A little bit of you, a little bit of me

In marriage, compromises are an art.  It can be challenging to think of something that will make both partners happy, or to get at least one person to let go.  My biggest compromise lately has been in our master bedroom.  There has always been something missing on the far wall, where there was a lot of empty floor space in a weird shape and a big, giant blank wall of gray staring at you when you enter the room.  I was always thinking of a chaise lounge, or at least something long and skinny that kept with the comfortable, neutral theme of the room.

Well, as of last January, there is no more floor space.  So what did we find?  A lovely, vintage-y chaise lounge?  A small chair and side table for reading before bed?  At least something upholstered and neutral?  Nope.  This post is about compromise, remember?  No, what we ended up with is this:

A weight bench.  My wonderful husband wanted to get into a more regular routine, which I totally support, and I found a full set for an amazing price on Craigslist (complete with both heavy dust and tags still intact).  After extensive discussion, we found that this was the only spot in our house that could accommodate the odd shape and massive size.  A bit far from the upholstered neutrals of the rest of the room, but at least it fills the space and balances the room a little more.  I think we still need to add a full size mirror to the right of it, and perhaps an organizer for the free weights, but for now it works for us.  I decided that I didn't need to have yet another spot to read (I have the third floor library for that, or, more regularly, the bed itself), so I didn't need a chaise lounge or side table/chair combo.  Overall it is a daily reminder of combining my style with Jeremy's functionality, and Jeremy actually uses it, so that's a bonus.  The day it turns into one big clothing rack is the day we know we don't need it any more!

Come and knock on our door, we've been waiting for you!

I am pretty proud of our guest room, I have to say.  After years of compelling guests to crash on the couch or stay on our pull-out sofa in the office, it feels pretty swanky to have a room set up specifically for that purpose at all times.  If someone were to randomly drop in and need a room, they could be sleeping in their own private space in 2.5 seconds, no need to pull out a lumpy mattress or move aside stuff that is usually in regular use.  We got extremely lucky that the room was already a warm khaki color, which I had been planning on painting our future guest room back when we were in planning mode.  All I needed to do was add some chocolate brown stripes (the previous owners were nice enough to leave some extra paint from when they painted the dining room) and a couple of accessories, and we were set!

I have had a lot of fun styling the room since it is essentially a museum between rare guest visits.  Emily Henderson (www.stylebyemilyhenderson.com) is amazing at nightstands, so I have been trying to emulate her style with this small part of our home.  You can't really see it in this photo, but it has a dark wood tray, water carafe, water glass, lamp, and small ceramic shoe.  I think I still need to add a piece of art behind the tray and resting on the wall for more of an impact, but I'm not sure.  I'm always torn about the surfaces in a guest room since people inevitably bring lots of stuff and need a place to set it, and if I have a ton of decorative stuff they don't have as much space, but art doesn't take up too much space.  I may move that little painting on the wall above the bed to the nightstand and find something better for that focal spot.  We'll see if we ever find that perfect piece, otherwise, less effort = awesome and the small art will stay.

Let me zoom in on another controversial spot in the room:

I saw this idea in Young House Love's new book, and I tried to pull it off in my own space.  It seemed like the perfect solution for adding another side table in a part of the room where a regular sized nightstand would block the closet door.  I found the chair itself at World Market for $10 at the end of the fall season and added some hardcover books that were of similar size.  Plop an alarm clock on top and it's a nightstand, right?  Jeremy is skeptical, but one can at least set down a pair of glasses or a cell phone, I think.  We'll see how it shapes up over time.

So there it is, what do you think?  Wanna come by?

Banishing Builder's Beige 2: Revenge of the Paint Cans

As you saw in the previous post we have been painting our little cans off lately.  The most ambitious project, I'm sure, was the upstairs hallway.  The walls just...kept...going.  It felt like I would always be cutting in around the trim and baseboards until I grew old and died, paintbrush in hand, falling down carefully so I didn't splatter the carpet.  Fortunately, and obviously, death did not overtake me and we made the transformation from scuffed up beige to a warm neutral very close to the kitchen color.

You saw this picture in the previous post, but now it has a little context.  In person it's a warm, olive-y brown.  Jeremy actually picked the color, and it just happened to be an incredibly close match to the kitchen (love that guy!).  I think it looks great with the black of the gallery frames, as well as with the blues and grays of the rooms connected to it.

This is a shot from the guest room doorway looking back toward the gallery wall.  This was the largest chunk of wall, and I think it shows that the color stands up by itself, without too many things layered on top of it.  I plan to make it a gallery of the UF championship newspapers we have, but framing them is a project to handle over time (have you ever custom framed something?  Yowch!!!  Even with a 60% off coupon and the cheapest options, this one was a bit pricey!  End of aside.)  

