Rearranged

This summer, I found a pin on Pinterest that looked almost exactly like our living room. It was almost eerily similar.

Pin that looks like our living room

I really liked the way the furniture was arranged in this living room. All of the furniture was basically in the exact same place as our living room but the couches and chairs were more at an angle towards the walls and the dining room table is turned so that longest side of the table is not parallel to the longest side of the room. So, on a whim, I decided to rearrange our furniture. It was just a test and I really didn't think I would keep it. But, my husband liked the change so for now it is staying.

This is our new living room arrangement. It is almost the same angle as the living room in the pin
except you can't see the dining room table or the kitchen across the way.  

The dining room table used to go the other direction 

Looking at the room from the other direction. The amber lamp on the table has been destroyed by
our new cat who knocked it on the floor. A glass lamp falling on a cement floor doesn't have a
chance. The lamp had belonged to my great aunt who died ten years ago at the age of 96. 

I still need to write a blog about the envelope we got from the daughter of the people who built our house. It was full of ads they used to make decisions for all kinds of fixtures and appliances when they built the house. Some of the things we have ads for actually made it into the house. On February 13, work will begin on our bathroom. If you have been following along you know our bathroom has been quite an interesting topic. You can read several posts about our bathroom here.

A Knock On The Door

This morning at about 10am there was a knock at our front door. My husband has a horrible cold but I have this policy about not answering the door if I don't know who is on the other side. So, he got the job of answering. It ended up being the second owner of our house standing on the other side of the door! She wanted to know if she could come back later today with her family to see the house. This is the lady who happened to be very good friends with my mother's best friend and we have emailed about the house several times. I had not heard from her in quite some time. So, we set an appointment for 2pm when they returned.

At 2pm the owner showed up with her daughter, husband, granddaughter-in-law and grandson. It was so interesting to hear what they had to say about the house. They seemed to like the things we had done to it. I am going to type some of the things they told us about the house so that I don't forget. We started in the living room. She said when they moved in, the living room floor had just been carpeted with wool carpet for the sale of the house. We speculate this may have been the same carpet that was in the house when we moved in. She said the living room windows had white sheer panels when they lived there. We think they were the same ones on the windows when we moved in. They also told us they used the fireplace. We were told by the inspector that he thought there was no liner in the fireplace and we shouldn't use it until we know for sure. We haven't had it inspected by a chimney sweep yet but we suspect it does have a liner!

The kitchen was still terrazzo when they moved in but they covered it in linoleum. She thought the kitchen cabinets were white when they moved in and they had been painted due to damage. I was told that the cabinet that divides the living room and kitchen was moved further into the kitchen by them because they thought it went too far into the living room. She said the kitchen had a gourmet freezer/ fridge that was very large and had wood surrounding it. It was not very efficient and when it broke they couldn't find anyone to fix it so they replaced it. We think that was the original fridge for the house. She said it was very tall and flush with the kitchen cabinets. That is what I had speculated. The original owners had a laundry off the kitchen with a washer/ dryer all in one unit. That was removed and the laundry was added in the basement by these people.

The hallway leading to the family room.
The laundry room is on the left. The laundry
room and door leading into the family room
were not always here.

The pink and blueish/green carpet that was in the two smaller bedrooms when we moved in sounds like it was here when these people lived here. The pink was added by them. One bedroom has funny marks in the floor and ceiling right above and below each other. (I have been meaning to do a post about these to see if anyone knows what they are.) All I can think is that some kind of tension unit was in this spot. Maybe a lamp or a shelf. They said they don't remember having anything like this. I had suspected these were the owners who put the wallpaper in both of the bathrooms but they said they did not. The basement bathroom has tile on the floor that was also in the entry way. They said they don't remember this tile. They think the basement hallway and bathroom had carpet when they lived there.

This is the same floor covered in white splotches
at the "floor problems" link  below.

They used our guest room as a den which is also what I think the original owners used it for. The biggest surprise of their visit was learning about the rest of the basement. The rest of the basement had originally been a dog kennel. I know these people had removed the dog kennel. So, I assumed they had also refinished the basement and turned it into the laundry room and family room. But, they were not the ones who refinished the basement. They left it unfinished with a cement floor. What is now the laundry room and family room were all one big room. At one time the entire basement had a long hall that went from one end to a door that went outside. They said that hall was still there when they lived in the house. This was a very big surprise to us.

When you walk in the family room this divider is in front of you.
We assume it's there as support instead  of the original wall. You
can see the door to the carport past this divider.

