Home Tour: Front of House.

On to the next part of our home tour.  In case you missed them, you can check out the changes we made in the formal living room and the powder room.  Today I wanted to show you the small changes we made outside to the front of the house.  The changes weren't major, but I'm really glad we made them.

Up first, we replaced the lighting.  The lights that were up in the front of the house weren't overly offensive (like other items in the house), but we didn't love them.  Here's what we were dealing with (since I was a bad blogger and failed to take before pictures of the front, this is actually the same light by our back door -- we didn't replace that one): 

So not horrible, but just not something we liked.  Instead of keep something we didn't love, we contacted Bevolo Lighting in New Orleans because we've always loved the look of their copper lights.  I sent them pictures of the front of our house, and they recommended a few style options for us and the appropriate sizes (at no charge).  I wish all house decisions were that easy!  

Per their recommendation, we got two of the French Quarter lights to go on either side of the front door.     

(As an aside, I really hate the sego palms on either side of the door.  They need to be removed, but we are just waiting to figure out what to put there instead.  Suggestions welcome!)  But back to the pretty lights . . .

Aren't they just gorgeous?  All of the lights are handmade in New Orleans, and Bevolo's attention to detail really shows.  

I also loved that they suggested we mix 2 styles of lights.  For the column on the other side of the garage, which you can barely see from this picture, they suggested the Williamsburg light.

During one of our recent trips to New Orleans, we swung by the Bevolo store in the French Quarter.  You can go to the back and see them actually making the lights.  How cool is that?  The lights in the picture are the raw cooper fixtures before they are oxidized.         

Replacing the lights really did spruce up the front of the house -- even our neighbors noticed them.  But we also decided to paint the door a high gloss black (it was previously a dark stained brown).  After getting a shiny coat of black paint, the door was just calling out for a lion's head knocker (purchased here).
  

So that's it for the changes to the front of the house.  Nothing major, but just a few key things that jazz up the curb appeal.

      

Home Tour: Formal Living Room.

First up on the post-renovations home tour, I showed you our powder room.  Next up is the formal living room.  I also refer to this room as the "sitting room" because I tend to refer to our main TV room as the living room.  Regardless of what you call it, this room is currently my favorite room in the house for any number of reasons.

Just to set the stage here, when you are in the entry way, this room is directly to your right and the formal dining is to your left.  Since it's one of the very first things guests see when they come in, I wanted the room to make a statement.  I decided early on that I wanted to stretch my comfort zone a bit and go bold in this room.

This is a picture of the room from the real estate listing.  It may be bold in its own right for different reasons.  (Obviously, we have slightly different taste than the previous owners.)

We started with a blank slate (well, a yellow slate actually).  And here's how the room looks today.

One of the reasons why I love this room so much is because it came together so easily.  I didn't really have a vision for the room when I started (besides bold choices and mixed prints), which is different than I how normally decorate.  But for whatever reason, my lack of a plan totally worked in this room.

I knew right away I wanted jewel tones in the room.  Every time I considered something else, my mind went back to jewel tones.  Then one day, Justin and I were at High Fashion Home and they had furniture displayed in various mock-up rooms.  One of the rooms was fabulous with a deep teal color, and as soon as I saw it, I knew that was the perfect color for the space.  Thankfully, the employee knew what color it was (Benjamin Moore Stained Glass).  And that's how the wall color was chosen!

We had the Ethan Allen chairs that were in our old living room recovered in a neutral linen.  Since the walls are darker, I wanted the main furniture pieces to be lighter.  You can't tell from the pictures, but the chairs have a subtle pattern on them and tie in nicely with the couch, which is from Macy's.  I may recover the vintage ottomans (a craigslist find) at some point, but I am currently digging the rose pink.  I am also considering painting the lamps (a Homegoods find) that are sitting on the end tables (another craigslist find, blogged about here), but haven't been able to commit to a color quite yet.  In the meantime, the tan color is working just fine.  And see that awesome vintage brass pharmacy lamp?  I got 3 of them on craigslist for $25 total -- yes, all 3 for $25!  

