New Home Tour + Renovation Plans and Exciting News

Saved By Love Creatiaans New Home TourWe jumped into our new place with immediate renovations, no time wasted.  It has been just about 2 months since we took possession and already, you have seen our DIY Countertop Makeover with Rustoleum’s Countertop Transformation Kit, as well as our DIY Kitchen Cabinet Upgrade.  We wanted to take the time today to show you around the house before continuing with our updating plans.  While house hunting, the biggest must haves on our list were land, wood shop space, studio space, and a couple of rooms for guests.  It will be easy to see how we landed where we did, provided you bring with you a DIY remodel vision.  Come with us as we go from a 1990’s country house to a vintage farmhouse style home, one budget minded project at a time!

Ariel View

Here is the aerial view.  You can see the large front and back yard, pond, outbuilding (yay for workshop with 60 Amp service, and ample wood storage).  There is even a running trail in the wooded area!

DIY Farmhouse Inspiration

Here we are from the back of the house.  That pond is delightful with a fountain feature and fully stocked.  Not that I plan to fish, but several friends and family members are excited about that aspect.  You wouldn’t believe the number of frogs hopping around there right now!

Outbuilding

The tools are in the right half of the outbuilding, which has a concrete floor and windows in the back.  The left hand side holds the tractor and all of the reclaimed wood I hoard!

Let’s go inside now…

foyer

Here we have the foyer.  The first thing we did, even before the kitchen, was paint the walls and trim.  Bye bye wood trim!!  Some of you will want to vomit at the thought of that.  I am a white trim girl, so white it is.

Living room and Dormers

Here is the living room from the sliding doors that go out onto the back deck.  The walls are no longer country blue.  We went Moderate White by Sherwinn Williams.

Living room ceiling

I loved the wood ceiling and window trim in the living room, so it stayed as is.  That light will be replaced with something less shiny brass and more awesome/vintage/farmhousey.

Living room to deck

Here is the view of the double deck doors from the living room.  I showed you a DIY Window Treatment for them no long ago.  You can also see the new paint on the walls and trim:

Living room

Like I said, I left the wood on the big window above the double doors, and on the ceiling.  No more deer head, if you were curious.

Kitchen2

You have seen the kitchen in the DIY countertops and DIY kitchen Cabinet Upgrade posts.

Kitchen

DIY Kitchen Cabinet Upgrade

It is now much brighter, fresher and along the lines of the farmhouse feel we want.  Stay tuned tomorrow for the farmhouse table and bench we built!

Master Bedroom

Here is the master bedroom.  Again, we have painted walls and trim, which you have yet to see!

Master Bath

Here is the master bathroom.  If the picture extended right, you would see a shower, toilet and walk-in closet.  It is a great space, but we have a lot of updating to do!  I would like to rip out the vanity and drawers to it’s left and go with something junkier.  Also, faux wood ceramic tiles are on my list!  That mirror and those lights are never going to make the cut either.

Living room and Dormers

Here you see the upper level from the living room.  I love the open concept and cathedral ceilings.  There are two mirror image bedroom dormers on either side of the upstairs, with a full bath in between them.Right Bedroom Guest bedroom left

As you can imagine, we will be painting our style all over these canvases!

Downstairs familyroom

DownstairsYou may be wondering where I will have my art and craft supplies!  This finished basement is huge!  There are three rooms for storage, two of which are office like, or potential extra bedrooms.  I have such big plans for this space.  It is amazing, aside from the drop ceiling tiles.  That is on the top of my list of “must go” features!

Downstaris office

I am working on an exciting DIY custom built-in storage from bookshelves in this room.  You will see more about that in August.

And now for more exciting news!!!  You are going to get double the inspiration.

two-bloggers-two-homes

My very talented friend Karen, a.k.a The Graphics Fairy, has also recently purchased a new home!  Follow the two of us as we share our DIY projects and home decor ideas in turning these houses into homes.

Tour Karen’s house in the suburbs HERE.

