back to normal...

for two nights. sort of. last night we got to sleep in our own room - more importantly, a bed that i didn't have to crawl into because it's surrounded by dressers :)  our floors are finished in two rooms and they look really nice!  we are definitely glad to have this non-d-i-y project well underway! last night, we re-stocked the china cabinet and moved all of our breakables back upstairs into the dining room, where they'll live for a few more days (along with our living room furniture) until the living room and guest room are re-done.  then we'll really be back to normal. and we are very excited for that day.

here are a few pictures of the work that was done in our bedroom...

i changed the bedding temporarily...may be a little too on the girly side for billy (plus i LOVE our toile bedding)

jefferson likes the floors too :)  and i'm wishing we didn't have so many clothes because it's so nice only having a few pieces of furniture in here!

here's what is going to be corrected (hopefully) in the next few days...

furniture lines and stains left even after screening

i'll post pictures of the final product - hopefully we'll be all done and really back to normal by tuesday!!  also exciting, we're having our basement waterproofed, so hopefully no rain in the next 24 hours, and then no more flooding EVER. unless a pipe bursts again, but that's out of our control :)  so it's been a busy home improvement week at the chorey household!



tired of the chaos

a few weeks ago, we finally decided to get our hardwood floors refinished.  we have pretty floors, but there are some water stains, furniture/rug stains, and not much poly left on them from the decades of use without refinishing.  so, we got a VERY reasonable quote (maybe too reasonable, looking back :)) and thought now was a good time to go ahead with that project. 

we thought timing the project around our trip to boston would be a good plan since we'd be out of the house for a few days, and so we made the arrangements to have the work done, moved all of our guest room furniture into our room and all of our living room furniture into the dining room, and expected to come back to two rooms looking perfectly new and refreshed.  well, we got our hopes up a little too much and were pretty disappointed to come back to mediocre-looking floors that had been "screened", which i guess is similar to sanding but doesn't take off a layer of the wood.  it only removes the pre-existing poly, so that works well when you don't have significant stains, sun damage, etc.  we had told the contractor to sand the floors if he didn't think they would look uniform with the screening, so we thought he would follow through on that.  it was not the case, so the past week and a half, we've been living in chaos, trying to squeeze between pieces of furniture to even get into bed (which is the guest room at this point), and trying to keep in mind that the end result will be worth it :)

after we got back from boston and weren't overly pleased with the screening results, we asked the contractor to sand the dining room and master bedroom, and then he'll go back and sand the living room and guest room that he had already screened.  definitely the right choice!  even though we're now on day 12 of the madness, we are excited about how good the floors look and that we'll hopefully get back to living normally within the next week. 

sanded dining room floor

sanded master bedroom floor

our living room (complete with 2.5 rooms of furniture in it!)

our guest room (where we're currently sleeping, along with dressers and huge armoire from our bedroom)

the positives about all of this madness are that we're going to have really pretty hardwood floors when it's all finished, and it's going to be easier to make any furniture/decorating adjustments we want to make.  like possibly moving the main living area to the living room rather than the basement man case :)

i'll be sure to post some "after" pictures, hopefully in the next week!!

big birthday in boston!

this weekend, my husband turned the big 3-0!  and we were in boston to celebrate the occasion, so that was lots of fun!!  friday, we went to dinner with his family for a birthday celebration here, and then saturday (his actual birthday), we tried out ltk in boston's seaport district.  so yummy!! 

cazadores - always a winner for bday dinners!

great atmosphere!

will post pictures from the race/weekend later, but we had a great time and were joined by my parents, which was lots of fun! 

happy birthday billy!!

planning ahead

we are hoping to not be in our current house long enough to need to do any major construction projects (i.e., expanding the kitchen/porch, possibly adding on another bedroom, etc.), but i've had this idea for awhile just as food for thought in case we do end up staying around here longer than expected.  i always love to think about different ways houses could be changed/improved and have had some help with house ideas from my mom, laura, and others (as all of us are "frustrated architects" to some extent :)). 

so, here's my plan that's a longshot but could be cool for the main floor of our house if we stayed put for let's say another 10 years or so...

current layout of our main level (minus the living room)

what i envision for a more usable space (again, minus the living room)

 

shortly after buying our house when we were painting the kitchen cabinets, we came across the original house plans, which i thought was so cool (i would love to frame and hang them somewhere in the house but haven't decided the best place yet).  it's so neat to see what the original ideas were, what was done (or not done), and get to view our house from its starting point.  surprisingly for the era in which our house was built, the floorplan was much more open than they ended up building.  the kitchen and dining room were more open (similar to the above setup), making the space much more user-friendly, especially with our very opposite-of-formal lifestyle. 

