Home Renovations!

So before every post on my blog became pregnancy related, I was talking about home renovations. We've been working on so much! Now with the baby on the way, we've had way more motivation to get things done faster.

I don't have a comparison of what the upstairs looked like before, but I do have a pic of what the upstairs looks like now, so let's start with that.

We've installed the new floors upstairs, and the baseboards! I will eventually take better pictures of the whole house, but for now, I'm only showing the parts that aren't covered in boxes from moving stuff around. This is what "volcanic cherry" floor looks like. It's a nice 13mm laminate, and it looks amazing in comparison to the terribly faded ugly pink/grey carpeting that came with the house. We wanted hardwood, but for the price, decided to go with the laminate. This is our first house, and we didn't want to invest too much into expensive flooring when we'll likely be looking for something bigger in a couple of years.. this laminate was a good compromise for us.

This is a before shot of our living room.

This is the after shot, including cat and dog. (Still missing baseboards)

We did two things to the living room. One, is that we made it slightly smaller. It was already a pretty small room to begin with, so why make it smaller? To make the kitchen bigger! The kitchen won't be ready for a while, we're saving up for the counters, but it will be a lot more functional when we're done with it. The kitchen was way too small before, with only about 2.5 feet of actual prep space! Try making Christmas dinner when the turkey can barely fit on the counter!! When we finish the kitchen renovation, we will add counter space on the other side of the kitchen which will extend the whole wall, so we'll have plenty of working space! :)

This is what the dining room looked like before. Carpet in the dining room?? WHY???? lol

And this is the dining room with the new floors / new paint job.

When all is said and done, I promise I will take better non-camera phone pictures. These pictures simply do not do justice to all the hard work DH and I have done!

We're getting new furniture for both the living / dining rooms on Saturday, at which point I will take pictures of the rooms as they will be completed! Basically, the living room/dining room are pretty well joint like this:

This floorplan that I made will vary slightly (but the dining room and the kitchen, with the exception of the L-cupboards at the back of the room, just take off the extra part of the L counter, are accurate).

Instead of having a sofa and two chairs like you see here, we decided to go with a small sectional instead that will go by the big picture window in the living room, and just one chair facing inward from the stairs, so more like this:

We bought drapes and sheer to put over the big picture window. We have a south facing yard, and we get sun in that window all day long, so the drapes are great way to cool the house off in the summer when we're not home during the day. They look fantastic, and I can't wait to show them off once we get everything in that room set up this weekend! :)

Speaking of this weekend... here's a look at what is coming!!

The sectional sofa

The chair for the living room. (Our offset colours are red and white... how canadian, lol)

The shelving unit that we'll be putting in the dining room. We have a wall that kind of dips in a foot or so, and this shelf fits perfectly in it. This shelf will display our martini glasses, some ornamental stuff, should be pretty cool. We will also add red accents to the dining room by putting some red things on here. Our kitchen appliances are all red, so that's kind of where that came from. :)

The dining room chairs. We bought 4, and have other chairs for extra guests. :) Our dining room is small, and we need to maximize space as much as possible. Which brings me to the last piece... the dining room table.

Table, fully extended... way too big for our dining room :D

Same table, closed up in to a square....

Same table, closed up for 5-6 people....

Same table closed all the way down to 18".

We fell in love with this table, simply because it is so versatile. I loooove that when we're not using it, it can be closed down so small with just two chairs, leaving the room nice and open. It's the only table I've seen that can do what this one does. Ahhh... love. :)

This pretty much sums up where we're at with things at the moment. When everything is done, I will take out my professional camera, and take some snapshots of the finished product. Between now and Saturday, DH and I need to finish up the baseboards in the living/dining room, so when all the furniture is in, it should be officially done!! Well... almost.. we still have some stairs to work on, but the bulk of the work is done! :)