Anyway, with a big project comes a big sense of accomplishment when it's done.  I definitely have been rocking a holy-smokes-we-did-it buzz since we finished this in early November, in preparation for Thanksgiving.  It's actually been long enough that we are playing with the idea of adding another coat, but all in good time!

Apologies for the long delay

So I have to sincerely apologize for being away since...September?  Can that be right?  I am thoroughly convinced that no one has been reading this in real time, but if so, thanks for coming back to stay updated on the process of making this house ours.  I could attribute the long hiatus to the chaos of the holidays and sheer procrastination, but the truth is something else entirely which I may or may not share someday.  For now, prepare yourself for a massive upload of information spaced out over several posts of the numerous projects that have gotten us through a long, cold winter.

First, the painting projects.  As of this weekend we have painted almost every wall in this home, sticking to a palette of blues and grays.  The rooms we have tackled since September are:

The office

The guest bathroom

The upstairs hallway

The extra bedroom

Phew!!  It was certainly a lot of work, and we still need to add a second coat of paint to a couple of walls (stairway, I'm looking at you, I didn't even want to photograph you yet, let's get it together).  Overall it feels awesome to shake off the varied palette of neon green, builder's beige, eggplant purple, and chocolate brown to create a more cohesive feel.  It also makes the place feel more like our own, even in rooms that we don't use quite yet (guest bathroom and extra bedroom, that's you).  I'll post with more details as we develop these rooms, but for now, I'm just glad that it's done!

Our own Sherry and Terry

It's twins!!  Before you get too excited, I mean our slipper chairs, which arrived today!  After some minor assembly with a little assist from Allen Wrench

they were all ready to go!  I definitely need to dress them up with some brown pillows to tie in the couch, and maybe track down this fabric to make some pillows for the couch.  I am so glad that they turned out this well, and I must resist the urge to grab a fun stool to put between them, we still need to save money!

Banishing beige

We all know it, that pale, sickly shade of yellow-y beige that many have lovingly dubbed "builder's beige."  All of the transitional spaces in our home are were this color, perhaps since there is so much space that repainting it would be a big undertaking.  As part of our plan to have all painting projects completed by Thanksgiving we decided to tackle the beige in the downstairs a few weeks ago.  I wanted yet another shade of gray but couldn't decide exactly one and was nervous about just choosing one since so much space would be committed to this color (our hallways are like one big Mobius strip).  Enter the swatches:

To see how it would look next to the greenish kitchen walls

Checking to coordination with the darker gray already in the hallway

Under the silver and white frames in the gallery

In the mudroom with the darker wood console table

Fairly quickly both hubs and I chose the lighter shade for the hallways and the darker one for the mudroom.  This was a little surprising as I was planning on just choosing one color, but it has definitely worked out having two shades.  The wonderful thing about Martha Stewart's paint collection is that she has handy little symbols to make sure that the colors coordinate, so our home still feels cohesive.  Observe!

Underneath the fun mirror I painted with chalkboard paint

Looking snazzy with the trellis rug

Going moody in the mudroom

Looks alright with the kitchen green too!

So goodbye, downstairs builder's beige, catch you on the second floor!

Crossing my fingers on this one

We had our housewarming party on the 8th, and much to our surprise most of the people that we invited actually came!  We had lofty plans of entertaining all of these people outside on our lovely paved patio with the grill going and a Bocce ball tournament.  Sadly, Mother Nature had a different idea and all 20+ of our guests were confined to the living room and kitchen.  This alerted us to the shortage of seats in the living room (the sectional seats five, which is a lot with the two of us but not so much when you have 18 extra people).  Our favorite seating arrangement ever was when we had this sectional plus another large sofa that we used before we upgraded, we were able to seat 12 with that arrangement!  We don't quite have the room for another sofa since our room is more long than wide, and a loveseat would be too bulky.  A lot of the rooms that I have seen on design blogs and Pinterest have a matched pair of slipper chairs, so I decided to start preliminary searches for those.  I also decided to try to find an interesting pattern to bring some life into the living room (forgive me) since we have a large solid sofa, solid walls, and natural tables.  Enter this chair,

The Avington slipper chair in Cloud Floral from Target, so cute!  It was also marked down to $125, which was nice enough, but when I noticed that it was a buy one/get one 50% off, it pushed me over the edge.  I figured out how to frame it with the hubs since we decided to stop buying furniture and start saving for a car (that hasn't worked the last ten times we have said it), and I really wanted these.  What gets me, every single time I have decided to spend money, is the deal.  I mean, c'mon, two slipper chairs for $225 after tax and delivery?!  Crazy good, right?  The pattern is also a perfect blend of the blues and grays without being too overpowering. 

Ugh, I hope so.  Because I really have to stop spending soon.  Like now.