Day One Progress Report

God bless you, dearly departed homeowner. God bless you for buying the expensive wallpaper. God bless you for priming the walls before it was applied. God bless you.

I have about 90% of the wallpaper in the house removed. And this house was papered. It came off in full sheets in my hands. I used no tools. My nails are all still present and accounted for.

Lest you think I've been inhaling some sort of toxic gas and hallucinating, we made a short (and apparently hilarious?) video to demonstrate:

This was actually one of the more 'challenging' wallpapers in the entire house, because it was more paper and less fabric underneath and was tearing horizontally. Most of the floors are covered in entire sheets of paper. Like so: 

Did I do that? 

My back and feet tell me that I did. 

So in addition to winning the wallpaper lottery today, I also unearthed this little gem: 

Also known as the gorgeous hardwood floors in my bedroom. Score. 

This is the worst thing that happened today:

Oh wait. That's the wall I'm going to open up anyway. Looking at the state of the wall, we may end up removing it entirely now. Either way. It's cool. 

I also got the water and gas turned on and the utilities switched over to our name. We met the next door neighbors to the north, who don't live in that house but come down randomly every few weeks to mow and stuff, so we were able to have a fence discussion much earlier than anticipated. We had two other contractors out to bid today and are looking forward to their numbers soon. I will call and order the dumpster for the demolition party tomorrow, it will be dropped on Friday and the sledgehammers attack on Saturday. Depending on my discussion with the mold guy, we may have all the carpets and wallpaper down by Saturday as well. 

Am I crazy or are things going really well over here? Don't get too excited. It won't last. 

The armadillo and I meet with the mold remediation dude at 9 am. 

At Last!

My love has come along...

As of 4:30 p.m. today, we are officially old home-owners! After the months of negotiating back and forth, the seller didn't even come to the closing. He came in Sunday afternoon and signed everything before we even got there. If I had known that, I might have had a much better night's sleep last night. As it was, I had stress dreams all night about trying to get to closing and there were a million escalators at school and I was trying to call the Mr. and tell him where I was and how hard I was trying to get there and water kept getting on my cell phone and then I had to walk across campus in the dark and I got attacked by werewolves. 

So in comparison, it's been a pretty quiet day, really. Wallpaper removal and contractors are on the docket for tomorrow, along with a bunch of phone calls for utilities and dumpsters and all that. 

(P.S. For months I've been texting our realtor: If we get to closing, I'll bring cupcakes. If we get to closing, I'll kiss the seller! If we get to closing, there is going to be champagne. We got to closing, and then he drove us back to the house for a champagne toast. Our new next door neighbor came over to toast with us. Pretty sweet afternoon.)

(P.P.S. Do you SEE that window frame??!?!? And the formica backsplash?!?!) 

Pink and Black Bathroom

There is actually one room in this whole house where I want to keep the wallpaper as is: the downstairs half bathroom.

This may be because I have no idea what to paint this room, and I kind of enjoy the swanky little fish. It's also in much better shape than the other wallpaper in the house.

The current plan is to replace the toilet and sink with vintage looking white fixtures. The black toilet just really squicks me out for some reason. Is that weird? I'll put in a pedestal sink instead of the nasty vanity and paint the cabinet over the toilet a glossy black. Then we'll rip down the curtain and call it a day.

The tile floor has a lot of yellow in it, actually, and has been painstakingly laid to be flush with the hardwood floor. So we're not interested in replacing it unless we absolutely have to. There are a few wonky spots where they've done some repairs, but we have no idea what's behind the vanity or the toilet.

I'll admit that my first impulse was just to demo the whole thing, but one of my BFFs convinced me to keep it  as a highly coveted vintage find. It grew on me, what can I say. 

My only other idea for this room is chalkboard paint above the tile: 

The Mud Room

This isn't a particularly exciting room, but it's an important one. With a large dog and a small child living on 150 acres of park, a good mudroom is a must.

See this flooring seam? There's an even bigger one running straight down the middle of the kitchen.

