First impressions

I’ve shown you the kitchen and the living room, so how about the rest of the first floor?

Here’s what you see when you first walk in the door:

We knew we wanted a long bench for that spot by the stairs.  We wanted to buy this (we’d found it elsewhere for a lot less money), but then found this for even less and decided that the design differences weren’t that important to us, but the price difference certainly was.  We’re trying to keep the bench free of clutter so that people really can sit there for tying shoes and whatnot.  It’s tempting to paint the bench a bold color, but I want to think about it for a while, possibly a long while, before doing so.

Here’s the view back toward the door:

Since our coat closet is so small, I found that iron coat rack at this Etsy shop.  It has already been a handy spot for the girls’ friends to hang their coats and backpacks when they come over after school.

At this point, the foyer is very spare and color-less.  We’ve been hesitant to put nail holes in our pristine walls, but are nearly ready to take the plunge and start hanging art.

As you saw in the first photo, our study is straight ahead and the first room you see:

The rug is Thick & Thin by FLOR in Persimmon/Cherry and Straw/Grass.  We had this in the foyer of our old house and will expand it by a row in each direction to better fill the room.

Yes, that’s a hand chair and if you’re a fan of “Arrested Development” then you probably recognize it.

Here are our computer work stations:

Right now, we have two computers.  We needed desks that could expand to hold the inevitable third computer we’ll buy when the girls are older and need one for school work.  At this point, they use our two computers and we all share our toys nicely.  We spent months thinking about our desk set-up and thought we were going to do one thing, but then changed our minds when we were at Ikea and got something totally different.  I like this better, because the desks are essentially modular and be rearranged easily.

This is my “command center”:

That magnet board pretty much organizes my life and therefore everyone else’s.  There are not one, but TWO calendars up there (one for family life, one for my various blogging schedules).  Also:  to-do lists, reminder notes, invitations, school notices, photos, and more.

And here’s the book wall of our study:

Apologies for the mess — as you can see,we’re still getting settled.

The bookcases are, again, from Ikea and we got height extension units to take advantage of vertical space.

We’re still trying decide how to organize ourselves in this room.  We had wall cabinets above our desk in our old house and, while they weren’t perfect, they worked pretty well, so we might do that again.  Or maybe we’ll figure something else out.

Going out of the study and turning left toward the kitchen, here’s our half bathroom:

Looks like a calm and serene place, right?  Well, this is what you see when you sit down:

If you’ve never seen this poster before, click here for the history, which is (to me, at least) fascinating.

That concludes our tour of the first floor.  I’m hoping to finish unpacking SEVEN boxes of “kid krap” this weekend so that next week I can show you three relatively tidy bedrooms and one not-too-scary toy room.

Rethinking a few things

Almost two weeks into our residency here, we’ve learned a few more things:

Lesson Learned #1 — The toilet paper holders we bought are not working out.  That’s actually an understatement.  It would be more accurate to say that all four of us hate — big stabby hate — them.  At this point, in two of the three bathrooms, we have the toilet paper just sitting on the counters now.    Why does this design suck so much?  First of all, the holder is just a bit too small for big fat American rolls of TP, so when you pull on the paper, it doesn’t unfurl easily.  Then, it turns out that replacing the rolls — which we do a few times a week — is darn near impossible and might actually require an engineering degree.  And, finally, the holders like to occasionally pop off when you least expect it, which makes for unpleasants surprises when you’re trying to have an otherwise quiet moment.

Lesson Learned #2 — That gorgeous tile we put on the floor of our master bathroom shower is slippery.  To be more specific, it’s as slick as snot and Pete and I are afraid that one of us is going to have a tragic bathroom accident one day.  I am now actively shopping for  non-skid thingies I can put on the tile.  It’s almost killing me to mar my beautiful tile in this way, but I’d rather do that then end up with a fractured skull.  So I’m trying to at least find those non-skid grippers in a clear material that won’t be as visible.

