Office Space

Our smallest room will be used as an office. The room came with some very dark, super knotty wood paneling that we knew would not be long for this world:

But we were petrified thinking about what could be lurking behind the panels, so decided painting would be our best (and cheapest) option. I found this picture in Cottage Living of Fishers Home Furnishings in Sag Harbor, NY, and thought it was a good direction to go in:

(Sorry for the poor quality. Page is a bit tattered from joining me on a few shopping trips!)

So we painted the room white, and here’s what we’ve got so far:

The paint looks OK in these pictures, but it’s not quite right. The wood was so dark and the paint so white (we simply used leftover ceiling paint to “experiment” with) that there’s a blue, almost fluorescent, hue from the dark paneling showing through. We were kind of going for a weathered driftwood look, so may try to touch it up or wash it with a paint that has a slight gray tone to it.

The loveseat we’re stuck with. And I mean stuck with quite literally. We wanted a sturdy loveseat-sized sleeper and while initially this fit the bill, we weren’t totally crazy about it once it was delivered. But it took four men (including M.) and an extraordinary amount of energy and shoving to get it past our narrow stairway landing, and through an even narrower door. So the loveseat stays. Like, forever. I can fix it up with some pillows.

In lieu of a desk we’re going to use a simple dining table. It’s cost effective, and the larger surface room will be better for us to spread out work or craft projects (the latter of which would be mine. I think if I came home to M. crafting I’d plotz.).

The little vintage looking fan was a $14 fabulous find at Lowe’s. Who knew I could find such exciting tchotchke amidst plumbing parts and weed whackers? While there, we also scored a $99 black-framed wall mirror.

The lamp table was in a closet in my aunt and uncle’s house, and if I’m not mistaken was originally in my uncle’s (long gone) bachelor pad living room. I love it! I need to find a white drum shade and haven’t had any luck yet. We also aren’t sure what to do for window coverings. Textured woven blinds? White wood blinds? Sailcloth curtain panels?

I picked up a pair of sailboat prints for $30 each from Home Goods that will help with the quasi-nautical theme. (Well, I guess it’s not a quasi theme anymore if those prints are going up.) I’m also thinking the oversized art and mirror will help us cover up the paneling so we don’t need to worry about the paint job as much.

Speaking of oversized art, I spotted a vintage school roller map at an antique shop the other week for $50. I gave it some thought (I think it would fit on the one windowless wall behind the desk) and went back last weekend. They had just lent it to one of their vendors to use for staging a condo he’s selling. I put my real estate stalking skills to work to find the listing so I could see what the map looked like unrolled and hanging on wall.

I really, really hope he sells his condo soon.

Isn't she beautiful?

I love the things I’m scavenging for the house, and this gem is one of my favorites so far.

The woman I bought her from acquired it about 10 years ago. Her husband was helping a woman sort through her husband’s belongings after he passed away. He salvaged a bunch of pictures from a tattered old calendar, and framed a couple of his favorite little lasses.

It’s a really nice size -- bit over 20” x 17” -- and at 10 bucks I didn’t even try to bargain. This babe was coming home with me.

There is much to adore about this gem, like the patina (re: peeling paint) on the black wood frame, and the “Beach Party” text at the bottom. But I think my favorite part is the tray of random foodstuffs perched at her sassy little hip. There are fruits, a hunk of cheese (processed, no doubt) and an entire loaf of Wonder-type white bread. I love me a girl who loves her carbs!

Surprise!

There are a lot of surprises that come with being a new homeowner.

Many are sad, like your basement filling with water the first week. (Refrigerator icemaker disconnected. It could have been a lot worse.)

But many are happy, like waking up to find out that the tree in your backyard is apparently a cherry tree.


Yay, house!

Happy Earth Day!

I can't think of a happier way to kick off Earth Day than with the blooming of this tree-of-unknown-variety in the front of our house.



UPDATE, 4/26/08: It's a "Krauter's Vesuvius" plum tree (thanks, mom!). And it will not engulf our porch.

UPDATE, 4/23/08: An astute reader (OK, my friend from Chicago. But she’s still astute and technically a reader if she saw this post) emailed to say this might be a purple leaf plum tree. I think we have a winner! Although I’m a little concerned about A Tree Growers’ Diary’s claim that it’s growing two feet a year in her backyard. At that rate, our front porch will be engulfed by 2014.

P.S. Not one, but two (Update: three!) of our neighbors asked when we planted it. We tried to nicely explain (lest we offend the prior owners) that maybe it was the half-dead behemoth-of-a-tree that blocked it from view in the past. (We made that tree disappear one evening.)

