Works in Progress

The last time I mentioned the formal living room and dining room was almost a year ago. Jeez. Now I feel guilty.

Anyway, to help alleviate all this blog guilt, I thought I'd share some current pics of the formal living/dining area to keep you updated. Sorry these pics are so dark, I'm not sure why they came out like that...

One of my favorite things about the living room is my little craigslist-dresser-that-could. I talked about it when I bought it, here. So what if I started this project in '07? Heh heh. I finally got the dresser painted (BM Monterey White) and added the new hardware from Quality Bath.

After lusting over the botanical prints from Restoration Hardware, which are like, $2700 apiece (okay, I'm exaggerating), I decided to make my own - and so I did. I picked the ferns myself during one of our impromptu family hikes and bought some nice, coordinating card stock at Michael's. The little decorative labels came from Michael's as well. I looked up the names of the different ferns online. Some of them might even be correctly identified! The frames came from Christmas Tree Shop - I swear the have the cheapest frames anywhere! Their frames are all over my house. The total cost of the project was about $45 for all nine botanicals. Not bad, eh? Much better than that $1800 it would've cost at RH, anyway.

We also (finally!) hung the window treatments. These are some of the very first items I bought for the house back in '06. We stored them for years until we were ready for them. I fell in love with the drapes the moment I laid eyes on them in the Pottery Barn catalog. I patiently (or not so patiently, depending on who you ask) waited for them to go on sale, and the rest is history. And you know what? I still love them. Every day I look at them and think, "I love these drapes! I love these shades!" I do have to admit that I was a little worried about becoming yet another PB carbon-copy-house. But they ARE only window treatments and I DID see the roman shades in the Kate Townsend-Simpson house on lonnymag.com (which, in my mind, gives them serious street cred). Moving on...

When the island became usable, we were finally able to move the round table from the kitchen into the dining room. We bought this table specifically for the dining room, and I think it looks really great in there. The table came with four leaves that extend the table to a huge 81" diameter - all while remaining round in shape. The pictures show the table with the leaves on. If you look closely, you can see the seam where the leaves meet the actual table. For the record, all those extra chairs in the room were placed there for a party and aren't normally there...

I love love LOVE the idea of having a fireplace in the dining room. I picture everyone gathered around the table at a big Christmas Eve party, with a fire warming the room while it snows outside. Hopefully, this will come true and I'll have the pics to prove it!

The only snag we hit with the fireplace was that we had to place the table so as to ensure that even at 81", somebody's seat (literal and figurative) wouldn't end up getting scorched. So, we had to set the table slightly off center. For a while, I had a hard time getting past it, but as the room gets filled in, it looks better and less noticeable.

Mike and I recently found some chandeliers that we actually agreed on (oh happy day!) online at Golden Lighting. I bought the rugs for these rooms online at Target.com. Typically, I don't like buying certain things sight unseen, but I was getting desperate. At the time, I was dying for seagrass, but we were on a strict budget, and these 8x 10 rugs were something like $140 a piece, with free shipping. Hello! Mike HATES them - but I love them and he loves me. So for now, they stay. Still, I'd love to have seagrass someday...

The living room still needs lots of work and lots of new furniture, as discussed in my recent sofa post. Almost everything in these rooms came from craigslist. Literally. Some of it will stay, but some of it has got. to. go.

So, I guess that's it for now. Hopefully the rooms will be a bit more pulled together at the next update. Maybe I'll even have a new sofa!

Piece by Piece

Seeing as we now have a house full of beautiful, original, hardwood floors, the project of the moment is area rugs...many of them.

Since the floors have been refinished, we've spent a LOT of time trying to decide what the heck to do for rugs. I've been leaning toward something solid or with a fairly plain print. Nothing too busy. I've been looking everywhere and either the color is wrong, the size is wrong, the pattern is wrong or the price wrong. Throughout this rug-searching mission, I have come to one ultimate realization: rugs are really friggin' expensive.

Area rugs for the living room, dining room and foyer could easily run over $2000. Oh, I could just see it: "Honey, we won't be eating dinner at all this month....but check my new dhurri!" Yeah, not gonna fly.

Desperate and at my wits end, I started flipping through the flor catalog that magically appears in my mailbox every so often. And I have to say, I'm impressed. The prices run the gamut, that's for sure, but several of the patterns I like best are only $9.99 per tile...

this one is called Finer Things and is currently my #1 choice:

this one is called Checkered Past:

and this one is called Twill Ride:

After some quick math, I realized I could get two rugs, both roughly 9' x 9', for about $700.00. This is great a for a lot of reasons, the top two being:

1. I'll end up with a square shaped rug, which would best fit the room, rather than settle for a standard rectangular rug.

2. The flor tiles give us the ability to replace any stained or damaged tiles, which, with two little boys in the house, is priceless.

