The Living Room Befores

These days, when I am not nursing or wiping bums or doing endless laundry, I am trying to focus on the living room and the entryway. I was going to just work on the entryway, since it is a relatively small space and basically just needs paint and art. HOWEVER, it's the only area in the house that has quite a bit of trim, which all needs some fresh white paint, and of course it requires three coats of paint and lots of taping off, and painting during nap times and basically it is just kicking my butt. So! I am working on another space as well for the sake of my sanity.

Which brings us to the living room. Now, I didn't purposely take these pictures in a way that made them look really awful, it was just a dark, rainy day and this room doesn't get the most light anyways, so things look a little more... dire than they really are. Here goes.



Our decision to paint the whole house with one shade of paint has really been pushing me to think of the house as one whole space. I find myself making decisions that work for each space, so that all of the pieces are mostly interchangeable. I'm trying to make design decisions that carry themes throughout the rooms, which for now is looking like soft neutrals, warm wood tones, dark wrought iron, and splashes of saturated color. So I am keeping all of that in mind as we work on this room.

We bought quite a bit of the furniture in here right away, so the foundation has been here for a couple of months which has allowed me to just think about all the nitty gritty little details. Let's talk about the fireplace wall first. When you come in the front door, the left wall is the back of the living room fireplace. It's a wall of brick.



And as you enter the  living room, the fireplace and hearth are basically one entire wall of the living room. I think the mantel was made by the previous owner. It's sturdy and substantial. The plan is to strip off the existing finish and darken it up quite a bit. I'd like to try out a few different techniques to try and make the finish look more like weathered barn wood.



As far as what to put on the mantel, I'd love to hang a canvas of a family picture of the five of us up here. You know, once we actually get a picture of the five of us. Hehe. Maybe sometime this fall.

I love the color of the brick, don't you? Such a nice soft tan, with the dark gray grout. It's interesting and slightly different. The brick will be staying as is. It's one of the few things that Lover is adamant about - no painted brick. :)

The fireplace is functional, as far as we know. That brass insert is so fancy, don't you think? I think I am going to try and paint the insert with a high heat paint in flat black to make it fade away a little bit. Right now it's a bit in your face.



The window wall is next. This wall looks out on the street, or rather, on the two big trees in the front yard. It lets in quite a bit of light and fresh air, and is really quite enormous. It's taking me a while to find an affordable curtain rod that can span the 120 inches, and curtains that won't break the bank. The curtains there currently are very nice quality and we've been living with them for several months now. They're fine, I'm just looking for something that is more my style.  Oh, and I almost forgot, because we removed them in the first few days of living here, but this corner also held a corner shelf and shallow bookcase. It made this whole corner feel heavy and off balance.





Oh and how much do you like that little loveseat?We found it for $20 at our local thrift store. It's super cute and comfy with great lines. Just needs a little reupholstering, and it will really shine. I can't decide if I want to go bright and happy with it, like a sunny yellow, or muted and soft neutrals, or kind of a burnt orange/brown combo. I need to go spend some quality time in a fabric store. Darn. :)



The back wall is where we decided the couch should hang out. It's kind of a cousin of the couch we had in the apartment - rolled arms, warm brown leather. We got it for ninety dollars from some family way up north in Arvada. It's super comfy and I am loving how durable leather is with the kids. We are considering adding another big window centered on this wall over the couch. It will depend on cost and feasibility since we'll be messing with exterior brick and such. I'll keep you posted on that decision. :)

We are tossing around a few ideas for end tables, but we are pretty sure that we are also doing some really substantial shelves on either side of the couch. I drew up a very rudimentary sketch to show what direction we are thinking. Initially I was thinking a sofa table would work behind the couch, but Lover convinced me (rightly so) that this room is shallow enough without sticking that couch out even further into the room. So end tables and shelves it is.



The shelves will hold pretty things, like plants and pictures, and useful things like ... all those little things that need to be kept out of the reach of sticky fingers. :) I'm planning to finish them the same way as the mantel - we will see how that works out.



