open shelving on top.

The island was super fun to do. Since space was really limited, but we needed more storage, we used some of the upper cabinets for the island as they are only 15 inches deep. The Hubs built a base fastened to the floor to attach the cabinets to. Here’s a video of how to build a sub frame if you’re using wall cabinets for bases, so you can get a visual of it.

Then we used a regular depth countertop which overhung perfectly for counter-height stools.

We put veneer over the sides and backs of the cabinets and then painted them with a custom color to match the rest of the cabinets.

The cabinets were the perfect depth for pots and pans and all those random kitchen items.

The floor

We pulled up three layers of flooring down to the original hardwood, but sadly it was way beyond repair (looks-wise!). We weighed our options, and decided to go with the very affordable, very fast peel-and-stick vinyl.

If it wasn’t that, it was going to be real tile, and we didn’t have the time or the budget for that at the moment.

We put down new subflooring on top of the hardwood for a clean surface to stick to. Then it’s just a project you can work on for a couple hours a day until it’s done! At least that’s how I do it.

A big thing I love about peel and stick is that because there isn’t nearly the time and financial investment, I’m not afraid to go bold.

We used Achim Geometric pattern tiles. I loved them.

The appliances

The big splurges were the fridge and stove, though we did wait until they were on sale. We went with black stainless steel (since the lower cabinets were supposed to be black).

We started buying counter-depth refrigerators years ago, and just can’t go back to standard depth. Less food gets lost in the back, AND it just looks so much better and saves that much more room in the kitchen.

The range hood was from Amazon. It was more affordable there, but it was a little frustrating to install with the way the sleeve was designed.

The sink and counters

The sink was special to me. Since we were going to go black on the cabinets, I also wanted a black sink to sit on the marble-look counters. We found this single bowl sink from Kohler and paired it with this gorgeous (and affordable) gold faucet.

The counters were our old favorites from Ikea. We got shock and disbelieving comments from both a pair of designer friends and from realtors that were visiting when we told them they were IKEA. Highly recommend!

The pantry

The pantry was a huge change too. I can’t currently find an image of what it was originally but…

The door to the right inside the kitchen was a little hallway with a door to the back yard at the end.

When we bought the house, that hallway had three closets in it for pantry-type storage. It was clever, but a lot of the spaces were awkward and because of the doors, things would pile up and get messy in there really fast.

So we gutted it.

We didn’t want to take out the walls as well, but they were plastered within an inch of their life and it was just not pretty.

So we took it all down and started with fresh drywall.

I always wanted a butler’s pantry, so we built one. And it was so much more functional! It was also a great place to store dry goods, which is always the one thing missing when you go with open shelves for uppers in the kitchen.

We also removed the door so it would flow better.

The pictures aren’t that great because it’s such a tiny space (and we left in such a hurry), but there were two full lower cabinets and one extra large upper hanging above them. Then we had more open shelves, and an open section underneath for a trash can and rain boots.

We didn’t keep detailed records, but including the splurge on higher-end appliances, we estimate the whole remodel at $15,000. The biggest costs were the appliances and then the building materials (the wall we ripped out was load-bearing, so we needed to put in a lot of quality materials and care there).

So worth it to go from the very cramped galley kitchen to a big open one for a couple who loves to cook and entertain.

So there it is! Our years-in-the-making galley kitchen remodel!

Pin this to your house inspiration board.

Hover over the image and click “Pin”

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We got the dividing wall up in the bathroom, and our house officially went from a 1.1 bath to a 1.5 bath.  It’s week two of the One Room Challenge!

The shower had pretty cute mother of pearl plastic tiles on the two walls.  But the bottoms of the walls were rotten underneath, so they and all the very hard glue they left behind (the brown stuff in the photo) had to be chiseled off so we could save the drywall on the top halves. (Wow that part took a long time.)

The tub is rounded on both sides, so we couldn’t just make a wall that butted up to the tub, we had to overlap the tub a little with the studs.  

We framed it out, and put up water resistant drywall.  

We were of course hoping that this would be a one-day project so we wouldn’t be without a shower, but of course things didn’t go as smoothly as we hoped.  We purchased cement board to use for the walls, but it was SO difficult to work with that it was taking about 5 times as long as usual. 

