We still need to finish painting and Window Treatments (why do these need to be so expensive), new front porches and update our heating system. We already put in all new windows (both units), new electrical (our unit), new floors, 2 new bathrooms, new insulation, kitchen.... an so on.

This forum was a great help in deciding what we needed, wanted and great for resources. There are quit a few things that we did that are direct result of all the research and threads on GW. Thanks:

photos on a cloudy day, much brighter when it isn't so gray out:

looking into the living space from kitchen:

into kitchen from living space:

saved the old dining hutch:

Living space:

My office tucked away with door to front porch and DD easel, my desk is tucked away on the other side as well as a closet.

Pantry/half bath/laundry off the kitchen on the right of photo:

Close up of quartzite:

Anyone that lived in the city might understand why I am so excited about this "room" our half bath/laundry/pantry. To not have to walk 2 or 3 flights of stairs to the basement to do laundry has been awesome (especially since I have a new baby coming end of January). This room needs to be painted and I think I will hang a curtain or fabric to close of the w/d. This was an old useless unfinished 3 seasons porch:

Thanks for looking, sorry if it is so long.

I love it. It's wonderful. Gorgeous, clean, and so much storage!! Congratulations and best wishes on your new baby! Having a laundry close like that, I know, is worth a lot.

dislikes:
do not like the trash pullout... ugh. I am constantly wiping it down and the top of it already chipped. We (well DD and DH) are just too rough on it. Wish we did a bank of drawers there and put the trash next to the back stairs
We skipped on a garbage disposal, we have everything wired to add it, might do so....
A lot of things that I wish we could have done were things that we just did not have in the budget to do. Went with a cheaper backsplash, no uppers, and less expensive fixtures, I do not really miss them but figured these can be added later if need be.

The work was actually completed end of JUNE (they started end of March). We have been living with it for 6 months, but I wanted to update where we are now as I had shown a preview before.

I still feel it is not quite finished, still a little bland. I hope adding some window treatments will help (open to suggestions) We just needed to stop spending money for a while LOL. We have 12 windows, non of which are standard size. Originally I wanted custom fabric shades but that will be at least 3K..... again open to any and all suggestions. As I think adding some sort of Window treatment will pull it together more.

I was wondering about the chalkboard - my DM always had one and had a painted frame around it - we tried to talk her out of it during the renovation zillions of years ago - but she painted the frame and it was always a fond memory - since your kitchen is white - how about a white board and markers instead of chalk.

Questions - what are the large drawers on either side of the sink? - DW drawers?
What color is the wall?

Hopefully Bee or Lavender or some of the other design folks will pop on your requests for finishing touches.

Also - how about more details on your total kitchen when you have time Thanks!

Question 1: What brand is your kitchen cabinet?
Question 2: I really like your cooking stove. What brand is it? What's size is it?
Love it all!

The great thing about such a neutral background is that you can change the accent color at any time and totally change the room. I love the little pops of orange you have in the living room and you could totally swap them for another color and change the whole mood when you get tired of it.

I really like the pantry cabs surrounding the fridge, especially with your integrated microwave cabinet and the drawers below it. That looks amazing. And I love your counters and the backsplash and height you took it to.

The colors looks great and your gorgeous floor keeps everything warm looking. Lovely kitchen. Best wishes for many years of joy in your new home for your whole family, 2-legged and 4-legged. :)

Congratulations on the new baby !! c

There's a lot of brown furniture in the family room, but maybe some more of that clear blue in throw pillows or the throw(s) on the couch/chair? I love your kitchen/family areas and just think they need some planned pops of color.

Can you totally tell I love what you've done? ;)

Thanks!!!

