Sixth House - Reality on the Main Floor
Hello! In my last post I mentioned that I was considering showing you what our house is currently like on the inside - how we are living while in a holding pattern before renovation begins. Well, I'm just gonna do it. We had a (fully vaccinated) colleague of John's over for dinner recently and that seemed to go okay so I think you all for sure should see it too! I think it is important to help us get our bearings for the decor posts so time to rip the bandaid off Kerry!
We decided that we would not paint nor rip up carpet nor make any real changes to the inside before our renovation begins so that we would not be spending money twice as our plan will touch/mar just about every surface in the house. That was at the idealistic time when we did not think we would be waiting so long to get started. Nonetheless, we still think it makes sense to wait. We have hung some artwork and placed some of the furniture where we think it may ultimately end up - a lot of which is going to be reupholstered. We unpacked as few of our "decorative objects" as possible. The ones that came from boxes with necessities in them are just placed in the rooms they were opened in with no real rhyme or reason. These are all statements to prepare you for a house that is not put together, not styled, not clean! That's how we roll lately, not my ideal, "okay for now though" I keep telling myself.
I will try and show the pictures in the order of the house tour post and add a few comments. We will wait to really get into the rooms until we talk about the ultimate vision for them though, no need to spend a lot of time on them in their current state.
The Entryway
This is an antique table that was in my parent's entry in Florida with a planter stuck underneath. I'm not sure if the table will stay in the entry. You may recall in the renovation post that we want to open the wall to reveal the stairs to the basement.
The Library
Most of our books are still in boxes and I don't know what else to say about this room other than if you don't need to get something from the printer, you don't go in here. Also, I'm noticing there were obviously a lot of pillows in the boxes we opened in here lol. Our renovation plan is to turn this room into a library. The stack of books with the printer on it is where the door would be to the room behind this one (the sitting room).
The Sitting Room
This room gets a lot of use for reading and hanging out actually. The large space between the Detroit bus roll and the Detroit United Airlines poster in the second picture represents where the door would be to the library. Our dog is making a guest appearance in the last picture! Here is the renovation plan for this room.
The Great Room/Family Room
This room is a dumping ground. The large floral club chairs are from The Farm and need to be recovered after twenty-five years of use. When we moved things from my parent's Florida house to West Virginia these chairs ended coming home with me because there was no longer room for them at The Farm. The chaise is from my Nana and needs a new leg and new upholstery. The toile arm chair, which we only bought because the antique dealer told us it was from Ireland - suckers, is there because John likes to sit there when I'm making dinner. The table behind the sofa is also from my parent's house in Florida. My mom used it as her desk and it has a great origin story that I will tell at another time. Here is the renovation plan for the family room.
The Kitchen
The actual kitchen has not changed at all yet. We are currently using our kitchen table from the Grosse Pointe house and the antique desk my dad bought me as a gift is in here too. In fact, I am typing at that desk right now. The renovation plan for the kitchen is quite transformative.
The Dining Room
This is our same dining room table and furniture from the Holland house. The wicker chair in the corner is the chair my mom used at her desk (the desk/table now in our family room). My mom loved this chair and built a contraption underneath to shore up the seat, another sentimental piece of furniture that my sister in-law convinced me to take. We did hang the chandelier from the Grosse Pointe house because to me it was better in the short (now longer and longer) term than the one that was hanging here when we bought the house. There are some plans to bring new life to this space.
The powder room and laundry room area are the same as when we moved in, save for piles of dirty laundry and some clean laundry hanging from the rod. You can see what they look like now and the renovation plans for the spaces here.
That wasn't too bad, was it? I don't know which is worse, me revealing this or you seeing it, hopefully not the latter. Next time I will show you what the upstairs and basement look like and then we'll get to decorating plans: the vision I try and see in my mind when I'm walking through the rooms, rather than the reality.
Thank you so much for coming by today, I hope to see you again next time,
Kerry
