Our Farmhouse Pantry Renovation: Before & After

Oh, hi. Remember us? It's been a minute since we last popped on for an update. We've been hard at work on the house, but we had one teeny little project that has kind of held us up for months. I'm happy to say, it's finally done!

So friends, this was the little project that could. We started to renovate our kitchen pantry right after we finished our master bathroom in September because we thought it would be a nice, easy-breezy room we could get done in a couple of months. We thought it was more than realistic to have it done by Thanksgiving last year, and we were so excited at the possibility of having it complete right before baking season began. Oh, we'll just rip all the walls down in a day, take a week or so to install new drywall and electrical, and in a little over a month we should have this thing done in time for Thanksgiving! It's funny to think how wrong we were! 

The biggest delay was actually beyond our control. The sawmill we used to have all our wood pieces cut for our custom shelving just ran into delay after delay after delay. We called in our order about a month before Thanksgiving, they said it would all be ready in a week or so, and we got it on March 31st of the following year. It was crazy, and unfortunately, we're just limited on places in our area where we can order custom wood pieces. On top of that, we ran into a lot of design issues because of the slanted ceiling, and our attempt to squeeze way too many things in here. But, in the end, we ended up getting almost everything we wanted for our pantry, and it's finally done. About six months late, but it's done.

This Year's Big Project: Plans For Our Living Room Spaces

It's the New Year, which means it's time for another huge house project. We changed our minds so many times on what we wanted to tackle next. Now that the two bathrooms and the one guest room are done, which were always our biggest priorities, everything else seemed to have the same sense of urgency. In October, we were so certain we were going to tackle our remaining two bedrooms next, one of which serves as Josh's home office. But while arranging our downstairs living spaces this past Christmas to prep them for our trees, it hit me that it was time to start renovating these spaces so that we could get them exactly how we wanted for the next  holiday season. Josh agreed because we spend most of our time downstairs in our living room, and we had kinda, sorta started them already, but never finished.

Allow me to explain.

Basically, we have two living rooms, and we spend most of our time in the one that overlooks our backyard. Here's a little (also, horrible) diagram on the layout:

Top 10 (And A Half) Moments From 2018

While the end of the New Year doesn't always spark renewed motivation for me to set goals or revamp my life in anyway, it's hard to not reminisce about our accomplishments, favorite little everyday moments and adventures taken. Every year we spend in this house, we think back a lot more during this time of the year because we usually take some time to do a whole lot of nothing, and look back on the projects we've finished. This also got me thinking about all the little moments that had huge impacts, how lucky we are that we've gotten to travel more as of late, and how great life really is - every single day. Looking back on 2018, I put together a list of my top 10 memories; well, more like 10 and a half, which I'll explain later. I always try to find something good in every day, even the very worst of days, so it goes without saying that coming home to Josh and the doggies every day after work is always a favorite memory. But these are definitely the rest of the standouts from the past year.