A few more things of note - we found that super chunky coffee table at a yard sale. It has three deep drawers for storage and is the perfect height for building legos and making train tracks. But it's a little oversized for this relatively small room, so that's going in the bonus room. It will be replaced with an upholstered ottoman. We are also updating that ceiling fan to something a little less...ancient. And lastly, we settled on mounting the TV on that little wall between the bonus room doorway and the closet. It's on a swing arm so that we can pull it out and see it from the couch comfortably. We're in the process of switching that ridiculous useless light fixture behind the TV to an outlet, so the TV will plug in hidden behind the screen. The other cord is for the whole house antenna, which we only use when we are watching live TV. The rest of the time it's unplugged and coiled up behind the screen as well for a seamless look.

So - new curtains, furniture tweaking, fresh paint and some refinished wood should help this room along quite a bit. We're in the process of paint and curtains right now, so I should have an update on those soon. :) Or you know, in six months. You never know these days!

Shelves and other updates

Having a whole new house to start from scratch with is simultaneously awesome and slightly overwhelming. That's one of the reasons I pushed so hard to get the master bedroom to a place where it felt "done enough" to me, so that at least one room in the house didn't prompt constant "should we move that? tweak that? paint that?" feelings every time I was in there. And it has totally been worth it.

The other rooms in the house? They are not quite as calming. But we are making progress little by little, and some things are just going to take time (like painting all the trim in the house with a fresh coat (or three) of white paint). I'm learning to enjoy the process and not rush things. Although I am sure our neighbors would appreciate if we "rushed" improving our yards a bit. :)

The last time we chatted about the kitchen (three months ago!) we had removed the cabinets and the soffit above them, and painted the walls. Since then, we've continued to work on little projects here and there. One of the projects that I am just wild about was adding some shelving to give us some storage (since we removed all the upper cabinets). Sometimes when I get the idea for a project, I can see it in my head, but the execution comes out less than stellar. This used to happen to me all the time when I drew a lot. I could see it in my head but could not make my fingers reproduce that on paper. But this project? It exceeded my expectations. Behold.



They're cute, right? I knew, pretty much from the moment that we took out the cabinets, that we'd put up some shelving between the window and the door. All it took was two pine boards from Home Depot (or was it Lowes?), six brackets from IKEA, and some stain, poly and paint. And there you have a functional and pretty little addition to our kitchen. Here's a picture from a little further back so you can see how it all plays together.



By the way, if anyone knows of a microwave that is cute to look at, I am all ears. I can't figure out anywhere else to put the darn thing, but it's just so... black and hulking. ANYWAYS. Redirect your attention to the cute shelves. One of my favorite details is the fact that I painted the bottoms of the shelves in a deep green. It was one of those off the cuff - hey let's try this!- kind of things, but I really like how it's slightly unexpected and brings in a bit of color.







So that is one completed project that I am loving. We have also, since May, replaced the seventies light with this classy and brassy chandelier.



It's a huge improvement over what was there, for sure. When we went out one night to pick this up (for $20 off Craigslist - hurray!), we obviously had the kids with us. So Javi asked "mommy, why we buyed this light?" and I told him it was because I didn't like the one that was hanging in the dining area. He thought about that for a long time, and then at lunchtime the next day we had the exact same conversation. He then proceeded to take me through the house and ask me if I liked every other light in the house. :)

Anyways, it's a huge improvement. There still feels like something is a bit off with it, (too gold? too white? too... much?) but it's so much better than what was there. And brighter too! I also hung up some curtains and found a really cool mirror at the thrift store so this side of the room is looking a bit fancier.