There wasn’t time to go back to the store that first day, so we had to go without a shower.  Thankfully, the Hubs is awesome, and when we first moved in, he set me up a dog bathing station in the basement.  Complete with a nice hand-held showerhead, and easy hot and cold adjustments.  We have concrete floors, and he placed the station right between two floor drains.  

So we showered in the basement.  

Because the Hubs had to be back in the office all week, there was hardly any time to work on it, and it took all week.  But it’s done!  And it’s solid, quality work.  And it’s good to be showering in a shower again.  

Finishing the tub area is up next!

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But first, an update on our houses: there is no update on the Victorian.  Sadly, it still belongs to us.  And we are still loving the new house.  There is considerably more work to be done than we originally thought, but we’re happy about that; it will be fun.  So far, we’ve just done minor things like paint, but we have been making plans and pricing the bigger projects.  The next post will be introducing the new house.

Several months ago, we visited my parents again.  As our yearly tradition has become, we redecorated a room in their house.  This year it was Dad’s office.

The office was not meeting their needs at all.  Mom has been simplifying over the last couple years, but they hadn’t gotten to the office yet.  So before our visit, she and I got on Skype and made a plan for her to clean it all out before we arrived.

She did an awesome job and we arrived to an empty room that dad had just finished repainting.  The old furniture was sold on Craigslist and new furniture was picked out before we got there too.

Since it’s dad’s office, I wanted his desk in the center of the room as the focal point.  He uses a tablet instead of a PC, so we didn’t even have any cords to try to hide.  Also, since they had gotten rid of most of what was on the bookshelves, they didn’t need nearly that amount of storage space.  I had been looking (unsuccessfully) for new, smaller and better-looking bookshelves for them, but dad surprised me and built the new ones.

The photos aren’t good…sorry.

Yes, that is the same room.  As you can see, we didn’t have enough to fill the bookshelves at this point.  We also hadn’t found replacement office chairs yet.  The drafting desk is from World Market.  (Similar, but not quite as good-looking here if you don’t have a World Market).  While they had the desk in stock, I suggested asking for the floor model at a discount since the surface was scratched.  He did and they gave it to him!  The wood had more green undertones than he wanted, so he refinished it when he got it home to this richer, less trendy color.

We got a long and shallow desk for mom and put it where the old giant bookshelf used to be.  They went for the build-your-own IKEA system with a filing cabinet on one end and two legs on this end.

Dad wanted a comfy place to sit and read, so the comfy chair came in.  They are considering updating it with one that matches better in the future.

The last night we were there, we stopped at a Restoration Hardware outlet store and found the perfect new desk chairs for both of them.  (Didn’t realize my camera was out of focus, and I only got the one picture of mom’s new chair, but you get the idea.)

Here are the before and after pictures together for perspective:

I’ll be back on Thursday with some photos of our new Craftsman!

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Seriously.  If there’s anything about your home’s layout or functionality that isn’t working for you, you need to read this book.  (This is not a sponsored post–I am highly recommending it for free.)

The first floor of our house has had me stumped for a while.  (Because you know I have decorating ADD and can’t just think about the project[s] I’m already working on.)

Our kitchen has a semi-closed off breakfast area and a dining room.  For the two of us, it was just redundant.  Especially since the breakfast table was only about 6 feet away from the dining table.  At any given time, one of them was just acting as a junk collector.  Ick.

I’d been trying to think of ways to use the spaces better for months, but I was still stumped.  So I was very excited while browsing the library shelf to see this book:

Right-Sizing Your Home: How to Make Your House Fit Your Lifestyle by Gale C. Steves (affiliate link)

The book really has nothing to do with the size of your home; it’s about making the home you already have work for you.  Not by remodeling either (while you could definitely do that–and she has advice for that too), a lot of the ideas you’ll get when you read it could be done for free by just changing furniture around.  It’s about re-thinking the way you actually use your house and the way your house is currently arranged.

The book is well-organized, starting from the beginning of how and why to re-think your whole house, before going into the details of each room, one per chapter.  There are even pages in each chapter with general dimension guides and extra things to think about if you have kids.

