Home Remodel: Then and Now

Guys, this is a really fun one for me. I love being able to talk about where our house was exactly one year ago and now how far our home has come along. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a true believer that any place that I have my husband and my babies makes a home. I don’t need much more than that. But having the ability to change our home into everything we love and what fits our little circus is something I’m so proud of and so happy to share with you.

So let’s talk about where we came from. I gave a full home tour on my Fixer Upper Home Tour post last year, but let’s talk about the highlights and go from room to room.

Livingroom

Prior to construction, the room was closed off and dark. We had these great bay windows on the back wall that should have allowed for a lot of light, but it always felt very dark. And once the sun went down…oh boy. We were straining our eyes in this space.

There were also just two can lights in this space also we had such little availability to put the overhead lights in to make it brighter.

In the corner, our TV sat upon a corner cabinet that was built-in to the space. Not the most symmetrical appearance for my OCD eyes.

And finally, the fireplace had dark red brick that fit this space well, but wasn’t my taste and I was ready to change.

Behind the couch, there stood a wet bar. I don’t hate the idea of a wet bar and I’d love to have something like this if our space allowed for a butler’s pantry type area, but it’s just not in the cards for us. This just seemed to be bulky and unnecessary for us. I used it for storage, but only because it was there. If it was taken out, I had enough cabinet space to move our glassware there.

Ready for where we sat exactly one year ago today?

The wall separating our living room from the front room was torn down!

The team was also able to already have our shelves and bookcases flanking the fireplace ripped out and the beam put in to make the space between these two rooms a cased opening.

And as for the wet bar?

She’s gone, too! 🙂 And you can start getting a quick peek into our kitchen. Let’s move into that space next.

Kitchen

If you’d like to fast forward and move ahead through this space to see where we went with our kitchen remodel, check out my post on my Dream Kitchen Reveal. Talk about a good before and after! 🙂

Prior to construction, our kitchen was very 1980s. We had a lot of blue tile, a lot of laminate, and even a built in “glass” cutting board right into our counter. Oh yeah, and our countertops were lined with extremely nicked up wood trim.

As I said before, I don’t mind living in a space that isn’t Pinterest-perfect, as long as my loved ones are with me. This space was a special place, though. It was dirty. That’s what made it bad. It was just plain and simply dirty. And the kind of dirt that just doesn’t wipe away. It was built up from a lot of years in that space. It was ready to be beautified.

So a tad bit small. But what made it shrink in size even more was the location of our half bathroom and laundry room. These two rooms were right off the right of the kitchen and took up so much space that we were able to relocate.

One year ago today…

Going…

Going…

Gone.

Major demo happened in just a few short weeks but what a wild difference in size from where we started to where we were a year ago.

You can see all the open space in the photo above where our wet bar, half bathroom, AND laundry all stood. We didn’t replace our wet bar, we relocated our half bathroom to the main hallway, and taking our laundry out to another level. With all that change, there’s now so much room for a large island, extra cabinetry, AND my very own pantry. 🙂

Dining and Front Room Spaces

At this point in August last year, these areas of our house really hadn’t changed much and were more just dumping grounds for all the demo. Since we didn’t have major demolition or structural changes, these spaces were left until much later in the process.

Before:

And at this point in August last year…a whole lot worse 🙂

It’s so much fun to go back and look at where we were just one year ago, but boy, it was certainly a lot! Looking at that photo above and realizing we were actually still living in this house during this construction…with two kids…is a little unbelievable. But we made it and maybe we’re a little stronger on this side of things. 🙂

All of our updated spaces have been posted under the heading Home Remodel on Growing Up Kemper, but excited to continue showing you the progress as we go along through these three months of construction with you!

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