Lesson Learned #3 — Our kitchen sink, for all its beauty, has a big  flaw:  Because the edge around it is perfectly flat with no lip, we have to be careful about not slopping water everywhere.  Along the wall, we’re going to have to put in a backsplash, which we were planning to do at some point anyway.  On the front and sides, we’re wiping things down regularly.  Otherwise, water could drip on those wood floors I insisted on putting in the kitchen…

With all these things, plus others, we’re either learning to adapt (not be so messy with water) or will make corrections (buy new toilet paper holders).  The most important thing is, we’re still unbelievably happy with our house!

I will post more photos soon, I promise.

The Secret Attic

I was going to post photos of the foyer and study today, but they’re still wrecks-in-progress, so instead I  thought I’d show what the girls have been doing with their Secret Attic.

Here’s the approach in the upstairs hallway:

The thing on the left of the entrance is a toy that has a bell in it and is currently serving as the doorbell.

Once you’re at the top of the ladder, this is what you see:

Looks pretty neat and tidy, doesn’t it?  Well, this is the view if you turn around and look back toward the entrance:

Suffice it to say that two certain juveniles burned through three rolls of tape this weekend.  So far, the girls have mostly hung their own art and magazine photos of animals; I’m sure that in a few years the Jonas Brothers and who-knows-who-else will be taped up in this Girls Lair.

Here’s a close-up:

I’ll post more photos soon.

The heart of our home

I’ve made no secret that the kitchen has been my favorite room in this new house.  It was the room I obsessed most over and had the most opionions about what I wanted. 

Like most families, we spend a lot of time in our kitchen.  Our girls do their homework there while I cook dinner and they’ll often just sit and read in there, even though there are plenty of other more comfortable chairs available to them. 

Since the kitchen is truly the heart of our home, this was the room that we focused on getting settled even before we moved in.  A week before the move, my mother came into town, specifically to help me empty boxes and set up everything.  We didn’t cook dinner the first night we moved in — we ordered pizza as a special treat to celebrate the move — but the next night we did cook and changing locations hasn’t slowed down our culinary efforts much at all.  In the past seven days, we’ve had soup, homemade bread, slow-cooked beans, spaghetti and meatballs, Pete’s amazing pancakes, and more. 

With all that said, how about some photos?

Here’s the view when you first walk in:

 

We knew we wanted a place where we could have a lot of people around one table, but didn’t want a separate dining room.  I’ve always loved the idea of a cozy built-in bench and it’s already a popular place for the girls and their friends.  Yesterday, we had six 3rd and 4th graders all on the bench at once, eating popcorn and chattering away loudly.  Very loudly.

The table and chairs are some we had already.  Originally, they were in our formal-ish dining room in our first house.  In our last house, we didn’t have a dining room, so the chairs were used with our kitchen table and the table shown above was stashed in our basement, largely as a dumping ground for toys.  The surface is scarred from juvenile abuse, but we figure that’s just the patina that comes from having a family.  The pillows on the bench are ones that we’ve collected over the years, including two Pete’s parents brought us back from India, one my mother-in-law made me for my birthday years ago, a couple I’ve made myself, etc.

And, looking to the left:

 

By the way, if you ever think you might want to put slate gray counters in your kitchen, be advised that EVERY. SINGLE. CRUMB will show up, as if lit by neon.  I wipe down the counters several times a day, which surprisingly hasn’t gotten annoying.  Yet.

Walking across the room and looking back toward the peninsula:

The girls LOVE this peninsula!  They eat pretty much every meal there.  Look, you can even see the stacks of books they left there this morning.

Look across the peninsula toward the stove.  Do you see my little set up on the wall?  Here’s a close up:

Yes, that’s a little spot of Zen for me.  I love having everything organized and I smile when I look at this wall.  My college roommate has a similar set up for her spices and I shamelessly stole this idea from her.  The utensil rack is from Ikea.  (And, no, I didn’t hang things crooked — it’s the photo.  I measured very carefully before I started drilling.)

Looking back across the peninsula to the front of the kitchen:

Yes, that’s an easel in the corner.  Our younger girl spends a lot of time making art every day and we wanted her to have a spot of her own.  When we have people over for dinner, it will be easy enough to put the easel away.  And, no, we haven’t decided what artwork to put on the big wall next to the easel. 