I really like the direction this room is heading - lots of visual interest from the brick wall, all the warm wood tones from the dining set and the shelves, and the deep greens and purples. Oh, and I also found these little hanging planters that are just like the ones my Grandma has hanging on either side of her sink. Although her plants are real, because her thumb is amazingly green. I have much less of a green thumb, and also three little babes to remember to take care of before I water plants, so my succulents are fake. :)



How much do you love my little herb tiles on the backsplash? They're kinda charming. I just wish that rosemary wasn't represented three times all within a foot of each other. But - cute. I'm searching for a new little light for over the sink to replace that fluorescent awesomeness. And I think some new knobs and hinges are in order for these cabinets, but I haven't totally made up my mind about that. The next project we'll be tackling in this space? Flooring. For reals. The carpet has seen better days and we have only lived here for four months. :)

Opening up the Kitchen

There's a lot to do at Amherst, which I love. A project house is my kind of jam! :) We've been working on a few things in the kitchen, namely removing some upper cabinets to open things up in there. The kitchen and the dining room are basically one big room, with the galley kitchen on the left, and the dining area on the right. (That far right wall is the awesome brick wall) The kitchen has some fancy nineties linoleum, and the dining area has my very favorite - carpet! So at some point we will be ripping all of that out and replacing it with something a lot more durable and kid friendly. The carpet is a really nice quality, and is throughout much of the upstairs, so it will stay for the time being everywhere except for the dining area. I'm done with cleaning up little kid messes out of carpet.

Anyways, let me show you a floor plan, so you know where I am talking about. This is NOT 100% accurate, or even 90% I'd say. But it gives you a general idea of what I am talking about.



Okay, so the dining area is directly in front of you when you walk up the stairs coming into the house. Brick wall on the right, that door leads out to the back yard. Make sure to take note of the lovely dust filled curtains, the decals on the windows, and the rocking macrame plant holder. (sans plant)



If you spin around and stand at the back door, this is what you see. That blank wall is the back of the coat closet, and you can juuust see the pantry. On the far right of the picture you can see the decorative panel on the back of the upper cabinets, which we will be talking about in a moment.



So. If you look at the floor plan again, that "wall" between the kitchen and the dining area is just cabinets. It's all one open space, but the stove and lower cabinets form the bottom of the wall dividing the two spaces, and the upper cabinets along with the soffit further enhanced that feeling of it being two separate rooms, with the kitchen feeling really small and a little claustrophobic.





See how you could see through, but it was low and all in your face? If you wanted to talk to the person in the kitchen you had to crouch down and talk through that opening. Not the end of the world, but also not the open feeling that we wanted. We knew that taking those cabinets and soffit out would change the room entirely.

So we started by removing the decorative panel on the back of the cabinets. Let me interject here that the previous owner did some beautiful woodworking, and made all these cabinets and panels himself. They're really well made and in great shape, so we were very careful removing them as I think we will put them to good use elsewhere. The back panel was decorative and just nailed into place, so Lover was able to remove it without too much trouble. It was heavy though!



Then he disconnected the power to the vent hood, (obviously after turning off the power and taking all necessary safety measures) and removed the hood. Once that was safely out, we set about removing the cabinets, one by one. Each of the three were screwed to each other and then up into the supports above, so we just unscrewed them one by one. Lover would get them mostly free, and then I would remove the last couple of screws while he held up the weight of the cabinet. We may or may not have figured out this system after dropping the first cabinet on the counter. Luckily laminate is durable. :) They are all now sitting pretty in the garage.



This picture is terrible and blurry, but see how immediately things were feeling lighter? A few days later when we got the itch again, Lover removed the soffit above. This was more of a task, and I did not help at all. I just sat at the table and kept him company. The demo was pretty straight forward, with the exception of some long bolts that anchored everything into the ceiling. Those took some work to remove. But, in the end Lover was victorious and the soffit was no more.

Once those cabinets were out I was dying to paint everything to freshen up the room even more. We prepped the room one evening, and then the next day I fit in the painting between naps and TV shows and whatever other time I could steal away. It needs touch up in a few spots, but it looks so much nicer now!



And here's the new and improved kitchen. Ahhhhh. Space, light and openness. It's my jam, I tell ya.



From the other direction, it's even more dramatic. This picture was taken standing right next to the fridge.





Now the entire dining area is a part of the kitchen too. That brick wall gets to be the star of the dining area and the kitchen, and it's so much nicer to work on what is now a peninsula, instead of the lower half of a hulking wall.



