Sassy Seagull on The Tybee Tour of Homes!

Wow! It's been a long while since I've posted. Now that spring is here I am thrilled to think about tuning up our Tybee cottages for beach season!  I'm also super-excited to announce that our cottage, The Sassy Seagull is going to be on the 

Tybee Tour of Homes on May 5, 2018! 

We've been working hard to make it a fun time filled with lots of inspiration and great ideas for all of the tour patrons. We hope that you will come for a great day of touring and having lunch at Tybee! Click here for details about the tour, tickets and such...

My last post was a wrap up with pretty pictures of the vintage clawfoot tub bathroom reno at Sassy Seagull cottage. If you missed it and want to catch up, there is a link below plus a few "blast from the past" posts at The Sassy Seagull...

Clawfoot Tub Bathroom

Beach-y Master Bedroom

Quirky Little Kitchen

From Dive to Dining Room

Living Room--Welcome In!

I'll be back soon with some all new pictures and posts!

Now We're Cooking!

Last week I posted about all of the crazy quirks in the kitchen at Sassy Seagull and how we planned to remodel it. Let me pick up where we left off...

I chose basic white shaker cabinets--a style that suits this little cottage--simple 

and timeless.

I found these knobs and pulls at Home Depot. I liked the aged, galvanized look and felt it had the feel I was trying to capture in this vintage cottage.

I used Wilsonart laminate countertops in Designer White...not fancy or luxurious (which fits in with with the down home feel of these quaint old Tybee cottages) but 

very budget-friendly!

Once these elements were in place we stained the floors, installed the sink and the appliances, and painted the walls with Martha Stewart Living's 

"Glass of Milk" in semi-gloss. I also had some pretty blue penny tiles installed as a backsplash.

Here's a closeup of the tile...

SomerTile FXLMPML Retro Penni Matte Light Porcelain Floor and Wall Tile

Last but not least, we had some leftover boards that were ripped down from some of the walls in the cottage to allow for wiring and plumbing to be updated so we decided to salvage them and reuse them by cladding the peninsula with them.  They add such a fun touch to the room! And they were free!

So here's the kitchen...

I used curtains in the window that pick up the orange of the stools. They are not pictured here because they were installed after I took these photos. This is the fabric...

P. Kaufmann Indoor/Outdoor Coral Splendor Stripe fabric

A few more photos...

And that's how we went from this...

To this...

SaveSave

A Quirky Kitchen

Have you ever played "What's Wrong With This Picture?"  Well, take a look at these "before" photos of the kitchen at Sassy Seagull cottage and let's play!

What's wrong with this kitchen?

Some of the things that stand out to me are (1) the countertop and cabinet end at a window (2) there is a electrical panel box next to the upper cabinet which violates code and  (3) the overall look says "tired".

Here's another view of the room...What else do you see?

At first I wondered if an appliance was missing at the end of the counter to the right of the sink but then I realized there was a gap there because of the closet door. And although it is not obvious from these photos, the floors were buckling and we suspected (correctly) that there were structural issues to deal with.

So these were on our to-do list:

(1) Gut the kitchen

(2) Repair the structural issues to shore up the floor joists. 

(3)Relocate the electrical panel to the new laundry/utility room.

(4) Close up the window on the left side of the room so the base and upper cabinets could run all the way across to the wall. This was a tough call but having cabinets won out. We compensated by replacing the center window with a slightly larger one.

(5) Replace the flooring with wood floors and clad the walls with paneling to match the rest of the house.

(6) Add pulldown attic stairs so that access could be available to the attic for storage and for servicing the systems such as HVAC, wiring, plumbing. The stairs were added in the walkway that goes through the periphery of the kitchen and not in the work area. You can see just a bit of them in the ceiling on the right.

(7) Close up one of the closets on the right side of the wall so that the counter and cabinets can run all the way across without obstruction. As the next photos show, the lost closet space was recovered on the living room side of the wall as a built-in bookshelf.

Looking from kitchen side through to the living room before the wall is closed up.

The roughed-in bookshelf

The finished bookshelf in the living room.

(8) Turn one of the other closets into a built-in pantry/storage area with shelving.

 (9) Add a peninsula for additional workspace, storage, and seating.  Here's a not-to-scale hand drawing of the plan.

Next week I'll show you how it all turned out!