Cabinets: Shiloh Polar white beaded inset in Homestead
Wall Color- Ben Moore Revere Pewter threw out the first level
Range and Fridge: DCS, 36" range came with 2 free dishdrawers
Dishdrawers: 2 Tall dish drawers on either side of the sink, with regular cabinet drawer under. this has been awesome b/c I hated to lean all the way down to load/unload (we hand wash pots and pan mostly)
Range hood-Viking
Open Shelving-Reclaimed wood from Elmwood (awesome company to work with) mounted directly to studs
Faucet: Blanco Culina
Dining light Fixture- Robert Abbey Thalia
Table-antique farmhouse salvage
barstools-pottery barn
knobs/pulls-restoration hardware
Counters- Taj Mahal quartzite
Backsplash-daltile contempo marble subway
Floors-rift and quartered white oak site finished with bona traffic hd super matte. (kids bedroom still have original pine)

This is after we gutted:

I will admit when I walked up and the house was like this I had a mini panic attack about what we got ourselves into, but the end result has been fantastic. So any at this point feeling the same panic feeling know the end will be worth it.

Suzanne- I do love the blue accents thanks!

As an appliance buff, I must ask how do you like your 36" DCS range for cooking, durability, cleaning? How long does it's fan run and how loud. I've heard good reports to date, but now it's production has moved to China and of course, we await new news.

Lovely living space amongst your generations. Enjoy!

Ps what did you ever do with the wrong color cabs?
Congratulations on the outcome!

Now, on to that kitchen! It is gorgeous! If you wouldn't have confessed that lack of uppers was for cost savings reasons, I would never ever have thought that. It looks so clean and contemporary without looking "modern". Sounds confusing, I know, but in my odd world it makes perfect sense! Love all your choices and really it all looks very high end, nothing looks like you skimped.

I have two tall dish drawers too, it was a change from the double one in the last kitchen. A WELCOME change! I also hated bending down to get dishes essentially off of the floor! I'm sure being 8 months pregnant you really appreciate that now.

Can you retrofit a foot pedal for the trash pull-out drawer? I know Beagles has one (not retrofitted, but it was one that the cabinetmaker installed during construction). You can always ask her for the details on where she got it, etc.

As far as window treatments, if you really want something to warm up the place and not be too expensive, you can get some woven roman shades. Have them match in all the windows. It would unify the space and you can get them relatively cheaply. Check JCPenney, Overstock, Lowe's... A nice honey color to go with the floors would be great. (My opinion, of course) ;-)

Couple of more days, and you will be saying you are "due this month"! Yikes. Time is going to go so quickly, so get ready to enjoy it.

Best Wishes,
Bee

Fab job!!

And I love your shih tzus! Spotted the first guy in the chair, then cracked up when I saw the other one up front by the couch;)

Congratulations! Thanks so much for sharing all the pics, they're fabulous!

Fistmap- I love having "no" uppers, but I would absolutely miss the open shelving I have. It is a must for me for dishes I use on a daily basis mixed in with a few for decor. I think no uppers can be done easily if you have some pantry storage and/or willing to do some open shelves for mostly used items.
We fit our extra dishes/glasses in 2 27" drawer.
Here is a better shot of our open shelving, the brackets were put in the studs so can hold a lot. Most our plates are in the dish drawers, all of our dishes we use on a daily basis fit here. My 3 year old has her own drawer under one of the dish drawers that holds all her plastic plates, utensils, cups and bowls, so she can reach it and put he own dishes away. Works very well for us:

I have not seen Taj Mahal Quartzite installed before. I saw it at our local supplier, but have never seen anyone use it and it's fabulous. You will love the quartzite. It's so amazingly durable and no maintenance. I might have to go back and look at it again for our remodel :) Yours has a warm feel to it and I wonder now about the slabs I saw.

Love your faucet. It's a beautiful shape and I am really liking the professional series look of it, but with a modern bent. So pretty!

I agree with Bee about the woven shades. The wood would add a warmth. I could also see a pretty fabric in a modern pattern like this Mark Alexander Uzbek fabric:

Well, maybe not your house, but you know what I mean. One of the gazillions of Boston two- and three-family houses with the exact same layouts.