our current plan is good for the kind of entertaining where you don't want everyone to gather in the kitchen but would prefer a more formal dinner party atmosphere.  and the times we've had people over and all migrated to the kitchen, it's a bit crowded.  we also have pretty limited counterspace, but i do LOVE the amount of cabinet space we have (so much so that i'm hesitant to install a dishwasher and give up some of the space).  we have a small eat-in area in our kitchen that works for the two of us but would be completely impractical for a family of more than two.  we love our enclosed porch as well, but the space is just a little bit too small.

so, i envision opening up the kitchen, dining room, and porch to make a nice, large kitchen (which would be great for us since we both enjoy cooking very much), informal dining room area, office space (which could come in handy when i start working from home), and expanding the porch a couple of feet and better-enclosing the room to make it actual living area that opens to a back patio.  that informal family room would take the place of our den, which at that point would probably be our master bedroom. 

and that's my plan - for that space at least.  hopefully we'll be long gone from our current house (either to the beach or a different area all together) by the time we would need to make those changes, but it's fun to think about for now :)

bargain hunting

this saturday, my mother-in-law and i headed out to go find some deals on furniture at a few local places.  while we came home empty-handed, it was still lots of fun to see the different places and spend the day together with our dogs (they accompanied us on our outing :)).  i viewed the day as a success because we didn't waste our money on things we didn't absolutely love or need, so we'll have that money to spend later when the right pieces come along. 

the first stop we made was rooms blooms & more in the historic hilton village area of newport news.  this was the best consignment shop we went to all day!  they have a great facebook page, but in person, the store is even better!  their store is completely full of unique, quality pieces, and i wish i needed more furniture or had more money to spend on furniture right now because i could've easily done so there.  plus, it's a dog-friendly store, which we always love :)  i'm excited for my next trip there and will be checking their fb page regularly!

the second stop was not a consignment shop but a higher-end design shop with beautiful and eclectic pieces.  the shop is sisters unique and is located in oyster point city center, conveniently across from a taste unlimited where we stopped for lunch - yum!!  great shop if you have a higher budget than i do :)  they are apparently getting in some new items for the spring that are more modestly priced, so i look forward to checking back then!

the third stop was aladdin consignment, and we found a couple of nice things there but overall still liked rb&m better.  they did have a pretty craftique table (best find in the shop), but neither of us had a real need for it, and the pricetag was still pushing $700. 

just a mile or so down the road from aladdin was the velvet shoestring, which was a good shop but somewhat of a letdown.  their website photo must've been taken on a really good consigning day, as we didn't find a ton we were enamoured with.  there were definitely some very nice, quality pieces, but there wasn't as much furniture, decor, etc. as we thought there would be.  i think it'd be worth going back to sometime, but only if we're in the area, since it's very close to colonial williamsburg, which is a bit of a hike from our house :)

after that, we wandered around the williamsburg at home store and williamsburg craft house, which are also not consignment shops but have very pretty things (and very much out of my price range :)  ha!).  they did have fabric that wasn't too pricey, and i loved a couple of patterns they had, as well as some of their furniture. 

so, it was a good day of looking even though we didn't do any buying.  i'm excited to hopefully find some good deals on a few pieces of furniture we're looking for (mostly small end tables or bedside tables) in the near future! 

to rearrange or not to rearrange...

in order to accomodate jefferson's love of watching what's going on out the back window, or maybe just for a change of scenery, i am toying with the idea of moving around the guest room furniture.  with the amount of furniture we have in there and the shape of the room, there are only a couple different layouts that would work for us right now, seeing as we need to keep our office area in there as well as the bedroom furniture for our rare houseguest. 

i got an email recently about an online remodeling design tool through marvin windows & doors website, so i had to check out the program.  i have a couple different design programs on my computer - one for the frustrated architect (which i have definitely been at times in my life) and one for my appraisal drawings - but i was curious to see about the online system.  the tool is great!  it only lets you do a couple of rooms at once because of the scale, but it's super user-friendly and allows you to play with furniture arrangment, renovation possibilities, changing around window and door placement, etc. 

so, here's what i came up with for our guest room possibilities that could work for us right now...

pros for the current (left) setup - bed and makeshift nightstands fit perfectly in the alcove on the right side of the room; lots of light gets into the room with both windows unobstructed; doesn't look too crowded when you enter the room since there is a pretty clear passage from the doorway to the window on the left side; art works well with current arrangement

pros for the possible future (right) setup - jefferson could lounge on the bed while watching over our backyard; i like the feel of walking into a room and having a head-on view of the bed (something about that just feels centered); better display of staged shelves; i'm always up for a change when it comes to the house (at least temporary changes)

we'll see what we end up deciding on.  guess i need to consult the better designer/spacial planner in my marriage :)  and, we're planning to have our floors refinished in the next couple of weeks, so i'll hold off on any big changes until then!

