The new oak floors in the kitchen were stained and finished last week, which is an exhilarating step in the renovation.  I had dreams of moving a few simple pieces of furniture in to feel a bit more settled, but there will be one more coat of finish applied once the base cabinets are installed, so I’ll just have to practice more patience!  While the crew (and as an aside, when I’m talking about “the crew”, it’s the contractor, Nathan, and his right-hand-woman, Brianna, and some subcontractors coming in for specialty jobs) worked on applying the stain, I was hearing comments and questions from where I was working in the studio.  “Does it look redder to you?  What do you think…?”  Of course, this made me peek my head into the kitchen to see what was “looking redder.” These floors are the exact same species and the exact same stain

When it came time to select flooring for our kitchen, there really wasn’t much of a question of what my choice would be.  I knew, without even looking at other options, that I wanted hardwood floors.  But, I didn’t want to discount all of the other options available, so I did a bit of browsing for ideas that might tempt me away from my gut instinct.  I considered slate in an irregular pattern to coordinate with the foyer, but I felt like that would be a lot of slate in such a large room.  It might overwhelm the space.  I had a fleeting thought about brick, but again, I thought it might be a bit too much and I questioned how well it would flow with the rest of the house. In the end, wood was still the clear winner.  It’s what I’ve always loved in kitchens and it’s what

As soon as we learned that taking walls down to make our current kitchen footprint more open was possible, I knew that meant I could have an island.  (You can read all about the kitchen renovation HERE.)  Without that extra space, a tiny island may have worked, but there wouldn’t be room for anything substantial.  The possibilities are endless now that the walls have come down and the room is open.  As I’ve shared, I didn’t want to do a built-in island, because I wanted the flexibility to have either a table or an island and I thought an antique freestanding piece would be more my speed, anyway.  It would also be more cost effective than ordering the cabinets and a quartz counter to go on top. The only issue is now I needed to find the perfect one and, when you’re looking for something very specific secondhand, you have

Well, we’re living in dust and fluff and clutter, but we’re happy about it because we know we’ll have an awesome kitchen when it’s all done!  I have a pretty low threshold for disorganization and mess, but I’m just making peace with it and I’ll do a deep clean once the house is put back together.  Honestly, there is still a lot of unpacking and organizing that needs to happen, but I learned from our move from PA to MN a little over five years ago that it takes a couple of years to fully get settled in a new home especially if you have a lot of projects going on! Now that the basement staircase is moved, I wanted to show a comparison of how it opened the space and also share a bit more detail about how it was possible.  Moving the stairs was something we wanted to

As I’ve shared in past posts about our kitchen renovation, we are working with a contractor and professionals on the “big stuff” and work that requires licenses and special skills, but we are doing a few things ourselves to stretch our budget a bit further. One of the projects we’re taking on is building a range hood.  We did it in our Pennsylvania kitchen and, in fact, I wrote an HGTV tutorial sharing how we did it.  You can find that tutorial HERE. Remember the cow head?  I actually still have it and I just might find a home for it in this house. Anyway, the range hood insert we selected is the   It’s a range hood that is meant to go into a cabinet, so the controls are on the underside. Range hoods can certainly be a feature, but I want our range hood to be simple so

I almost hate to say that the progress made on the kitchen last week is a little boring, but the walls and staircase being removed were so dramatic that drywall doesn’t seem as noteworthy.  (If you’ve missed the kitchen renovation so far, you can catch up HERE.)  But, exciting progress has been made even if it doesn’t make for flashy photos.  The crew worked on framing, drywall, skim-coating, and removing the top layer of the subfloor.  (There are two layers and one is being removed so the new hardwood floors will be flush with the old ones.)  We also had the electricians for a day and they started moving around switches and outlets. One of the most exciting things, though, is seeing the light coming into the kitchen all the way from the back of the hallway.  It’s so open now while still allowing the kitchen to be its own