First of all, you must realize that your kitchen is about twenty times nicer than anything you'd see in a similar house, even a recent flip. Most of the renos are completely bizarre to me. They are either Home Depot specials or really odd, bizarre pseudo modern things with crazy tile and weird angles. Yours is lovely and fits the house. Looks like Wellesley.

Second, I can't explain why I think this, but U-shaped sideways kitchens like yours seem to work really well and feel just right in these old Boston places. It makes way for all the front-to-back traffic, but you still get a cozy space out of it.

As far as color and personalization--look into top-down bottom-up shades to give you privacy from the street while still allowing light at the top.

The other thing I can suggest, having lived in a space almost exactly like that one, is some sort of divider between the living and dining spaces, but one that blocks no light. From personal experience I can say that these actually make the space appear bigger. I'm talking about something not this busy, and not this dark, but this amount of see-through:

Or maybe:

Put it where the hubs is sitting in your photo. Or behind the couch.

I do think we plan on getting top down/bottom up shades...WE had then in our last place and liked them, but they add up so quickly when you need so many of them. Not sure if we will do a print or solid. Last time we had a solid color that let a lot of light threw and liked them the ones we had in the old house, wish I had taken them with us, maybe they would have fit!

Thanks!

swtceleb, that fan caught my eye too. Looks like it's the Minka Aire Acero in ORB/Mahogany.

Swtceleb- it is indeed the minka aire Acero. It is a decent air mover, though we had the MA Como before and that was more powerful, but of course this one looks nicer!

Jfay- I think kids artwork would look great there, thanks for the suggestion!

Cieler the floors are rift and quartered white oak, site finished in extra matte. We did order online. Hurst hardwood had great prices, Marc from countryplank price matched them, I have heard good things about both places.

Can you share the dims of the kitchen space, and comment on the lighting? We are struggling there, with how many, feet apart, etc. Like you, we will have no uppers, and a bank of wall cabinets opposite. Any insight to your lighting plan or design would be much appreciated.

Regarding bottom up shades. DH and I just made some really, super-inexpensive ones. He bought a six pack of Redi-shades for $20. Then we attached stick on velcro fasteners to the window edge half way up, near the locks, and the corresponding fasteners to the top edge of the paper shades. We keep them tightly folded and clipped down (they come with the clips, kind of like clothespins), sitting on the windowsill during the day, and then unclip, unfold and lift them up to the halfway point and velcro them in place when it starts to get dark out. They're pretty unobtrusive. It's a great fix, and would give you some privacy while you save up for the more expensive deal if you want. (No, this wasn't our idea. We found it somewhere in cyberspace.)

Whit- our kitchen is just over 16' long and 12' wide. For the lighting plan we actually have a small pendant to still put in over the kitchen sink. We originally purchased 2 pendants over the peninsula, but with the kitchen light fixture, dining chandelier so close by we nixed it. We used the highly GW rec. home depot LED 4" lights. We had the electrician put them where we needed them most and have 8/9 in the kitchen and then more threw out the first floor. They are all on dimmers. With out the uppers to worry about shadows on the countertop we rarely turn them all the way up. During the day I rarely turn on any lights as the place gets lots of natural light.
Good luck with your remodel. I really working in this kitchen and find it plenty big for us. We hosted Christmas and had about 5-6 people cooking/prepping and it was great. Cleans up well and the peninsula has been perfect for my 3 year olds meals and craft time and keeps her at bay while I cook.

Just wanted to ad our much anticipated new addition finally made her debute fashionably late on 2/13/13, a successful VBAC:

We are enjoying her just as much as the kitchen ;)

She's also lucky in that she will grow up in such a lovely home.

Congratulations on all of the above.

Oh, and your baby is nice too! :)

You said you did your backsplash cheap, but I absolutely adore it. Which brand of subways did you use?

Thanks!