Room reveal #7 – the heart of the home
It’s been a loooong time since I’ve shared one of these posts. If you’re new around here you might be feeling a bit like ‘what the?’ this morning. More recently my posts have been only of yoga, and loss and motherhood. So a post on a before and after of our kitchen might feel a bit left of centre.
But once upon a time, we were also renovating pretty hardcore and I was sharing each room as we finished it. But then our renovating kinda stalled and I feel like we haven’t really ‘finished’ anything in quite a while. You know that place you get to? Where the house is no longer bad enough that things need doing, so you settle into a comfortable half-done state with everything.
The laundry is mostly done, but the floor tiles still need grout.
The kitchen is mostly done except for painting the pantry door, the window sills and putting up shelves.
The bathroom is mostly done except for the lack of vanity doors and hooks.
And on, and on it goes…
Which is why there have been no room reveals lately because I’ve been waiting for things to be finished. I wanted to share the shiny, glossy ideal that exists in my head.
Until I realised that actually doesn’t exist. The minute the walls are freshly painted, a small person rubs their dirty hands on them or takes to them with a pen. Two minutes after the floors are cleaned, someone walks around with biscuit crumbs trailing them.
You finish renovating a room, only to realise a few months later that the window has a leak and part of it needs repairing. Or those new lights you bought have already started rusting in the salt air. (Total first world problems when you live at the beach.)
Nothing is ever perfect or done or finished. Renovating a home is the greatest never-ending project there ever is. I really should know this, given I grew up in a home that is still being ‘finished’ 30 + years on…
So with that, I am deciding to embrace the imperfection and get back to sharing the progress, because in all honesty – our kitchen kicks arse, and even though I don’t have my shelves yet (Andrew promised in time for Christmas, although now he is claiming I never specified which one), the transformation really is amazing. And this just means I get to share again when the room does actually get finished.
And really, most of the rooms I’ve already shared, don’t even look like their original room reveal. The boys room now has bunk beds and an art space. Our room has been totally moved around to accomodate a desk for my writing. Our dining table now sits against a wall to give me a filming area. Homes are forever changing and shifting to accomodate the lives of the people within them and I want to start sharing that too.
So here goes. I’ve currently ‘misplaced’ the usb with all the photos I took when we moved in, so I had to use the real estate photos that they used to sell the place. So keep in mind their use of wide angle lenses and photoshop make it look better than it actually was. Their photos don’t show the cat faeces that littered the pantry and the water damaged extent of the floors.
But anyway… check out our kitchen before….
And… the after (for now anyway – I’m not giving up on those shelves which will run along the right side wall. Andrew tells me the timber is just going through an essential ageing process before he can do them.)
The basic ‘what we did’ is similar to all of the other rooms which you can check out below. We removed those ugly scrolly things on the entrance to the kitchen and moved the island bench right back in line with the wall. We already have a dining room so it seemed unnecessary to have another table in this room like the previous owners did. We decided we’d rather have a massive kitchen instead. Yep, there’s enough room in our kitchen to have a dance party or do yoga (both of which regularly happen).
Obviously yet again, Andrew takes most of the credit for this beautiful room (the benefits of having a husband who is a cabinet maker). Although I would like it on record that I did all the tiling – it was my first ever attempt and I was 8 months pregnant with Rory, so woo! go me! If we did it again though, I would have done dark grout for contrast, but once the timber shelves go up (hint husband, hint) I don’t think it will matter as much.
So that’s it – what do you think? Want to come over for a kitchen dance party?
If you missed the previous reveals, check them out here.