Showing posts with label hollen home 2018. Show all posts

Hollen Home | Our Kitchen Update


As I have been mentioning in posts the past few weeks, we recently embarked upon getting our kitchen cabinets refaced and a back splash done. I have spent most of the last year debating on whether or not we should sell our home or put down deep roots and stay here for a long time. I started making my lists about what needed to be done to move and then I started thinking about all of the things that have occurred in this little home of ours. I became nostalgic of the many band practices that were held in our basement over the years and the moments out on the back porch with many musicians and friends. I thought about bringing both of our children home to this house. Marin started crawling here, walking here. I've spent many a night and early morning upstairs in the kid's rooms, nursing a little baby in the glow of a night light. I thought about cramming all of our family into our living room and kitchen to celebrate birthdays and gender reveal parties. 


This is home. I want to be here for quite a while, putting down some roots. Deep roots. 


So, we decided to move forward with updating our kitchen since we plan on sticking around for an extended period of time. Completely replacing the cabinets was going to be way too expensive, especially since we had put in new floors a few years ago and they didn't extend under the existing cabinets. The floor would need to be redone as well. Our cabinets had good bones and structure, they just needed a refresh. We had updated the cabinet doors and painted them white a few years ago. That plan worked great for a number of years but I was getting super tired of repainting everything every year or so. The wood cabinets weren't wearing amazingly well either and our cat had clawed at many areas and drawers. 

It's pretty crazy to me how much our home has changed over the years. This is how the kitchen looked when we bought the house...


This is how the kitchen looked before our cabinet refacing....


We contacted Home Depot for an estimate. They reface all of the cabinets, replace all of the doors, replace all of the drawers, etc. Our drawers were pretty much falling apart so I was super excited about new drawers. They also installed sliding shelves in our pantry and a few other cabinets and rebuilt a few of our cabinet floors because ours had been damaged. We have never had an actual cabinet floor under our kitchen sink. I imagine it existed at some point but had some water damage. When we bought the home, under the sink was pretty much dirt and spider world. We just kind of lived with it that way all of these years. 




All of the cabinets are soft closing which is a cool, added bonus. We added hardware to everything as well. Our cabinets didn't have hardware before and I felt like I was constantly wiping them down due to cute, little, grimy hands constantly touching them. 



I love how it all turned out. The backsplash has been a project we have wanted to do for quite a while now. I cannot believe how much brighter everything feels now. We kept the counter tops the same because luckily the previous owners owned a granite company. I love the contrast of the backsplash and dark counter tops. 


There are still  few things to be done though. I need to go through and touch up a lot of the aqua paint on the walls. They also removed the white valance that was above the kitchen sink. Right now it looks pretty horrible and unfinished. I also want to get a cool pendant light for above the kitchen sink.    Little baby steps. 


Before....

Overall, we are super pleased with the results. I am also very thankful to have our kitchen back. Not having a kitchen for a week with two small children is something I really don't want to have to experience again. This was our living room for that week...


Hallelujah. I am so thankful that this project is pretty much complete. Now we can enjoy our kitchen. 



Baby Sullivan | Week Thirty Five



What a whirlwind of a week. Phew. I feel like we haven't had a moment of calm for many days in our home. We had our cabinets refaced and a backsplash done this week. They just finished yesterday and I am so excited with how it all turned out. But, we were without a kitchen for a week and resorted to eating breakfast in our basement and hanging out at other people's houses. My house needs a really good, deep clean because I feel like there's just a fine layer of dust pretty much everywhere. I've been sneezing like crazy since I woke up this morning and I'm ready to conquer the dust. I am also very ready to get everything put back into our cabinets and bring order into the chaos a bit. 



We also just went through a refinance and everything went smoothly with that. It was pretty comical last night though because they send an agent to your home to sign your final papers. I am knucklehead and decided to schedule this while we didn't have a kitchen and while our kitchen table was in our family room in the basement surrounded my music gear and kid toys. Bless the woman who came to have us sign documents. It was pretty much a hot mess from when she entered our home to when she left. Our living room was full of boxes, our kitchen was a mess. Our children were fussy and hungry. There was a weird smell in the basement. It was definitely not our shining moment as homeowners and as parents. I was looking very forward to getting everything signed and getting her out of our hot mess of a home. It's funning now looking back at it but at the time I wanted to crawl into a hole for a while. 



Sully is working on some new teeth and I can see them getting ready to poke through the gums. He's had a few rough moments this week. I think mostly teeth are to blame but we also were all over the place this week with meals and nap times. I'm looking very forward to getting some consistency back in our schedule this week and to normalize our naps and mealtimes. Both kids were troopers this week and I am thankful for that. Marin probably only napped one day out of seven this past week. I know she fights the nap and most of the time just entertains herself during quiet time. But, the kid still needs a nap sometimes, especially when the world around her is in such upheaval. We had a few rough tantrums this week from her and I know our schedule is to blame. 



Sully tried a few new things this week food wise, even with all of the meal craziness. I found that little dude loves hummus. He also tried a fruit and veggie pouch at the coffeehouse yesterday. He seemed to really like it and I would love the ease of a pouch. He's still been rocking the sweet potatoes and chicken. He love carrots and peas. He eats a lot of bananas and yogurt bites. 



Many things in our lives are changing. I realize that is fairly vague and goes beyond just getting our cabinets redone. I'm trying to grasp all of it and move through a season of change as best as I can. I do believe that the changes at hand are good and I am excited for what may come out of all of it. 



Today, I plan on focusing on the kids schedules and offering some normalcy in their lives. I want to scrub down the house and conquer the dust. I want to cook in my kitchen and clean out the fridge. We definitely need groceries in the next day or so as well. I probably won't even get out of my pajamas and plan to not leave the house unless absolutely necessary. 

I really need to catch up some blog stuff too this week. I need to post my February Portrait. My One Little Word Post. Lots of catching up to be done....



Week Thirty Five.