Around the House // Kitchen & Dining Room Reno

Hi guys, Christina here. I've been excited to put this post together ever since my husband and I started doing some minor renovations around our house that we bought in 2014. The folks who owned this house prior to us built it in 1965 and lived here for 45 years. Another girl owned it since then and quickly sold it to us. It's a cute little ranch style home but of course it came with a lot of original features including yellow formica countertops and backsplash, wood paneled walls and dark doors that made it feel quite sad. I mean, you'll understand as soon as you see the before and afters...

Click below to see all the photos  and also read about my experience with ordering my cordless roman shades from Blinds.com...

The pictures that realtors take sometimes...I mean, wow!  Anyways, we knew the house had "good bones" as they call it and were pretty much sold on it immediately. With some elbow grease, paint, new counter tops, back splash, shelves and new hardware, we were able to bring the kitchen up to pace to be a great space for us. My husband is very handy and along with help from his dad they were able to do the back splash themselves as well as install the new counter tops. Our most recent addition is the cordless roman shade above the sink, which we really love (more on that below).

The other side of the room:

Sorry for the atrocious 'before' photos. I could only find some from an old real estate listing. With this room all we did was paint and install a new light fixture.

One of the things I knew I wanted when we moved in were roman blinds for the dining room and kitchen. There's not a whole lot of light on this side of the house so I wanted shades that would open up and let in as much light as possible. I began to research and found Blinds.com and that they do custom roman shades. Their prices were amazing and I had already heard great things from other people who love their products. The ones that we ordered are the Signature Roman Shade (Cordless) in Odyssey Graphite. 

The shades were SUPER easy to install, maybe totaling 15 minutes tops. That was a huge plus for me since I've got a crawling baby at my feet. Not only that, but the whole process of ordering the shades was one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had. They offered to have a design assistant help me place my order and even though I felt totally capable, I ended up asking lots of questions. He sent me cell phone photos of the different fabrics and colors up against the light and even offered to mail me some samples. His guidance made the ordering process so smooth, and he even placed the order for me. I was already felt confident in my order, even though I had yet to see them in person. They arrived really quickly and it was like Christmas opening them up and installing them. I was immediately impressed with the quality of the fabric and how smooth the mechanics are to open and close. 

I'm so excited for things to finally come together in this part of our home. A few more things we have yet to do:

- Re-do the floors in the space
- Upgrade the stove (we have one, just need to run a gas line)
- Open up the doorway that goes to the living room just a little bit wider so it's more open and airy

It's fun to take it one step at a time. Also, huge thanks to Megan for helping me style these photos for this post :)

Thanks for stopping in to see our home reno progress!

- Christina

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This post is a sponsored post by our friends at Blinds.com, even though I would've ordered from them either way! My entire review is pure and honest based solely on my experience. And if you're a reader of Goldmine, you know we only share products that we believe in and truly love. Hope you check them out!