We made major changes in this room:
1. We had a contractor put in a pass-through to the Kitchen. We hired a contractor to do that because the wall between the kitchen and living room is load-bearing and we don't do structural stuff. Well, we might do that now - but we wouldn't have done it when we started. Once the contractor built the pass-through, we tiled the top to make a little bar/high countertop area.
2. We closed in a "hallway" that went between the living room and the old family room. Because we made the old family room into our master bedroom, we had to close off the open hallway for privacy sake. We made the hallway into a closet to add storage space (since old homes like ours never have enough storage). The closet opens into the living room and serves as our "catch-all" area.
3. We scraped the popcorn ceilings and removed the picture molding. This was a tough project since the ceilings in this room are 10+ feet high. Luckily, our contractor let us borrow his scaffolding. I couldn't have imagined doing this without that.
4. We repainted - twice actually. I really wanted a red accent wall and we originally had the other 3 walls painted a taupe color. We decided that it was too light with the red so we got a great orange color. It was definitely a risk but we think it turned out really great. We were afraid that buyers might be scared off by our color choices but apparently not!
5. Kirk built a gorgeous mantel for the fireplace. This was one of our last projects and it turned out so wonderful. You can really tell how much Kirk has learned working on this house by this project. No way could he have built this 2 years ago.
6. We tiled the fireplace surround. This was our last major project which was somewhat fitting because tiling the kitchen counters was one of our first projects together.
Here I am scraping the ceiling - what a mess!
Here's the "hallway" that we closed in to make a closet. You can see the first framing that we put up.
All framed and drywalled - just need to add the shelves and door:
With the door (and the orange paint color - which is still wet in this picture):
This was the taupe color that we originally had on the other 3 walls. We ended up using the taupe color in the family room instead. Notice the nice, smooth ceilings.
The old fireplace - with no mantel and a terrible green linoleum tile surround.
The pass-through all framed out but no counter-top yet:
With countertop and molding.
The "custom" tile job. Kirk and I had a system that was working really well for us. I measured and marked the tile, he cut the tile, and I laid it. I let him help me lay a few and I could show you exactly where he messed it up. Which is why doing-it-yourself is not always best - you know exactly where all the flaws are!
The pendant lights we had put up over the bar area. We picked the orange color that we ended up using on the walls out of the glass on these lights. These lights are one of my favorite parts of the whole house!
Here are the after pics:
The closet - Kirk did a great job combining 3 different shades of stain to get this aged look on our brand new closet door. You can also see part of Kirk's mantel and the tile surround.
Kirk's masterpiece - the mantel. Best part of the mantel - the fact that he only had to buy $20 worth of supplies. Most of the mantel was built using old scrap wood that he had torn out of other parts of the house or had laying around from other projects. We had a couple of people come out to give us quotes on building a mantel and the cheapest quote we got was $250. I'm willing to bet that the pros couldn't have done any better job than Kirk did.
The mantel and closet
Dining area:
The bar area.
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