Making Our House A Home

I talked in older posts about my wonderful hubby working tirelessly on projects around our house. We have been dying to do things around our house since we moved in, but we have been so busy with work and school that we didn't have a chance. Once Phil got done with school for the summer, he just dove right into the "honey-do" list. I love my hubby. :)

The first project my husband worked on was to add an island to our kitchen. Our kitchen was big before and very spacious but we thought an island would be SO great and it turned out amazing! I love it and I already use it more than the rest of our kitchen! Phil was able to build columns on the side of the island in order to get electricity. We then painted the kitchen a good red color. To sum it up....I LOVE MY NEW ISLAND!

Before Island...

After Island!...

The top section of the island, on the reverse side is a spice rack. I had no great place to store my spices and other odds and ends and having them in this spice rack that Phil made on the top of the island makes them easy to get to and hides them from the rest of the room. I just love my island.

The next big project was to create a space for our office. We have 3 rooms in our house besides our loft and front and family room. With our baby girl on the way we needed to clear the office upstairs and make it into her new room. With that in mind, we had to make a space for the office. We decided that our front room was no use to us and to make that into our office. I knew that if we made the front room into an office that we would need to close it off some how because my son is a beast and its possible my daughter will be too, so we couldn't give them full access to the office. (Plus...we all know that offices don't ever stay as clean and organized as you want them to be and I needed a way to hide it from all of you. So...we turned a half way into a whole wall to put our entertainment center on, and we bought book shelves from IKEA that stretch to the ceiling and made a wall out of those to block off the area. Again, to sum it up...I am happy with our new office.

Front room before the office project...

Family room before the office project...

Family room AFTER the office project... broke down the half wall, turned it into a full wall and then painted the wall this rusty orange color.

 The bookshelves you see to the left in the picture below are the ones we added to close off the new created office.

The new bookshelf wall to close off the office. (Please ignore the dust. Lots of construction at our house and I am not cleaning it over and over again. When its all over I will clean the heck out of it!)

The third big project that my husband busted out was our back yard. I don't have a before picture of the backyard because I am a dummy and I never thought to do so. But if I could paint an imaginary before picture in your head, all I would have to say is boring, brown, empty, dirt yard. That's basically it. There was only dirt and a small covered porch with a small piece of cement under it. Phil built a rock wall for our garden (once the sun decides to cooperate and not be so flippin' hot), He planted 6 trees, and 20 other plants around the back yard, planted the grass, and laid the pavers around the grass and extended our porch. There is small area to the left where there is going to be a sand box eventually. This is what my husband turned the lot of dirt it into.

These projects are not all of the projects we have on our list but it is a major start. I would like to make sure that everyone knows that I did little/nothing for these projects. In fact most of the time I came home from work to major progress having been done to my house without my knowledge. The deal was that I work on growing a baby, and Phil make our house amazing. I think he out did himself. ;)

I love my husband! :)