Here’s a small part of the pantry:

 

I think that pretty much thoroughly covers the kitchen. 

I’ll post more photos next week.

The living room

Okay, okay, I hear you.  I’ll start posting photos.  Not all at once, but as the rooms take shape.

Today, we’ll start with the living room, which is more or less unpacked and complete.  We haven’t hung much on the walls, but I’m guessing it’s the furniture you’re more interested in.

The living room is 12′ x 24′ and has huge windows on three sides that face northwest, southwest, and southeast.  We wanted to take advantage of all that sunlight, which is why we have so many windows.  Consequently, this is a very sunny, warm room right now.  This summer, we’ll have the benefit of trees to provide shade and cut down on the heat gain.

Here’s a view from the door from the kitchen, looking toward the back:

The rug is FLOR — Toy Poodle in black, Shirt Stripe in Button Down, and Take a Ribbing in sand.  The coffee table is a 1950s hand-me-down from Pete’s parents — an Asian-inspired brass top and a rattan base that we painted black a couple of years ago.  The side table on the right is a Civil War-era pine dry sink that we got from Pete’s parents when we were first married.  What you can’t see in this photo is that we have bookshelves and a TV across from the furniture.  Also, if you want a clearer view of the Nelson Marshmallow sofa in the foreground, click here.  (No, we didn’t spend that kind of money on it; I like the photo and the content is interesting.)

Looking toward the front of the room, here’s a shot of my new favorite place:

Right now, this corner is a mess, as I’ve been working here and I have files for various projects scattered about.   I’d like to think I’ll keep this area tidier, but I doubt I will.  I haven’t decided what to do about the little red table, so for now it’s holding my work stuff.  Later on, it’s possible it will be moved to another room, but for now I like the shot of color it gives the room.

The rug is more FLOR.  (House Pet in three colors.)   The shelves, side table, and CD/DVD rack are from Ikea.  The chair  and ottoman are, ahem, vintage.  (As in, Pete saw them at a yard sale and brought them home for $50.  They’re probably from the early 1970’s and oh-so comfortable.  I love the butterscotch color of the leather.)  

A closer look at the CD/DVD rack:

We created this from 10 Lerberg racks.  Pete and I had been debating what to do with our hundreds of CDs and DVDs and had been planning to buy shelves.  When we saw a display of these racks at Ikea,   Pete had the brilliant idea to hang them as if they were one unit.  It took me all of an hour to get all 10 up.  We’re probably going to get a few more for future expansion.  And, at some point, we should probably actually organize and sort everything, as we just threw everything on the shelves last weekend just so that we could mark that task off our extensive projects list.

I mention all these details to show that, even though we live in a sleek modern house, we aren’t living with uncomfortable furniture.  Nor have we felt compelled to keep things of the same era and aesthetic.  We have an eclectic mix of antique and modern, but it all seems to work together just fine, mostly because our furniture is clean-lined and not too frou-frou.  Also, we tend to buy everything in the same colors — black and tan — so it all more or less matches.  Even our art is a funky hodge podge.  In the living room, for example, we have a pottery face (made by Pete’s aunt) on one wall and an oil painting of an early 20th century ship (bought for $5 at a preschool yard sale) on another wall.  They’re seemingly different, but the colors are similar to each other and also to the furniture in the room, so it all seems to work. 

That’s all I have for today.  I’ll post more photos soon.

Well?

We’ve been in the house full time since last Friday. In short, we are very pleased with it. I wouldn’t say that our house is a home quite yet, but it will be and I don’t think it will take too long to cross that divide.

We’ve moving speedily through the unpacking and settling in process, which is great, although it will take us weeks to sift through all this stuff.  At this point, the Man Cave and the craft room are mere dumping grounds and are not in any way, shape, or form set up.

But, the kitchen is in good shape, other than a pile of tools and random stuff on the table in the dining room.  The living room is nearly settled.  And the other rooms are coming along.

