Brookfield renovation update.

Friends! I finally gathered all of my before and after photos of our DIY renovation chez Brookfield house. For those of you who are new here, my husband and I are DIY renovation experts. I can confidently say ‘experts’ because we literally spent the last 10 years renovating. I purchased my first home in 2009 finding a quaint little spot in the west end of downtown St. John’s. We began ripping out room by room replacing windows and eventually the siding as well. Now, most people wouldn’t go through the painstaking process of shellacking all of the knots, and painting two coats on both sides of pine siding with solid stain. Most would purchase cape cod siding and pay someone to install it. We painted EVERY SINGLE board on that house. It took 3 summers to complete. Not an easy task when you’re facing a three story home, setting up and taking down scaffolding, doors, windows…you name it, we’ve done it. The last major renovation was completed in January 2018 when we gutted the entire first floor, created an open concept, replaced all of the flooring in the home with hardwood (worse than siding the house IMO) and built the kitchen of our dreams. Fast forward a year later and we had the house on the market. I know. We’re obviously INSANE, right? The house hit the market at 11am on a Wednesday and we accepted an offer 2 hours later. I was terrified that the house wouldn’t sell (lol). We had our eye on a new property, but were patiently waiting to get word back from the city on a permit I had applied for to operate a business from the property. The house is on a fairly busy road and next to a commercial establishment, so we were making concessions based on the opportunity that I could FINALLY open a fitness studio. The house had been on the market for quite some time so we thought we could wait out the council meeting to find out if we’d get the permit or not. Things didn’t go quite the way we wanted when another offer came in on Brookfield house. Terrifying. We took the plunge and purchased the new house without selling the old one. I’ve never been so nervous in all my life. Thankfully, we had a confident real estate agent, who talked me off the ledge (ish) and told me I was nuts* and told us that there was no way our old home wouldn’t sell. *Sidenote: he’s a good friend of ours and can tell me I’m nuts without hurting my feelings. LOL. Love you, Donald. xx

Before ( photos from realtor.com) from our listing:

Side by side of the old cabinet colour on the left and the new on the right. (cabinet colour is also Chantilly Lace using Stix primer and Benjamin Moore’s advance collection in a pearl finish):

Once the island was removed:

The kitchen sink side under construction:

So with a new house purchased, the old one sold, we waited for the permit to go through. Thankfully, it did! We started renovations on the new home to make it our own right away. This house is much larger than our last and I spent the better part of 3-4 months painting it. Once the paint was on the walls, it was quite obvious (to me anyways) that the cabinet colour in the kitchen had to go. It was an almost buttery colour and I had painted the walls in Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore (a cool white that clashed so badly it made me crazy). Long story short, we decided to spray the cabinets rather than replace them (the house is only 6 years old and replacing them seemed outrageous) which then started the spiral down the rabbit hole. New countertops and backsplash and the idea in my head that we could remove a block of cabinets and replace them with oak floating shelves. In addition, the kitchen island was not user friendly. It was bar height, and needed to go, so we replaced it and made it kitchen counter height so now ya girl can get those recipes coming to you on the regular. A TON of work, some hiccups along the way but we got the job done. YAY! I absolutely love DIY and home decor and this isn’t something I normally post, but I’ve been pushed by my friends to explore this side of the blog so here we are. If you’re interested in seeing more of this type of content, let me know in the comments! I’d be more than happy to do some how to’s and maybe posts of my fave home decor/ improvement products.

Here are the after photos! We are so happy with how everything turned out 🙂 :

So many photos that it was hard to choose!

What’s next? FULL STEAM on my business venture. Tons of renovations to come! I’ll do my best to document everything as we go, but in the meantime, HAPPY WEEKEND!

Sincerely,

Les xx