The "brass" shelves are an Ikea hack that made its way around the blog world (i.e. the Vittsjo shelves spray painted gold).  It's probably not a great solution for something that's getting a lot of use, but these serve only one purpose: to look pretty.

The shelves hold all kinds of goodies.  Some highlights are my grandfather's books; Justin's grandfather's books; an antique print from a Paris trip; some other vintage finds, and of course, some Target gems.

It took us three tries, but we finally nailed the rug.  Surprisingly, this was really the only element in the room Justin had a strong opinion on.  He was definitely on board with the leopard, but he was pretty picky with the look of the leopard print.  Thankfully, he has excellent taste, and we found a carpet that we both loved and had them cut it to specific dimensions for the room.  It totally makes the room.

While I was taking pictures of the room, my two favorite helpers/modelers were assisting.

When we moved in, this room had no overhead lighting.  We added 4 recessed lights and a center fixture by Visual Comfort, which I have loved for a long time.  The overhead lighting makes such a huge difference in the space.

So, I think that's about it.  Did I miss anything?  One thing is for dang sure . . . this room has come along way from the floral couches it started with!  

Blueprint Surprise.

The realtor who sold us our home stopped by today to drop off a little surprise.  The previous (and original) owners found the original blueprints for the house and sent them to their realtor to give to us!  How nice of them to think to send them along for us to enjoy.  And the timing is ironic because we closed on our house almost exactly one year ago today. 

Of course, we've loved looking the plans and seeing the minor changes that they made between the blueprints vs. what was actually built.  I should really take better photos so you get a feel for the actual layout, but the point isn't the actual floorplan, but just that we have the blueprints!

Here's the first floor.  To get you oriented, the front door is on the right-hand side of the photo a little more than halfway down.   The formal living room (to the right of the front door as you walk in) was slated to have a tray ceiling, but for some reason that never happened (and no overhead lighting was ever installed either!).  The lack of lighting situation has since been remedied.    

This next one is the second floor.  With the 100+ degree temperatures we've been having the past few days, I really wish they actually installed the ceiling fan in the gameroom, rather than the hideous boob light they picked instead.  And it looks like the previous owners decided to add in built-ins to the fifth bedroom (and the plans don't mention anything about the wood paneling in that room either).  All very interesting.  Well, at least to us! 

And this is the landscape design for the house (in both the front and the back).  Evidently, there were 2 phases of the landscaping.  They were going to install an awesome covered porch with ceiling fans in "phase 2," but I guess they stopped after phase 1.  It's a total bummer because we've always talked about how awesome having a covered area in our backyard would be, but at least we can see where they thought about putting it (and get some idea for what the landscaping looked like when the house was first built).  We're total suckers for historical information like that.     

So kind of an amazing, totally unexpected one year house anniversary present, right?  

And thanks for your comments on the powder room.  I will be sharing our formal living room next week.  Spoiler alert: the formal living room may be my favorite room in the house. 

Home Tour: Powder Room.

Yikes.  It's been a while (thanks for your frequent reminders, mom and Ellen).  But let's ignore that and focus instead on the fact that I am finally getting around to showing you our powder room.  Who doesn't love a good before and after?

Basically, the before was a massive snooze-fest.  Complete with a bad brass and chrome faucet, a claw-like light fixture, pale yellow walls, two toilet paper holders (why?), and a toilet and sink that were undersized.  Needless to say, this room didn't do anything for us and needed some major help.   

     

And here's the after!  Bye bye snooze fest, hello gorgeous (if I do say so myself). 

Absolutely nothing from the old powder room stayed.  I'm all for re-using what we could, but in here, there was nothing worth even working with.  I knew right off the bat I wanted to do some bold wallpaper in this room.  If you can't be bold in the powder room, where can you?    

And for some detail shots . . .

My mom bought this vintage mirror and it was exactly what I was looking for.  She was sweet enough to let me have it for the space.  I love the detailing on the frame and the contrast the dark frame provides in the space. 

The light fixture proved to be more difficult than I thought it should have been.  Probably because I kept envisioning sconces in the space (that wouldn't fit) or a chandelier (which would require us to re-wire).  I also wanted to add a touch of brass in this room via the light, but wanted to keep it simple.  At the end of the day (and lots of searching), this fixture fit the bill. 

