Good Morning and Happy Sunday!!
It’s another warm weekend here in New Jersey right smack in the middle of December and we are hard at work in The Coronato Kitchen! For those of you who don’t know, Christian and I bought our home last July. We found the perfect fixer upper right in the neighborhood Christian grew up in, and lucky (or not so lucky) for us we bought it as a short-sale. LUCKY for us, we saved a wonderful amount of money, for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, walk-in closet and in-ground pool. Not so lucky for us, it needed/needs a lot of work. When we first bought the house we worked on it for about 2 months before we moved in; cleaning (oh boy did it need cleaning), painting, ripping up carpet and replacing it, and knocking down some walls to build the most beautiful walk-in closet!
Right around the time we moved into our new home, IKEA was having an incredible sale on their entire kitchen line!! We took this opportunity to pick out our dream kitchen, big pullout cabinets, grey in color, gorgeous farm house sink and all the fun accessories that go along with it! Christian built all the cabinets and we thought we were well on our way to our dream kitchen. Fast forward a year and NOW we’ve finally started! Those cabinets are no longer going to be collecting dust in our guest bedroom and living room! WOOHOO
We started renovations about 3 weeks ago, replacing our back door and kitchen window, then taking down cabinets and counter tops, re-sheetrocking. We’re very lucky to have Christian’s dad helping us every step of the way! He’s made models of our new kitchen on his computer and is now helping us bring it to life. This weekend we attacked probably the hardest, messiest part of the renovation = the floors. The previous owners had tile flooring so we’re ripping up tile, concrete and wood!
Luckily I’m a huge picture taker so I can take you through what the house looked like when we first bought it, through the initial renos, all the way up to this weekend’s BIG renos!!
These are the very first photos we took of our new home as we drove by (can’t you tell) before we even had the keys! Check out those awesome humungo bushes covering half the house in the second picture.
Of course I took a picture of our homeowners binder.. doesn’t everyone?!
WE’RE OFFICIALY OWNERS OF OUR OWN HOME!!!!
This WAS our master bedroom and that WAS our master closet.. so puny.
That maroon wall as soon as you walk in is so welcoming.. that’s why we got rid of it!
A little office just waiting to be loved!
The kitchen!! Who would soon be the best feature of the house! Oh, there’s the maroon wall again, HEY!
OK, what you’re looking at here is a “room” that was off of our bedroom.. It had it’s own entry way (shown in the first picture, it looked like an almost built close when you first walked in (second picture) but then that closet had a closet (shown in the third picture).. lost yet? Yeah, so were we..
A better view of the front, you can’t see half the house because of the jungle covering the whole left side.
Remember the small master closet? And the closet inside a closet?? THAT’S what you’re looking at here! BUH-BYE!
A finally cleared out “room”/”closet”, whatever it was, that was soon to be our walk-in closet.
Because even when you don’t have a rug you still need accessories!
The beginning of a beautiful thing!
Closet heaven, even Philly agreed.
And now… the mecca of walk-in closets!! Look at the picture on the left, my cute little Ho Ho Hos, exactly one year ago today, maybe I should write something cute on our chalk board wall now..
NO MORE MAROON WALL!!!!
Our gorgeous backyard!
Hello front porch without the jungle!
Mom knew I always wanted rocking chairs (reminds me so much of my Mummum) so she surprised me last year with this beautiful set up.
And the office that needed love, got her wish!
NOW for the current renos!
See ya later green counter top! Cabinets gone + new sheetrock!
And the messy part begins..
Tile flooring is incredibly hard to pull up, theres concrete under the tile, then wood under the concrete and finally screws that need to be pulled out.. The poor guys worked so hard at getting this up.
THIS is our new floor!!!!!
And TODAY we’re working on the other side of the kitchen, finishing ripping up the floor, maybe sheetrocking a little more if we can, and hopefully the guys will take nice long naps afterwards.
Currently, I’m sitting in our bed keeping Philly company. She’s been a trooper though all of this, being locked up in our room every weekend! If I’m not in the room with her she sits at the door and just squeaks, so whenever I can get some things done in our room I keep her company. She’s cozy on her tower right now trying to sleep but not liking all the noise. I’m blogging while Christian is breaking his back working on our kitchen, I can hear how hard he’s working so now that this blog is complete I’m going to lace up my sneaks, put on my gloves and help out!! I’ll be posting weekly updates on our home and I hope you follow along!! If you haven’t already subscribe at the top right of this page to stay up to date on all my posts!!
kristicoronato.com 