It's better, right? Yes, we lost some storage, but we're planning on addressing that by adding shelves on the wall between the window and the back door, and possibly a hutch in the dining area. We're still figuring out what we need and what should go where. Also, in this picture you can see that we are still working on patching up the ceiling, and replacing that light. Turns out when they installed the soffit they used a very high tech method of finding the studs in the ceiling, which involved smashing a hammer through the drywall in about a dozen places. #facepalm So we are working on patching those up relatively well, and then the entire ceiling needs a fresh coat of paint. And we need to figure out the lighting up there. But - it looks so much better, functions better, and I love it.

Also, I need to talk for a minute about the wall color. We agreed that since all of the walls in the house need a fresh coat of paint, we would just find a nice, neutral color that worked with everything, and start with that. Later on, as we figure out what direction we want the rooms to go, we might repaint certain rooms, but this way everything gets freshly updated. I brought home a million light gray swatches, some tans and some light blues, and then a miracle happened. In five seconds flat, we both agreed on a color, and said color worked in every room of the house. Miracles, they still happen people. :) The gray we went with is suuuper light and has great undertones, and works with all the different bricks, and so far has looked nice in every room we've painted. (The master, the kids' room and now the kitchen.) I love it. It's called Saltaire by Ralph Lauren, and we had it matched to Glidden paint.

Anyways, so that's what we've been working on. Next on my radar may possibly be this light. Weird seventies light, you have been warned.

The House God Gave Us

We have a house. We have a house! Hurray! We've owned our house for exactly twenty days and it still feels unreal. After my last post about our house hunting adventures, we switched realtors yet again, saw over fifty more houses, and submitted an additional 11 offers. For a total of 18 offers! Every single one of them fell through for one reason or another. Our poor realtor was absolutely stunned. He couldn't believe we were losing on SO many houses! It was right down to the wire - it was March 18th and if we didn't have an accepted offer by March 19th, we wouldn't close in time to move before our lease was up and our backup plan (which we didn't actually have) would have to go into effect. We were looking at moving into a month-to-month lease (and paying through the nose) while we continued to house shop. That would have been a)stressful b)expensive, and c)undesirable since our new closing/move dates would be much closer to when the baby would be born.

So, we prayed, a lot. We started looking at houses outside of our preferred location (for commute times). We started looking at houses outside of our established parameters (i.e. no HOA, no recent builds, etc) Basically we were looking for anything, with the knowledge that we would probably only live there for a year or two, and then move AGAIN. We prayed some more. We asked everyone at our Life Group and all our friends back home to pray. Things were serious!

Wednesday we spent all day trying to set up appointments to view houses that evening. The kids were worn out and grumpy from spending every evening and weekend doing nothing but looking at houses. Lover was stressed trying to balance work and house hunting and an emotional wife. I was stressed and overwhelmed trying to coordinate with our realtor, find houses we wanted to see, take care of the kids, oh and be pregnant too... it was a rough time. Our realtor touched base with me several times that day to let me know that most of the houses we were trying to see were unavailable, already sold, or simply refusing viewings for some unknown reason. I was on the verge of losing it.

I put the kids down for a nap, and sat on the couch trying to relax. Then our realtor called. At this point, I assumed he was calling to say that all of our viewings had been canceled for that evening. He started out by asking, "Hey Jenny, do you remember that house on Amherst?" 

Did I remember it? Of course I did! It was one of the first houses we saw with Bill, and we totally and completely loved it. It was older, in a nice neighborhood, and had tons of vintage charm and quirk. It was love at first sight. We had put in a really strong offer, but someone had outbid us by several thousand dollars and had more cash to put down.

"Well," Bill said "turns out the original buyers backed out, apparently due to an inspection issue that has since been resolved.  But they were no longer interested, and our offer was the second best offer, so the seller's agent just called me to see if we still wanted this house."

...silence...

