Ebony Fields Forever

It's Spring.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Yup, that's it.

Let's say it at the same time...

HOME RENOVATION.

Something about the warm weather and having a little extra cash in our pockets from tax returns has made our "to-do" list turn into a "doing" list in a hurry.

To start, we got a great deal on a couple of Adirondack chairs with a matching table off Craigslist:

We've already gotten the chance to hang out on our newly-furnished patio, grilling brats and making s'mores with some dear friends of our's this past weekend.

We've logged approximately 15 hours of manual labor over the last few weekends pulling up ivy, digging up tree roots and chopping down trees (okay, a tree....okay, a small tree).  Here's what the front of our house used to look like:

I realize that this picture doesn't show the tree that used to occupy the right corner of our house, but I included it as a reference since this is the only "before" picture of the front of our house that I've shared here.  Here's another "before" picture I captured on a snowy day where you can see the Occupy Tree:

Notice the progression of the ivy from green and lush in the first picture, brown and dead in the second picture and non-existent in this "after" picture:

Here's another "before" angle of the ivy that was threatening to overtake our house:

And because it wasn't enough to just have to yank up ivy that was over a foot deep, these too were concealed within...

The landscaping is nothing special yet, but even a blank slate makes me feel happy and relieved.  Happy because the ground is ready to plant hydrangeas, and relieved because I no longer dream about ivy creeping through the window and strangling me in the middle of the night.  Let's move on, shall we?

If you couldn't tell from the picture above, allow me to point out the obvious:  We've picked a paint color!

The name is Valspar "Ebony Field" and when you look at the color chip, it is exactly how the name describes it-- Black.  But on the house it is the most beautiful shade of charcoal, which is exactly what I wanted.  At first we had selected Valspar "Semi-sweet" but found out very quickly that paint dries lighter outside on the side of a house, so we had to select a shade darker to get the desired effect.

If you remember from this post, "Ebony Field" was not one of the initial paint options.  But once we had a sample blob of each of the those colors represented on the house, my dad said it best when he said, "Brown makes this house look dated."  So we made the decision to go with gray and attempt to bring out the gray/black vein running through our mostly sand-colored brick.  The next step will be to pressure wash the whole house and then we'll be ready to paint!  And once the house gets painted we get to paint the front door red.  We'd paint it now, but we don't want to have a Christmas house!

And finally, here's an update on the kitchen:

To say that I'm in love with my exposed shelves would be an exaggeration-- you can't be in love with shelves.  But I'm super excited to welcome them into our kitchen and I'm astounded at what a difference they make in terms of storage.  Keep in mind, we will be losing almost the entire right side of our kitchen's upper cabinets, so increasing storage elsewhere is key.

I can't stop looking at them anytime I'm anywhere near the kitchen.  I love the crisp white color, along with our white dishes, and it's going to look even better once our cabinets are white.  The corbels do a great job of balancing the look of our large, heavy dishes and are also extremely functional--adding an additional carrying capacity of 205 lbs each (and if you've ever seen my plates, you know we need all the help we can get).  

We also have some new lighting.  Here's a before picture of our kitchen with our non-functional and non-attractive lighting:

It's hard to see, but over the sink there was a long fluorescent light behind a frosted plastic cover.  

After (these pictures were obviously taken before we installed the new floating shelves):

Eric actually installed three new recessed lights:  One over the sink where there used to be a long fluorescent light, one in the center of the kitchen, and one in the mudroom/back door area.

Here's an angle from the back of the kitchen looking toward the backdoor area, where you can see the third recessed light:

We've done a lot...but we haven't even scratched the surface!  The biggest project we have done to date will happen in just six short days!

Both of our bathrooms.  And I know it's actually going to happen this time (I know I've teased in the past), because we've hired a professional and he told us he's coming on Monday. But to build the suspense just a little bit (and to keep this post from getting any longer), I'm not going to go into further detail now.  I'll try to post more frequently with it being such a large project that way I'm not just dumping the finished product on you like I normally do.



Ohmanohmanohmanohmanohman.  [Excited]

Until next time!