Snazzy Comfort

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The pink walls will need to be addressed, but we love this living room. It's comfortable. It's fun. It's perfect for us and we arrived at a consensus so quickly it had us both stunned. It's coming along. I cannot wait to have a fire in this room, curl up with a book and blanket, and sit and be.

Con

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Caro

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Sunny Kitchen

Where we started:

Where we arrived:

Eventually the cabinets will be replaced or refaced, the floor will be replaced with either hardwood or tile, the beams will vanish, and all the trim will be white. For now, we can work with this. I love it.

Coming Together

I know I promised this last week, and the week before, and the week before that, but here it is. Your first look inside the new McCasa.

Stats:

4 Bedroom, 2.5 Bath Split Level
1931 sq ft
Built 1969

Now you'll understand why things have been so quiet on McCashew. When there are endless boxes to come out from under, finding places for all your wordly possessions takes precedence over laptop time. Not to mention the two adorable little distractions racing around here. The bigger one is pretty ecstatic to have her kitchen and shopping cart back. The little one seems pretty enamored with opening and closing the play kitchen oven door and just about anything round that rolls.

We've been keeping busy and with a whole week off between gigs, I've been able to catch up on the list of things that still needed to be done, cleaned, put away, and organized. I might have let things get a little out of control. Steve got inspired a couple weeks ago and ripped all the wallpaper down in the kitchen because "it is coming down so easily!" We've been staring at blank walls. We've had the color picked out since before we moved in. I bit the bullet, spackled, sanded. We primed. I painted. I touched up. I started to transform the trim from dark to white. It looks amazing people. PEOPLE, it looks amazing.

It feels different to transform this house. It feels more permanent. It feels like we are perfecting a house that is a home, not a stopping point or a an inbetween. I painted the trim today with such precision and care. I turned on the Nutone radio that runs through the house (do they make one with an iPod attachment!?) and spent a day and a half rolling Benjamin Moore Hawthore Yellow. I've been talking for YEARS about turning my Susan Wallace Barnes calendar prints into framed art for the kitchen walls and PRESTO - there it is and it looks as sweet as I imagined. It's coming along, still a ways to go, but no longer a floral/striped/bordered wallpapered fright show. It's a bright cheerful space, with a tv for me to watch Oprah or the News while chopping onions. The floor plan upstairs makes me smile with its open feel and I will try not to stare too long at the walls in the living room, dining room and hallway or I will feel the pink penetrating my soul. In time that too will change, but it requires a significant investment both time and $$$. One thing at a time.

Here is a glimpse into the moving chaos and the kitchen "before" shots and priming.

Connor in the living room with one of the 2000 boxes.

Steve setting up the kitchen table - love that wallpaper.

The kitchen, with the dining room to the right, living room and entrance straight ahead.

Living room from the stairs

The family room

Unloading the POD. Remind me to tell you THAT story.

This is Caroline racing to her room the day we officially moved in. I have this image frozen in my mind.

That is Benji Moore Robin's Nest.

Sanding the spackle, ready to prime and that is one of TWO new light fixtures, it's ok, scroll back up to see the original. I don't have any shots of the dining room fixture we had and that might be a good thing.

Photos of the finished kitchen coming tomorrow!