I was trying so hard not to bawl my eyes out, right then and there on the phone with Bill. Did we still want it? Do three year old boys like playing in the dirt? Yes, we still wanted this house. YES, YES, YES!!!!

I managed to answer in a somewhat dignified tone "ah, yes, I remember the house. We loved it. Yes, we are still interested in it." Bill proceeded to say something about talking to Lover about it, and getting back to him in the next half an hour or so to confirm. I hung up the phone, sat down on the couch and cried. It was definitely an ugly cry. Such feelings of relief and exhilaration and incredulity. I cried for about twenty minutes, then pulled myself together and called Bill back. I told him we were on board and to send over the contracts.

I hadn't talked to Lover about it, but I knew that we had both loved this house, and he wouldn't have any problem with me giving the okay. We were devastated the first time we lost that house, and I knew he would jump at the chance to get a house, ANY house, but especially THIS house, that had been our favorite!

I confirmed everything with Bill, and e-signed all the paperwork while I anxiously waited for Lover to get home from work. The waiting just about killed me. Finally, I heard Lover come in the front door, and I met him at the top of the stairs. "I'm sorry," I said. "we canceled all our showings for tonight." His shoulders just slumped and he looked at me confused. "Because..." I said, with a sparkle in my eye "the buyers on Amherst backed out and NOW WE GET TO BUY IT!!!!!!" Lover grabbed me and hugged me and I cried some more and we jumped around and were all giddy and it was awesome.

God gave us the perfect house, in the perfect location, just in the nick of time. We had to wait till the bitter end, trusting that He would come through for us. It was really hard, but we did it, and we trusted that he had something great for us, and boy did He ever. Our Heavenly Father pours out on us an embarrassment of riches.

Amherst is a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom raised ranch with a ton of quirk and charm. It is about fifteen minutes from work, less than five minutes from church, and most of the friends we have made since moving here live less than ten minutes away. We couldn't have picked a better location if we had tried.



 

The bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, living and dining rooms are all upstairs. The living room has a brick wood burning fireplace. (Don't worry, we didn't inherit any of that furniture!) The fireplace is massive and awesome.

The dining room has a brick wall that is completely different from the fireplace brick just steps away. We love it. It's moody and gray and totally makes the space. The kitchen is well planned out and very workable, and the cabinets are super sturdy - made by the previous owner who was a master woodworker.



 

These pictures are all pretty horrible (they are the listing photos) so I'll follow up sometime soon with better pictures. But everything works, everything is clean, and we're loving all the space to spread out.

There is a second brick fireplace in the basement family room, that is completely different from the two types and colors of brick upstairs. It's also huge and awesome. We got to keep that geese carving/decoration thing above the fireplace too. :)

The family room is fully half of the bottom story of the house. In between the family room and the garage is a utility room with the laundry and a half bathroom with - wait for it - a brick wall that is nothing like the other brick walls/fireplaces in the house! Yes! :) This bar was made by the owner, along with all of that orange paneling you see (it wraps around the outside wall throughout the whole basement. We are actually considering keeping the orange, if you can believe that.

There's lots more to see, but we'll get to that as I have time to blog about it. It's been a VERY busy couple of weeks, and we've got a trip back to NY coming up, along with traveling to my brother's wedding in Spain, and oh yeah, I'm 31 weeks along today. So things are busy. So far we are working on the house little by little, painting a room here, taking out some cabinets there, and we are loving it.



Oh, and the yard! We have a yard again! It is the epitome of awesome. It's overgrown and neglected and has about six trees that need to be chopped down post haste. But it's fenced and full of grass and dirt and the kids absolutely love it. And it has a lilac bush. :)

So that's where we are. Living in our new house, on Amherst Dr. (How funny is that, Wendhurst and Amherst? It's like it was meant to be :) Settling in, unpacking boxes, and feeling thankful every day for the house that God gave us. We've already met several of our neighbors, and they couldn't be nicer. Also, none of them call us at 5 in the morning to tell us our kids are being too loud. :) We are loving this house and we're so thankful for all that God has provided us with.

Till next time,