Beach House Kitchen Finishes and Inspiration

Several weeks ago I spent some time ironing out the final kitchen design for the beach house.  Remember this color concept board posted a few months ago?

Well, the kitchen colors will definitely be taking their cue from this concept, with the addition of spring grass green.

Here are some of our selections so far. I am in love with the soft gray painted cabinets....

The existing slate floors are gray, like the sand of Pacific Northwest beaches.

The gray cabinet finish we've chosen is inspired by silvery driftwood.

We would love to have quartz countertops that echoed the color of sun-bleached sand dollars, but those may have to be nixed due to cost over runs in other areas....

Bright green spring grass gives us the color inspiration for our large window treatment.

Streaks of pink in a local sunset and inspired the pops of pink for kitchen seating.

Natural hessian cloth accents are inspired by the color and texture of late season dune grass.

Of course, the kitchen transformation won't happen all at once --  we are doing the kitchen in three phases.  This first phase has focused on just making the kitchen functional, by working on the layout, making repairs, redoing drywall, replacing windows, and so on.  Our cabinets have not arrived yet, but they will be here soon!

Reunited with my Vintage Stove, and It Feels So Good

We moved out of one of our four storage lockers last weekend.   The beach house garage is now stacked with boxes and miscellaneous stuff, and is awaiting even more boxes and miscellaneous stuff this weekend.   Finally, after nearly two years, I have been reunited with my love. 

Here is a sneak peek:

And another peek:

And here is one last look:

You can see a vintage ad for my love in this post. 

House Hunting. Again.

Life is getting a little crazy at House Revivals.  You've probably noticed I'm not posting as much lately.  That will soon change, but in the mean time, thanks for bearing with me as we go through lots of changes.  The beach house renovation is going very well, but as we near the finish line, it is consuming our days.

 The beach house, before the renovation.

We have also been searching for a more permanent pied-a-terre in the city.  So, when I am here, I am often scouring the internet and running off to meet with our realtor.  On top of everything, our son just finished his master's degree and got a job in our city.  We are very happy to have one of our kiddos nearby.  And he is definitely very nearby.  So near, he's sleeping on our couch until he finds a place to buy. 

So, I am house hunting for him, also, which is how I stumbled upon this:

I found an affordably priced condo midway between my son's job, and the university where he plans to attend med school.  And it has a boat slip. And a parking space. And a storage locker. And canoe storage. And bicycle storage.  As it turns out, the building and location are not hip enough for my kiddo. 

Well, my husband and I started thinking maybe we should buy it.  We're not hip.  I'm pretty sure we've never been hip. And we really like the condo.  And my husband enjoys being able to paddle around exploring the shoreline.

We've made an offer on the property, so now we just wait and see how it all works out. We're a bit skeptical, as it's a bank-owned property, and banks aren't that easy to negotiate with, but who knows?

Drop In Bathtubs

We're adding a drop in tub to the master bathroom at the beach house.  Here are a few images of tubs that we found inspirational.

via Decor Pad

via Decor Pad

traditional bathroom design

traditional bathroom design

traditional other design by bhg.com

contemporary bathroom design by burlington architect Smith & Vansant Architects PC

traditional bathroom design by chicago architect COOK ARCHITECTURAL Design Studio

This is how our tub alcove looked the first time we saw the place.  Not very inspirational.  The tub was pink and cracked, and the tile was pink, and the "step up" configuration was lethal  (this was built in the days before building codes stopped allowing "step up" tubs).

We were very happy the day that tub was demolished....

.... and ended up in a pile of rubble in the driveway.

Here is what our new tub looked like a couple of weeks ago.

It's nice and deep....

I can't wait for that first luxurious soak....

It won't be long, now!

This post is being linked to:

My Romantic Home

The Beach House Gets a Sleeping Loft

We're doing it!  We're adding the sleeping loft we talked about in this post. One of our guest bedrooms has a cathedral ceiling, and shared part of one wall with a little attic space, like I shared in this diagram.

This guest bedroom started out life as a workshop attached to a garage; then, a former owner of the house converting the garage and workshop in bedrooms.   When we bought the house last fall, we knew we wanted to keep the bedrooms, but we tweaked the floorplan a bit and made a few other changes.

 Here is how the room looked while the house was up on cribbing.

One BIG change we made was to lift the house nine feet to recapture a view lost to a growing sand dune!

old view (holding the camera over my head)

new view

This is how this guest room looked the first time we saw it.  It had suspended fluorescent lights, with exposed conduit, a concrete floor, a door leading to the driveway, and it was piled with moldy insulation.

The room was about twenty feet long, but felt oppressively narrow.  By playing around with the floor plan, we were able to correct the room's proportions, like I talked about here.

This is how the space looked a week ago.  We took down the wall that separated the bedroom from the little attic storage space, to create a sleeping loft attached to the bedroom.  The space can now function as a "family suite"!

And here is a concept for the finished space.

Let's look at the "before" again!

And now, the "after".

What do you think?  Pretty big change?

This post is being linked to the following lovely sites:

Between Naps on the Porch

Drywall is In at the Beach House!

On our last trip out to the coast, the house was really starting to feel like a, well... a house!  The dry wall was in, and has since been taped and mudded and textured.  We went over tile details, plumbing fixture details, and trim details, and I dropped off dozens and dozens of light fixtures, and laminate flooring for the remodeled wing of the house.  Would you like a tour of the rooms?

Remember the guest room concept I shared in this post?

Well, it's a far cry from how we found it last year!

Here's our guest bath.

It used to be a huge laundry room, but we've converted it to a medium sized bath and a laundry closet and a storage closet (the house also has a laundry nook in the master closet).

Here is the new laundry closet and storage closet.

Our back hallway is extra wide to allow for a wheelchair turn-around (the guest bath was also designed to accommodate a wheelchair).   The new doorways are all 36 inches to allow for easy access for wheelchairs or mobility impaired persons, as well.  The far end of the hallway will have floor to ceiling bookcases.

The hallway was carved from the converted garage bedrooms that existed when we bought the house.  Both bedrooms were very long, and you had to walk through one room...

... to get to the other.

This bedroom, with the utility sink on the left, and the breaker boxes to the back, had been used as the master bedroom.  It was part of a long ago garage/ workshop DIY conversion.

By tweaking the floor plan just a little, we were able to get three bedrooms from this old garage space, and they all have there own door :)

Do you see the two doors on the left in the photo above?  Those doors led to an en suite bathroom and to a short stairway to an exterior door.  Here is the entrance to the old master bath.

And here is the entrance to the stairway.

The wall between those two spaces has been removed, and the bathroom has been completely gutted out to create the fourth bedroom/ den.  This is what those spaces look like now (well, they looked like this last week -- they're a bit further along than this today).

The last bedroom has seen the most dramatic changes.

We talked about adding a sleeping loft "someday" to this bedroom, by busting into a storage space above.  This would make the bedroom ideal for visiting families -- or for groups of cousins, as one of my readers pointed out.

Well, my husband decided "someday" may as well be right now.

I've got another post in the works, with a concept rendering of the space, so be sure to check back in a couple of days for that.

There are a few more spaces to share, but I don't want to bore you all too much, so I'll save them for another time.  Have a wonderful weekend!

This post is being linked to the following lovely places:

Remodelaholic's Anonymous
My Romantic Home