Amazing Kitchen Remodel in 7 Weeks

I wish I could sit here and tell you this was easy, but I'd be lying to you.  I also wish I could find the before photo of this kitchen and bar because it looks completely different.  When remodeling, the first thing you have to do is start with a clean slate.  That means in this case a week of demo, tying down old electrical and plumbing, and game planning for new electrical and plumbing.  You should see it, we write on the walls, the floor the ceiling- everywhere.  It looks like graffiti and a war zone all at the same time.  Then we patch up the walls, paint, get the cabinet guys in and start measuring for cabinets.  This ceiling and lighting                                                                        is new as well,

and it required some framing and repositioning of duct work to pull it off.  These customers were awesome in the sense that they were living there for a good majority of the project and were very patient and kind.  I love before and afters because you get such a great return on effort in such a short amount of time.  They are not easy, and often you miss things that are unforeseen but they are certainly rewarding when finished.  Check out the cool edge the homeowner chose for the island, probably one of my all time favorites.  If you don't think it's that great it's probably because you're not there in person but it's really cool how the granite company fabricated the edge.

How to Improve the Entry of Your Home

This courtyard is only 1 week old

I love this house for a lot of reasons.  True story, the owners brought us a CD of a resort they travel to in the Virgin Islands every year and wanted to recreate it to a large degree.  They really wanted a focus on the outside.  This home has outside showers, amazing landscaping, a wooden door courtyard entry and custom lights we imported from the Virgin Islands that were hand made.  Really cool and fun project.  I wanted to focus however on the sidewalk and front entry.  When you see your home from the street, I think you have 2 curb appeals going on.  The initial impression, and also the feel you get as you walk up to the home.  My theory is it should continue to surprise and impress as you walk to the front door.  You don't have to go over the top, but you can do little things with landscaping, install a water feature, improve the walk way, add lighting, rocks and the focus on the porch area.  This picture was taken shortly after the homeowners moved-in.  If you look closely you can see that they installed a water feature to the left that runs down the rocks and flows into a small pond area, then recirculates back up to the origin and flows back down again.  These kits are sold at Home Depot and Lowes and have come way down in price.  The stones that were laid were field stones from excavation and supplanted with river rock.  The concrete walk path was stained, which is real easy to do with a bug sprayer and could be a fun weekend project.  Lastly, they installed a couple of outdoor speakers in the front, just to welcome guests or have some outdoor tunes going while they work and play outside.  I admit, this is pretty grand, but it if you take an idea or two from this you would be surprised at how different you can make the walk up appeal of your home.