Some serious before and after

(My apologies for the blurriness of the “after” shots…I think I have some more learning to do with regard to my camera.)

 

I can see a twinkle of light…

We have been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our living/dining room. It is truly incredible how long all the small details take to complete. Not to mention the fact that we have been waiting on our living room furniture from Dania for two months. The couch and chair-and-a-half arrive Saturday morning, and we can finally invite people over to our house and be able to offer them a place to sit and relax!

The following are some of the minor projects that are either in progress or that we have yet to start in the living space:

• Baseboard installation (almost complete, and it’s transformed the feel of the space completely)
• Repaint heat grates (using spray paint to give them a hammered, wrought iron look)
• Replace fireplace screen (rip out ugly brass built-in and replace with free-standing wrought iron screen)
• Hang dining room curtains (chocolate-colored, to match the living room furniture)
• Hang mirror in dining room (I have a large mirror with an antiqued frame that is one of my most prized possessions…it is hopefully going to add some dimension to the dining room.)
• Find a rug for the living room (Can anyone help on this one? We are looking for something neutral but not boring, with hints of the cranberry color in our other rug in it to tie the space together.)

We can’t wait to finally share our space with the people we love!

 

Return from a winter wonderland

It feels so good to be home in Seattle after living through a stretch of real winter weather back in Duxbury. A few days after our arrival, Mother Nature dumped twenty inches of snow on us. Needless to say, this made Christmas shopping, Christmas decorating, and holiday life in general a bit difficult.

Below are two photos I managed to take before my camera died. (Yes, I forgot the charger…my brain is still living in a world where any two AA batteries can be used to restore life to a camera.) The first one is a mid-storm view from my mother’s kitchen door window; the second one is a post-storm view of a partially frozen Bluefish River, down the street from my mother’s house.

 

Mocha magic

Window treatments have finally found their way to our large front window. The custom wood blinds we ordered from Lowe’s arrived last week, and their presence makes the living room feel a lot cozier and, of course, gives us some much needed privacy from peering neighbors. Everyone we have met in the neighborhood can detail just about every renovation project we have done so far. Thankfully everyone seems relatively nice and normal, otherwise I would probably feel more uncomfortable than I do about it.

Overall, we are very happy with the blinds; my one qualm is that, because we went with one large blind instead of breaking the window up with two or three, it’s a bit of a struggle to open and close, and it makes me feel guilty, as if I am hurting this thing we paid too much money for every time I do so. They do make it very easy to regulate the amount of light the plants get without exposing the empty daytime house to the rest of the world.

 

Profile of a master bedroom closet

 

Filling in the gaps

Once the baseboards are in, it’s time to furnish! Here is what we are thinking for the furniture in the living/dining room:

Dining room table and chairs

Entertainment console (This matches the table and chairs and, although it’s listed online as a buffet, most of the reviews say people have used it as a TV stand. Wine consumption can be considered entertainment, right?)

The other large pieces (sofa and chair-and-a-half) are from Dania and have already been ordered, but they aren’t listed on the website (which really bugs me, by the way…if the sofa is backordered, it’s obviously a popular item that should be featured prominently on their site, no?). We will have to make further decisions about a coffee table and an ottoman for the chair once the furniture is in the space and we can take measurements.

In addition to these items, we need to make some choices regarding area rugs and curtains for the sliding door in the dining room. We have ordered wood blinds for the large picture window at the front of the room and gone with Mocha for the color. They arrive on Thursday, so our lives wont be on display for the entire neighborhood to see much longer. I am leaning toward incorporating some red/maroon into the decor in the living and dining space, and doing so with curtains and floor coverings (although I don’t want to mask the beautiful hardwoods too much). Retailer and/or product suggestions are welcomed!

 

Life in Hardwood Heaven

After a long Thanksgiving weekend of toiling away (resulting in hurting hands, knees, legs, and backs), the hardwood floors are finally installed. Immeasurable appreciation once again goes out to B’s cousins for their amazing work and dedicated time to our cause; we now have rich, beautiful floors that make the space feel warmer and cozier than the old wall-to-wall carpeting ever could have hoped to. The caramel brown and subtle grain of the planks creates an eye-catching contrast with the lighter, muted colors of the walls. And it looks SO classy. We can dress it up or dress it down, and we can have fun with art and other decor options because we have kept the basics, well, basic. It is so exciting to see the space coming together and, more importantly, a sliver of light at the end of the superproject tunnel. The house is really starting to feel like our HOME. B and I just kind of sit in our chairs and reach down and caress the floor every now and then…in many ways, the house also feels like our baby.

