One of the first lessons we learned from our first home project was to focus on one room at a time, rather than focusing on like tasks throughout the house. When one moves into a new home that needs a lot of work the impulse is to get everything done as quickly as possible. Then one finds out finishing “as quickly as possible” mean months, if not years. It becomes overwhelming.
We are progressing much slower than I would like, but this is what happens when you have little ones and work full time. We’re using a bit of a scatter approach this time, focus on a couple of rooms at a time. The boys room is nearly done, just a matter of touching up paint, doing all the trim and adding base boards. Their furniture will do for now, though we’re keeping an eye out on Craigslist for a bunk bed. Our four year old son is in a toddler mattress on the floor which we are hoping looks kind of minimalist chic (that exists, right?) but it’s also quite practical because he tumbles out of the bed quite often.
We are also focusing on the upstairs, since this is the introduction to the house. The layout of the upstairs is a bit challenging, but it does have some nice features. We love the open floor plan, but it’s not expansive which means we need to measure and choose our furnishings really carefully. Tonight I’ve spent about 3 hours using a floor layout tool to figure out what kind of couch and chair combination we need in the living area. I think I might finally have the solution, but let’s wait until daylight. I think we’ll be able to incorporate these awesome mid-century club chairs that we have had for years. (Similar to these.) They still need reupholstering, but they are really gorgeous. I’ll be super happy if we can find a place for them here. I’ll write a bit more and share some of the layouts I came up with a little later.
So what do you think of the fireplace? Groovy? Yeah, it’s a little 70′s, isn’t it? Not really the good kind of 70′s either. I love the way it extends to the ceiling, though. Eventually we will probably tear out the faux rock, but for now we are going to paint it charcoal gray. Our color palette upstairs is going to be limited to grays and whites with some black and browns (wood accents) and I think it will have a really groovy (in a good way) vibe. The Fjäll Lodge in Australia has done something similar and it looks quite striking.
Erich got the cabinets for our stair cabinet project. We’ll need to have that done before the painters come at the end of June. (They are finishing the drywall.) Sadly, our upstairs is going to continue to be an eyesore until the painters take care of smoothing out the rest of the walls. The kitchen is nearly really ready to go, so that might be our next focus after we get the stair cabinet built. Or build storage in the master bath. Ack, so much to do!
The pictures, by the way, are from before we moved in. The weekend that we pulled out the carpets. Not too much has changed. I am so hating the floors, but we just don’t have the money to replace them right now. They are a low priority compared to some of the other things we need to deal with. I’m sure once we have painted the walls and moved furniture in (and rugs!) they won’t bother me as much. (Hoping….)