I haven't included many pictures of the basement. That is where a large part of our floor problems happened. (Remember the story about the floors that got stained purple on accident?) I figure it is about time to post some photos of the basement. I'm sorry I didn't take them in the day when there was more light. We are just about moved in down there. For those of you wondering, our other house still has not sold!! So, we aren't completely moved into this house. We still have furniture at the other house. We do have an offer on the other house. It is supposed to close on June 24th. Hopefully everything will go through without any hitches. We are now in the process of moving the last of our furniture to the new house.

This is the divider from the opposite side.
The right side of this divider was where there
was a wall that ran the length of the family room
and created a hallway.

At our old house we had a lot of built in shelving in our family room. We were wondering how we were going to make up for all of that lost space. This past winter we got a shelving unit for the family room that comes in two pieces. They are supposed to be stacked on top of each other but we separated them. One unit is being used as an entertainment center. The other unit is being used as shelving for books. The unit was originally a beverage rack. I will have more photos soon of our guest bedroom. It has also been neglected in my photos. A new bedspread comes this week and we should be about done with that room. We finally had our front yard repaired after the new sewer line. So, be watching for more landscaping photos. We also have some new patio furniture.

It is our hope to paint the exterior of the house this summer. Choosing colors is not fun!! I wish someone could just tell me what will look great.

More to come soon!

This is the new storage unit we got in the winter. The piece on the left is actually supposed to stack on top of the piece
on the right. The top of the piece on the right is actually from our old house. My cousin built it to serve the same
purpose it serves now on top of a built in shelving unit where our TV sat. The two pieces on the right are not attached.

4 Christmas Trees, 3 French Hens, 2 Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

The first tree.

I decided I would make a post about the FOUR Christmas trees we have this year since three of them are vintage or sort of vintage. My husband likes to joke about our four Christmas trees though I think he is secretly kind of proud of them. We went from one Christmas tree last year to four this year. We started out with the Christmas tree I have had for seventeen years. I bought it the first year I lived on my own in Kansas while I was going to grad school. It was a little half size tree that sat on a table. It wasn't anything special. I was very poor and couldn't afford much. Considering the price I paid I thought it shaped up into a nice little tree. The little houses under the tree are vintage. They were once on a string of lights that didn't last long. My mom took them off and they ended up in a little box of Christmas decorations I was always given to decorate my room every Christmas. I loved the little houses and setting them up to make a Christmas village.

My parents 40 year old tree.

My parents have had the same Christmas tree for  over forty years. It came from a department store in Chicago.  I always loved that tree. It was really tall and packed with ornaments. I aways loved the way the angel was about a centimeter from touching the ceiling. My grandparents who lived in Chicago had the exact same tree. It was in their garage when it collapsed from an ice storm. The Christmas decorations did not get removed before they were destroyed from the weather. My mom always complained about her tree and talked about getting a new one. I would always harass her until she gave in and kept it.

She finally went and bought a tree without me knowing it. Now we have the old Christmas tree that is over forty years old. I still love it and think it looks as good as any tree you could go out and buy today. It might even look better! Our ceilings are so high the top isn't quite as close to the ceiling as it was at my parents house. I eventually need to get an angel for the top instead of a star. It is now in our living room and the little tabletop tree is in the "dressing room". The little table top tree is the only tree we have that is not vintage.

I made the joy pillows in 8th grade sewing class.

Grandpa's Tree

The next tree is another hand me down from my mom. Not that long ago when those skinny rustic Christmas trees became in vogue she bought this skinny, rustic tree to decorate in memory of my grandfather (her dad) who died of cancer when I was in the 7th grade. I was very close to my grandpa and spent a lot of time with him. The honorary ornament on this tree is a bird's nest he gave me over thirty years ago to take to school for show and tell. The tree also has a red bike on it because my grandpa would ride his red bike everywhere. He even road his bike about 25 minutes from his town to our town to come and visit. There is a wagon on the tree because he would pull me all over town in a red wagon. My mom always says I knew more people in the town she grew up in than her because of my grandpa taking me in the red wagon to visit people. There are also little animals and gardening tools on the tree. My grandpa loved animals and nature. He had a huge garden that was probably about three house lots big. He would give vegetables from the garden away to everyone he knew. This tree has the vintage bird's nest and lots of vintage memories. If you come stay in our guest room this is where you will find the grandpa tree.

The bird's nest for show and tell.

