Kitchen/ Great Room Transformation

Long time no blog! Sorry, we have had our heads buried in cardboard boxes.

We finally moved all of our stuff into the house this weekend! It was extremely busy, but thankfully we had no furniture casualties in the process. Our poor belongings have seen 4 moves in 5 years so they have collected their fair share of dents and scratches, but this time we actually had movers were great!

Again, with the help of lots of fam (thanks Jan and Larry!)
and friends, we managed to get all of the boxes in and begin the great unpack. However, the biggest transformation came in the great room/ kitchen! After the painters finished painting the cabinets, Davy + Micheal put on our brushed nickel t-bar cabinet hardware. What a change! We think the transformation is amazing. DSN (Davy Side Note), the t-bars were so hard to put up I told Rachel if she ever wants to change hardware again we are going to sell this house and buy one with the hardware she wants already installed. Once again, thank you Mike, if it were not for you I would have pulled all 10 fingernails away from the nailbed instead of just three.

All of the essentials to hang the cabinetry hardware.....

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After!

Another Before View

Transformed!

Coffee Corner with new Asker suspension rail from Ikea. Perfect spot for Splenda and spoons.

We also unpacked our brand spankin' new dining room table and living room furniture. The table looks great nestled underneath our new Garrison Pendants from Pottery Barn!
After all of that hard work we needed a little retail therapy so we headed to Pier 1 to get a new chair. It is an awesome textured banana leaf chair which gives some depth to our furniture.

Check it out!

We plan on continuing the unpacking process this week and will add more pics as things come together. Also on the docket....... enjoying golf and the pool and the club, working on the yard and possibly planting a perinneal bed, and oh yeah, Rach is graduating from a little thing called MEDICAL SCHOOL!

Enegizer Bunny Weekend!

WOW! Don't even know where to begin with this weekend. We accomplished so much and our house looks like a million bucks. However, it would not have been possible without the Amadio-Rouse-Wilson labor force. Let us just say, these people come to get stuff done.

Before we jump into our weekend warrior accomplishments though, I (Rachel) have to share my work on Davy's work bench/ garage. It was a spider haven covered in dust and webs prior to Friday morning. While contemplating what to clean the area with, I had flashbacks to my youth. Then I knew there was only one thing for the job............Murphy Oil Soap.

Say Hello To my Little Friend....

Growing up, I remember my parents cleaning everything thing with this stuff. My dad could take a dirty, dingy vehicle, and make it look like a shiny new quarter with a bucket full of Murphy's Oil Soap. Honestly, I'm surprised that Mom and Dad didn't bathe us in this potion when we got especially dirty. Anyway, I digress......

Workspace before


Workspace after (notice tools organized according to size and type :-) )

On Saturday, we headed to Evergreen with Stephanie on board to see the results of our landscape consult with Bob. After a few tweaks we ended up purchasing quite a few things and brought them back to the casa. That is where the work began. Steph was a HUGE help in guiding us in the planting process and our friend Lacy showed up helped us plant the ENTIRE landscaping!!

Saturday night we had a lil' celebrating to do cause our sweet nephew Eric is graduating from Avoca and heading to middle school. We have no doubt he will make quite the splash at Vance and we can't wait to see what the future holds for him!

On Sunday, the Rouses' and Amadios' showed up bright and early to mulch our brand new landscaping and got it done in a flash!! On top of it all they also installed our landscape lighting. Sunday afternoon Steph and Rach headed to Lowe's to complete the landscaping look with a few bright and cheery annuals. 19 Plymouth Circle has never looked so good. Let's reminese on the progress..... :-)

Front Landscaping before.....

Naked!

Landscaping After!!

To top off all of this Steph, Jif, and Rach completed a back bed with a hydrangea (a sweet housewarming gift compliments of the Amadios') and some clippings from the neighbor's garden that she graciously offered! Looks great!