Celebrate the day...B.Y.O.Bags, ride your bike, unplug unused appliances (that means laptops, too, my bloggy friends), shop at thrift stores, and -- my favorite -- always support local farmers.

We’re In The Chips

I wish. The “chips” I’m talking about are of the paint variety.

After a while they all started to look the same. What began as an exciting prospect (having lived in vanilla-walled apartments my whole adult life) soon became a head spinning, overwhelming rainbow of chips and sample jars.

Overall, we’re both pretty happy with the colors we ultimately chose.

Benjamin Moore’s Patriotic White was the pick for our living room and hallways, and I have to say we hit it out of the park with this one. It’s a perfect house-by-the-seashore paint; a neutral with just a hint of color. The color is a very soft blue, with greenish-gray undertones depending on how light hits it.

We’re a little disappointed with BM’s November Skies in the master bedroom. It was one of the last rooms we painted so I think mental paint fatigue had set in – it was the one room color we decided on without taping chips on the walls first, whittling down to a “Top Three,” buying quarts or sample sizes, and painting foam core swatches to move around the room at different times of day and night. (Sounds a little time consuming, right? I assure you, it was.) We were looking for a blueish silver/gray, which the November Skies paint chip matched perfectly. And sites like this listed it as a “Top Gray Paint Color.” Gray. What we wound up with is more of a, well, BLUE. Super duper blue.


Since someone else painted the room for us (Noel, a wonderfully invaluable floor refinisher who we commandeered for our bedroom painting), we didn’t realize just how blue the “real” paint was until it was too late. So, we’re living with it.

And feeling a little blue.

Art I Heart

Toni Grote is an amazing Iowa-based artist I “met” on eBay. It’s difficult to describe the texture and drama that make her (reasonably priced!) landscape paintings so unique. She uses a combination of detailed brushwork and abstract technique that truly makes the scene “pop.” The pieces are varnished which gives an interesting dimension to the work; depending on how the light hits them different colors and surfaces are highlighted. Many of her scenes also contain an element of surprise – whether it’s a distant sailboat, a barn on the horizon, or a couple walking on the beach, these tiny details make the paintings beautiful conversation pieces!


Here’s the pieces I own. I love the one painted on ceiling tin (the tiles were found above the drop ceiling in the building -- "the oldest in town" -- that she owns):






Toni posts a new painting on her blog every day, so there’s always something new and exciting to check out.

Nothing says spring...

...like pilfered forsythia.

Our house is a very, very, very fine house.

I think we sang that on continuous loop the first weekend in the house.

The big emptiness was a bit shocking at first. Suddenly every ding, dent, scratch and Crayola mark was somehow magnified 10x. And the cabbage roses on the wallpaper seemed to be leaping off the walls.

So we called in reinforcements.

Our neighbor Kevin (who we'd met while we were renting two summers ago) is a house painter, and both of us couldn't have been happier to have met him. He's an amazingly meticulous painter -- and wallpaper remover. He also cleaned up the woodwork on our first floor. (As much as I would like to claim this house to be 100% D.I.Y., it ain't.)

He helped turn things like this:



Into this:

It all started one day last summer...

Isn't that how all great tales start?

M. and I weren't seriously considering buying, but we were seriously considering how much money we'd spent in two summers renting little shore shacks in what Realtors would call a "desirable seaside community." So, we started poking around at open houses. (Who am I kidding? I became totally O.C.D. -- I knew every house that was listed in town, before real estate agents even did.)

I was out for a morning (OK, early afternoon) walk for coffee, and happened upon an open house unknown to me. It was listed by an out-of-town agency I'd not heard of (thus, was not yet stalking), and while it was out of our imaginary price range (remember: we weren't "really" looking), it was big, it was old, and it was intriguing. So I got the man and we went inside.

And it had me at pocket doors.

To make a LONG story short...As much as we liked it (we visited, and revisited), we found out the sellers turned down offers higher than we were willing to go (based largely on my aforementioned stalking of local listings). The house was eventually “sold,” and while we looked around at other open houses nothing said “home” to us. And we couldn’t stop comparing others to “the house the got away.”

Fast forward two months (to November) – I got an email from the Realtor asking if we’re still interested. The original sale fell through. Now it was winter and a shore house was a harder sell. And the sellers were motivated because their kids were in school. And the price had dropped.

Four short weeks later, we were sleeping on an air mattress in our new home. You know when people say, "it was meant to be" and you think it's crap? Well, I don't think that way any more.

And our lives have been a paint swatching, thrift storing, furniture hunting, cabinet scrubbing, electrical working whirlwind. And we couldn’t love it more.

That was a week before Christmas, so I have four months to catch up on. Stand by for power posting by this Blogging newbie...and thanks for stopping by.