The New, The Improved Kitchen, Dining and Living

Mom, Dad and Emily have been up from Houston since last Sunday, and Dad has gone to town with kitchen renovations!! Rory was wonderful, and worked until about 11pm every weeknight for about two weeks before they arrived to get the house finished. I helped too, but Rory deserves most of the kudos... he did all the hard stuff and really made it all come together! We ended up moving in the day before Mom, Emily and Dad got here... in fact, I was still unpacking 30 minutes before they arrived! We had a great week in Canberra... we visited Gold Creek, went to the farm, ate in the Telstra Tower revolving restaurant, and they saw most of the sites around Canberra. Dad tiled the kitchen, Emily painted loads of trim, and mom's decorating skills will be sorely missed. They left today, leaving the kitchen looking like this: I bought the kitchen second hand for about 1/5 of what we would have paid for it new (from someone who had only had it 3 years... who gets rid of a three year old kitchen?!). Rory knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make one big, long room, and it really opened up the space and made it look excellent! We even got a dishwasher, which is a giant leap away from washing dishes by hand! When dad came, he did a fabulous tile job. He used the tiles that we had on the hearth in the lounge room, which I really liked. That brings the grand total of 'original decor' items to 2... the tiles and a bit of wallpaper that we left in the master bedroom closet. Dad also bought us the kitchen cabinets, which match perfectly... lucky, considering we bought them from Bunnings (Australian Home Depot) straight off the shelf. And now, the living room: My favorite room in the house! Remember the ugly pink bedroom? Rory knocked down that room, too, and we separated it into two seating areas. We laid carpet on one side of the front door, and wood on the other to make the long room into two separate areas. We chose a paint chip from Bunnings and used every one of the colors on it... kind of un-inspired, but it turned out great!! The walls are gray, the trim is a darker gray, and the focal walls and firplace are green. The carpeted side is the TV area, a small seating area with the blue couch and the TV (and Alfie's chairs). The wood side we use for a game/ seating area. I prefer the chairs over by the heater... its been nice and cozy over there for the past few cold nights! It turned out better than I could have hoped for... there is lots of room for lots of guests, and its comfortable to boot! Mom, Emily and Dad went up to Sydney yesterday, and Rory and I will join them to catch a flight to Cairns on Wednesday morning. We're going to go to the Great Barrier Reef for a few days... I can't wait for the warmer weather! Hopefully, I'll have lots of great pictures to share when we get back, and I'll continue the house tour as well.