Two! How on Earth did that happen? We celebrated our birthday girl with pink and purple birthday party surrounded by family on a quiet Sunday afternoon.  Well as quiet as it can be with a toddler running the house.  

At two, Charlie is over the moon in love with the movie Frozen.  The DVD is about wore out.  She's finally getting enough hair for mama to put little pony tails in.  She's an expert at living through a demolition site and construction zone [snicker] She's still sleeping in her crib and I don't foresee changing that situation until I absolutely have to.  She loves it and so do I.  This year she's gotten quite talented at moving whatever furniture she needs to crawl into the cabinet for snacks.  We've started potty training and introducing the idea more and more.  She's also discovered her love of horses this year.  Daddy's in trouble.  Peppa Pig is a favorite around the house and we watch allllll the episodes and have the books.  That we ready nightly. Speaking of nightly.  We still read a few books at night then rock for a while before I lay her down in her crib.  

This Old House, downstairs almost complete

The final pictures.  Almost final.  Remember, I suck at the little details.  They take me years to acquire and gather together.

The wood you see along the ceiling there is what we believe to be wormy chestnut.  It was originally on the ceiling of our basement.  We love to repurpose things that were original to the house.  

Those beautiful counter tops

IKEA sink hack.  Anyone that heard me talk about this project knew my main goal was a farmhouse sink and open concept. The open concept was an easy win (for me) but the farmhouse sink proved to be tricky.  It's amazing how expensive those things can be! IKEA for the win.  Less then $200 for this baby that my husband then made into an under mount sink.  I then turned around and spent the money I saved on that faucet.  Yikes.  Well worth the money though. 

Let's not forget the dining room got some loving too.  

I can't get over the natural light this whole space has now.  

And that's our house! 

This old house got a face lift

We have been diligently working on renovating our 1840's farm house since about two months after we bought it.  Ah, those were the days.  When we could randomly decide at 7 pm on a Friday to tear down some awful wood paneling and completely redo our living room with no care in the world.  There was no child to risk waking or money that should be saved for diapers and small person clothing.

Of all our projects, this was the biggest one yet.  We took the plunge and completely gutted our entire first floor.  Right down to the bare bones.  I'm sure there's more technical terms and if my husband ever read this, he'll correct me numerous times.  The big plan was to level our floors.  As you can imagine over the last 100 plus years of several generations living in this home, things moved, and were (for lack of a better term) half assed fixed.  And while you have the floors ripped up, why not take down some walls while you're at it?  I mean, really, no biggie right?  In response my husband closed his eyes and walked away.  But hey, I ain't got those walls no more! Winning.

So to summarize, the first floor was gutted completely.  New insulation, new floors, new drywall, new paint and fixtures.  At the point that these photos were taken, (ahem, today) we just need to add trim and finish with the small touches.  We have had enough of the renovating phase and those final touches will probably not get added until a few years down the road.  Let's face it, Charlie is going to be two and I still haven't put pictures in the frames on her wall.

Because my husband is a bit of the impatient sort, I don't have many before photos but rather they're more of during type photos.

So the drywall is down and the floors are ripped up.  

 

We lived upstairs for two weeks.  It was take out and barging in on our folks for evening meals and places to go over the weekends. 

Everything in our home looked like that left picture.  Just boards.  

A contractor came in and within 3-4 days we had a level plywood floor.  

Next up, no more walls! 

And just so you get the full affect; a side by side

Once all the walls were out it was time to install the island. 

We bought one cabinet that was in one large piece and meant for a sink base, then three cabinets that are meant to be wall mounted.  Steve built a base for those cabinets to create a bar top. 

We lived with the plywood floors, plywood countertops for about two weeks until our new hardwoods were delivered and the drywall contractor could come. 

All of the cabinets got primer, the dry wall got complete and my husband made me the most amazing concrete counter tops.  Installation photographed below.  

He was thrilled with my constant photo taking.  

Next up, the final product! (Or almost final.)