House Updates

We made some big changes to our house over the past few months.

The first change was the kitchen cabinets. I have always disliked our yellowish knotty alder cabinets with our yellowish hickory floors. I didn't necessarily hate them separately, but I really disliked them together. 

I have really wanted white cabinets so we decided to go with it. I chose a bright white lacquer, which is much more durable than something like wall paint. I also had them add some trim to make the island less plain. The painters came on a Monday morning and took off all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts. Then they taped everything off, did a light sand and painted 3 coats on the cabinet shells. Here's what it looked like after day 1.

On Friday they returned and installed all our finished doors and drawers. They put 5 coats of lacquer on those since they get much more use and abuse then the cabinet shells. They also installed the hardware. We didn't have any hardware before. Anyone notice what else they changed? The pot rack hanging from the ceiling is gone. I told the painters they could have it if they took it down, patched and painted.

I am in love with the drawer pulls. I didn't think I would be picky about them but then, surprise, I was. Shocker. The ones the painter showed me were all shorter and they looked funny on the bigger drawers on our island.

Next up was refinishing the floors. The floors had water damage by the dishwasher when we bought the house. (We didn't notice it until the day after we moved in.) Anyway, we faithfully watched that warped area after moving in and it hadn't changed at all, so we were fairly confident the water was an old issue that had been remedied. When we had floor guys out to bid on the job they all confirmed that it was old damage that they could sand down flat so we didn't have to replace any flooring. We also found a ton of old water damage under the refrigerator when we moved it for the cabinet painters. Then the big question was the color. All along I thought I wanted to change the color and I strongly disliked the glossy finish we had. 

Every floor person I talked to begged me not to mess with the color of our natural hickory floors. Every single one of them told me natural hickory was their favorite wood floor. I had no idea we had high quality wood floors, but hickory is very durable and hard and expensive. I still wasn't convinced about the color and brought home a few samples. Here is a gray sample against our white cabinets. As I kept staring at the floors I decided I liked the floors a lot more now that the cabinets were white. I also feel like the beautiful variation in color stands out much more. The floor refinishers told me that by sanding all the floors down and putting a matte finish the yellowish tint would go away. 

Here is what they looked like after day 1 of sanding. 

And here is what they looked like after they were completely finished. To be honest the color I liked best was when they were all sanded down without any finish, but you can't leave wood floor without any protective coat. I am very happy with the decision to not stain them a new color. They are beautiful. 

The next big change we made was our front door. This front door has been struggling since before we bought the house. The outside of it had virtually no finish/stain left on it. It was basically raw wood. The door was starting to crack. 

Again, I hated the knotty alder color. I wanted a dark brown with some black/gray tones to it. The painters advised me to choose a slightly darker stain than I wanted because the outside will fade a lot. 

I didn't take a full before picture of the outside of the front door, but here it is after they had started to sand it down. 

And here it is after:

I absolutely panicked when I pulled up to the house that afternoon. It totally looked black to me and I hated it. As I have gotten used to it I love it more and more. When you are up close and can see all the wood grain it is beautiful. I wish you could see a little more of the wood grain from far away. I like it SO much better in the overall aesthetic of the outside of our house. If you look closely in that picture below you will see we won American Fork yard of the month. Most notable achievement of our lives. That's for sure. 

The last change we made was some furniture upgrades. I mentioned we sold our old table. Here is our new table and bench. Haven't purchased chairs yet. We are using folding chairs. Haha

And a new tv stand. We moved our older, smaller tv to the basement because we really don't go down there much. We had the same guy who made us the table make this tv stand. I love it. It is massive and makes our 60" tv look tiny. 

 I am so happy with all the storage inside. 

The last change I would really like to make is to this hideous stair railing/banister. We would like to stain the hand railing and posts to match the dark front door. And then replace all the iron balusters with wood and paint them white. 

Oh, plus add a backsplash in the kitchen. And change our whole fireplace. And all our outside light fixtures. Plus a few other things. 

It never ends, does it?