Also accomplished this weekend.... the cabinet doors are painted and in the garage and our bedrooms are painted! They look better than expected, but all you blog readers are going to have to wait to see these beauties in action!

As we were driving away this evening a huge downpour came and drenched our landscaping! The perfect ending to a weekend where we felt the love once again from our friends and family. We are truly blessed!

Walkway: Revamped!

As you probably have gathered from our previous posts, we have been held prisoner by the weather the past few days. Not today! The sun was shining all day long which allowed us to jump right back in to our list of outdoor projects. And to put icing on the cake, our dining room table and sideboard came in! After 3 long months of waiting our walnut table that seats a whopping eight people made its way to Holston Furniture today and it is gorgeous! Davy still insists that the furniture maker must have had to stalk walnut trees late at night to make this table because it took so long, but it was well worth the wait. We are excited to have such a nice piece of solid wood furniture!

Sideboard with legs of table underneath

Table (wrapped in plastic) Top of Chairs also seen here!

After doing the happy dance over our table we began working on the side steps in our backyard. By the end of this deck situation, we will both likely spontaneously combust if we see another can of Olympic deck stain. However, if we may say so ourselves, the change has really made a difference in the back yard! We just lack putting the railing on the steps and we will be done!
Davy working hard removing the old railing. (Notice his stylin' headgear, including the kitchen towel tucked in his hat.......)

Finally, Davy topped the evening off by working on the flagstone pathway. After deweeding, ant killing, and Round-Uping, he was ready to spread pea gravel in between the stone. The gravel really completed the walkway and gave it a bright look! We love it.

Walkway after

Walkway before

Wine down Wednesday and Lowe's Loot!

So today was another rainy/ cloudy/ partly sunny day, we weren't sure what kind of outside work could be accomplished. So, we spent the day filling out IRS forms to get our first time homebuyers credit. Boring, but oh so important. We also snagged us an exterior painter who seemed to jive with our ideas.

But the end of the day was where the fun began! Davy and the 'rents grabbed some grub for lunch at K.P. Duty, a favorite local cafe, and noticed that tonight was "Wine down Wednesday" were apps and wine are 1/2 off! Well you can guess where we headed to get our dinner fill! We, Dave and Judy made our way downtown for a great meal and afterwords we headed out to Lowe's where we scored some great loot! We left with a new garden hoe, pea gravel, new door handles for the interior bedroom doors, and some Round-up. Much to Davy's despair Rach also found some Lowes' market bags at the check-out! Let's face it, no one wants to put ant killer in the same bag as their romaine!

All of the essentials to get our flagstone walkway in shipshape!

Tomorrow the hardwoods are DONE, and hopefully some more good ol' manual labor can begin.

Never Trust the Weatherman

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well this picture sums up the words of every weather forecast for our area; rain, rain, rain, with a chance of scattered thunderstorms. Since the storms were supposed to start in the afternoon, Rachel started the day with the idea of heading out to the local nurseries to replace our decimated landscaping. She was so excited when she told me all of the great ideas she had received at Evergreens in Bristol, VA. Of course, that was after the first trip... I joined her late in the afternoon to check on all of her finds. After a quick detour for a late lunch and a trip to Decorator's Warehouse, (side note: who decided that outdoor furniture should cost at least $1500? It is literally made out of PVC and plastic faux wicker, as you probably can guess we did not buy anything.) we made our second trip to Evergreens. I was pretty impressed with her ideas, but naturally my Amadio side came out and I talked her into price comparing the plants at both Lowes and Home Depot. While running back and forth we also were able to set up three appointments with exterior painters and coordinate SW commissions, great multitasking. After being disappointed with the selection at both aforementioned places we headed back, for a third time, to Evergreens where we met "Bob". This is where our tip of the day comes in, buy from local nurseries!! They may be a little more expensive, but you cannot beat the extra steps they will take for you. We asked Bob about the choices we had made and he confirmed what we already knew, we know squat about landscaping. Fortunately for us that is where Bob comes in to save the day. He told us that if we would just go home, take pictures of the house, measure our landscape beds, and measure the height of the windows above the beds, he would design the entire front of our house. Then he said the most magical words in the English language, "we do this for FREE"!!!!!!! I love Bob. This naturally meant that Rachel wanted to go get the camera and tape measure immediately and get to work. After some quick measurements, a photo sessions, sketch of the front of the house, and small breaks to introduce ourselves to our new postman and next door neighbor, we were back at Evergreens. For anyone who lost track that was four trips to Evergreens in one day, whew.... Bob took all our data and he is starting to plan our completely Azalea and Rhododendron free front landscaping. All in all there is not much to show in ways of physical progress today, but by Saturday we will have a completely designed front yard and quotes from three different painters.