The house lives as well as we’d hoped.  The kitchen is great to cook in.  The living room is warm and comfortable.  The Secret Attic is a fabulous place for the girls to have secret club meetings.  And we absolutely love walking into the garage in the morning and not having to scrape ice off the cars.

We’ve learned a few things about our house already:

• Passive solar heat is not to be underestimated.  The house always feels toasty, even when it’s 27 degrees outside.  I’m normally bundled up in many layers, but not since we moved in.
• Lots of large windows are great for allowing sunlight to pour in, but that also means that, at times, the light can be blinding.  Contrary to my earlier plans, we will be installing mini blinds so that we can angle them to block the strongest rays.
• Tall ceilings make small rooms feel bigger.  We intentionallly made the bedrooms and bathrooms pretty small, much more so than is common with new construction these days.  Having the higher ceilings makes the rooms feel more spacious and airy than they are.
• Asking the phone company to run a line to the house weeks ago doesn’t mean that they’ll actually do it.  Repeated phone calls don’t seem to speed things along either. We probably won’t have phone or internet for at least a week and possibly as much as two.  Frustrating.

Living in the house has also shown us a few things that need to be tweaked, so we’re working on a list for Jeff the Builder, including some places in the floor that need to be nailed down a bit more.  But, it’s not a long list and there’s nothing major on it.

I know y’all would like to see photos of the house now that the furniture is in and I will post some soon.  Just as soon as I find the phone cord.

Testing the lights

This week marks the first time we’ve been at our house after dark.  We’ve been taking loads of boxes over every evening and then spending some time unpacking, so as to minimize the chaos on Friday (ha!).

Being in the house at night means that we’re testing all those lights we (okay, I) agonized over for months.  The good news is that virtually all of the lights are just a bright as we’d hoped.  The not-really-bad news is that a couple of lights need brighter bulbs, which we’ll get around to correcting at some point after we take care of about 117 other things.

Here’s the view this evening:

Okay, so not a great photo, but the point is, that even with just a few lights on, the house is clearly well lit.

It was nice driving up to the house and having the porch lights already on — hooray for photosensitive lights!  The garage light is motion sensitive and came on as we walked up the stairs, thereby startling one of children, who jumped about a foot in surprise.

Lighting was important to us because we’ve never lived in a house with good hardwired lighting.  We’ve always had to make do with lots of strategically placed lamps.  In this house, we were able to have as much light as we wanted, which is why there are six different kinds of lights in the kitchen alone (dining area, peninsula, center of kitchen, over the sink, cabinet task lighting, and a pantry light).

We are schlepping stuff over every day and things are slowly, slowly taking shape.  The moving crew arrives on Friday.

Bar stools

We spent all of last weekend hauling boxes over to the house and trying to get things set up.  Today, after school, the girls and I went over to get more done.  First of all, however, we needed to have an afternoon snack:

Yep, I can tell that’s going to be a popular spot for hanging out.

We move in on Friday.

Ta da!

Check out our new aluminum and glass garage doors:

Right now, the glass is very … well … CLEAR.  We’re going to have it tinted frosted white for privacy. Plus, when the lights are on in the garage at night, those doors are going to GLOW.

As you can also see, the driveway has been paved.  This was definitely not the most eco-friendly choice we could have made, but we needed to weigh the environment vs. our budget and the budget won this time.

Inside the house, things are nearly done.  In fact, Jeff the Builder said we could start bringing some stuff over this weekend, so we’re going to focus on setting up the kitchen, the children’s toy room (so they’ll have a place to play while we’re working), and the upstairs closets.  Depending on how things look, we might also work on the children’s rooms, but we’ll just have to see.

Speaking of play spots, do you want to see the Secret Attic?

Here’s a shot of the ladder, which is not complete, so the child in the photo was not allowed to go any higher:

Here’s a close up of the materials used for the ladder:

And here’s what it looks like inside:

Doesn’t it feel like a cozy cabin?  We’re going to put a rug in there make things even cozier and possibly some big cushions/pillows.   The girls haven’t seen the Secret Attic yet, so they’re going to be THRILLED to finally get up there in a week or so.

More soon!