Karen and I are going to Haven Conference, and will be coming back to you next week with the latest in DIY products, projects and inspiration.  I, for one, am super excited.  Are you?!

 

DIY Kitchen Cabinet Upgrade With Paint and Crown Molding

[pinit]Upgrade Cabinet Makeover with DIY crown moulding and chalky finish @DecoArt_Inc @savedbyloves[pinit]

I am thrilled to be sharing our kitchen cabinet upgrade with you today, mainly because that means it is finished!  We moved into a house with, as you can see, outdated oak kitchen cabinets.  Maybe you were here before and saw our DIY countertop transformation with Rustoleum.  To continue the kitchen renovation, we took the cabinets up to the ceiling by boxing them in and adding crown molding to close the 12 inch gap between the ceiling and the tops of the cabinets.  We tied together the new wood and cabinets by painting them with Chalky Finish Americana Decor Paint.  It would have been fairly difficult to stain wood and crown moulding to match the current cabinets perfectly.  This is a great way to add a high end look to your kitchen for cheap, especially if you are going to paint your cabinets anyway.

DIY Kitchen upgrades

Here is what the cabinets looked like to start.  This was after revamping the countertops to cover that country blue laminate.

diy kitchen cabinets

To close the gap between the cabinet tops and the ceiling, we removed the trim on the cabinet tops with a pry bar.  We measured the dimensions of the cabinet tops and built 3 sided boxes from 1×12 boards to fit.  This was perfect for the 12 inch gap.  It left about a half inch (since 1×12 lumber is actually 0.75×11.5 inches… I know).  This was no problem since we knew we would be covering the gap with crown moulding later.  We used construction adhesive to adhere the boxes to the top of the cabinets.  We planned to nail trim to cover the seam where the cabinets met the box, which we would nail into both, adding extra security.

take cabinets to ceiling with crown moulding

Here you see the trim (we used pine mullion) and the crown moulding.  This was my first time cutting crown molding.  Save yourself a ton of wasted materials and heartache by visiting Sawdust Girl’s How to Cut Crown Molding Tutorial.  My little brain thought it would be as easy as cutting trim… ha!  Not the case.  Sandra didn’t touch on how to cut angles molding for angles that aren’t 90°…

tips for installing crown moulding

We ran into that fun conundrum as you see in the above photo.  There are charts on how to do this for every angle and every position on your saw.  We finally ended up using this Bench Dog Polymer Crown-Cut Crown Molding Cutting Jig I picked up from Amazon.  It was pretty helpful.  We the 2 odd angles above the glass window containing cabinet were 135°, so we set up our molding on the saw exactly like it would siton the cabinet, which was only possible to maintain for cutting with the use of the jig.  This is a process you are just going to have to go through in order to get to the good stuff!  Sandra points out that she has to go back to her templates every time, even though she does this often.  I found that to be the case everyday during this project!

DecoArt Americana Chalkyfinish Paint

Big thanks to DecoArt for providing the paint and wax for this project!  We used Americana Decor Chalky Finish in “Everlasting” to paint everything from the bottom of the cabinets up to and including the crown molding.  The best thing about using this paint was not having to sand or prime the cabinets!

kitchen makeover DIY

We started by taping over the hinges with painter’s tape and painting the cabinets without removing the doors.  This ended up in paint on the hardware anyway, so we decided to remove the doors for the rest of the cabinets.

How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets

All in all, we used 17 8 oz jars of the paint.  If you are going to go this route, make sure you have plenty of paint for your project before you start.  Waiting on more to come while you have no cabinet doors is less than fun.  Ask me how I know.

DIY Farmhouse Kitchen

Remember when I built the DIY Dog Feeding Station from Shipping Pallets?  It fits under the window in our new house like a glove!

Painting the cabinets took 4 coats.  We applied the clear wax and that was it.  We were without cabinet doors for 2 weeks while we continued moving into the house and painting cabinets as time would allow.

What do you think?  I love the high end look we achieved with little cost!

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