I struggled with what to put on the walls for two reasons:  (1) I didn't want anything to compete with the wallpaper; and (2) I was scared to put a hole in the beautiful paper.  I'm happy with my choice to go with simple black frame (that works with the mirror), which has a large white mat to provide some separation between the picture and the wallpaper (and only required 1 tiny hole).  Win, win, win!  The picture itself is one we took of a street in Paris right by one of the hotels we stayed in.    

As a bonus, here's a before shot of the hall that leads to the laundry room and garage with the powder room off of it (the door on the right). 

And here's the after.   You can't tell from the photos, but the wood floor and the handrail were all stained a darker, richer color.  And we replace the ceramic tile in the powder room with some fun black and white mosaic tile.  We still need to paint the laundry room, but that's a subject for a different post.

Oh!  And we added the chandelier in the hallway.  I mean, why not?  Since we didn't want to redo the electrical to put it in the powder room, we did the next best thing . . . we put it right outside the door.  It's actually perfect there.  I love the way it totally glams up the hallway.  Some things just work out.  (In case anyone's curious, the wall color is Benjamin Moore Silver Chain.)

If it's something that would be helpful, I will do a post with the sources.  So what do you think?  Much better, right?        

New Door Hardware.

It's not only a Monday, but the Monday after the time-change.  Such a double whammy!  Regardless, happy Monday!  

We had a fun-filled weekend installing some new door hardware around the house.  To be fair, I installed the easy ones and Justin was in charge of the more complicated ones.  Here's the fun that was waiting for us on Friday evening when we got home from work.      

This was the before situation on every dang door.  It's not terrible, but those levers do nothing for me and the finish wasn't nice looking at all.    

Remember how I said that "good" brass is back?  Well I mean it.  Here's what our doors are adorned with now.  It's the Emtek Turino lever in French Antique with the regular rosette.   

One of the things I've known since day one in this house is that I wanted crystal knobs on the master bath doors.  Lucky for me, Emtek also offers beautiful crystal knobs and I could get them in the same finish with the same rosette as the levers.  These are the Old Town knobs.    

When I woke up yesterday (the first day after we installed them), they were the first thing I saw and they brought an immediate smile to my face.  And isn't that what decorating is all about -- making decisions that make you smile?  

In case you're curious, most of our other hardware (all faucets, kitchen hardware, etc.) are polished nickel.  It doesn't bother me at all to mix finishes.  In fact, I really like it.  I love the warmth the brass brings to the table.  

The hardware is even more beautiful that what I thought it would be.  In case you're in the market, I ordered them through Simpson's Hardware.  They had the best price by far and the customer service was great.  For the record, they don't know who I am; I just wanted to pass along the website in case anyone else is looking for new door hardware.  Oh, and Emtek has no idea who I am either.  I am just one very happy customer. 
 

A Little Preview.

It will definitely be a while before each room is in shape to share in a wide view because we are still unpacking and getting things set up.  But I didn't want to keep you hanging that long.  In the meantime, check out some little sneak peeks around the house.  In case you need a reminder on what we started with, check out this video for a home tour before the renovation.   

Is it wrong that I've been sticking my head in the powder room everyday just to admire the pretty bird wallpaper?  I didn't think so.  I'm also a fan of the new faucet as well.     

In this picture, you can see the refinished hardwoods and the new laundry room tile.  

Check out the new paint color and orb chandy in the entry way.  I love the shadows it casts on the wall.  (I had to close my eyes when our contractor was teetering on a super tall ladder to hang that thing.)
 

 

We restained the banister to match the new darker hardwoods and replaced the medallion carpet with something a little more normal/neutral.  I love the gray, dark brown, and white together.  

The butler's pantry (sans cabinet hardware).  I am in love with the counters and the mirror backsplash. 

One of the master bath sinks.   

And my closet.  Oh yes, I did put leopard carpet in there. 

We're working hard to get things in order over here so I can do some "real" before and afters.  Hope these little bits can hold you over.