Thanks to some thoughts provoked by the book, we have a solution to the breakfast area/dining room issue (and a couple other issues too!), but there are still some details we need to work out…and of course, it adds another project to our list.  Good thing we like projects.

The post How to make your home fit your lifestyle appeared first on Little Victorian.

Our dressers and wardrobes have been sold. But those are 4 pieces of furniture that will not be replaced, because we built an open wardrobe in the bedroom.

One thing I loved, loved, loved about the open storage in the kitchen is how much easier it is to keep everything neat and orderly.

I know, it’s weird. It’s not like opening a cabinet door is that much work. I don’t understand how or why it’s so much easier…it just is.

An issue we struggled with in keeping the bedroom tidy is piling things on any available surface (dresser tops, nightstands, etc). When there is no surface available, we won’t have the option to be lazy, so we should suck it up and put stuff away, where it belongs.  Hopefully.

While our closet is mostly finished, it still needs some adjustments, and there is still a lot of work to do in the room, so updates will continue.  But we’ve been using it for a couple weeks now, and we love it so far.  It almost feels like getting dressed in a boutique.  And our bedroom feels so much bigger without all that furniture.  Here’s what it looked like before, one more time:

Here are links to similar products (though treads are MUCH cheaper at the DIY store):

(Affiliate links above)

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A long time ago, a commenter mentioned to me that it would be helpful for my readers if I would post a floor plan of our house. That was a great idea, and I had every intention of doing it. And then I forgot…as usual.

But I was reminded this week when Nicole gave us one of her new house.

I’d love to say I whipped one up this morning, but it takes some time to measure the whole house!  Here is our layout:

And the second floor:

Hopefully it all makes more sense to you now when you see pictures of various rooms.  If you go to the house tour page, you can see pictures of most of the rooms (though they need to be updated badly).

There are probably some things on there that don’t make much sense…our house has a lot of quirks.  For example, the fridge isn’t just hanging out in the dining room/mud room/weird spot, the previous owners actually built walls around it, so it’s a big fridge box.  (You can see part of it here.)  Feel free to ask questions if you’re confused!

The post The big picture: our whole-house floor plan appeared first on Little Victorian.

A year and a half ago, we visited my parents who live 1,100 miles away.  While we were there, I helped them redecorate their living room, dining room and home office.  But, after all the work we did, I didn’t get any “after” photos.  18 months later, I finally have some to show you.

My parents have a mix of personal styles, from southern traditional to contemporary.  We found a good balance because they both love it!

Here it is before their traditional living room makeover:

One of the biggest changes we made was simply rearranging the furniture.  They had difficulty placing the furniture because the room layout was tricky.  The front door opens to the corner of the living room, and it is open to the dining room with the exception of the two built-in bookcases on either side.  The room is fairly small for a living room too.

We added curtains to the gorgeous window to make it more substantial and draw even more attention to it and the wonderfully high 12′ ceilings.  We picked out a traditional impressionist-style painting to go above the television and complete the space.

And here it is after:

Things we purchased for the living room makeover:

• Two bookcases to flank either side of the media stand they already had (Target)
• The painting (Pier 1)
• Two side tables (Pier 1 floor models)
• Two table lamps
• Console table (HomeGoods)
• Chandelier

The sofa and chairs will be replaced, they like this combination:

Sofa, Chairs

I love the cream slipper chairs for this room, it will really open it up and make it feel roomier.

Here are the before and after photos, side-by-side for easy viewing!

Next week, I’ll show you the small makeover the dining room got.

The post Traditional living room makeover appeared first on Little Victorian.

My parents are currently looking for a new sofa and chairs for their living room.  They live in a 1920s Bungalow with a combination of traditional and contemporary decor. 

They also have a fairly small living room and with the layout, the sofa needs to be floated with room to walk around on all sides.  So, the length of the sofa is limited.  Here are 4 sofa and chair options.  All of these pieces are available in different colors (and available in your area, Mom).

Sofa, Chairs

Another option is to change up the floor plan a little and put two loveseats facing each other, perpendicular to the television.

