Hooray! We're getting a tax return this year! Of course, we can't just save it like normal people. No, we're going to sink some of it into home renovations. Three projects will, hopefully, be tackled and make a huge difference in our house.
First project: The stairs
I'm not even going to post a current picture of our staircase. Lets just say I saw one too many painted staircases on Pinterest and went balls-out tearing up carpeting while Jeremy was away one weekend... a while ago... okay, it was in September. So yes, we've had a horrible naked staircase for a few months. This is how they looked before I got my hands on them:
Why didn't I just finish the project? Well, I made a discovery underneath our carpet. Our treads are nice solid wood, but the risers are the shittiest particle board you could imagine. So that stalled me in my tracks and left us looking for options with regards to what to do with our risers. We've settled on just cutting wood and fitting it over the particle board, so we have a game plan. The risers will be white, and the treads and railings will be a dark espresso brown. This won't be an expensive project, but it's labor intensive. It also really needs to get done, so it's at the top of our list.
Second project: The patio
I'm not 100% sold on this project, but J really wants it so we're doing it. Our patio now consists of a walkway to the garage, a tiny slab off of the back door, and some large paving stones behind the chimney. It's a hodpodge of surfaces that are awkward in shape, and don't afford very much room for seating and grilling. Our grill is currently located on the section of miscellaneous paving stones, our picnic table is actually on the lawn, and we have a chair and side table on the actual patio. So okay, maybe we do need this project.
What we'll be doing is having a new slab poured next to what we currently have. It'll add on a good chunk of space and extend the patio out into the yard, instead of just hugging the house. I don't have a good current picture of the yard, so we'll use these for now. Also, 3 out of 4 trees are now gone... Guess which?
The grass area in the first pic (nearly up to that first tree on the left) will all be patio. It'll extend over and replace that part with separate stones, and it'll be next to that walkway in the second pic. We're going to angle the new corner as well (instead of laying down just a square), to avoid interfering with drainage and to give the whole patio a nice shape. I know, its hard to visualize. Once it's installed I want to get it stained. I hate how regular concrete looks... all boring and gray. So making the patio bigger isn't going to sit well with me aesthetically if its just a big, ugly, gray mass sitting in our yard.
Third project: The kitchen
I love our kitchen. It's big, it's open, everything works, and the cabinets and floors don't need to be changed. The things I dislike about our kitchen are the bathroom-esque tile backsplash, the horrible countertops, the cabinet hardware, and I'd kill for non-white appliances. Here she is from when we first moved in, in all of her bright white glory:
Sure, it's big and clean looking, but it's totally 90's style. The first part of our plan is new countertops. However, with the new countertops comes the need for a new cooktop and sink. We want to get the counters done in dark stained concrete, so a white sink is kind of not hot with that style. The cooktop, in addition to being white, is also coil burners and the bane of my existence in the kitchen. I hate coil burners with the white hot passion of a thousand burning suns. Eventually we'll have our gas line run to the kitchen so I can have a gas cooktop again, but that's a project for a full kitchen renovation... not just some simple updating. So the cooktop will be replaced with a sleek black glass-top.
Since we'll be getting the counters done, we'll obviously need a better backsplash. Preferably one that doesn't look like it belongs in a public bathroom. For this, we'll be taking out the tile and replacing it with Airstone in this color:
Check out the website for the lowdown on Airstone. I have a feeling we'll be covering the tile around our fireplace with it as well. It's lightweight, simple to install, able to be cut with a hacksaw, and only $50 for 8 square feet. The tile I originally wanted was $10-12 per square foot, so this is considerably cheaper and I love the look.
The final part of our kitchen renovation will be new hardware. I want the cup-style handles on all of the drawers, and all stainless will be changed to oil-rubbed bronze. We're slowly converting our house to the bronze, so anytime we replace metal hardware we upgrade. Sometimes an upgrade is buying new stuff, sometimes it's spray painting with Rustoleum's "Oil Rubbed Bronze" paint. Either way, it looks great. I hate the brass stuff that was left in the house, and I've never been a big fan of stainless steel.
So that's the plan. All written out like that, it looks like a ton of work. And I guess it kind of is, but it's going to be SO worth it. These are big updates we've been thinking about for a while, so to finally take the steps to get it done is huge. I'm incredibly thankful that we got a tax return this year that allows us to do these things, and still have some to set aside for savings. Definitely thankful for that.
