New Beginnings

Caught up in the excitement a few years ago of a time in our history I like to refer to as the year of the blog, the wife and I decided to start our own…and it failed. It sounded like such a good idea at first, you post a few photos write a few sentences and sit and watch as your legion of loyal followers hang on your every word. We really did have every intention of blogging on a regular basis. We were fresh out of school, had just gotten married, and the best way to stay up to date on the lives of your friends, your friends friends, and even friends of those friends, was to read their blogs from afar without ever actually having to speak to them. Katie spent the better part of a month designing/re-designing a background look for the blog that fit what she calls “our style”. We started snapping pictures of everything from decorating the Christmas tree to Lobo “el perro” playing in the snow. We said this is easy, we can do this! We were wrong. After the first few months we started to notice something pretty instrumental in the whole blogging process. Blogging is just a fun word for “writing” and writing is something neither of us like to do or do particularly well. So our blog died, we let it die.

Our last post on the blog was before the purchase of our house…over a year ago…where we so casually made the promise to start blogging more. I’m not exactly sure where the last twelve months have gone but here we are, another year older so they say, and taking on the daunting task of blogging again. The blog isn’t going to be so much about our everyday lives as it was in the past, but at the same time it kind of is. Instead of blogging about baking cookies and sharing our inner most personal feelings with the world we are going to focus on two primary topics we actually care a little bit about. That is renovating our house one project at a time, and food. I come from what you would call a “project family” and after purchasing this house last summer Katie and I can safely say without a doubt that this is our fate. Our evenings and weekends are filled with sawdust in our shorts and paint on our faces (not really because we are painting pros) and throughout this blog we are going to share with you what we like to do, how you can do it, and why in our opinion DIY is the way to go. Since we last left you with a picture of the house we had yet to purchase, we thought we would go ahead and share some before and after pictures of our kitchen remodel that is almost complete.

Here is a before picture of the kitchen from the listing when we bought the house. Not bad at all, but not our style. We did appreciate the gas range and stainless steel appliances though. It didn't take long after closing that we got to work.

My dad and I starting to take down the wall between the kitchen and dining room.

The wall is now down with a header in it's place. The studs you see are for the temporary support wall we had to build while taking down the wall since it was load bearing.

Since the pantry was on the wall we took down, we had to build a new, BIGGER, pantry and also decided to box in the fridge while we were at it.

We repainted all the original white cabinets after sanding off layers and layers of paint with Sherwin Williams ProClassic Universal Khaki which we saw in the kitchen of a parade house a few summers ago.

We replaced the old fake wood roll out flooring with some 16x16 tiles and built an island for our piece of marbel you may remember from our last post.

One Saturday while watching Sarah's Cottage on HGTV we saw this backsplash tile and Katie said "I want it". Come to find out it was from a Canadian supplier that only has one store in the U.S. which is conveiniently located in Indiana. Katie was determined however and after numerous phone calls, e-mails, and shipping mishaps the tile was finally ours. It really does look great. We also decided to refinish the original solid wood countertops in the rest of our kitchen after seeing it done at the Nix's remodel on Jeff Davis this last year on the parade.

FINALLY, here she is. The apron sink and pendants are worth mentioning, they were great finds from Ikea and the faucet is a pull down Moen from the HD. We also did a wood treatment on the ceiling and installed four can lights in the room and one above the sink to add more lighting.

In case remodeling and design is not your thing stay tuned because we are also going to be talking about food. Good food. Not so much how to make it but where to find it. We love to eat, finding new places, and enjoying what your put in your mouth past the point of simply fuel to stay alive. I wake up in the morning and think “what do I want to eat today”? I plan my day around food, I’ve planned vacations around food, and legend even has it my first word was “food”. We live in Tyler Tx, and despite the rumors, it is not the restaurant capital of the world. In the past few months we have added to our repertoire with the likes of a BJ’s Brew house and Chuy’s Mexican Café and have even seen construction start on Corner Bakery, Chipotle, and Panera Bread. However much is left to be desired when it comes to eating out in East Texas. Through the mass of fast food eateries and subpar Mexican restaurants on every corner there are still places out there serving good food worth the cost of eating out.

This week we have a short list of projects around the house that include putting the finishing touches on our kitchen, and at least half a dozen opportunities for eating out. We aren’t going to promise to start blogging every day or even every week for that matter, past history has taught us that it just won’t happen. When we do blog however, you know it’s going to be good so check back every once in a while and comment often, we are always looking for new DIY projects to tackle and exciting restaurants to check out.