Company!

I am way more than tickled that a lady who grew up at SunnyGrace visited today!! I'm sorry to say that I wasn't home, but she filled Jim in on some of the history of the house. She has pictures of the "earlier" years and I cannot wait to see those! 

Ms. Visitor, if you decide to check out the SunnyGrace blog, please know that I am in love with the house and Jim and I plan to do all we can to make it beautiful again.  We don't have any desire to knock down or build up any walls....it'd be really hard to improve upon the design of the house anyway....and besides that, we love it just the way it is.  We do plan to refinish the floors in every room and to pretty much gut two bathrooms, but that's out of necessity.   A third bathroom was added at some point, which is in REALLY bad shape and just needs to be completely done away with!!!! Ugh! We're hoping to make one of the upstairs bedrooms a big bath though.  It was apparently (at one time or another) an upstairs kitchen.  It has plumbing so it's the obvious room to turn into a bath.  I have ideas....lots of 'em!  I'll share those at another time.

For my friends who are already checking out the blog, I hope you are seeing my vision for SunnyGrace! The kitchen has taken about two weeks longer than we thought it would, but it is looking definitely like we will have a real kitchen by Monday or Tuesday at the latest.....complete with stove and fridge but lacking base cabinets, a kitchen sink/faucet, and the accessories that make a house a home.

If you're interested in some of my ideas, I'll be glad to share!

Here's the sink....but NOT that faucet. It's a Kolher white cast iron sink. 

I love a single bowl sink, and Lowe's has one that looks beautiful but it's not cast iron, and the reviews aren't good.

And a bridge faucet like these two....which are not cheap, but we did compromise on a cheaper sink....SO....



The stainless or the dark oil bronze??



I sure can't decide. The appliances are stainless, but the floors and countertops are dark. I don't know which to choose.

 



No posting yesterday (Wednesday)!

We were in Clinton, TN.  If you love antique (and I do!) Clinton, TN is a wonderful little town to visit.  The town is full of antique stores. Here's what we got.....!!!!

 

 

 

 

A set of twin beds! You can't tell from these pictures, but they are as cute as can be. We'll have to buy mattresses and some cute bedding (probably something shabby chic)....and, of course, we still have to sand and refinish the floor in the room where they're going! Until then, I'm going to be looking for some inspiration rooms with twin beds....like these:

 

 

 

 

This is the room where the twin beds will go (probably...?)

 

 

 

A big difference (right now) from those sweet and clean inspiration rooms....but just you wait and see!!!!

 

Speaking of waiting to see....remember the kitchen floor and how bad it looked?.....AND remember my farmhouse table Jim built?.....Here they both are!

 

 

Kitchen getting painted tomorrow....or Saturday.  It's getting there!

 

 

 

Farmhouse table....and more

So, here is how my farmhouse table looked this morning....

 

 This board is huge....14' long and 14" wide!

 

Here's that same board (plus part of another) cut into three 6' boards....all sanded and screaming, "TABLE"!

 

 

I didn't get a picture of the completly built table but I did get a picture of the builder....and I'm completely tickled with both.

 

 

The table still has to be painted...tomorrow. We're going to apply polyurethane to the top; the apron and legs will be painted a soft green, lightly sanded and then brushed with a little dark walnut stain to give it an aged look.  Hopefully, you'll be able to see that on the SunnyGrace blog tomorrow.

 

ALSO....

 

Here's the kitchen floor!!!

 

 

Beautiful!! Dark stained hardwood floors are my favorite.

More to follow.

 

More kitchen progress!!!

 

From this.....

To this!

 

 

The floor will get two coats of polyurethane tomorrow!  The baseboards still need to be stained but I'm loving the fact that we will have our kitchen floor completed by tomorrow evening!

 

AND

 

We'll have this as well!!!!

 

 

Not sure what color the paint will be for the apron and legs.....either off-white or the sage green from the wall color....but the top will be stained.  We've got 14" wide old boards that were piled up in the basement that Jim is going to trim to 11" wide.  With some sanding, staining, painting and sealing we should have a beautiful 33" wide x 6' long farmhouse table.  Now to hunt down some appropriate chairs to go with it.  Our kitchen is moving forward at a rapid rate....finally....YAY!

 

 

 

More kitchen details....

 

 

Can you visualize it?

 

 

 

 

See the shelves above these windows!? 

 

 

I love that.

We'll have only one long shelf (with these type of brackets) above our kitchen window.

Chunky corbels would be great...