"Before" Part One

Have you ever thought it would be fun to renovate a beach cottage? It is! It is so satisfying to see a cottage that is past its prime given a new lease on life. It's also very challenging to do it on a budget.

Let me show you our new little old cottage at Tybee Island.

Let's do a pretend walk-through so you can see the "Before" pictures. Then we can begin to get a feel for the cottage and begin imagining what we might want to do. Come on in!

Tiny Screened Porch leading to the Front Door

Living Room

The door on the left is the entry door from the screened porch. The door on the right which used to be the front door now leads to the dining area.

Dining Room

Kitchen


Notice the challenges in this room...there are many but two of the most obvious are the electrical panel over the countertop as well as the way the countertops end before the wall due to a window on one side and a closet door on the other.

This cottage also has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I'll show you those rooms in the next post.

"Coasting" into 2014!

It has been good to have a few weeks "off" to focus on my family and to think through my goals for 2014.  I'm still thinking and praying about the year ahead but also looking back to what was accomplished in 2013 and I just realized that I never finished giving you a tour of

Coast Awhile Cottage.

 

Jane Coslick and I worked so hard on Coast Awhile Cottage and then my husband and I sold it   The sale happened just as we were finishing up Doc Holiday cottage-- and it just kinda got lost in the busy-ness of decorating.  Kindly, the new owner gave me permission to show you what we did--this is what I was doing as we were ushering in 2013.

 I have already shown you the front porch "after".

And earlier I showed you how the living room went from this

...to this.  Click here for a link to the post with more photos!

In my last post concerning Coast Awhile Cottage there was a kitchen reveal. 

 

 

 So that bring us to where we left off...pretending we were finishing up cooking a nice seafood dinner.  Next time we'll head over to--where else?--the dining room!

By the way--Happy New Year!  I hope 2014 will be blessed and that we all will prosper in the most important areas of life!  Let's get started!

 

 

This Kitchen Gets Some Bling!

When I left you last time our kitchen was almost completed.  All we were lacking was a pantry which John Lindsay from Catskill Builders built to fit the space we had available.

You can see the pantry against the wall looking slightly rustic--just the way we want it.  But if you look closely you'll see something is not quite right yet...

This kitchen needs some bling!  I always think of the knobs as being like the jewelry accessorizing an outfit.  Budget had to be considered so I chose inexpensive pulls for the cabinet doors and splurged a little on the drawer knobs.

I found some great candidates.  Looky, looky!

Here are the sources for the hardware starting with the top row going left to right and 

working down.  I found most of them and many more at knobs.com which has a huge selection of knobs with beach and nautical themes.

1.  Hickory Hardware rectangular cabinet pull from Lowes  $4.39

2.  Liberty 2 3/4 in. Newton cabinet pull from Home Depot  $1.78

3. Siro Designs Ocean Line Collection bright chrome starfish knob  $7.51

4. Cal Crystal Artx Glass knob.  Comes in several colors ad finishes.  I chose Marine Blue (more turquoise than the knob shown) and polished nickel  $11.76

5.  Liberty Seaside Cottage turtle knob in vintage antique white  $2.86

6.  Liberty Seaside Cottage Starfish knob in vintage antique white  $2.86

7.  Novelty Hardware Tropical Collection Large Seahorse facing right--many finishes available.  My favorite was nickel  $13.68

8.  Novelty Hardware Tropical Collection Large Seahorse facing left  $13.68

This was my edited list of candidates.  There were so many great knobs to choose from.  The Liberty Seaside Cottage collection was huge and temptingly affordable!  So what did I choose?

I decided to use the bright chrome Starfish knobs from Siro for the nine drawers in the kitchen.  

 

For the cabinets I preferred the Hickory Hardware pulls from Lowes but since I splurged on the drawer pulls, I chose the inexpensive Liberty Newton cabinet pulls that were in stock at Home Depot.  They look fine!

Then for the pantry doors I couldn't resist the seahorses that face each other.  I chose the nickel finish which is brighter than the picture shown below.  Here's one seahorse...

After a marathon shopping trip to furnish the kitchen with dishes, appliances, pots and pans, etc. and it's hardware finery installed, the kitchen is finally all decked out and ready for a party!

The first holiday celebrated at Doc Holiday was Independence Day!  Simple decoration--3 flags in vases.  Gotta make do.

My daughter Meghan painted the corkboard with the chevron pattern as a Mother's Day gift for me!

Come on over!