The moment we (and our fans!) have been FINALLY waiting for...

HELLO, ello, elo! Can you hear me, hear me, er me?  (crickets)
Wait, is this thing on?

To anyone out there that is still cheering us on as Tommy and I embark in not only home ownership, but now married life, we thank you. We thank each and every one of you that has approached us, emailed and called us out with 'what the heck is going on at The Blooming House??' As you can see it's been since um, July when we last posted about our corner hutch revamp. But jumping to October 9th of this year, we said our 'I do's'... tears were shed (I was a cry baby) and we celebrated our faces off with amazing people in our lives and we can finally get back into the swing of things with The Blooming House as it is our most prized possession that we come home to every day.

I must say that in the last few months that we disappeared from you all and planned the wedding of the century might I add, (well, of October since it was a beautiful wedding season for friends and family this year) we had our ups and downs and one included an over flowed toilette that continued it's way out the hall and down the stairs. After all was contained and toweled down, we heard faint sounds of a relaxing-like water feature in our house. Oh wait, no, it was coming out of our beloved newly installed chandelier in our front hall. Not my kind of relaxation. But enough of toilette water. Let's get to (Que the trumpets, please) The Big Kitchen Renovation Reveal!!! It's about time already, I mean it has been since February....sheesh!

Welcome to, oh well, you get the picture...

I found this really cute chalkboard at IKEA awhile back and we just love it as it sits perfectly by the back door where we can grab keys, glasses, leave love notes and GO! It has two tin dishes (not shown) that holds the chalk as well as a small note pad and marker that will make sense later.

Can we offer you a cup of coffee... from our new wedding coffee maker and cute cream and sugar combo to complement? (This is going to be a long tour, it has been almost 8 months now)

 Opps! I think we may have shown too much already, moving on...

So lets go head back to where we started, the back door.

The kitchen's back door was always this strange-of-a-choice blue and we had every intention of painting it while going through this process of the kitchen make-over, but after all was said and sweated over, we realized that the blue kinda worked with our choices and it was kinda, kitschy. So blue it stayed (even after I was very careless with my wall trim painting and got white paint on it, but eh, whatever. I just love this door. 

You'll also see aside of the white trim to match our soon-to-come white cabinets, the walls have been painted a very light and neutral tan and a darker version to go in the back hall. (where the back door is and moving downstairs to the basement) In the photo, the two tones are harder to detect, but in person it gives off far more dimension than you see here.

Moving to our left is our pantry wall of cabinet space. The house was not built with a front hall closet unfortunately, but because of the WALL of cabinets, we give to you door number one and two for coats, winter gear and supply of overstock. But what's behind door number THREE is my Ooo and Ahh moment that I would like to share!

It's really not that great, in fact, I'm showing you our garbage, but it's our recycling center! I love it since we have to divide up our recyclables out back and this cabinet was just too perfect for the job.

Ok, moving on...

So, here she is! All shiny and new!

But before we continue, lets look back, shall we?

 

We can't believe it's the same kitchen when we look back at these. So fast forward again into the NEW kitchen and stay that way, shall we?

Here's the breakdown of what has been down to give you an idea just how hard we've been working ON TOP of planning a wedding:

- New light fixtures installed in the center and in back hall

- New wall paint (two colors) and new ceiling paint since the entire room was painted in one color, I've been known to call it "Silly Putty", but now it's a light and dark "khaki" if you will.

- Washed, sanded and painted all the cabinets

- New hardware bling

- We removed a cabinet section to fit our beast of a fridge. The cabinet sat above the pass through window

- Brand new stainless steel appliances al la Warner Stellian including french door/bottom freezer drawer fridge, dishwasher, mircowave, and range. (installed the over-the-head microwave as well as an outside vent)

- We had a plumber convert from electric to gas for our range as well experienced a few gas leaks at 2 am. That's one of those "up and downs" that we were referring to and choose to move on from.