We have to replace the exterior door for sure, and we don't plan to use the washer and dryer hook ups. So the plan is to have those taken down, take out the pantry (hiding behind the door jam to the left) so that there's room for the fridge, and do some built in storage under the window and along the wall. Once we move the doorway to the kitchen, we'd like to squeeze in a utility sink in that corner. 

The only rooms in the entire house with painted trim are the mudroom, the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom. The upstairs bath and the kitchen will all get the BM Mayonnaise treatment. I'm still undecided on the color scheme for this room. 

This HouseBeautiful picture makes me think about the orange bathroom, and about how making that connection would be so clever: 

The Kid actually had that striped jacket (from Target!) and just outgrew it. Dang. Do people in HouseBeautiful shop at Target? 

The Idea Room 'organizational boards' is what I'm aiming for on the north wall: 

I can totally DIY this, right? 

But if not, I like this too: 

My dream utility sink: 

The Mr. laughs at this picture. But he's okay with a Home Depot sink/cabinet combo doohick. 

The Kitchen... Dun dun DUUUUUUNNNN

In terms of our budget and our schedule, the kitchen is the big bad. It is the most sensitive to being out of date, impacts all of our lives on a daily basis, is a primary entertainment venue, etc. etc. You all know about kitchens.

The refrigerator isn't functional according to the seller's declaration. Thank goodness. The alcove to the right has three doors: to the left is the side exterior door/basement staircase, to the right is the pantry/closet and then across from the staircase going up there is a coat closet. You can actually see out the front door when the doors are closed.

The office is through the doorway. The stove will end up switching places with the fridge so that we can set the fridge even with the countertop. The cabinets above the fridge also have that glass front top row, and we will vent the cooktop and microwave through them and to the exterior, with a false back on the cabinets so you can't tell.

This door will get moved to the left to allow that strange recessed cabinet to get bumped out. The side cabinet next to the stove will be taken away to make room for the new doorways, so the fridge will be right next to the doorway. We'll have to get started on the project to actually get all the cabinet hijinks straightened out.

There is a nice pair of windows over the sink. Unfortunately, the window frame is in very rough shape, the counter and backsplash are all the same material and are also in rough shape. I actually like the top row of cabinets and I don't hate the doors of the middle cabinets, so painting the cabinetry and putting new hardware should get us pretty far. The cabinets were quite expensive when they were put in. I can only imagine how much they spent on all the funky countertops here and in the upstairs bath.

The little door is actually the first floor laundry chute access. Huzzah! I'd like to take the cabinet off the wall, paint it and use it as a hutch in the dining room. The wall will be opened up to about where the cabinet ends, so that we can have access to the island from the dining room. We have the original swinging door for that door frame in the basement. There's been some casual talk of hanging it between the kitchen and the mudroom to keep out the chill. 

So clearly, we have a lot of work to do in here, but by putting in new appliances we could live with the rest of it for awhile. We're hoping that we don't have to do that, but it all depends on how well the essential items are doing and when we sell our house and for how much. We would love to put in quartz counters, but may have to do an intermediate step of putting down new vinyl flooring (there's a huge, peeling seam running down the middle of the floor that I didn't get a picture of) and some new laminate counters and then saving our pennies for a few years before we do the 'real' renovation. It all sounds a little (or a lot) daunting, but even if the kitchen had been redone right before we moved in, we would have ended up doing at least some updates and new appliances over the next 30 years. We may anyway, but at least all the changes will be ours. 

I would like to take this moment to hop up on my design soapbox. It's past time we let go of this open cabinet kitchen craze. I have heard all the pros and I'm sure you have to, but the con is pretty huge: this is the  kitchen, people. Where people are cooking. Frying, flouring, mixing, cooking. Everything on those open shelves is going to be filthy every time you want to use it. Maybe you don't mind washing things twice, but I certainly do. I am way too OCD to even consider open cabinets. 

My plan is to paint all the cabinets BM Mayonnaise, and paint the interior of the glass front cabinets either the same aqua as the dining room or a lighter shade of it, which will also be used to paint the new faux beadboard ceiling in the kitchen. We want dark brown countertops and actually really like our current vinyl floor so we'll probably stick with a different style of vinyl. 

