Kitchen Dreams

I love the HGTV life. I faithfully watch all the design shows...to mentally file away great ideas for my own home. I carefully construct Pinterest board with ideas for decorating and nesting the home that has recently become a very cozy Shafferland.

Problem.

I have little talent in the land of renovation. I can paint like nobody's business. I can arrange furniture and add accessories and choose curtains. But whenever things like a screwdriver and a hammer enter the picture, I begin to sweat. I can barely handle a hammer for the purpose of hanging a picture.

That's why it's such a lovely thing that Ryan is a handyman. He can not only hang a picture without creating a fist-size hole in the wall, but he can also do things like install garbage disposals, assemble hammocks, and correctly connect electronic devices. It's unlike anything I've ever seen inside the walls of my little house.

And we have dreams, once we have our merge-n-purge-two-houses project complete, to do some actual renovation on the house. Nothing huge. No busting through walls. But some sweet little projects that might just make the house all the sweeter. {To sell.}

The kitchen is one of our projects. No idea what it will all pan out to look like in the end, as the dreaming phase is still very, very new. When I told Lynne about some of our ideas, her response was "Sounds like some good blog fodder."

Probably. :)

But wanna dream with me for a minute?

Curtains.

Really? In the world of actual renovations, I want to start by talking about curtains? I do. The kitchen doesn't have a TON of natural light and I find myself wanting to maximize every bit of it I can coax inside. I want to do something that will allow some decor...yet won't push away any sunlight. Here's an idea I found on Pinterest, which I would potentially like to try - with different fabric.

Source: google.com via Rebekah on Pinterest

Backsplash 

We don't have a backsplash right now, and we're both sort of OCD so we don't really need one for the purpose of keeping the wall clean/easy to clean, but I think the alteration to the wall would just be very pretty to look at. I found this one last night and loved it. No grout. Kinda cottage-y. Love it.

Source: sunlitspaces.com via Rebekah on Pinterest

Faucet

My faucet is relatively new...Mom and Dad helped me put in a new one when my house went on the market back in the day, but it's a standard faucet. I think getting a fun faucet {haven't picked one out yet - but something more in the style of the picture above} would be a good change for the kitchen. I especially think this because there are some things we just CAN'T change about the kitchen - so this would be one good thing to do.

Flooring

Haven't figured this one out yet entirely either. Currently, our kitchen has carpet. Old, old carpet. I am not a fan of carpet in a kitchen because it's just too hard to get clean. And this carpet is stained and ripped - and it just needs to go. Not sure if we'll go with wood laminate or tile, but either way, I think it will make a HUGE change in the kitchen.

Counter Top

Source 

We want to spruce up the counters without purchasing new ones, so we're going to try our hand at granite paint. {This would be when Lynne mentioned blog fodder....} We've seen this done at our friends' house...and it looks really nice. We looked through some of the options and found a couple we really like - so we'll see how it turns out when we do it for real!

Stove

The only appliance in the kitchen that looks kind of rough is our stove. The refrigerator, dishwasher, and microwave have all been purchased since I moved into the house, but the stove is old. {Like it belonged to my grandma.} It still has the coil burners and there's no window on the oven, which leads to misadventures like melting lids of things stored inside. There's also a giant piece gouged out of the top where I may or may not have dropped a dish on it one time. So a new stove would not only be a treat for us as we cook there, but should help be a selling point! My only request? A flat top to the stove. I think those are beautiful.

So there you have it...our kitchen renovation dreams. Can't wait to share the official before and after pictures with you - and all manner of stories in between, I'm sure. {Ryan will do the hammering. I'll do the photographing. A match made in Heaven.}