Kitchen Remodel and paint job

Here are some post-pictures of our house so far. We redid the kitchen ceiling, lighting and paint and made a big difference in the look of our home we think. Matt put in many hours with his dad and friend, Ray. Shellie, with the help of many people, Henry, Lorna, Uncle Peter, Aunt Harriet, Camille, Sarah, Erin, my momma (who came up for a surprise visit) did a lot of work on the paint:) So, they
1) Removed the lowered ceiling, framing, etc and the cabinets that separated the kitchen from the living room
2) Dry-walled everything above the cabinets, created new framing and re-dry-walled the existing sky-light.
3)Put in the can lighting
4)re-textured all the new stuff
5) Painted
all while painting the rest of the house!
6)moved in with a lot of great help!
7) had Christmas!

Again, pictures taken with me turning continuously clockwise about 360 degrees, the cabinets were taken from the far left of this first picture

Our new home!!

We have been looking at houses for about two years now, never finding the right place. We put a few bids on houses here and there (always a total lowball!) and either were rejected or pulled out ourselves because it just wasn't right. Well, Matt came upon this house a year ago while browsing the "way too expensive" range of houses. He really liked it (which means a lot coming from him), it was on an acre, it was a good sized home, with a HUGE deck! Shellie was ho-hum about it but really liked the floorplan (it is VERY rare to find good floorplans around here, I'm not sure if that is always the case, but it definitely is here). We put in our low-ball offer and were rejected because there was a better offer already on it. To make it worse, the house was a short sale which means that the buyers are trying to sell it at a loss for the bank that financed the purchase, AKA, this is gonna take FOREVER! Several months went by, Shellie forgot about the house, but Matt remembered. Several offers also went through on the house but the buyers pulled out due to the bank being ridiculous! Eventually, the sellers' agent called us and told us that if we offer a certain amount (still a low-ball offer), she was pretty sure she could get it through. Well, true to a short-sales reputation the process of getting our offer accepted took FOREVER, about 5 months! We had peace that God rarely does things quickly and having to wait is never a closed door from Him. we knew that if this house was not meant to be ours that doors would definitely closed. Meanwhile, we were living in our great little Honeymoon cottage and happy as clams. So, around the second week of November our offer was finally accepted and we went into escrow. So many things could still close the doors on this home so we kept our excitement to a minimum. The Pest inspection went well, the Home inspection went really well and the Septic was great! We had already gotten ourselves ready financially, so the financing went through without a hitch and we got an amazing interest rate! blah, blah blah.... We are now painting the new house and packing up our old one. We move on December 12!! Here are some pictures from when we were still waiting, it already looks a bit different.
All of these pictures were taken with me standing in the dining area, I'm doing a 360 going clockwise. Gotta love that 80's kitchen!

By the way, we have already done a ton to this kitchen and I will post the remodel pictures very soon. Or you can look at my facebook to see some in-process pics.