Inspiration

Before there was Pinterest, we all used to read magazines for decor inspiration. We would carefully clip out our favourite photos and keep scrapbooks of dream houses.

Remember when...

During my purge of the spare bedroom closet this past weekend, I came across my scrapbooks. It was interesting to look back through books I have not touched in years to see how my tastes have changed and what ideas actually got incorporated into the house along the way.

Amongst all of the pictures was one of a beige stucco house with a lush garden and brick patio.

Not the most eye catching house ever. Not really my taste in houses at all.

But surprisingly this photo was the inspiration that started our whole renovation adventure.

No really.

It all started back in early 2008... while Dave was away for a ski vacation, I had spent a night at my parents house and returned home to find that someone had attempted to break into our house, leaving our back door broken. Wanting to surprise Dave with my handy abilities, I bought and installed a new back door (with some help from my fantastic dad). 

When Dave returned home, although impressed that I had fixed it without him, he prompty decided he hated the new back door. HATED. 

So we began to shop around but I could not justify wasting the $300 door I had just purchased (and installed on my own!) let alone another more expensive door on our ugly, decrepit, rotting back porch.

Shortly there after I stumbled across the picture in a copy of Style at Home. And although it looked nothing like our house in its current condition and nothing like my dream of the house in its renovated state, it got the wheels turning...

we had patio doors upstairs in the office... 

currently they led to a leaky, rotten balcony that we never used... 

we didn't really need the balcony... 

or the ugly, decrepit, rotting back porch beneath it... 

we didn't like our dark kitchen hidden behind the porch... 

but we would love french doors in the kitchen... 

leading directly out to the back yard without have to go through the dark, smelly porch...

wouldn't our house look cute with matching upper and lower french doors?

wouldn't our house look cute with a juliette balcony too?

Now do you get our thought process?

So next thing we knew we had commited ourselves to demolishing the back porch, relocating the back door I had just installed to a new shed we would build, installing new french doors in the kitchen where the entrance to the porch previously was and completely re-arranging the kitchen to accomodate the new doors.

Suddenly we went from a $300 back door to a $30,000 renovation...

And five years later we have taken a random photo in a magazine...

And turned this...

Into this.

Looks exactly like the inspiration photo right?

We still need to paint the lower french doors and windows black and install the juliette balcony. But we definitely have come a long way.

Amy

PS. For more on the kitchen renovation check out: Part I Part II Part III 

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