-We had new travertine flooring installed as well as our blue, glass subway tiled backsplash

- We had granite countertops installed and added prep space by extending the area on the other side of the pass trough window

- New stainless steel under mount kitchen sink

- Brought in bar stools for our very own eat-in kitchen option.

And last but not least..
- Created a message center

(Phew!)

 

Tommy picked out the door handles since I got to pick out these babies!

We still have to figure out if we want to have a new pull-out cutting board made to replace the questionable existing one, knowing how 'clean' the kitchen was when we got our hands on it, as well as some minor tweaks on our Lazy Suzan cabinet, but other than that we are done and DONE!

Our color palette of the kitchen all goes back to these lil guys.

 

My mom sent this salt n' pepper shaker set to me for my birthday back in February and I just loved the bright orange color they had in them. We had already had our hearts set on the beautiful blue glass tile, so I did what I love to do most, picked from the bright colors that I will always stay true to and use it as an accent color in the kitchen. And in came Mr. Tangerine...

 

I LOVED this tangerine mixer when we were registering for our wedding and it just sits so well on the countertop in the spotlight of our new light fixture. A shot out to the Peters Family for this beautiful baby!

We chose a earthy, warm mix of colors for our countertops since we were going the white cabinetry route. To my surprise, countertop and tile shopping became my kid-in-a-candy-store experience. And on both final days of installation it was like opening gifts on Christmas for me.

 

 We also thought out our color palette when it came to what it would look like on the other side in the dining room. So we picked a blue color that best matches the tile so that there is an easy flow from dining room to kitchen. Plus we are using both black and browns in the dining room, so the countertops fit right in.

- Before -

The funny thing about this kitchen renovation, other than re-finishing the existing cabinets, is that we did not keep anything in this room, EXCEPT the sink faucet.

Here's another up-close shot of the tile, but I want to share with you a very special wedding shower gift passed on by my extremely talented uncle back in Wisconsin. Along time ago, he handmade these cutting boards for all of his siblings as Christmas gifts of all the states they live in. My mom has a Wisconsin one and I too now am a proud owner of my very own. It's very special to me, not only because it was handmade by a family member, but now it recognizes my new life in the great state of Minnesota.

 

Here's a quick view of the Message Center I have created and I plan on showing you how I made it on my craft blog, Loopty Lu and Her Crafty Corner soon. So stay tuned! I really like the bulletin boards because whenever we need something from the store, we can put it up there as a reminder, pin up any coupons for the next shopping excursion (Watch out! Old, married lady coming through.) or just a place for us to hang up any new recipes we'd like to try out. The small pad of paper that you saw sitting on the  chalkboard at the backdoor is for the Message Center. That way it doesn't get too crowded with more stuff over here.

 

We were able to create the Message Center because we took away a large cabinet over the pass through which in turn really lightened the place up! NOW can you see my reference to "Silly Putty"?

Dinner for 2, please!

(Note: the new blue walls in the dining room and sneak preview of the window treatments we hung up)

This is the extra space that was added to the pass through over hang. It's not quite "bar" material to pull up to, but the good news is that if I were cooking on one side and had people over and saw how territoial I was getting with my prep space they could swing their stools on over into the safe zone on the other side. But honestly, it's really great added space for entertaining and prepping dinner with Tommy. (He too appreciated the extra space since he's very familiar with my territorial monster-ness with my cooking.) The idea of extending the over hang just a tad more (I think it was only 10 inches) was actually our granite guy's idea and it turned out beautiful! And if you need a good granite guy and/or tile guy CONTACT US! We couldn't have been more happy with the work they did in our kitchen. In fact, we're in the process of providing pics to both of them for their portfolios since (we think) it was such a success!!

So there you have it folks! Our BIG kitchen makeover has been completed and we love every inch of it! Thank you again for being so patient with us (and for kicking our butts back into gear with the threat emails) as we are in full bloom again with The Blooming House! Trust me, we already have new projects in the making.

As always, (and if you're still following us) stay tuned! 

Sincerely, 

-The new Mr. and Mrs.