The last tree is truly vintage. My husband kept talking about aluminum Christmas trees. I was never really that excited about them and definitely wasn't impressed by the color wheels for them that seem so popular these days. We saw an aluminum tree not long ago at an antique shop. We talked about buying it but I felt it was a bit expensive and I still wasn't that excited about it. Our family room has tan walls with deep blue accents. I started thinking about how pretty an aluminum tree would look decorated in blue. Then every morning when I would leave for work I would look over at the empty corner of the room and imagine an aluminum Christmas tree decorated in blue sitting in that corner. I finally decided I had to have that aluminum tree. We went to get it and the shop was closed for vacation! My dad stopped in about a week later and was able to get the tree for $20 less than the price we had been quoted. It's ours. I think it is so pretty. If you decide to get your own aluminum Christmas tree please beware! That aluminum will give you cuts on your hands while you decorate.

I always think about the people who built this house. I think about their original intentions for the house, how they had it decorated etc. I start to think about Christmas and what the house looked like for them at Christmas tree. Then I remind myself they were Jewish and I assume there was no Christmas tree. Then I wonder even more how their house was decorated in December. What did it look like for Hannukah?

It Arrived!!!

We can finally live in our living room again!! All of the walls have been stripped and stained. We put a very thin molding around the ceiling. You can't even really see it. It just makes it look finished and the edges look sharper. We had new vertical blinds put up last Friday. Our awesome guy who did the walls came back and put them up for free so we wouldn't mess up his work by accidentally drilling holes in the wrong spot. Now our walls will be protected from more sun damage. The kitties can also stick their heads through and look out whenever they want. I have decided there is a lot of green in the room. I love green but we need something else. I think I will eventually make some pillows that are a different color. Maybe I will blog about pillow ideas next. I still need to do a blog on the bathroom.

Today my piano came!!!! I have been so anxious to get it here and see how it looks in the room. But, we decided to hold off until the walls were done and new blinds were up as long as our old house hadn't sold. The mess from the construction would have been very bad for the piano. We have a few little things we would still like to do in this room but there is no rush. We will most likely eventually take the ceiling fan down. We think it detracts from the fire place. We will live through all of the seasons and see for sure if we can do without it. We are under the impression the fireplace is not lined. At some point we need to have a chimney sweep look at it. If it is not lined we will look into our options. We may possibly put in a gas fireplace. I read about unlined fireplaces. It sounds like they are a very bad thing. We have a pretty low open shelf that we are going to put against the window in the open space in front of the piano. We also have four more chairs for the table. We are waiting to move them back into the room because we still have some spots where stripper got on the floor that need to be scrubbed. If we are lucky we may even get our intercom system working again!!

Before

After

Our New Little Guy

Our spring break wasn't super exciting. We spent a lot of time dealing with house stuff and some work issues. We did have one fun day where we went to a local estate sale and got quite an exciting find for $8. I have posted before about our plan to collect Blenko and Viking glass to put on some of the tall shelves in the house. On the shelf between the kitchen and living room we have green, amber, blue and yellow glass. We decided to get some bigger pieces for some of the tall built in shelves upstairs. My husband has been reading a lot about the glass and other mid-century furniture online. He is getting quite good at spotting things at sales and in shops. A lot of the glass is very similar and hard to identify. We are just starting to learn. At the estate sale he eyed the cutest little blue glass bottle with a topper that has a face on it and the bottle has arms. This bottle is the cutest looking little guy. He had seen it online and recognized it. He took a photo of it last night with two great big glass pieces. The tall skinny one with the yellow stripe (the Mommy) was a gift to my husband from my parents for Christmas. The big fat bottle (the Daddy) has a broken topper but we got it for $1 at an antique shop. It will be very hard for us to find a bottle that size for a reasonable price. It is so high up you can't tell the stopper is broken. I decided for $1 I can live with it until something more exciting comes along. The new cute guy looks like their baby!!

A Mess Until March

Wow! Things have been a mess! On January 22, the work finally began on our house. We had 3 workers here every day until February 25. A whole month!! Our house was a DISASTER the whole time they were here. All of our furniture was piled into every room they weren't working in except our bedroom. There was dust everywhere. There was paper covering much of the floor. That paper was coated in stripper or stain. It was a yucky, yucky mess. We were unable to use our kitchen or sit in our living room for a month.

Our living room a couple of weeks ago

We actually ended up spending a lot of time at home with the workers. I have completely lost count of how many snow days we have had this winter. There were many days we did not have work and stayed home. My husband stayed home with them for a week after suffering through the beginning of anaphylaxis. If you don't know what that is, it basically means you quit breathing due to an allergic reaction. He didn't quit breathing but he was headed in that direction.

