On the Before and "Almost After" Kick

So it's quite funny to think that we have been here for almost a full year come September 14th!  Wow, we were so gun-ho about the multitude of projects that we wanted to start!  Well, we did in fact start many of them, but how is it that I don't feel like we have any one room done or even one of our many landscaping projects completed?  Many of our first stabs have been to "clear" our exterior spaces and " give wide brush strokes" to our interior spaces.

Paint has become our friend, only insomuch as washing away some of our very-granny room looks and at least giving us something that is a little more us during the interim phases of our design process and renovations.

Just to show a few "Before" and "Almost After(s)" for the people who have asked, "Are you almost done?  I bet everything looks great!"  Not quite...

Adam and I are just pleased that we have made changes up to this point.  In fact, unlike the fast-pace of my commercial interior design job, I am very glad that we haven't rushed things.  Instead, it has been very nice to let the house "speak to us". We have been able to take in it's lighting nuances and conditions during different times of the day, determine exactly how each room functions for us individually and as a family, and of course with our new family addition scheduled to arrive on October 3rd, there was no need to rush out to buy new and fancy furniture which had been one of our initial inclinations.

For now, these shots will show a snippet of our improvements with more to come in time...

Our very not-so-grand entrance!  Notice the very ugly light fixture which was original to the home.  Basically, a foyer that is kind-of bland and definitely not exciting.  Can we say, no personality?

 

Ok, now we are at least getting somewhere!  Yes, it is not complete, but come on, the stencil took like months to do (on-again, off-again).  We left the wainscoting white, selected two accent paint colors by Sherwin Williams Sea Salt and Oyster Bay.  http://www.sherwin-williams.com/

Then, we changed that terrible existing light fixture by replacing it with the home's original dining room chandelier.  We thought the scale of this fixture and glam style is a much better fit for a welcoming foyer.

The console is by us (IDM) and the crazy lamp from the late 1960s belonged to my grandfather and is a glammed-up re-do by (IDM).  The sea grass rug from Target. http://www.target.com/   And the knotted ball doorstop is from World Market. http://www.worldmarket.com/

 

I still need something for over the console, perhaps a sunburst mirror.  Right now I'm contemplating on spraying the "bursts" white. I need to purchase some better table-top accessories for the console.  Maybe even adding some interesting looking basket storage pieces to house under the table would function nicely too...

 

Call me picky, but I have never been in love with the legs on that table.  I'm waiting patiently for Adam to change them out with something that I have designed to be a less bulky, rectangular base with a high-polished chrome look.  I suppose I'll keep dreaming of that until it happens. 

 

 

Oh, and for any of those of you who are bold enough (or naive enough) to tackle a wall stencil project on your own, please visit a very cool website to purchase the coolest stencils that you have ever seen:

 

http://www.royaldesignstudio.com/



 

So far, we love it and the great thing about the stencil is, if you mess up, you can always paint over it without the headache of using wall paper!

 

More snapshots of our DIY home re-do's to follow!  Please stop by again!