P.S. As I write this post it is 10:00 pm and it still has not rained a drop, stupid Doppler.

Holy Hardwood!

Wow! What a difference a day can make! We started out the day with warn out caramel colored hardwood floors and ended up with these to die for mocha hardwoods and a finished deck to boot! We spent the entire putting a second coat on the deck while the Booher's were inside sanding their little hearts out. Before noon they had called us inside to pick the stain color. Lets just say the hardwood guy was a little suprised when we picked the dark stain, so much so that it made Rach second guess the choice. But WOW! We think they look gorgeous. Of course, they don't have any sealant on them yet and we had to take these McGuiver shots through the half opened door so that we wouldn't mess up the stain.

Another life lesson learned today, when life hands you an unpainted deck, NEVER paint it. Davy spent the entire afternoon putting a second coat on what we started on Saturday while Rach massaged deck stain into the cracks so that they pre-existing gray paint didn't peek through. Nonetheless, we finally tackled the task, and it gives the back side of the house a much better look! What do you think?

On the docket tomorrow, visit Lowe's in hopes for some inspiration for the landscaping (BTW thanks for the thoughts Steph, our front yard gets afternoon sun but does have some shady spots. We will definitely have to consider the sun situation with those laurels in the sunny front yard), unpack our Garrison pendants that arrived today from PB, and possibly even paint the side steps, although the the thought of another day of deck stain already gives us low back pain! :-)

New dark mocha stain

Freshly sanded floors, the dust was flyin!

Porch before Davy and E rhododendron demolition and with redwood posts, gray deck floor, ans white railing

Davy is actually stuck in this position :-)

Finished product! We chose Olympic solid deck stain in Outside White for the railing and Ebony Gray for the deck floor, posts, and steps. Two coats did the trick for covering the weathered redwood stain.

Our First Home

This weekend we finally did it. We closed on our very first house and wasted no time getting to work. We could not wait to tear into the projects that we have been tediously planning for the last two months. First on the docket, removing the beady-eyed eagle from above our door so that we could carry out a time honored tradition, carrying the wife across the threshold ! :-) Luckily the eagle came down with ease, although Rachel was sure that thing could have attacked at any moment!

After a quick tour of the place without realtors, painters, previous homeowners, etc, we got down to work. Everything that happened after that moment is pretty much a blur, but all we have to say is THANK GOODNESS FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Jif and E showed up first thing Saturday morning, Kabota in tow, ready to rip out the grossly overgrown (albiet blooming) rhodadenron and other shrubery as well as paint our tri-colored deck. Jan began painting the huge red brick fireplace. Lacy and Aaron showed up with the essentials: food, wine, and toilet paper. :-)

After two solid days of work we can definitely say that we are well on our way to knocking down our lengthy project list. Rachel is sporting an awesome Chaco tan and Davy has a farmers tan that would challenge John Deere, all signs of a successful first weekend of homeownership.

Gigantic Brick Fireplace, now a lovely shade of Alabaster, Thanks to Jan and Sherwin-Williams!

Shrubbery Carnage

Our Fresh Blank Slate! Any Ideas?