Thankfully we loved our workers. They did an awesome job on our house and they were fun to talk to. We don't have one single complaint. It was kind of sad when they left. It was depressing on the last day when they walked out with their radio. I knew they would not be coming back! They were also quite handy to have around. They helped us figure out that we had a basement full of water due to our sewer backing up.

A week later they saved us from having a completely flooded house. The toilet backed up after I left for work. Water went in the bathroom, bedroom, down the hall and through the ceiling into the basement. Luckily, one of them was in the basement and saw the water pouring through the ceiling. They had a shop vac and they were able to clean it up quickly and call me at work to come home and deal with it. So, on top of everything else that was done we now also have a new sewer line. So, not only was the inside of the house a mess but the outside too!

The giant mole hill in our front yard after getting a new sewer line.

 Finally,  everything is done except the two new toilets we will be getting Sunday because of their contribution to our sewer problems and the new roof on the carport which we can't get until the weather warms up. Believe it or not we are forecast to have MORE snow Sunday night. Today we got new vertical blinds in the living room to prevent having so much sun damage again. We also had the walls refinished in the living room and guest room, new very thin molding added around the ceiling in the family room and guest bedroom, new floor molding added in the family room and downstairs hallway, refinished stairs, kitchen cabinets and molding refinished, painted the kitchen, built in grill repaired, stove hood repaired, basement door repaired, new thresholds leading into all bathrooms, bathroom cabinets refinished, all inside doors to closets, bedroom etc. refinished, and new shower door. My next post well be lots of photos of all the new work that was done.

Would You Like An Update On Our Wood?

The very first time I looked at our house I walked in the living room and thought wow this is awesome! Too bad this wood is so pale and ugly. The living rooms walls are redwood paneled along with the stairwells, ceiling beams in the living room and kitchen and walls in the basement room that was once a den and will now be our guest bedroom. I don't know anything about wood but we have been told our walls are heart of redwood which is very, very expensive and we would probably never be able to afford them today. Unfortunately, they were a very pale blonde color. They were covered in some kind of blonde wash that we don't think is original to the house. Then the blonde has faded even more due to years and years of sun damage from a complete wall of windows. The stairwells, which really catch your eye because they are right next to the beautiful fireplace, were extremely worn from years and years of people running their hands and who knows what else (feet, dogs, kids, toys, suitcases etc.) up and down them. Some of the living room beams were almost white from the sun. You could point out every spot on the wall where a photo had been hanging due to the sun damage.

So, we decided we would have the walls refinished, re-stained etc. as soon as we could afford it and find someone to do it. We had a very difficult time finding someone and everyone we spoke with had a different idea about the best way to complete the job. Some people thought the walls should be sanded. Other people thought the walls should be stripped. And, of course, the most common solution was that we should just make it easier on ourselves and paint the walls. We were both so opposed to the idea of paint. Why in the world would you want to paint when you could have natural wood that would require virtually no upkeep. I'm finally just recovering from all the painting I did this summer. I don't want to paint more!!! When we were looking at houses I almost got to a point where I quit looking at the photos if I didn't see any wood paneling in the photos. I KNOW I am probably the only person in the world that feels this way. But, I just love the look of the natural wood. I finally got so frustrated I called a guy from my mom's home town who builds homes. He comes HIGHLY recommended. He is in high demand and known for his very reasonable prices.

I called him in hopes of getting a reference for someone who could refinish our wood. I never thought he would be interested in doing such a little job. I just hoped he wouldn't completely blow me off. He came and looked at our house in September and seemed to really like it. He told us he would the job himself (and several other smaller things we needed done) if we could wait until January when the weather was colder and he would need inside work. We agreed to happily wait. After the fiasco with our floors we were absolutely thrilled to find someone of such high quality to do the job. He stopped by last week and tested out several strippers on the wall in hopes of finding one that was not as toxic and would work well since it is the middle of winter (4 degrees this morning to be exact!) and opening a lot of windows is not practical. He then tested out some stain. In the photo below you can see the original wall color. It actually is more pale than in the photo. You can also see three strips where he tested stripper and stain. To the right is the stain color that we decided upon. You can see the drastic difference in the wall and the stain. Also at the right above the stain you can sort of see a faded square in the wood. It looks like there may have been a file cabinet or similar sized item there for a long time. There are spots like this all over the wood.

