To Renovate or Not continued
Posted by Katie Grabner on
A little over a month ago, I shared a big question we have been asking ourselves for some time now: To renovate or not? As I mentioned in my previous post, we love our house and especially our location. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, we are in the village of a very cute town called Chagrin Falls. We love that we are able to walk to town and that we are "centrally" located to so many places we often visit. I could go on and on, but to keep with the topic at hand, I'll get straight to the point... we have decided to renovate!
We are blessed that our home was very move-in-ready when we bought it back in 2010. When we moved in it had beautiful hardwood floors throughout, all updated bathrooms and fresh paint. We were very fortunate that the previous owners also added on a family room and master bedroom and bathroom as well. As for the kitchen.. it was definitely great and livable as well, but we personally just wanted a total refresh.
I've already been asked why we are renovating our kitchen. So for those of you that would like to know, here it goes!
The cabinets were partially original and did not have drawer gliders under the drawers. (Imagine sawdust in the lower cabinets from the rubbing wood on wood). The upper cabinets in the original kitchen did not go to the ceiling. Apparently, the ceiling height cabinets were covered at some point and taken down closer to the counter tops as well. Our contractor believes a husband must have done this for a short wife. (How sweet!) We were unable to put appliances under the upper cabinets as a result because they were not your typical 18" clearance (just a 13" clearance). This didn't bother us that much, but we are excited to have ceiling height cabinets in the future with more storage. The island we had previously was something we bought and did not match the kitchen counters as well, but it worked out perfectly for us for the time being. Other reasons for change are really just for our personal preference. We will no longer have any of the white appliances and we wanted new and updated floors.
We will be doing more with the house in a few phases, but I will share more about that as we go along. We were luckily out of town for a nice long stretch of time for the kitchen demo. Below are some pictures of what we came home to yesterday! Even though we have already run into some setbacks, we are fortunate that this project will move along quickly. I cannot believe I made a call to our contractor just a month ago and we have come so far with the plans since then! We should be seeing more of a kitchen by Friday, in just one week after the demo :) I'll be sharing as we go and share before and after pictures at the end. Let me know what you think!
We are blessed that our home was very move-in-ready when we bought it back in 2010. When we moved in it had beautiful hardwood floors throughout, all updated bathrooms and fresh paint. We were very fortunate that the previous owners also added on a family room and master bedroom and bathroom as well. As for the kitchen.. it was definitely great and livable as well, but we personally just wanted a total refresh.
I've already been asked why we are renovating our kitchen. So for those of you that would like to know, here it goes!
The cabinets were partially original and did not have drawer gliders under the drawers. (Imagine sawdust in the lower cabinets from the rubbing wood on wood). The upper cabinets in the original kitchen did not go to the ceiling. Apparently, the ceiling height cabinets were covered at some point and taken down closer to the counter tops as well. Our contractor believes a husband must have done this for a short wife. (How sweet!) We were unable to put appliances under the upper cabinets as a result because they were not your typical 18" clearance (just a 13" clearance). This didn't bother us that much, but we are excited to have ceiling height cabinets in the future with more storage. The island we had previously was something we bought and did not match the kitchen counters as well, but it worked out perfectly for us for the time being. Other reasons for change are really just for our personal preference. We will no longer have any of the white appliances and we wanted new and updated floors.
We will be doing more with the house in a few phases, but I will share more about that as we go along. We were luckily out of town for a nice long stretch of time for the kitchen demo. Below are some pictures of what we came home to yesterday! Even though we have already run into some setbacks, we are fortunate that this project will move along quickly. I cannot believe I made a call to our contractor just a month ago and we have come so far with the plans since then! We should be seeing more of a kitchen by Friday, in just one week after the demo :) I'll be sharing as we go and share before and after pictures at the end. Let me know what you think!
