To our home’s successors,

With Covid not appearing to be going anywhere, and with so much loss, we knew we would want to end our year on a good note, and continue with our wedding plans, which would probably mean having immediate family celebrate with us at our home. With this in mind, our focus shifted to getting our Kitchen ready to host. 

We started by washing(scrubbing) and painting the lower cabinets and cleaning up the hardware. Turns out the hardware was coated and not solid, so we may have done more damage to them than we meant to. I should add that eventually… we want to completely redo the Kitchen, but the realization that this house was going to take more time and money and we didn’t want to live in spaces that didn’t feel like OURS in the meantime. We decided to give this space a temporary face-lift and not invest too much money into this project. 

If you couldn’t tell by now the old owner seemed to love yellow, and I… very much dislike it, so the pattern continued with covering our Kitchen countertops with white contact paper- also making it much easier to see when surfaces are dirty. Again, don’t come for me please, our hope is that all of this is redone before we ever place it in your hands. 

We know the Kitchen ceiling is dropped because the previous owner had a failed radiator leak and the ceiling was opened for repairs. The real estate agent told the seller to leave it open to show that the height could go up about a foot or two- which we do eventually plan to do, but for now? It’s time to close up the hazard. The original ceiling was crumbling down and came down over our poor unsuspecting pup and we did not want this happening again of course. And so, we learned how to drywall… While we were doing do, we realized the water pipes that run above were uninsulated and at risk for possible freeze-up if we were to completely close up the ceiling so we looked for a decorative vent to allow for warm air exchange during the winter. We landed on a relatively heavy floor register, but we reinforced the drop ceiling framing and we think this has been pretty successful so far. 

And on that note… We also… painted over wallpaper. I know. Ugh I know. This wasn’t the greatest idea. At the time, we still believed we were going to need to gut every room at some point… The wallpaper was securely adhered to the kitchen walls, and removal felt daunting, so we instead opted to prime over it with shellac to try to keep the water based paint from loosening the wallpaper glue. We followed that up with a few coats of latex paint in early December. 

We ordered a new double oven to replace the old one, and we found a used range that fit the old space almost perfectly on facebook marketplace and got a bonus “new” dishwasher from them too. We had our electrician come back to change out our recessed lighting, and hook up the appliances, and with some of the major parts completed, we made our way to IKEA to put in a new center island. 

Prior to moving in, there was an obvious flooring hole in the kitchen where an old island once stood as well as 13 circles around the perimeter where the MacNamara’s once sat on fixed stools. This created a VERY cramped kitchen, so along with all the previous suggestions the realtor made, they removed the island to show it was actually a decent sized room. We’re glad they did this, but the kitchen really did need proper prep space. 

We ended up going to one straight cabinet run and for the purpose of getting it “functional” ahead of our wedding, we put a plywood top on until we had the chance to replace it with a butcherblock top which we did in March 2022.

With the miserable year closing out, it was time to celebrate something.