Main Floor Renovation - Why I've been absent from the blog

This is my latest creative project which took 7 weeks and was only supposed to take 3-4. When we bought our house, we knew the main floor wasn't our style and that we'd renovate it someday. Well, after 8 years and a lot of planning and designing on my part, we finally bit the bullet. I am thrilled with the results.

Here is our kitchen before the remodel (well we had already taken off some drawer fronts and taken out the stove). But standard cookie cutter kitchen and plain beige everything including ceramic tile with dirty grout.

And here is the kitchen after the remodel...

new island...so much better for the work flow

We used the same cabinets but rearranged them, added 3 new ones, and put new doors and moldings on everything. (When I say we here, I mean I had the cabinet company do them.) They painted the cabinets and then added doors. The counters are quartz.

My husband and I did all the floors. They are bamboo hardwood planks, called Antique Strand Bamboo from Lumber liquidators. I personally painted all the walls on the main floor (whew!) and had fun installing all the new light fixtures and caulking the darn baseboards when we put them back on.  It was all a lot of work but we are excited to have it done.

Here's the flooring...minus baseboards. The walls are Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray (but they look a little green in this light. It's really a nice warm gray. See the other pics.

moved the microwave to the new island and installed a range hood 

view from the couches

The main room before the remodel

after the remodel...new pillows, flooring, rug from rugsusa.com and wall pics and ceiling lights from overstock.com

front room before

front room after...ikea rug and cube by chair

So there's what I've been doing on the side. Living without a kitchen for 7 weeks really stunk. But I'll forget it now because it's all done! 

BESIDES all that I have some great news about illustrating I'll post next. Watch for it!