I love this kitchen from Modwalls, and I would even allow the open shelves for cookbooks. I'd go with an undermount sink instead of the big farmhouse. The Mr. has a personal vendetta against stainless steel appliances so we've selected everything in white. Due to his other vendetta against glass tile I probably couldn't get this backsplash, which is in a color called Surf (squee!) but I luuuuuuuuuurv it. Like, I want to lick this kitchen. It's delicious. 

He has approved an opaque subway tile backsplash in white (so avant garde!) but he doesn't care about the pattern so much. Thanks to this post by Kate at Centsational Girl, I was able to get his okay for a herringbone pattern (Sarah Richardson for HGTV): 

Fortunately or unfortunately, the Mr. is the one who does the cooking and the dishes in our household, so he gets the final word on all the kitchen decisions. I love colored glass tile but I don't love it enough to cook every night. Alas. 

Office

The office is kind of low on my list, because the Mr. won't really be working from home until after construction and generally prefers his cubicle at work when the weather is warm. But here it is.

The fancy lens makes this room look strangely long. It's wider and shorter in real life. You can see the pink and black bathroom through the door on the right. The built in opens up and my goal is to put all our hanging files in there and then put cushions down for additional seating. The Mr. uses a laptop on a lap desk (with the ugliest recliner in history) for his work, so we don't really need to do a desk. 

This is the part of the room that will be affected by the kitchen reno. The door to the kitchen will be removed and walled up, so that the cabinets continue around to the island which opens up to the dining room. The closet will be knocked back to make room for the refrigerator which will be flipping sides with the stove. It shouldn't affect the door at all, just the interior.

This awesome light fixture has already been claimed by another BFF. She's a lucky, lucky girl.

The color for this room is going to be the same as the living room, whatever that ends up being. I need something neutral to offset the bright dining room and the design challenges posed by the pink and black bathroom. Also, the Mr. wants all walls to be white. Always. 

Dining Room

The dining room itself isn't a huge issue, but the kitchen is. So this room is going to be hanging out for a bit while we figure out the kitchen business. One of my BFFs has been dying for me to save the 'party carpet'. Like, campaigning for months. She wants to use it for some nefarious Design Star scheme involving white sofas and lava lamps. I will support her in this endeavor as long as it takes place in the garage.

Here is the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. The idea is to open up the doorway between the two rooms and put in an island with cabinets to give us some kitchen space and bring more light and flow to the dining room. This kitchen is way too small for everyone to be standing in it at a party, so we need easy visual and audio access to the dining room. Also, it will just feel better day to day. 

The pantry is on the right of the doorway, so if we decide to move that around we could potentially have an even larger opening. But the kitchen is so small there isn't a whole lot of other places the pantry could go. 

This room has been the most fun to find inspiration for, because I've got a fever and the only prescription is more AQUA!

BM's Jamaican Aqua is the paint deck favorite, and I love how bold and bright it is. 

Image from Cupkay, which I would like to eat, I love it so much. 

You might remember that this home tour from Poppytalk used the BM Yarmouth Blue in the master that I want to put in the upstairs bedrooms. They also used Jamaican Aqua in their kid's room. Jill, the homeowner, warns that it is bright, but it looks pretty toned down here: 

And yet another bedroom from Kathleen Murphy Designs: 

It really changes with the light in each room, which is why I don't really want to put it on the wall until we've opened the room up to the kitchen and the south facing windows over the sink. Taking the wooden things off the windows will definitely help, although I will need to put up something for privacy and security's sake. 

Kelly Rae Roberts used this BM Covington Blue in her bathroom. This image is via Decor Pad. If I chicken out on the bold aqua, this may be my fall back. 

Living Room

The living room isn't a super complicated or work heavy job, thankfully. The wallpaper, carpet and curtains are all coming out (obvs). I love the original leaded glass in the window and the cabinet doors, although I worry about its compatibility with the Kid and his rock and roll lifestyle. This room ruined me for (filthy) fireplaces.