Test strips

 As January grew closer I was starting to second guess my thoughts on having the walls refinished. I was starting to get used to the blonde. I worried that maybe I was ruining the original style of the house that we were working so hard to maintain. I thought maybe we were going to waste our money. I was really to a point where I thought maybe I would be just fine with the wood if it didn't have so much sun damage and wear. He finally started the job on Wednesday and the downstairs bedroom (formally den) is basically done except trim and detail work. It looks AMAZING! The walls are finally a beautiful brown color. They have done such a professional job. We haven't had one complaint yet! This has been such a change after the floor people this summer. After the first day of work on the job it looked great but I still wondered if we were going to all this work for a change that wouldn't be that great. I asked the workers what they thought. They said all that mattered was what I thought because I had to live with it. I told them I knew that but they looked at so many houses that they know what looks good. Then they let it fly! They said it was a huge improvement. They said you couldn't even compare the before and after. Then they said it looked like someone had smeared mustard on the walls previously! After seeing the completed room today I think we are very happy with the results.

This is a completed wall in the guest bedroom. You can't completely see how it looks because there is nothing else in the room to compare it to in the way of color except the vent and the outlet. But, hopefully you can see that it looks much better!

The people doing the work are so good at what they do we feel like we need to get as much work out of them as we can afford because we will probably never have an opportunity like this again. They are going to put new stair treads on our steps that are finished to match the walls better. The work the people did on the stairs this summer was awful. They look orange now! As I said above, the stairs really catch your eye because they are next to the fireplace. We are looking forward to having stairs that actually look good! If we can afford it we also plan on having them do a few more things. Our kitchen cabinets are white. They will refinish those back to wood. They will refinish our bathroom cabinets that look orange because the varnish has yellowed over time. We will have transition strips added as you go into all of the bathrooms since the flooring people did not finish that this summer. Our basement door is having some major issues so that will be rectified. And, we are looking forward to putting a shower door in so that we no longer get water on our shower floor. I have always preferred shower doors over curtains and was very excited to find out the bathroom originally had one but it was removed. Before I knew that I felt like I was "ruining" the original bathroom if I added a door. I will try to post more updates as the work progresses.

Coffee Table...

Bassett coffee table

for the new coffee table books! Before our end table came we saw this coffee table we liked at an antique shop for a cheap price. We decided after our end table came in we would go back and look at it to see if it would match the end table. Yesterday we went back and checked it out. We decided it would match. It JUST fit in our car perfectly. If it would have been an inch bigger in any direction we would have been in trouble. After getting it home I decided it was a bit darker than our end table. It also doesn't have as beautiful of a grain as the end table. The coffee table is a more solid color and the end table is much more variegated and pretty. The coffee table is wood veneer (I think that is what you would call it.) instead of solid wood. I was a bit unhappy that the wood doesn't match everything perfectly and the style of the legs aren't the same as our other furniture. But, I have been informed that if everything matches it will look like we bought a furniture set at Sears! I really do like the style of the table! We will probably eventually get a different coffee table that is solid wood. For now, I have another place to put all of my new coffee table books.

Bassett coffee table

Happy Holidays!!!

I have promised some people photos of the house decorated for Christmas. So, here I am. The Christmas mess is finally picked up so I thought I better strike while the iron is hot. We still have a wimpy little tree from when I lived in an apartment 15 years ago. Maybe next year we will have big one! I have lots of great aunts, grandmas and students who have supplied me with decorations over the years. At first my husband thought maybe we had too many. But, now he seems to be enjoying them. For several years my aunt gave me Christmas Village houses that light up for Christmas.  We have a perfect place for them now on the fireplace hearth. We have enjoyed sitting in the living room at night watching the lights reflect off of the shiny new floors! I have also enjoyed finding things to decorate the openings next to the fireplace. Right now we are unable to use the fireplace because it does not have a liner. We hope to eventually get that taken care of.

This year I got some exciting new Mid-Century themed books from my husband for Christmas. The first gift I got was actually a very high end Mid-Century magazine that looks like a book. I think it will be coming quarterly. I got another book about Charles Eames. We would like to eventually get a white Eames fiberglass chair in our "office". He also gave me a book about Danish Modern furniture and a book by Atomic Ranch magazine. I really like the Atomic Ranch book because it has a lot of houses that are similar in style to ours.

New books I received as Christmas presents

If you look carefully you will notice that the new books are sitting on our new end table! It arrived a couple of days ago by Greyhound shipping. I had no idea Greyhound has a shipping service until I found this table. When we bought our living room furniture there was a very low end table between the two couches that made them look like they were connected together and one piece of furniture. We really liked the way it looked but the table had a black laminate top. We really wanted a wooden table. So we have been looking ever since for table to fit in that spot. But, it had to be the EXACT size in order to fit! Finding a table that is exactly 30 inches square and 15 inches high turned out to be a challenge. There aren't many 15 inch high tables out there. When we finally found one on Ebay that seemed reasonably priced we had to jump. It turned out to be exactly what we wanted but it has a bit of a wobble and more wear than we expected. We should be able to fix the wobble and the wear is not particularly noticeable. I do feel that for the value of the table we paid too high of a price and the seller was misleading about the condition. But, we are otherwise happy with it.