Weekend Project #2

this weekend, i undertook another little house project.  you know the "c" i had bought at the lucketts antique store when i was visiting patrice?  well, i decided to try my hand a collage of photos and other items going up the stairs.  billy is convinced he's going to knock something down when going up or down the stairs (it's happened before...with a cute picture of jefferson, which previously hung there), but i figured i'd test it out for now. 

 blank slate

so, i collected several frames from around the house, most of which have wedding pictures in them (i'm not good about updating pics very often, plus i love our wedding pictures, so it works), and got to work.  i measured the space on the wall, which is a little bit of a tricky setup because of the angle going up the stairs.  normally i would've laid out newspaper in the shape of the wall space (works well when trying to see how furniture will fit in a space as well), but i had just taken everything to the recycling bin, so i had to look elsewhere for my "canvas". 

i grabbed a down throw from our room and folded it into the measurements of the wall space.  then, i played around with different ways to arrange the pictures, etc. and came up with a simple layout that works for the space.  four picture frames, the "c", and a wooden frame with some little sayings in it fill the space perfectly. 

i started by hanging the bottom two frames and worked my way up.  i still haven't quite finished, as i'm a little short for hanging the final piece (the wooden quote frame) and didn't have a chance to bring the ladder inside over the weekend.  and, let's be realistic, no house projects get done around our house during the week!

so, here's the almost-final product...

substituted the frame with jefferson picture because of its slightly smaller size than the one in my mock-up...and, we needed to have a terrier picture on our wall too :)

on a side note, last night i realized that my moving the guest bed 6 or so inches to the right made it so that jefferson can't watch out that window with two feet on the bed and two on the sill like he enjoys doing.  this may mean that things need to be rearranged again.  not that i base the furniture placement around the dog, but we like to give him some simple pleasures (such as being able to watch birds, cats, etc. out the window) whenever possible :)

Where's Jefferson???

and no, we do not normally keep a giant curious george doll on the bed...he has been a major obesssion of jefe's ever since we won him at busch gardens a few years ago and i guess is his main "friend" since we don't have another dog  :)

Weekend Project #1

with billy working basically every saturday, my weekends tend to be filled with house projects...cleaning that i don't have time for during the week, rearranging and redecorating, some side jobs, etc.  this weekend, i actually did several mini house projects.  saturday morning, i hit up an estate sale (unsuccessfully in terms of good finds - successfully for the wallet :) ), went by lowe's for some gardening supplies, and then headed to my in-laws to paint.  i've been helping my mother-in-law transform a very green bedroom to a very white bedroom...so white, in fact, that the bright white trim and painted white iron bed now look kind of gray!  it's a really pretty color and completely brightens the room, making it a much more serene, calm space.  and the yellow pb toile bedding looks great now against the white background!  i'll have to take some pictures next time i'm over there. 

anyways, i wound up coming home with a few hand-me-down decorative items, including a white dvd/cd cabinet, which made for a little project in the guest room.

guest room before

pier1 chest formerly used as the bedside table

cabinet before

unidentified stain on bottom shelf...

easily covered up with a couple sheets of decorative paper!  i didnt' have any adhesive shelf-liner paper, so i grabbed some scrapbooking paper, cut it to fit the base shelf (needed 2 pieces), and taped it down.

much better!

staged cabinet (maybe not in its final form, but i used what i had)...i needed the cabinet to provide some storage in addition to being cute, as i had previously stored stationery, buttons/sewing kit, jewelry boxes, etc. in the 3-drawer chest i had been using as the bedside table and didn't want to give up that storage space in the guest room/office.

here's the bookcase i had gotten from target awhile back that was the other "bedside table", so i thought having a similar piece on the other side would be good. and help me slightly de-clutter this bookcase (which has not yet been completed :)).

guest room after - please excuse the off-center picture.  i haven't had a chance to center it after moving the bed several inches to the right.  also, i may be doing a little art switch in there soon, but i'm not positive, since i LOVE the botanical above the bed and it goes really well with the bedding.  will post again once i have this area finished (until the next project).  i'm not sure if i'm crazy about how tall the pieces are beside the bed, but they are functional, and i switched the lamps around to try and even them up a little more.  i'm sure this will drive my husband crazy, since he loves for things to be symmetrical and uniform, but that's ok...he doesn't have to spend too much time in this room :)