It has a gas log but no one has been able to figure out how to turn it on. It will probably be the Kid who figures it out, and he'll probably catch something on fire. 

A vintage illustration via American Vintage Home's Flickr: 

Our dearly departed homeowner must have been channeling the blue accents in the room above when they put blue light bulbs in the sconces. These are the only wired light fixtures in the entire room. 

Inspiration for this room was pretty hard to find because I was looking for something at a specific intersection of modern and traditional. Once I found my colors I was set. 

Better Homes and Gardens

And then I realized I had just set my little decorating heart on the hardest color to match EVER. It's a little yellow, it's a little pink, it's not too light or too dark. It is the bane of my paint deck. But I keep trying, because I just love the concept so much. 

Kelly Rae Roberts made me reconsider a straight up yellow: 

 Benjamin Moore's Weston Flax is the color. 

Benjamin Moore's Caramel Creme is the running favorite from my paint deck. I love being able to Google images of people using paint colors in their spaces because it gives you a sneak peek of how it might look in your own space, but it gets harder to find images with the less popular colors and then you feel unnecessarily anxious. Or at least I do. Here is one room of BM Caramel Creme in action via Of Sound Mind: 

Pretty close, right? Only swatches will tell... 

Stairway to Heaven

Some people love kitchens. Some people love bathrooms. I love stairs. I really wanted (didn't need, but fervently hoped for) a fantastic stairway in the house. So imagine my thrill of hope when this was the visual that greeted me from the front door:

How groovy is that wallpaper? It continues up the stairs and on the landing. 

We're hopeful that the original treads are in good shape under the carpet, but we'll have to wait and see. We plan to replace the original glass in the window with something safer. 

We have no plans to sand and stain the banisters. I love the character that hands have left on the wood over the past century. Cleaning and sealing is the plan.

Awesome light fixture at the bottom of the stairs. On the back side of the door there is a beautiful inlaid mirror. Contemplating swapping it out for one of the master suite doors so I can use it every day. 

Upstairs Bedrooms

We've been through the master suite and the upstairs bathroom, so that leaves two more bedrooms upstairs. One is smaller and faces east and one is larger and faces west over the park. Both of these rooms will require the standard wallpaper and shag carpet removal, and the west facing/larger bedroom also needs some ceiling work from some water damage. Right now, the plan is that the Kid will take the smaller bedroom and use the larger bedroom as a playroom/guest room for the Sister. But that isn't set in stone and my favorite plan is to move the playroom down into the basement and use the smaller bedroom for a room of my own. Virginia Woolf said I needed it. Who am I to argue? Then the guest room can also go in the basement, where there is a full bathroom in a serious state of disrepair (like, no sink and no toilet).

The smaller bedroom is the (in)famous red room of pain: 

This closet pokes into the footprint of the upstairs bath. 

The laundry chute is behind it, the tub to the right. 

The Butterfly Room reflects the house's bucolic setting. The Kid really wanted to keep this carpet.

Our dearly departed homeowner spared no expense on flocked wallpaper. 

These rooms are actually my personal first order of business, as wallpaper steaming is about to be my full time job. We may need to skim coat the plaster when I'm done, but as far as we can tell the hardwoods under the carpet are in good shape and should be ready to go with some mopping and sealing. 

I'm doubling up on the design for these rooms, so that we can swap the Kid and the Sister without everything  clashing. We've actually bought our very first decor for this house, as an incentive (bribe?) for the Kid, who is pretty anxious about moving after the months of stress and drama and uncertainty surrounding the house purchase. We favorited these posters on Etsy and they emailed us back a coupon code. Sweet! They arrived today and are getting flattened out for framing. The Mr. seems to have resigned himself to the presence of Episodes 1-3 on our walls. 

Poppytalk.com featured this home tour which is also a big color inspiration for me. This room is painted Benjamin Moore's Yarmouth Blue, which, again pending swatches, is my pick for both of the upstairs bedrooms. It's also the color of Kelly Rae Robert's dining room. 

Random pinterest image.