I am struggling with before and after photos, because honestly, the photos I have taken of the hardwoods simply do not do them justice. I’ll keep at it so that everyone can be as wowed as we are by the transformation.

Update: Check Flickr photos for hardwood shots if you haven’t already.

 

Construction zone

The house feels a bit strange right now, and it’s mostly due to the dichotomy that the brand new plywood floors on the main level are creating when compared with the retro feel of the downstairs. The house is slowly morphing…what is odd is that it’s starting to become difficult to recall how it looked before we started all this. I have to keep reviewing the photos I took when we came for the inspection and the previous owners’ belongings were strewn everywhere to fully grasp the magnitude of the transformation this place has undergone thus far.

In the next couple of weeks, hopefully before we venture back to Boston for our Christmas vacation, we are planning to have the hardwood floors down. When B’s cousins were here last weekend helping us lay the plywood (which, by the way, could only be laid after they, along with B, spent half the day in the crawl space under the living/dining room reinforcing the poorly constructed joists holding the floor up–fun times) we played around with the new hardwoods and laid a few pieces down to simulate what it will ultimately look like. Already, with just the sub-floor down, the space has an entirely different feel to it. Before, when you entered the front door, there was just a smidge of nasty hardwood before you were thrown into an unsightly mess of old, dirty Berber. The abrupt transitions in the flooring caught your eye (not in a good way) and really prevented the type of flow you want to have in what should be the most inviting space in your home. Even with cheap plywood down, it is obvious how much better the feng shui is with one consistent type of flooring. I can hardly wait to see what the final result will look like.

Below are some shots of the space before and now, under construction. Enjoy.

Dining room before

Dining room after ceiling removal

Dining room now

Living room before

Living room now

 

Lighting excitement

My, how priorities change when you move into a home. And how we get excited about things that would never have excited us before. Never would I have imagined that I could be as enthusiastic about spending $150 on lighting as I would be about spending a similar amount of money on, say, this.

This weekend we purchased the chandelier for our dining room and three ceiling mount light fixtures for the hallway space. We have decided to go with a simple, wrought iron feel for all of the fixtures, which will tie in with the new fireplace screen we will be purchasing and will also help inform the style we want to have in the house.

Dining room chandelier

Upstairs hallway fixture

Good thing Christmas is coming…I need some new clothes.

 

Details

Lighting fixtures. Window treatments. Furniture placement.

Now that we are tantalizingly close to being done with all the resurfacing and painting on the main levels, we are faced with the task of integrating these small details into the spaces we have created, which presents its own set of challenges.

Lighting

We need to choose ceiling-mount fixtures for the hallway spaces, as well as decide upon a chandelier for the dining room space. Here is what we are leaning toward for the chandelier:

Murray Feiss Boulevard 5-Light Chandelier

I love the simple look of the imitation candles and the wrought iron, and I think the fixture itself will bring just enough character to the space. It will also tie in with the wrought iron, freestanding fireplace screen we plan on replacing the current brass, built-in screen with.

Choosing the ceiling-mount fixtures has proven to be a bit more difficult. So far, I am leaning toward something either like this or like this. This is what I have come up with due to what is seemingly a lack of better options. If anyone has any suggestions for more interesting/tasteful ceiling mount fixtures, I am open to them.

Windows

I am quite partial to long flowy things, as anyone who knows me can attest, so naturally I lean toward dramatic curtains when it comes to window treatments. B, being the man with simple taste that he is, does not share my enthusiasm for all things cozy and romantic. Thus, we are struggling a bit. We have quite a few windows to outfit, of various sizes, shapes, and types, so one type of shade or curtain wont work for everything. I would prefer to have cozy curtains in all the bedrooms, but for a space like the small guest room/office, this isn’t really practical. Here are my thoughts so far:

Master bedroom and living room bay window

Large guest room

Small guest room

Dining room slider

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten, and these are by no means final decisions. It does help to view things in person before purchasing.

Furniture

Stay tuned for updates on this. The size of shape of the living room is posing quite a challenge as far as furniture placement goes. We have chosen a couch/chair-and-a-half/ottoman set from Dania, but they don’t have it listed on their website, so it will be a secret until we have it in our hot little hands (or good-sized, room temperature living room, as the case may be). It’s an overstuffed, chocolate brown, fabric design that is super comfortable, which is of great importance to us, since we are fairly lazy people who like to spend a lot of time in the colder months watching movies in front of a fire. The placement of these furniture pieces, along with whatever other seating or table solutions we decide to go with, is up for debate. I feel there may be a few iterations of furniture arrangement before a final decision is reached.