Front Porch Pretty

With the sun shining outside the past few days, its got me thinking about our front porch (I use the term loosely, since our porch is tiny) but it was one of my 'must have' on our buying list. I can't complain even though our front porch is small its come along way since we first bought our house in December 2008. Back in 2008 and over half of 2009 our front porch and house looked like this.

I know its hard to tell { from the picture above }, but we just placed our patio set on the front porch and called it good. After we painted our house gray and added shutters, a new light fixture, new house numbers and redid our flower bed things started looking up.

To me our front porch still looks boring and not that inviting. I think one major change we need to do our front porch is add some pops color that will look nice against the grey. I've been thinking about painting our front door for quite sometime. Mr CLH and I butted heads over our front door color - he wanted black and I wanted a cranberry red. I love red front doors, I know they are the norm in some areas, but I only counted one on our street so I thinking we are going to go red.

I also want to add some either cushions to our bistro set or add pillows to create warmth. I was also thinking spay painting our plastic plant containers on of porch to add more color. Right now the containers 'natrual Terra Cotta color' just blend in with our brick exterior.

Here are some pretty front porches that are giving me serious inspiration for small porches!

Isn't this the perfect sunny spot for morning coffee, I like the cushions and bright potted plants that surround the front porch.

{ via Ladies Home Journal }

This front porch is so charming, I like the bright floors

{ via Ladies Home Journal }

I love the swing on this porch so welcoming

{ via Country Living }

These two pillows are the perfect touch on this porch.

{ via Country Living }

Now that its getting warm outside, I'm really looking forward to added extra oomph to the front of the house. Our project list keeps getting longer and longer, looking forward to the time change when our days get longer too. Have you done a porch re-do? I'd love to see and hear all about it.

My Kitchen & Design Ideas

Last week, I planned on sharing our kitchen which is scary since there is no after. Since the weather was gloomy all last week, I wanted wait until the sun came out (so my kitchen wouldn't look even worse)

Here's my kitchen in all its glory (be nice) Right now I have an L Shape kitchen. We want to change our kitchen layout to be more of a transitional U Shape.

The Problems:

1. The dark cabinets make our kitchen appear even than it is, and make out kitchen look date and tired. The white ceramic counters with dark brown grout is dreadful and reminds us of 1985.
2. The porcelain sink is dated and stained, no amount of bleach will get this puppy cleaned!
3. The dishwasher and oven have seen better days.
4. The poor lighting above the sink and the overhead lighting let off very little light. At night when I'm cooking dinner I can hardly see, unless my dining room light is on.
5. The 'dead space' a small wall with only a fridge on it that creates a nook in our kitchen - leaving valuable kitchen space un-used. The bright yellow wall behind the oven - not cute. It actually looks better than before! Before it was a faux tile back splash with light blue flowers covered in grease - that would not come clean. Thankfully after we removed our old tile, with ripped out the back splash.
6. We have no vent above our oven (its in the ceiling) which means we'll lose cabinet space when we install once above the oven. No more hording boxes of microwave popcorn!

The Ok's { thankfully there are a few things I like about my kitchen, I know shocking }

1. I like that our cabinets ( the very few we have ) go all the way to the ceiling - which allows more cabinet space. I also like our corner cabinet next to the window - perfect to fit a few Lazy Susan's inside.
2. I also like our kitchen window that's directly over our sink - it also has a nice large ledge for plants, the window lets allot of natural light in the kitchen.
3. I also like our new laminate flooring in our kitchen that we replaced last month, good bye icky broken tile!

I do see a lot of potential in our kitchens future without a lot of demo. Nope we are planning on re-doing the kitchen in phases as our budgets allows and playing up our kitchens good bones.

Here's the plan

Phase # 1

Replace the icky broken tile with new flooring (check we installed new flooring) Paint the upper kitchen cabinets Delicate white by Olympic Paint. Paint the entire kitchen Woodrow Wilson Putty (we will paint the bottom cabinets after we replace the tile counter top) Install crown molding on all cabinets and ceilings. The tall cabinet to the left of the sink, we will have a carpenter cut the center out of the cabinet out and then install glass panes. Replace the heavy wood like blinds with white roman shades, allowing more light to come in when the shade is closed.

Phase # 2

New appliances! We are only replacing the dishwasher and oven with stainless steel versions, we'll keep our black fridge. Install a stainless steel vent over our oven. Finally deal with the dead space with cabinets (more on this later)

Phase # 3

Remove the back splash and counters and replace with solid surface counter tops and stainless steel under mount sink (we plan on taking advantage of free sink w/purchase of solid surface counters at Lowe's) Paint the lower cabinets Delicate White and install new hardware (pulls and knobs) Install white subway tile back splash and install new overhead lighting. I really like the look of school house pendant lighting - so more than likely we will go the route. I also found a great large area rug in the color palette we love, that will look great in our kitchen (this rug was originally meant for the dining room)

Phase # 4

Final touches, making sure our kitchen and dining room flow well together, since we have an eat in kitchen. It's important for us to make the room look cohesive.

{ The photo above is our dining room that we recently re-did from top to bottom}

A cool thing about doing our project in phases is sharing the little afters with all our you until we finally have a big reveal!

So what do you think our of current kitchen? Are you seeing it's 'Good Bones' ? Have you done a kitchen re-do in phases like we are planning?

Later this week, I'll share with you how our new floor plan will go from an L Shape to a more Transitional U Shape