Our new end table.

We also added a new lamp to the room just this evening. It is actually new from our attic!!! This lamp originally was given to me by my great aunt who died about 6 years ago. The lamp is probably at least 50 years old I would think. When I was given the lamp I didn't like the original shade so I got a more modern one and added some nice olive beads on a ribbon that hung around the bottom of edge of the lamp. When my husband moved in he HATED the lamp. So, the lamp ended up in the attic. It turns out he actually just hated the beads! I told him tonight I loved those beads. I was just going for a different look back then! So, tonight we went out and got a new lamp shade that was a bit more subdued. We are both pretty happy with the way the lamp looks now.

I told my husband that my Aunt Emma would be proud!

Right now the chair pictured below is the favorite place for the cats! They LOVE these snowman and are always trying to cuddle up to them. Right now we have to flip the furniture cushions up if we are not in the room so they don't think they can sit wherever they want. We really would prefer that our living room furniture does not become their favorite place to sit. So, if you come over to our house for an unexpected visit and our cushions are all flipped up, please don't think we are crazy!! And, if you decide to sit by the snowmen you will have a cat sitting with you also.

Happy New Year!!!!

Paint Palettes

We are STILL not quite done painting. We have some trim in the hallways and family room to still do. Thankfully we have had some help from my mom because my back is about shot from painting. We are close so I finally decided to take a few photos. I just tried to get photos of paint colors because we still have dressers with no drawers in them and boxes piled up and weird things like that! I took photos this afternoon at 3PM but the sun was already starting to go down I realized.  :(  So, the photos could be better but at least you get a sneak peak for now. All of the colors were picked from California Paints 20th Century Colors Of America which are authentic shades used from 1900-1985. All of the colors we used were from the year our house was built.

Our bedroom is my favorite color! In our old house our bedroom was a very deep burgundy color. Everyone hated it but me. I was finally convinced to ditch the burgundy because it was not appropriate for our house. But, I wanted something that still would compliment the bedspread, wall hangings etc. from the burgundy room. I decided I wanted a pinkish brown color but I DID NOT want pink. I was scared to death I would think I found something then get it on the wall and it would be pink. It is a miracle that I somehow found exactly what I had hoped for!! It has just a touch of pinkish and I think it also transitions nicely into the pink and blue bathroom. (I keep saying "I" because I tried to include my husband in picking colors but he didn't seem to have a lot of interest. He did give some input but he mostly let me choose.)

 I settled on University Square by California Paints. Unfortunately, the photos of our bedroom are the worst. I don't think they nearly show off how great this color is. I will have to get better ones later. You really should click the University Square link above to get a better look. I really like the way all of the colors we picked bring the outside colors inside. I believe this was one of the architectural goals of the style of our house which is one of the reasons for the large windows. Outside our bedroom window is a Japanese Maple Tree. The pinkish brown paint really brings out the pinkish purple colors in the tree. Unfortunately I didn't realize when I took the photos that the tree is quickly turning brown and shedding for the winter.

Japanese Maple tree outside bedroom window before it turned cold.

The view from our bedroom. The Japanese Maple is looking a bit sorry now. Just the other day it was still beautiful.

I wish this picture showed the paint color off better. I LOVE it! Ignore our horribly wrinkled bedspread.

For the second bedroom (originally the girl's room) that we are using as a dressing room, the family room and the upstairs and downstairs hallway I chose Gobi Desert by Behr. This was a neutral color that was much easier to get from Behr than trying to get a copy from California Paints but there are several similar historical California Paint Colors. It is kind of a khaki color. I love that it is very neutral but just dark enough to have a punch of color. It also goes with the burgundy items from the old bedroom and compliments the colors in the beautiful trees you can see outside from the large window in the bedroom.

The dressing room, family room and hallway colors. I'm not sure if the white trim was the right choice.

The downstairs of the house is a bit more modern than the upstairs since the family room was done almost 20 years after the house was built. I wanted blues in there and thought since it was more modern I might paint it a deep blue color. But, we have lots of blue pillows, wall hangings etc. so I came to my senses and decided to do the Gobi desert down there also. I decided it would compliment the blues nicely. And, my husband was more anti-blue basement than anything else having to do with paint.

