We've officially had our house for almost three weeks now, and we are slowly making progress! Every night after we put Lelia to bed we run over and put in a few hours of work. The "ick" factor is fading as we remove years of grease and dirt and mouse poop. I know everyone has their own level of dirtiness they're comfortable living with, and I wouldn't say mine's off the charts high or anything, but the level of grime in this house is WAY too high! Just so you know what we're dealing with, I'll share this photo of what Joe found in the vent hood above the stove:

So, you can see we have a lot of work to do. Let me give you a little tour.

Here is the view from the french doors as you enter from the garage. The size and layout are not bad, it just needs a little freshening up. We plan to do a major renovation at some point, that will allow us to remove the column and replace the island and laminate flooring but for now we're just going to do some cosmetic changes so it's livable. All the cabinets are solid wood and are in great condition, so my plan is to add hardware and some simple shaker style molding so they aren't so plain. I don't care for the glass window pane doors (nobody needs to see my spices or my baby's bottles), so those will get swapped out with plain ones we'll steal from the butler's pantry (in the background). As I mentioned, it looks like we're stuck with the column in the middle of the room for now, so I'll try to reface it and help make sense of the half beam somehow.

I am big on symmetry, and this sink being off center of the window is KILLING me! So, hopefully we'll be able to move that bottom row of cabinets around and rearrange them so that the sink is centered directly under the window and the dishwasher is pushed down a little. Obviously we'll install new lighting, a new back splash, and counters.

The kitchen actually has a lot of storage which is so nice, since our last kitchen literally had 3 cabinets and 4 drawers in it! Here is a picture of some of the cabinetry in the periphery of the room. All the storage in here is such a luxury, and I never thought I'd say this, but I almost feel like there's too many cabinets in the room. I'd like to create a little corner here that just has a bench for taking off shoes and maybe some hooks or artwork or something simple you can see when you first walk in the door. Here are some of the inspiration images I've been staring at to figure out what I want. Follow me on Pinterest (@virginiadwelling) if you want to see more!

SO, stayed tuned, because we've already started demo, and will be sharing sneak peaks soon!