Key West Renovations

As you know, we spent a lot of time this summer in KW renovating our place and painting the ceilings, walls and closets. This entry is a 'Before and After' view of the changes that we made. We still have a some work to do, but this is what it looks like right now. This is view of the Living Room before we painted.

 

This is a similar view of the Living Room after we painted and got some new furniture. We used differant shades of the same color on the walls throughout the first floor. We started with a deeper color on the wall with the sun and lighter on walls as you moved around the space toward the kitchen and up the stairway.

This is the Dining Room area before the new paint.

 

This is the same space after we painted. Actually, that's Neal on the staircase "Painting Away in Margaritaville".

The wine rack wall before the paint.

 

After the new paint and with a different piece of art work.

The kitchen before the March renovation and new paint.

 

The kitchen after renovations and with the new paint.

Heading upstairs, the steps used to be carpeted and the walls were the same ivory white that we had used throughout the interior of our place.

We removed the carpet and installed bamboo flooring. It gave it a more tropical feel and blends better with the new wall colors.

The whole second floor used to be carpeted, too. This view is of the hallway looking from the master bedroom down the hall to the guest room before the new floor was installed and the walls were painted.

This is a similar view from the master bedroom looking down the hallway with the bamboo floor. You can see several of the new paint colors we used upstairs.

This is the opposite view - from the guest room toward the master bedroom with the old carpet.

This is the same view with the bamboo flooring and new paints.

As I mentioned earlier, the master bedroom was carpeted and the walls were the same light, ivory color as the rest of the interior of our place.

We put the bamboo flooring in the bedroom and painted the walls a mango color.

We left the master bedroom closet as full closets but gave the closet doors a fresh coat of paint. We put starfish on as door knobs! (I know, starfish aren't found in the tropics. But I really liked the knobs so I said the heck with it and used them anyway.)

The master bath used to be a little bit 'bright' shall we say?

 

We redid it and painted it one shade lighter than the mango color we used in the master bedroom. We got some funky knobs for the new cabinets and drawers in the bathroom, too.

The washer/dryer are located on the second floor. The original machine was a smaller combo w/d and fit in the laundry closet pretty well. But a year or so ago we bought new full size machines and stacked them. While the machines did fit in the closet, it was a very,, very tight fit. The whole stacking set up in such tight space concerned Neal a lot. In the case of an emergency, you'd have to pull both machines out at the same time. There was not wiggle room to do that quickly.

So he had the contractors build a shelf to support the dryer so we they didn't have to be stacked any more. Then, Neal de-coupled the machines. Now we can get to the washer (bottom machine) out without having to first take the dryer off the top. Very, very important if the washer ever got a leak....

The guest room is very small. Even with just a bed, dresser and night stand, it was difficult to walk around. And it wasn't an efficient use of space, which is at a premium in KW.

So, we painted the walls and carried the bamboo flooring into the room. We  brought the yellow rug up from the living room, too. Since we'll be spending more time in KW, we changed the furniture so that it's more flexible and can be used as an bedroom, an office, a tv room  or a reading room.

The closet in this room used to have just a rod for hanging clothes. That configuration resulted in a real inefficient use of that space. So we contracted with KW Closets (like California Closets) to design a layout that gave us more and better use of the closet space.

In the left side of the closet, we installed a rod to hang clothes on the far left, put in white shelving, and built out a space wide and deep enough to hold a large flat screen TV. Then we installed electrical outlets and a new cable connection in the closet.

In the right side closet, we put a set of drawers, shelving, and some additional rods to hang clothing. This allowed us to do away with the dresser that took up so much valuable space in the room.

We kept the bifold doors. We gave them a fresh coat of white paint and some fancy door pulls.. Now we can close them up when we're not watching TV and no one is using the closet space.

We still have some things left to do in KW but a lot of the heavy lifting has been done. Now comes the fun stuff - decorating!

Hemingway Days

When we went to KW over the summer, we hoped we could stay long enough to participate in "Hemingway Days". This is an annual celebration of the life of Ernest "Papa" Hemingway and is held each year around his birthday which was July 21. The Hemingway Days celebration has a lot of activities such as the Papa Hemingway Look-alike Contest, readings of some of his works at local galleries, the Running of the Bulls, a Marlin Tournament, and the 5k Sunset Road Race. Here is my choice for the 2010 Papa Hemingway look-alike winner!

Key West knows how to throw a party. For Hemingway Days, early in the day they closed  Duval Street to cars to get ready for the events!

By late moring, the street vendors and crafters were all there and everyone came out and had a great time.

Around noon,  the Papa's started to appear around Sloppy Joes bar.

 

Although the Running of the Bulls didn't start until 1:00 pm, I think the Papa's came early to be sure the bulls were healthy and feed and up for the Run.

While the Papa's were waiting for the race, I decided to climb up on the bull!

Lead by the KW Boys in Blue.....

... the bulls started to run. Well, they never actually ran because all the Papa's were drinking beer and didn't want to spill any.

I'm not sure who won the race or if anyone even made it to the finish line. But it was certainly a lot of laughs and everyone had a great time. Meanwhile at the Marlin Tournament, they caught only one marlin. They didn't bring it in because they can only catch-and-release Marlins. But this team caught a huge yellow tale snapper which they did bring in.

 

Neal and I decided to run in the 5K Sunset Run. And, as we probably have told you, we each won in "in our class" (aka old people class). We were pretty surprised- and happy. Not too shabby, huh!

It was a great celebration and we had a lot of fun. And like most birthdays, no celebration is complete without a birthday cake. It was delicious!

Happy Birthday, Ernest!