The family room is not finished but here is a glimpse of the color inside a white trimmed shelf.

Our "hobby room" (originally the boy's room) is a steel blueish grey color form California Paints called Industrial Steel. I thought this color might go well with some black and white photos I would like to hang in this room. I can see some of the original blue paint color that was in this room peeking out in places. It looks like it might have possibly been a very similar color at one time. There is a beautiful deep, deep green magnolia tree outside the big window in this room. It is so green some of the leaves almost look blue which again makes the blue paint a nice frame for this window.

The kitty looking outside at the Magnolia tree.

The "hobby room"

We have our new dining room set home and we really like the way it looks in the family room. Even the orange seats which I immediately wanted to change look so nice with all of the wood and the style of the house. I would almost be tempted to keep the orange but it just isn't me. It is too vibrant and not peaceful enough. And, we already have olive green living room furniture in the same room so the orange and green would really be over the top! I already have fabric to cover the dining room chairs. Maybe this weekend I can do that. I need to do a little bit of research on upholstering tonight.

New dining room set. Can you spot the sleeping kitty?

New fabric for dining room chairs.

New fabric

Now that all of the colors are starting to come together I am getting really anxious to paint the kitchen. We saved it for last since it has no furniture in it that we will have to work around. Also, we were trying to decide what we were going to do with the cabinets before we painted. I think this winter we are going to have the cabinets stripped back down to their natural wood instead of white. So, I think it would be best if we paint before instead of after they are stripped. Then we don't have to worry about getting paint on the cabinets as much.

The kitchen will be an olive green color from Behr called Spartan Stone. It is another match to a historical California Paint color. I love the olive green and it will go with the olive green furniture in the dining room and living room since the rooms are all open to each other. My husband might kill me if I ask him to paint that room before Thanksgiving. We have done so much painting!! There are some really high walls in there and he has to do all of the high parts since he is 6ft 5in. But, hopefully someday soon I will have kitchen photos for you! And, some full house photos!! Hopefully you caught a few glimpses of the floors in these photos. Taking photos of the floors requires them to not be covered with boxes!!! Still coming!

Weekend Finds

Hopefully someday our art glass shelf will look something like this.

OK, I said I would post more about our weekend finds. Besides the dining room table we also found four pieces of art glass. There is a shelf above a kitchen cabinet that divides our kitchen and living room. It catches the light nicely and we thought we would fill it with mid-century Blenko and Viking art glass. My grandma had a lot of Viking glass when I was a kid and I always thought it was neat looking. Orange seems to be a very popular color. (That is what my grandma had a lot of.) We are trying to collect greens (especially olive), yellow, amber, browns and blue (turquoise). We have not done a lot of research on the glass at this point but it seems that most of it was marked with stickers that have long ago fallen off so it can be hard to identify what is authentic. Right now we are just collecting whatever strikes our fancy and has the right price and we aren't worrying too much about authenticity. Apparently the kitchen cabinets they sit on are not original to the house. Everyone was telling us we should tear them out because they block the light that comes in the living room windows. At first I didn't like that idea but I am becoming more open to it. I think even if we do eventually decide to remove the cabinets we will keep the shelf. I have a Pinterest board for all of the Blenko glass I love.

The newest pieces of glass are the farthest to the left, fourth from the left and the two farthest to the right. The two turquoise pieces came from my grandmother's house when she passed away.

Our new olive green Catherin Holm enamel pot.

We also found a Catherine Holm enamel pot yesterday. We first got two hand me down Catherin Holm bowls from my husband's grandma. After doing a little research we found out how collectible they are. I really like the way they looked and I was especially fond of the fact they were olive green. Right now our kitchen is still white but soon the kitchen and living room colors will be olive green. So, when my husband found this Catherin Holm pot at a reasonable price I was all for it. It comes in several colors like blue, yellow and I believe orange. I am partial to the green. We found some yellow china yesterday that looks very similar. I would have snapped it up if it was green. I wish we would have taken a look at the brand so we could look it up and see if it came in green. We may stop back by tomorrow and see if we can get the name.

This evening we made an attempt to go shopping for fabric to recover for the dining room chairs.  We arrived just as the fabric store was closing. We are supposed to pick up the table and chairs tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I can post some more pictures of the house. I haven't really posted finished photos of the floors or paint because things are still a bit of a disaster. But, maybe I can post some small peeks. I will save the overall photos for when ALL of our stuff is finally moved. (Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.) There is a big hole in the living room right now because my piano is still at the old house. Last night as I was getting ready for bed and brushing my teeth I thought of another little odd thing about this house we didn't discover until we moved in. The bathroom sinks are REALLY low. It is very strange. I'm not really sure why they were made that way. Maybe I will have time to post again tomorrow and break a record by posting three days in a row.