Loveseats

Here is a more traditional option with a tufted sofa (mmm…tufting) and two accent chairs. 

Sofa, Chair 

But, since Mom really loves modern, funky furniture, I saved the best for last:

Sofa, Chairs

By the way, that last silver sofa is a sleeper.  And it’s awesome.  Go check it out. 

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Here it is: our small office guest room in it’s current state!  These are definitely not “After” shots as there are still projects to start and organizing to finish.  But before that happens, I’m very anxious to finally get back to working in here, the shop has been on hold for too long.

We painted the walls a very light gray, and the ceiling a crisp, spring-y blue (Martha Stewart’s Cumulus Cloud and Enamelware).  The desk and floating shelves are from IKEA.  I’m still so excited that I get to have a 5′ by 3′ desk AND a sofa bed in an 8′ wide room.

The command center is still in progress, but the cork board and dry erase board were finished today.

The empty frame will soon have some small, shallow wall shelves inside to hold supplies and/or products.  This morning, the cork and dry erase boards were gold inside, but I had a sudden change of mind and made them white lace instead.  Need my girly touches since the walls aren’t pink.

Still saving for the cowhide, and will probably get more white bins and/or baskets to keep the shelves simple and uncluttered.  Once we can get our hands on a few more wine crates, they will be stacked and turned into movable shelves.

(You can read more about the sofa bed and how it fits into the room perfectly here.)  I’ll keep you updated as this room continues to change.

We started clearing out the powder room last night and we’ve already discovered several additional “issues” that will need to be addressed.  There are a couple strange dilemmas that I will probably need your help with!

PS Here is the latest update on the office.

The post The girly office/guest room is done! (for now) appeared first on Little Victorian.

Some friends of ours recently purchased a new-to-them home and have been doing lots of work on it.  And they’re doing a great job, what I have seen so far is lovely.  She did say she would welcome any suggestions for her laundry room, which was dreamy to me, it’s bright and above ground with an actual floor instead of dirt… Not to complain about mine, I am the one who chose to move ours to the unfinished basement.  Anyway, hers is galley style with the washer and dryer on one side and a closet on the other.  At the end of the laundry area, there is a hallway going left and right.  There isn’t any floor space for storage, but there is lots of wall space both in the hallway and above the washer and dryer.

So here are some ideas I came up with (I hope you like Ikea!):

Nesting Place

First, for above the washer and dryer, some open shelving all the way up the wall would help.  The utilities are set off from the wall a bit to allow for plumbing, so deep shelving would be helpful up there with some extra large baskets to keep things organized.  The photo above shows floating shelves, which you can get at Ikea for $15 for 3.5 feet or $20 for just over 6 feet.  For something deeper than those, though, you can get boards and metal brackets from the home improvement store for about the same price.

For another option in that area, if the washer and dryer are stackable (didn’t really notice the machines), they could be stacked and a base kitchen cabinet could be put in the spot where the dryer currently is.  Counter space could be left on top and then an upper cabinet (maybe even a cute medicine cabinet!) could be mounted to the wall, just as in a kitchen.  Then a wall shelf could be added above the upper cabinet, spanning the whole area for extra (seasonal?) storage.  Similar to the picture below, only without the cabinet built around the washer and dryer—that’s an unnecessary expense in my opinion.

House and Home

Or just an open shelf next to the washer and dryer with pretty baskets.

Martha Stewart

I recommend taking full advantage of wall space in small rooms, even when the space is too narrow for shelves.  One of my favorite options for wall storage in any room are these $3 rails from IKEA.  Each of the accessories that go with it are under $5 each, so you can have a whole wall of very shallow storage for really cheap.

Everything in the picture above is under $20.  They sell hooks for the rails so you can hang brooms or dusters, or anything with a handle or hole on the end.  The hooks on the top right are actually toilet paper holders, but they cost $1 and they will hold about 5 hangers each, great for hanging clothes right out of the dryer.

Originally, I recommended a wall mounted, drop down ironing board (they can be so nice!), but then I saw the price…  I would still recommend though, the traditional ironing board and iron hanger. 

So there are some of my laundry room ideas for you.  Anyone else have laundry room tips to share?

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