The many personalities of my kitchen

Well construction has begun on our kitchen.We are taking a little bit at a time, starting with ripping out the old, dirty lenoleum checkerd floor. My hope was that we could salvage the hardwood that I know was underneath the lenoleum. I was going to do a painted hardwood look with charcoal and white diamonds. Oh how lovely it would have looked, the painted gray and white with the planks of the floor still visible... until my dream was shattered. Apparently previous owners had similar ideas about changing the kitchen floor, the only problem is that they were all lenoleum lovers, they all did not have very good taste, and worst of all, the original layer was secured down with TAR to the beautiful original 1903 red pine wood floors. Knife.to.the.heart.

Floor #1: Back and White (more like brown now) Checks

Floor #2: GREEN and white (brown) checks

Floor #3: ??? white-brown brickish lenoleum

Finally, the original hardwood, too bad you can't see if for the tar covering it:

Well, now that my painted hardwood kitchen is out of the question, tile it is! I've decided on a charcoal gray slate tile. I thought it had a good combination of rustic and modern. Here is an example kitchen with similar flooring:

Kind of a matte, natural finish. Love the gray and white.

Our kitchen cabinet doors will be changed to a more updated farmhouse style beadboard front with a frame, like this:

And we will have an island with pendant lights above it, maybe these barn style lights in this wonderful kitchen (!!):

Or these?

Right now the project is stressing me out because I don't like things to be out of order. I want everything in its place. I guess it will be worth it in the end.
Soon I'll be posting my living room update. New couch is here!!! Will have to take pics, I'm kind of waiting on my other items to arrive from Etsy before posting. SOON!

Officially Thursday

Well its past midnite and I'm still up...again. I have too much on my mind to get any decent rest these days it seems, so why not share some of my never ending thoughts!

So my new couch is coming hopefully this week. Its from Simple Pleasures in Marietta Ohio (my fav fav fav store of all time). Its a slipcovered apartment sofa (aka smaller size) from Lee Industries. Key feature to that statement is SLIPCOVERED so I can wash the fabric in my washer like only an true OCD sufferer could appreciate. Here it is.

You can't really get a feel for the drape on this picture, but the slipcover just gracefully hangs off of the frame. I lusted after this couch for over a year and can't wait to get it!
These pillows will be added of course, you have seen the fabric before:

My go to girl for my pillows and interior fabrics is the wonderful Heidi Devlin of etsy.

I'm probably going to add another jute rug like my parlor room to mimic the appearance of carpet, since my floors are all hardwood. I figure if the rugs are the same in both rooms it will flow better.

I have to take a picture of the coffee table because it just makes the room. Here is something similar.

A french vintage industrial cart (there's my element of "man" to my room!)

I'm still a little torn on the chairs, once again. I like leather chairs, as I've said over and over again. But I also like a slipcovered club chair as well.

I can't wait until its done!!! I will be posting 100,000,000 pics of course.

And to finish the day off right, here are some lovely things I've been admiring.

I'm having a heart attack over this dress.

Oh if only.

Good night everyone!

New Restoration Hardware

Today I got the new restoration hardware magazine in the mail. I'm not really into the whole modern industrial look, however, little touches here and there I'm liking alot. I have the habit of making rooms look too "femimine" if I'm not careful. I'm attracted to a lot of antique curvy lines and light colors. I've found that if you add in an industrial style piece it can make the room balanced. Not too feminine and just enough masculinity.

Could this be the leather chair I have been forever searching for? If so I would be getting it an more of a cognac color. The second picture gives you a better idea of the size. They look small, but I think I like that!

Loving this iron bed, and also love these old style trunks, although I think I would prefer a real vintage trunk versus the reproduction.

Here is an inspiration from country living for storage with vintage trunk and suitcases. Loving it.

New slipcovered couch should be in soon!! I'm kind of getting excited for Christmas and think I'm going to put up two trees this year. One in my sitting room and one in my living room I'm working on now, hopefully it will be in a good state by Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by :)

Random

Random post for a somewhat uneventful week. Here's my asian family members, Ping and Ling.


Ping is the fat one up front, Ling in the creeper you can see creeping in the back.

Love this kitchen. I may be repainting our kitchen walls white and our trim gray after seeing this beautiful inspiration! Also love the painted hardwood floors, would love to do this to our kitchen.



Here is a sneak peak of my living room project! I will post all my plans and pictures soon. These are the fabrics I am using for my living room. An Etsy shop owner is making them for me!

Thanks for looking!

Etsy = my obsession

I LOVE Etsy. I could look through its shops for hours and I've actually gotten a lot of things made for the house through shop owners there as well. Here are some things that are on my favorites list.

Sassycatcreations @ Etsy grainsack pillow (Want these made in Euro shams for our bed)

OldNewsCollective @ Etsy (Would love these on my dining room table)

Alexandragrecco @ Etsy (I want this cape)

Prettyfoldings @ Etsy (I ordered this yesterday!! Will soon be hanging on my door in the living room. SO EXCITED! The flowers are made from old book pages.)

aftershowershop @ Etsy (Want this dress)

TickingandToile @ Etsy (These are my dining room chair covers! Shop owner was nice enough to make me 6!)

Agrestis @ Etsy (Would love to put this bookcase somewhere)

Like I said, Etsy is my new obsession. Beware if you start looking because you will likely become addicted as well.

Happy Tuesday everyone. Sternwheel Festival this weekend, can't wait for fireworks :)

Kitchen

When we bought the house we did it with the intention of completely gutting the kitchen. We're waiting to do this last so we can have time to save but I just had to post this picture of what we did yesterday. The kitchen is, well, pretty ugly. It has old cabinets, an old checkered floor, and the counter tops were yellow. Yesterday I couldn't take it anymore and thought I would do some minor changes to make it look a little updated until we could afford to do the whole thing.
I bought some counter top paint (which I didn't even know existed) and painted the counter tops gray instead of yellow and it really does look a lot better! I wish I had some before pics but I don't. Here's what it looked like after.

Looks like new! I'm going to get some new knobs for the doors too. Can't wait until I get my dream kitchen. Someday it will look like this:

Or this:

Or this:

And I love this one too:

I'm off work today but I'm also not feeling too well. Hopefully I'm better by tomorrow. Its hard to be sick and then have to take care of other sick people.
Thanks for looking!

Updated Pics

I started this blog over 6 months ago and then kind of forgot about it, but now that we are making a great deal of progress with our home I thought it would be fun to document it all! Here are some pictures of the house so far, still a work in progress :)

This is our living room / sitting room. If you look at my first post you can see my inspiration puc. I think we did a good job so far! I took the ideas of the wall color, curtains, pillows and tried to make it my own. We plan to get some distressed leather chairs eventually, but still haven't found the perfect set yet.

Some of the dining room looking into sitting room.

Dining room.

Bedroom is REALLY not finished yet. But I like the way the bed looks.

More pics later!