Fireplace construction, continued.

Our supervisor and the current dictator of all our house projects. He's a tough boss but at least he is cute and lets us sleep a little bit at night.

I'm not scared of heights, but the way this ladder balances on its rubber-covered feet slightly stressed me out. We ended up going with a telescoping ladder  that will let us use it as a normal step ladder in addition to getting up high when we need to access the roof or apparently, the windows in our great room. We also found it when it was on sale for less than $130, which was a huge bonus and the reason why we went with 22' instead of 16' or 18'.

You know that your husband is an engineer when he devises strings with washers to ensure that the fireplace surround will be exactly centered and exactly level. He also claims that our kids could climb this frame without damaging themselves or the wall, but we don't plan on testing that theory.

This picture makes me a little seasick, but it's what happens when your husband insists that a lower mantel makes more sense and you are too visual of a person to be able to respond without seeing what it would look like. Ultimately I won this battle and we went with the rule of thirds. The mantel will be at 6 feet (the right side) and exactly a third of the way up the wall.

Now that we're actually making progress on framing the surround and finishing our mantel (more to come on that soon!), we needed to decide on a tile to use around the firebox and I headed to the store. Our initial plan was to utilize a subway-style marble tile but as it turns out, there were lots of viable options. 

(L- I love this pattern and the contrast of black and white that would complement our tuxedo kitchen. I was less sure of how the super graphic pattern would play with all of the other elements of our 18 foot tall fireplace surround. R- Herringbone is classic and I thought this oversized version was fun. But I questioned the beige undertones and monotony of color throughout.)

 

(L- I really think that this basketweave pattern would play well with the rectangles on the upper part of the wall, and the wood-look tile combined with marble is gorgeous. But I wondered if it might be too trendy in the end. R- Our original plan. I don't think subway tile can go wrong!)

(L- We love gray, perhaps a little too much, and the strong variation throughout this marble might give that contrast without going to an extreme like with the black & white tile above. R- Another herringbone option, this time with smaller tiles and both gray and beige undertones throughout. I was a little concerned that the small scale tile would look too tiny on our huge wall.)

Next step will be to lock our multi-hundred pound mantel into place this weekend after it's done curing. We ended up finishing it with a danish oil in a mix of medium and dark walnut to get close to the color of our dark hardwood floors.

Small Things

So we've only been in this house for 2 months and 6 days, but this past weekend we revamped the great room, and I'm still trying to process my feelings about it. While we've got space that now works for the accent chairs, it also closes off the space so that we've got three distinctive areas for kitchen/ dining/ living. I'll post more details later, as well as fireplace surround progress, but at the very least, furniture rearranging is a pretty low risk investment so it's worth the effort.

I also got a fun print for the short wall next to our kitchen, and while this space still needs to be styled, I really love the pop of color and the scale of the canvas. It's funny how much appropriately-scaled art can impact the feel of a home.

A Long-Overdue Update

After nearly two full months in our new home, we have finally rejoined 2016. We got our internet services set up this weekend (at 8am on Sunday, no less) and I still don't quite believe it. We had a number of false starts and stops in the process of getting construction completed on the line, so it's actually surreal to have it all in working order. We even have cable for this first year (super low rate, no contract, and it's a Summer Olympics/ presidential election year) which is a strange luxury. But beyond that, with an internet connection, we're actually able to fully use our speakers and thermostat in the way that they were intended.

It's funny how two months can feel like an eternity but also pass in an instant. That being said, we're settling in nicely, probably in no small part due to the insane nesting urges that have overcome me. Today I am 39 weeks and 4 days pregnant, so life will soon get crazy again. In the meantime I'm actually enjoying maternity leave. Though it would get boring over time, I have loved these days of organizing and decorating and cooking and napping at my leisure. Probably more so because I know just how fleeting they are.

Someday I'll reorganize myself and start taking more photos of our progress, but in the meantime, here are some of our downstairs spaces as they're coming together.

The someday library/ play room has been awesome. Although clearly the french doors don't do much to conceal the messes that overwhelm this space, it's been great to have a designated area for most of the kids' toys. We have plans to eventually do wall-to-wall built ins in here, but in the meantime we have found that our two existing Ikea Expedit bookshelves hold more than we suspected. Next steps will be to hang some kind of art (gallery wall? photo rail?) on the wall and at some point to recover the amazingly comfortable chair in the corner that used to belong to my grandparents.

I have dubbed the adjacent room to the playroom "the Seaside space." It is the area that was initially designed as a dining room but that we have reclaimed as a den area. Now that we actually can use our television, we just need to finish setting up the other side of the room and also figure out a plan for some kind of window treatment that will get echoed in the bay window at the front of the play room.

Our loft area is as comfortable as we imagined, and actually feels more spacious. We had a huge gallery wall in E-Haus #1 that no longer works in our new space, but I put together a smaller version of it using some of the more meaningful pieces over the love seat upstairs, and it makes me smile every day. The basket on the right is actually huge and full of books. It has become a new pre-bedtime ritual for the kids to pull out a handful of their favorites and then we do reading time all together in the common space before they head off to their own rooms.

I love this view of our great room/ dining nook/ kitchen. The pillows aren't in order, but they never are given their daily alternative use as building blocks, so this is just real life (a few weeks ago). Since this shot we've actually finished the floating shelves that finish off the right side of the kitchen.

Art is so difficult, especially on a huge wall like the one behind the sectional. We decided to print some oversized pictures that have since gotten finished with simple black frames. Someday we'll do something more artistic, but for less than $100, these look great to me! I have also since banned the striped upholstered pouf to the basement. It was a screened-in porch addition in our first house and has certainly seen better days.

 A birds-eye view after we switched out the well-used pouf for the Ikea table that I have had for 12 years (downgraded?). We have a table that will work really well once we cut down the legs to coffee table height, but one project at a time, eh?

These tufted chairs are huge-- almost comically tall-- but perfect in our comically tall great room. This is my new favorite reading nook.

We've finally started  thinking about the fireplace surround! It's nothing but an outline of painter's tape at the moment, but our plans are coming together.

They still need styled (and since this picture have gotten sealed), but our walnut floating shelves are done! I have word from Nate that I can play with them after today, and I have big plans to display some of the special things that I've mostly been hoarding since we got married 7 years ago.

Our powder room has a mirror! We bought a total of six options over the course of a month, and go figure, the least expensive option-- from Target no less-- ended up working best.

Next up: new art, bedrooms, and thoughts on budget items that pack a billion dollar punch.