RENOVATION UPDATE #2

There’s been so much renovation progress in the three weeks since my last update! We’re really happy with how everything is progressing so far and (knock on wood) haven’t had any major setbacks yet. We did have to get a little creative rerouting some plumbing within the kitchen and spent a good amount of time scratching our heads on that, but I think we ultimately came up with a good solution that won’t bankrupt us in the process. More on that and the rest of the progress below!

design darling mudroom reno

design darling mudroom renovation progress

The first thing that happened since my last update was removing the two sets of windows in the sunroom to create a solid wall on the left (since this will no longer be an exterior wall) and a cased opening on the right that leads into the future mudroom. The right set of windows was in good shape so we’ll be repurposing those on the back wall of the family room above where our sectional will be.

design darling mudroom renovation framing

design darling mudroom renovation door

design darling mudroom renovation

design darling mudroom renovation progress update

design darling mudroom laundry room renovation

I was very anxious to see the mudroom start to take shape and it felt like a lot of invisible preparations before we went to Florida for a few days and returned to see the foundation in place and floors being framed. The walls and roof went up over the course of a couple days and we can now stand in the space that will become our mudroom! I am absolutely over the moon with how this space is coming together. Once we had a better feel for the shape of the room, we went in and mapped out where we want windows, washer/dryer (which was a last minute addition I think we’ll be really happy to have), and mudroom cubbies. I’ve been stalking images of laundry rooms and mudrooms on Instagram and Pinterest and working with our builder to decide what’s possible and practical in our space. You can get a better idea of our plans on my Instagram stories (saved in two highlights labeled Renovation and Renovation Two!).

design darling shed dormer roof

design darling loft renovation

design darling shed dormer interior

Next the windows were hung in the loft above the garage and I think they surpassed all of our expectations for how roomy this space could feel. The shed dormer will give my parents so much more liveable space (see more on why they’re moving in with us here!) and the wall of windows under the dormered roof makes the whole room feel so light and bright. Now that all the framing is complete and windows are in, they’ve started electrical and plumbing for the bathroom.

design darling kitchen renovation progress

design darling kitchen reno

Last but definitely not least, we moved out of our kitchen and they got started with demo and framing! Losing the kitchen has drastically reduced our useable space for the next few months but I know it will be so, so, so worth it when it’s all said and done. I was counting down the days until they knocked down the powder room and small pantry that stuck out into the middle of our old kitchen and it’s amazing how much more open the whole room is without them there. We were able to donate all our old cabinets and most appliances to Habitat for Humanity!

design darling kitchen renovation

design darling breakfast nook renovation

design darling marvin picture window

Even though the kitchen is completely sealed off from the dining room, you can stand at the front door and get a glimpse of light shining through the back window (above where the sink used to be) through the plastic seal and it’s even better than I imagined. We will never have a modern open concept floor plan in our 1850 colonial, but having an open line of sight from the front to the back of the house gives the whole first floor a better flow. There will be even more light once the window above the old sink becomes the picture window in our breakfast nook and I just could not be happier about the whole scenario!

design darling kitchen reno

design darling powder room reno

design darling kitchen renovation

The back door switched places with a window so we’ll now walk in and have our powder room off to the left (where we’re bumping out the wall of a former closet) and a walk-in pantry off to the right. My dream is to have a dutch door back here someday, but a good one is definitely not in the budget right now so I’ve pressed pause on that vision for now!

design darling doorknobs

This weekend we spent some time looking at doorknobs (so many seemingly small decisions to be made!) and I love what we came up with. Many of the doors throughout our house have original white porcelain hardware that can no longer be replicated exactly, so the new doors in each of these spaces will have white porcelain knobs on a polished nickel rosette that matches the hardware we’ll have on the kitchen cabinets. It’s a nice way to tie in the old porcelain knobs with the new polished nickel hardware and when I first saw the combination mocked up on a computer, I didn’t know it was possible to be so excited about a doorknob! 

design darling kitchen layout

The only real hiccup we’ve encountered so far is a huge pipe coming down from our hall bathroom into the kitchen that can’t be easily moved. Our hope was to conceal it within the wall between the kitchen and the dining room so we could expand that doorway and have a wide clearance between the wall and the future kitchen island, but it turns out there’s a massive post from the original house right where the pipe would need to be so that’s not an option. We spent hours last week brainstorming a zillion possible work-arounds, from rerouting the pipe into the dining room ceiling and building a soffit around the entire room to matching the sloped ceiling in parts of the kitchen all the way around to conceal the top of the pipe in that one location and have the rest of it run down the wall on the other side of the door. I imagine this is a little hard to envision (it definitely was for me, even standing in the room!) but long story short: I rounded up a dozen inspiration images to try to get excited about a soffit in our dining room and ultimately decided it was such a costly and involved project in a room we weren’t planning on tackling in this phase of projects. So even though it’s hard for me to envision exactly what it will look like, we’re going to match the ceiling slope on the far wall of the family room above the fireplace all the way across the room. The flat part of the ceiling in the middle will still be 10 feet high so I’m crossing my fingers it won’t make the room feel too much smaller, but I feel good about this being the most reasonable solution while still giving us plenty of space to walk around the island and into the family room. I’m hoping there will be a lot more framing happening in this room over the next week or two so we can get a feel for the new ceiling and floor plan! Would love for you to follow on Instagram for more frequent updates — having so much fun documenting the process! 🙂

P.S. More posts about our house you might be interested in: