The Story Of Us

We are into day nine of our renovations.. we lost a few days due to the Thanksgiving Holidays... we hopefully have only a few days of work left though.. phew. Here's a look at what we started with and where we are now.. So, we started with this wall... the wall divided our kitchen and our family room. While both spaces are large I hated the idea of not being able to keep an eye on D.. and with another one on the way.. I think the open space would just make life easier.. and just think about how wonderful it would be to be able to entertain in an open floor plan. This is the view from our kitchen. Now looking at the same wall from the family room. To the right, the green room is what would be a formal living room. Notice the faux wood pillars along the wall, outdoor lantern lights hang off them.. the walls are a faux textured plaster like pattern.. now the interesting part.. the faux texture was not something that was painted on, instead they are plastic like panels nail...

pinterest So we hired our first contractor to help us create an open floor plan in our kitchen/family room. The work involved knocking down a wall, installing a window, new flooring etc. Didn't seem like much, just not something we were willing to try do ourselves. We started with an estimate in mind.. but having no experience we had no idea what to expect. I started by picking up the Home Improvement Guide at our grocery store.. picked out a few names of contractors and Googled them. Checked out their website, saw if they had any reviews or complaints and then made phone calls. We had a total of six contractors come out and give us estimates. You don't need to get six estimates.. but I would recommend getting at least three. We met an interesting mix of people. Of the six two declared our wall, separating the kitchen from the family room load bearing (this makes it a bit more pricey and difficult to knock down, but still doable). And then there were four. Our estima...

Hiring a Contractor   Family Room Kitchen Renovations Family Room Kitchen New Flooring Family Room Kitchen Painted Brick Fireplace Painted Places to Sit and a Rug A Place to Eat Pantry Makeover Formal Dinning Room Goes Office Master Bathroom Master Bedroom