The Heart of the Home - Part 1

They say the heart of the home is the kitchen and maybe one day that will be true for us once we renovate it and open it up a bit more but our dining room is more the heart of the home because it is literally in the center of our house. You see it from pretty much anywhere you stand. It's a big open space, big enough for a down-the-road purchase of a much larger table that can comfortably seat 8+. We had a nice canvas to work with when we moved in. There is a long wall from the foyer that runs the length of the dining room that was covered in very old yellowed peeling grasscloth wallpaper, built in china cabinet that needed some love, french doors that lead you to the family room addition and the potential for an awesome chandelier.

Let There Be Light

We removed the wallpaper a couple years ago when we added in our staircase and hardwood floors but we left that a primed wall up until this point not sure exactly what we'd do there. We have that figured out now but that will be for another blog post. We decided to tackle the lighting and the china cabinet first. The pervious owner had a basic apartment-grade flush mount glass and brass fixture that wasn't cutting it. We weren't sure why this was what they picked for a dining room light at the time but after doing some measuring of the room, it all became clear. The room is a weird space. I mean its a big rectangle but the space isn't centered to anything. The french doors don't line up to the wall parallel to it from across the room. The hallway opening doesn't line up to the start of the kitchen... so basically there was no where to center a fixture above a table. This created a couple challenges for me. I had to find a fixture that fit the feel of our house, looked good from all rooms but also didn't hang too low that it would obstruct the view from a room or at the table itself, and a light that looked somewhat centered in the space even when it wouldn't be.

I wanted something unique and not the typical go-to fixtures everyone seems to get... sputnik, the saucer... Nothing wrong with that just it's expected. I spent years looking and changing my mind constantly, I'd mock up a fixture and realize it was huge or I'd fall in love with ones that just were too expensive like the Bocci spheres - die!

It wasn't until I was on a forum page for MCM fans that someone posted a picture of their dining room and a fixture her husband made. I had seen some similar on etsy but for whatever reason this one spoke to me. They are custom made brass fixtures and you can pick the rod height, the globes and my hubby really wanted Edison bulbs so that was an option too. Done, ordered. There were some hiccups along the way with scratches on the smoked glass globes we first picked and we ended up reordering with clear glass which now I like better and before we installed it I started to question if I picked the right one since it is such a focal point of the house but I like it a lot.

Mockup fails and successes 

       When I thought we could pull off the Modo Chandelier. Even the smallest one is huge - #fail

Once I decided on the fixture... The trusty painters tape makes another appearance. Had to figure out what rod length to get and the wingspan of the overall light itself.

With special guests, the colorful bendy straws.

We cleared out the room, measured where the new box needed to be placed up in the attic and had our electrician wire it all up. Cats were put in the family room during the chaos and were acting like they were being tortured in a room they spend all their time in anyways just now with the doors closed. Room with huge sunny windows, water bowls and food at your finger, eh, pawtips... you poor things! :)

All the Small Things

I call these projects small because in the grand scheme of things, they are. However, these projects still took elbow grease and moola to get accomplished. 

The Door: Lite it up

We installed a custom door a few years ago and I had always wanted a door with multiple window lites and reeded glass. But for whatever reason this company could only do plain old boring glass. At the time we agreed to that, agreed to have my reeded glass dreams shattered, because their pricing blew every other company we got quoted out of the water and I figured I could come up with a privacy solution eventually.

Well, we probably had zero-privacy boring clear glass for a year or so before I was able to do anything about it. I spent a long time on the hunt for a window film that had the reeded look. Every site I found I ordered samples and each one was a disappointment. Some looked kinda cool but either looked too frosted, didn't stay on, or gave very little privacy. I realized that unless we paid to have new custom lites put in (which was not an option purely for how long it took us to stain and paint this fricken door), I had to come up with a plan B. Thankfully one of the companies I had found that had a subpar reeded glass film had many other options of other designs and textures. I came across one called rainfall. It had the vertical veining I liked about reeded but gave way more privacy, was a self-stick vs a cling and everytime I look through it I have flashbacks of Joey on Friends sitting by what we think is a window during a storm but when the camera zooms out he is just sitting near a water feature between glass while "All by Myself" plays out the scene. Classic Joey. 

The Blinds: I was blinded by the blinds

We didn't buy this house because of the previous owner's impeccable taste in vertical blinds. But I can see where some people may have thought that because they were everywhere in this house. Everywhere. The worst part was that most of our windows, much like other MCM homes, are huge. Huge. So after getting some quotes on custom window treatments and also hearing that our windows are so large that most window treatment options aren't even an option for us, I was starting to see why the past owner went the vertical route. Well they needed to go, all of them, regardless of cost. Well, kind of regardless of cost. Our family room has three massive windows and we knew eventually we'd remodel that room (fingers crossed soon!) and get new windows so there I just bought panels from IKEA and sewed them together and hemmed them to the floor and called it a day. But the Living room I needed something more long-term and timeless. 

Hunter Douglas makes this silhouette shades that are like a fabric blind and they are gorge, https://www.hunterdouglas.com/sheers/silhoutte

but they are pricy, thankfully there is a similar shade that is about half the cost but half the cost is still not cheap!

So that is what we went with because we did the front bedrooms in the same shade and I kinda like having the same window treatments in the front of the house visually. We did a taupe color in the bedrooms but we did bright white in the living room. During the day the light filters in and the room is bright but no one can see directly in unless they get really close and when the blinds are closed at night you also can't see in either even with all the lights on. I just love them.

When we took down the vertical blinds to prep for the install of the new blinds I decided I should probably sand and stain the window molding to match the new darker stain throughout the house. Sigh.

Stairwell Art: It's higher up than you think

Before we installed the open stairwell to the basement, I had some metal C.Jere-esque sea urchin wall art on the wall that now has my painting on it in the dining area. I wanted them to go on the wall directly above the new stairs. Seemed easy enough. We even bought one of those ladders where the sides can be at different heights for uneven surfaces. Perfect. 

I knew it wouldn't be that easy so I wanted to do all the prep work to make it go as smoothly as possible and to convince my hubby to help me. :) First I went to Photoshop with a picture of the stairwell and all the sea urchins to scale and I started to make different patterns on the wall with them. I am glad I did this because my husband may have killed me or killed himself dangling himself over the railing and on the ladder hanging these things if I didn't have a good idea of how it should look.

Once I figured out the shape I wanted them to form, we projected my design onto the wall. That didn't work out so great because we couldn't get it lined up well enough with all the walls due to the screen distortion but it gave a rough starting point. From there my husband bravely leaned over the half wall and marked where each one went and was able to hang some of them from above but the rest were done on the ladder below. 

Once they were all up, I would have loved to have tightened the space between some of them to be closer to what I mocked up on screen but when the light shines down on them, they give off a really cool shadow effect that does help fill a lot of the open space. I have grown to love how it looks now. 

Blogging is hard

Blogging is hard

Yikes, so I haven't blogged anything in, well, 2 years... almost to the day! Thank God I don't blog for a living or I surely would have been fired by now. I have been really busy, mainly working on home projects that I should be posting but just never have time to post them because I am working on projects. The circle of life.

If you are new to my blog, HI! and Please check out the archive to see what has been going on at our old 55'er. 

If you are one of my followers, I am dusting off the site with lots to post so hopefully I will get back to documenting them in a more timely manor. 

So here goes...