 

Some that are old and antique-y

 

Actually the sage green on the walls in the picture above will probably be our color choice as well....AND the butcher block countertops with the same style of cabinet (though not in yellow).  Our cabinet color will be painted an off-white with wooden knobs stained as close to the countertop stain color as we can find.  More like this look......

I think bookcases like this (stained).....

would look great on both sides of the kitchen window....symmetrical bookcases.   I'm more of an asymmetric type, but I think in this case it would be a good look for our kitchen.....positioned on either side of the window like this (to hold the gazillion cookbooks we have.....and love....and never (rarely) use).

Again, here's the kitchen
window you have to imagine those bookcases
surrounding! And remember they'll be open all the way.



In any case, there will be a combination of painted and stained cabinets.....unless something changes my mind!

Talk about tedious and time consuming!

So many little things take soooo much time and seem soooo tedious.....like stripping layers of paint from the kitchen woodwork. You know, if I had it to do over I'm not really sure that I'd choose to do that!! It has slowed down progress in the kitchen to a snail's pace.....or so it seems to me! Just the heat gun and a scraper....and a WHOLE lot of time.

And a whole lot of stretching....






 

 

 

And a whole lot of sweating.

 

To get from this....

 

To this....

They still need to be stained, but they actually do look so much better than they did when they were caked with layers of paint.

At least there's finally light at the end of this paint-stripping tunnel!

SunnyGrace!!!!

Some of these blog posts have been in my notepad on my laptop and are old....but other parts are new.  I just got started, but I'm adding them all in this first post under today's date (August 24, 2012).  I'll try to do better!

July 31, 2012 - 11:59 p.m.: The buyers (our good friends) are closing on our present home one week from today and we are closing on our new OLD home the following day!!! (I KNOW!!!) (happy dance). We have so much to do once we get "home".

This is SunnyGrace

 

 

 

I've ALWAYS wanted a huge old...OLD....house to love. God has, as stated in Ephesians 3:20, definitely done exceeding abundantly above all that I could ask or think by giving me this house to love!! I'm beyond thankful!!! The house has 3800 square feet and was built in 1880. The house has beautiful original millwork and trim, 10' ceilings in every room downstairs and 9' ceilings in every room upstairs. It also has a beautiful entrance foyer and an amazing staircase. Despite the fact that the kitchen has been ripped completely out, AND that the house has hot water radiator heat, AND that there is no AC, I think the house is perfect. Actually, I could not have asked for anything more perfect. The location is perfect and the two acre level lot is also perfect. I'm super excited to be moved in and helping Jim design and install a kitchen. The whole house....all 12 rooms.....5 bedrooms/3 baths...are filthy. There is so much woodwork, and all of it needing to be cleaned of years and years of grime. I told Jim we should invest in the Murphy Oil Soap company. Here's why....

 

 



 

 

 

DON'T think it's ALL nice except for the filthiness....

 

'Cause some of it looks like this!!! HELP!

 

THE KITCHEN





 

Here's our kitchen walls....

 

 



 

 

and kitchen ceiling....

 

 

 

 

AND here is our ceiling now....

Already something done!!!  It doesn't look like much here, but OHHH how wonderful to see progress being made!!!!

Appliances

 

We've been trying hard to decide on a kitchen stove.  We found one online at Sam's Club that Jim and I both wanted in a bad way, but come to find out it's designed for restaurant kitchens. It seems you can't use them in a residential kitchen...for a bunch of reasons......and not being able to get home insurance the biggie.  At any rate, we're still in search of "the" stove. We also need a new fridge
(I kinda like the french door type with the freezer on the bottom).

OK, so the above was written before we actually decided that these are the appliances we will definitely have in our kitchen....

 

I don't know if you can tell, but this is a gas stove.  We've never owned a gas stove. We have natural gas at SunnyGrace, so it was the obvious choice; however, I'm sure glad I'm not the cook of the family. Yep, really sure glad of that. 

I've been looking at laundry room pictures for inspiration, as we need a complete renovation of the "laundry room" in the house. This area can't really be called a true laundry room, though it can be called a true mess! Here's the room that will become the laundry room.......and pantry.

 



Yep, a definite mess!

We have to wait until we finish the kitchen, but we'll soon get out the tape measure to see how this room gets divided up into laundry room/pantry.  Until then, I'll dream of a laundry room that is neat....and clean!.....like this

with these....

and a pantry/buttery like this....(Yep, I STILL want it soooo bad!)

separated from the laundry room by this...

or this...

 

Until next time, the dreams continue......