Dining Room Bliss and Other Rambles

July 2010

I abruptly left the last blog post about the dining room because I felt it was getting long and probably not overly interesting.  Also, I wanted to convey the length of time it takes us to finish these projects.  It feels a bit criminal to sum up 2-3 weeks of work in one blog entry... although I am sure to blog world it makes it look like Josh and I are rock stars. 

 

Since I broke this blog up into two I can also talk a little about our trim/ceiling color.  As many of you may know from this blog, life, or any other interaction with me I do not like white.  Apparently, this is one of the reasons I can never be a true architect.  I feel quite simply, white is for pussies... wow I said it, gulp.  I love color, I think in colors, I want to express my moods in colors.  To the white lovers, I apologize, I try not to make it personal- I just feel deeply about this and wish I could go into every white house/apartment and paint it when their on vacation (so far this has not happened, so friends and family you are safe).   I realize that artwork and furniture can 'pop' against a white wall but so to can a sky blue vase on a chocolate brown wall.  Okay wow, that was a huge aside. I didn't know you could ramble in writing but proof is here.

So yeah, trim, I didn't want white trim in the house. Trying to pick out non-white white is kinda similar to a slow death by fire.  So I was lucky that we were using an 'attractive' cream white at our buildings.  It seems crazy to use a color that is used in health care clinics... how is that not cold?? But it is the perfect shade because it doesn't seem to fight any colors and doesn't change much with the lighting.  So, I had Josh buy a huge 5 gallon bucket for the trim and another for the ceilings.  We applied our Bone White and let me tell you, it was a leap of faith, against the stark white of the primer it kinda looked the color of flesh, urgh.  And Josh was looking at me in that... 'we just spent $200 bucks on the ugliest thing ever look.'  However, as soon as the white was banished with color it looked AMAZING.  It was antique without looking dirty, cream without looking pastel, and it looked fabulous with our oil rub bronze hardware, yay!

After we finished with the trim we pulled up the paper on the floors, cleaned the room and rolled out my favorite rug I got in Morocco, which fit perfectly!  Josh's boss was amazing and gave us an 80 year old Oak dining table and chairs that had been in his basement for years.  It is adorable and totally something I might have bought at an antique store if we had to go.  We slowly unpacked the room and ate our first dinner at a table in our own dining room.  Bliss.

 

 

Also can we all love this Gus photobomb?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adults Have Dining Rooms... Now I Do!

July 2010

 

It was now July and we had moved into the dining room.  I want to start by saying this is my favorite room in the whole house. It was probably one of the reasons I agreed to buy the Castle.  The room is almost a square, which is my favorite shape for a room.  There are two large windows on the East and a set of small English Cottage style casement windows (you know the ones you see on Masterpiece where the farmers wife puts her head out the window and calls everyone in for supper, those kind).  The room has an original built-in and a small arch over the windows.  This is probably too much information, but I am an architect and I get excited about these things. 

 

I wanted to make the dining room feel intimate and cozy, the kind of place you can sit with friends after dinner for a long time.  We decided to go with a warm dark chocolate color in the space.  This ended up being harder then we thought.  Did we want a blue brown, a red brown, or a purple brown... ummm kinda just wanted dark chocolate.  In the end, we chose Benjamin Moore Barista and I am very happy about it.  This room had a lot of damage to the trim work and we ended up tenting the doorways off and sanding for many many days.  This was also the point in the project where we stopped hand sanding and bought an orbital sander... why we did not do this earlier? I can't really tell you, but it makes life o so much easier.

 

After a week of sanding we got about priming everything in the room and applied the Barista, it went on like fudge.  It was so delicious looking I felt tempted to eat it several times when it dripped on my fingers. Over share, maybe? This is a much smaller room than the living room and only required two coats, phew. We removed the tenting and got to work painting out the trim each night. I was really excited to see this room happen because we have never had a dining room and it felt very grown-up to have one.  Also, its right off the family room and I have to look at it every day.

Living Rooms Are For Living

June 2010

 

At this point, we are about two weeks into our house owning adventure.  Josh came home every night and dutifully worked on the living room.  I helped taping, caulking, and scrapping paint off the windows.  Finally, late on a Saturday night we realized... we might be done?? 

 

We pulled up the paper on the floor and looked at our new walls, new floors and new paint and there was a wonderful moment of exhaustion fueled satisfaction.  However, it was also 11:00pm and there was no way I was moving furniture.  I cleaned the floors and woodwork and then went to bed.  If I wasn't so dang tired I would have thought about this all night... The best part of moving and projects is unpacking your stuff and making the room yours!

 

The next morning we went into our 'hoarders room', or as Aunt Cindy termed our 'room of requirement' and unearthed our two area rugs, coffee table, side table, chair, blankets, tv stands, hall table, lamps and pretty much proved that the back bedroom was Narnia because there was no way this all was in there.  As each item went in... it fit!  Yay, no new furniture! And I got to unpack about 16 boxes of movies and cds.  Hello, living!