window lickin' good

Remember when we first toured our house what the kitchen looked like? See those windows?

For nearly two years the only thing we did to them was paint the trim, even though there was a huge piece of broken glass out of the right window. Yep, that is the kitchen before we did pretty much anything to it...

When we gutted the kitchen we never moved the placement of the windows because we knew that was a bigger job than we were willing to take on.

When it got too cold from the giant piece of glass missing in the right window and we were tired of wearing our winter coats inside we did the depressing act of boarding up the window for the cold and dark months.

 

About two months ago we ordered our new windows from Home Depot. We chose the Anderson 200 series (400 is the completely upgraded model) because everything we wanted was in that model and we weren't about to pay at least an extra $150 per window to say we have Anderson 400. When our windows finally came in there was much celebrating... No more broken pane! No more Drew trying to eat scary window sills!

Here is the beginning of the end. The probably lead paint filled trim had been pried off by my demo loving handyman (aka: husband). 

I was on Drew duty that day (not just snapping pics of all the fun destruction) and had him bundled up in a snow suit since we were missing two large windows in our house. Here he is watching every move AJ makes.

At this point he'd put the first window in. Drew and I ran down to the hardware store to pick up some roofing nails for him to secure it to the house (each window has nail holes all around the frame of the window).

See that ugly thing on the side of our house with the silver facing over it? Look up in the first photograph... it's covering that vent that AJ filled in. He'll have to get new clapboard to cover it but (obviously) other things have taken priority.

AJ is still working on the trim on the inside of the house but here are some 85% finished pictures:

We couldn't be happier. They look like they fit right into the kitchen and now they match all the other windows. We also love how the windows have the panes on both the top and bottom portion of the window, because they bring extra character and a timeless feel to the kitchen.

What is left on the kitchen, you may wonder...

Frame the fridge in with a larger piece of wood on each side to make the fridge look more built in (so nothing will show other than the doors to the fridge). This will mean moving the upper cabinets closer to the front of the fridge.

Finishing the stairway.

Molding above the cabinets.

Finishing the work on our raised ceiling (which for now is only above the table... we need to extend it into the kitchen).

Lastly, our newest brainstorm... adding two extra cabinets to the island for extra storage and to make an appliance garage and then adding a breakfast bar about six inches higher than the current island.