So, it looks like we might be going with flor for the dining room and living room (not sure about the foyer yet).

All in all I think we're off to a good start.

What Lies Beneath

Wooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooo!

These floors have not seen the light of day in 50+ years! I have to say, they were worth waiting for...



Look. At. All. That. Dust. It's gonna take me weeks to get rid of all this dust. But again, I DON'T CARE! I HAVE FLOORS!!!

Another view during sanding...




I couldn't be happier with the results so far. There were areas of the floor that we couldn't clearly see before sanding and we thought there might be some damaged areas. But, so far so good! I cannot believe that these are hundred year old floors. They look brand new.


A ringing endorsement. We've used this company for every hardwood floor in the house and couldn't be happier with them. If you're in the Boston area, I highly recommend them.

More pics to follow.

They're Heeeerrrre...

One day late, but they're here! The floor guys got here around 7:45 this morning and have been hard at work ever since. I hear a whole lot of scraping goin on. I can't actually SEE the scraping, since Mike has us quarantined, but a little later I'll walk around to the front door and take some pics.

Today is the first really COLD day of Fall. High of 60 and it is freezing in the house right now. Guess I should go offer the guys some coffee...

Need Help! Am Cross-Eyed

You've probably seen my formal living room/dining room before...

The paint color is much more accurate in this pic:

While it's not 100% finished, it's close. As far as the floors go, a quote has been accepted, a job given and a start date promised. Namely, next Monday. With the end in sight, it's time to consider the "fun stuff." Which of course means interior decor.

It'll be a while before we have any real amount of money to spend on living room furniture. But the dining room, well, we already have our table and I am going to paint and reupholster some old chairs. Which brings me to the Waverly fabric to which I have recently become very attached:

Now, should I be bold and use pear?

Be safe and choose black (or dark brown)?

Or is this the perfect opportunity to try out some of that coral I've been thinking about?

One of my favorite versions of this fabric is navy - but I'm having a hard time envisioning navy blue as an accent color in this room. Anyone want to talk me into it?

The fabric will be for the seats of the dining room chairs, and probably for some pillows in the living room.

I have been staring at this fabric, trying to pick a color for the last two days. If you have an opinion, please cast your vote!

All That Remains...

Here are some pics of the floor, post dry ice experiment.

This is the view into the foyer from the formal livingroom/diningroom:

The foyer staircase landing:

A close up of the "grid" left by the 9" x 9" tiles. This tar paper currently covers the hardwood in some spots, but will be sanded off easily when the floors are refinished:

The tool Mike used to scrape the tiles off after they were treated with the dry ice:

Remnants of the asbestos tiles after they "shattered":

Originally, we thought the hardwood in the foyer and livingroom/diningroom were the same. Now, it looks like they are a little bit different. The width of the foyer planks look slightly bigger. This is a close up of the foyer floor:

And a close up of the livingroom/diningroom floor:

The view into the livingroom/diningroom (thought this would make a nice "before" pic after our floor guys work their magic):

The Boy in the Bubble

Well, we're all sealed up. Cullen came down with a cold, so we decided to quarantine him until Finn's first day of school had passed.

I'm just kidding.

Mike has been (very) hard at work scraping 50 year-old asbestos tiles off the better part of our entire first floor. His hands are covered in blisters. Hasn't been an easy task. He sealed up the areas he was working in so the dust from the tiles wouldn't get to the rest of the house. I talked to a contractor once who told me that for the asbestos to be harmful we'd have to grind it up and eat the dust for breakfast. Ha. Even if that's true, I think we'll err on the side of caution with this one.

Our floor guys are coming today to give us the estimate for refinishing the floors. This is what they (and we) are up against:

Kinda makes you want to cry, doesn't it? Why? WHY would ANYONE do this to hardwood floors!?! Of course, fifty years from now the house's new owner will probably be cursing us over our faux tin ceiling. So it's all relative, I guess.

Slow Going

Well, things haven't exactly been moving right along as of late. We spent most of last weekend cleaning out the cellar. Very fun in a 111 year-old house full of 111 year-old dirt. Luckily, my cleaning-machine mother-in-law was there to give us the kick in the butt we always seem to need on "clean-up days." The cellar had to be emptied so that the formal living room/dining room and foyer could be emptied. Those rooms had to be emptied so we can finally, FINALLY get the floors done! Til then, this is what these rooms look like:

Almost pretty.

And, to top off our dirt-filled weekend, my grandfather passed away on Sunday night after a very long, very brave battle with cancer. This grandfather was instrumental in allowing for me and Mike to have the opportunity to purchase the Big Yellow House. While I know he was very happy for us and knew how much we appreciated his help, I really regret not having been able to show him the "finished product" before he left us. Rest in peace, finally.