Still Here

I have not dropped off the face of the earth. It has just been too overwhelming to think about rehashing everything in a blog post. Tomorrow it will be two months exactly since we closed on the house and the flooring people STILL have a key to our house. : ( They think they are done with the floor. We are not in agreement! The overall look of the floors we are satisfied with but their attention to detail has been less than stellar.

After the last post about how upset we were with the look of the polished cement due to the flaws left from the dog kennel we spoke to them about our options. We decided to have the cement floor stained a coffee bean color. Because they had already sealed the floor before we got to see it that meant they had to strip it all again. We made it very clear that it was not their fault (even though communication could have been better and time could have been saved had we been given the opportunity to see the floor before it was sealed) that at one time there had been a dog kennel in the basement. We felt good about the decision and decided we might like the stained floor even better.

We then got a call one Friday night telling us not to freak out but if we went over to the house the basement floor would be purple and there was purple stain sprayed all over the carport. Apparently the container of stain they used was labeled correctly but had the wrong color stain inside. I was questioning the truth of this to myself but we then saw the container and it WAS labeled correctly. THEN apparently the sprayer broke in the driveway and got purple stain all over the place. We were assured that it would all be cleaned up and rectified on Monday.

After this we felt like they gave up on our house and quit putting in a lot of effort. We could tell they would go days without working and the attention to detail was very sloppy. They had to strip the basement floor a second time and re-stain it. We are quite satisfied with the overall look of the correct stain color but they were very sloppy with it. They sealed the walls around the floor with plastic to protect it from the stain. A spot of the floor about the size of a baseball got covered by plastic and has no stain on it. They went ahead and sealed it!

They also had me go over and look at the floor before they sealed it. (I wasn't able to see the spot mentioned above because the plastic was still up.) I confirmed with them it was safe to walk across the floors. They said yes. The grass had just been mowed and I tracked in a lot of cut grass. They knew I had been in the house and I assumed would sweep the floor one last time before sealing. Nope! I was wrong. We now have grass permanently embedded in our floor. It's not really noticeable but for the price we paid it shouldn't be there! They also didn't finish some of the chipped spots in the terrazzo correctly. We are going to have to add some extra speckles to it ourselves just because we want to be done with them.

The last thing we are waiting for is a spot in front of the doorway to the furnace room where the stain doesn't go all the way up to the door so there is a strip of bare concrete showing in front of the door. It is a shame they were willing to have unhappy customers over such silly careless things. I could go on and on with the little nit picky things they didn't do correctly but I could go on for days. Many of the small things we are just forgetting about so these people will be out of our lives. We had asked them for an estimate on refinishing our living room walls. They never gave us one and never finished the test patch they said they would do on the walls.

Right now we are trying to find out what would be entailed in having the walls refinished now by someone else. We would like to have it done now before we move in but it will depend how much it costs and if we can find someone to do it. It has been a challenge! Yesterday we started painting. We have almost all of the ceilings done and the trim in the family room. We also have paint colors picked out. We have chosen authentic historical paint colors. The only rooms we aren't painting right now are the bathrooms and kitchen.

We had an offer on our house and thought we might have to be moved by October 1 which was going to be pushing it. The offer ended up falling through. The girl didn't really seem to know what she was doing or what she wanted so we weren't too upset about it. Though, we are hoping to sell our house sooner rather than later. We would also like to be in the new house ASAP so that we don't have to deal with getting the house ready for a showing while school is in session. We did get our new living room furniture reupholstered which has been one bright spot in this ordeal of trying to get the house ready for moving in. The guy from Saint Louis who did the cushions for us did an awesome job! You can see the completed terrazzo floor in the photo of the furniture. I will post more floor photos soon.

Living Room Furniture

Well, progress on the house is moving slowly so we made our own progress today. We took another trip to Saint Louis. We had much more success! Again, don't go to Saint Louis to antique shop on a Tuesday. It will result in a failure. We stopped in Rocket Century and found so many pieces of furniture we would have loved to own. Many of them were already sold! We came across the living room set in the photograph to the left. We bought the two couches and two chairs. They are in like new condition and the wood is beautiful. The label from the shop says they are Kofod style. It is likely that we will have them reupholstered. I am partial to a nice neutral olive green. Right now they are a bright green and blue herring bone pattern which is a bit vivid for my taste. They could be much worse.