The Sixth House: Design Complete, Waiting Begins

Hello Friends. It has been a crazy morning around here. My little guy was stung by a bee three times when walking down our driveway to go to the bus stop (yes, school has started here, yikes). After taking off his shirt - which a bee flew out of in our kitchen, oh my gosh - killing the bee, applying baking soda and water paste to his stings - two on the neck and one on his hand, and calming him down, I drove him to school. As we were leaving the driveway we saw a swarm of bees around our garbage can - which is waiting for pick up at the curb. After I dropped off my son I went to the hardware store in my sweaty workout clothes and slippers (quite the sight I'm sure!) to buy bee spray. I called John on my way home to enlist his help in dealing with the bees. John got in the car and doused the garbage can with spray through a crack in the window, twice. The spray did not deter the bees at all. John theorizes that someone threw something in the can overnight that is attracting the bees. There is nothing unusual from us in the can so not sure. I have called the post office to alert our mail carrier to skip our house today and I will keep a listen out for the garbage truck to warn the men.

Now, I want to talk about something much more pleasant! I am done with designing the renovation of our house and I am done with my plans for all of the decor - paint colors, fabrics, furniture placement, finishes, fixtures, etc. The only thing that I have not designed is the master closet. I did design the master closet in our Holland house and our builder's carpenters built it. For this house though I think I need to call in a specialist! The closet space for the master is being reduced from two walk in closets to one as part of the renovation. I have an unnatural amount of sweaters, a love for shoes, and no doubt more than I need of every other clothing item and accessory. John has a few things he will need to put in there too I'm sure. The closet is not huge by any means (it is almost seven feet wide and is eight and one half feet long) and it has a sloped ceiling. I need to make the most out of every inch of it and although I have ideas on what to do, I want a closet expert to weigh in for sure.

In the last post I talked about decorating the master bedroom and sitting room and today I want to share the final decisions for paint colors, furniture placement, and finishes for the entire house.

I will start with the paint colors/wallpapers for the main floor:

Before I move on, I will say that the paint colors copied from a website and then on to the floor plan are not an exact match to the actual color. They are fairly close for the most part. All of the connected spaces of the home will be painted Swiss Coffee by Benjamin Moore. This starts with the entry, which does not have a definitive break from the great room, kitchen, back hall, stairwell/upstairs hall and stairwell/basement so there will be a lot of Swiss Coffee going on.

I have decided to go slightly darker with the kitchen cabinetry and am drawn to the color Mouse's Back by Farrow & Ball. I recently saw a coffee table painted this color in a home magazine and thought: "that is the perfect color for the kitchen cabinetry"! Other than that, none of the colors have changed from the original decor posts.

Here is a look at fabrics and furniture placement for the first floor too:

If you want to read more about the details of each room, I have covered them all here: the library, circle room, great room, kitchen, dining room, and mudroom/powder room.

Heading upstairs, these are the paint colors and wallpaper choices for the bedrooms, bathrooms, and laundry room. The color for the entire master suite will be Simply White by Benjamin Moore and this is one color that does not seem to translate very well when copied - it is whiter than this in person to my eye.

The only change here from the original decor posts is that I was on the fence about painting my son's bedroom (Bedroom Three) a color that picked up on his Bugatti poster - either dark gray/blue or an off-white. I have decided to paint the walls an off-white color (School House White by Farrow & Ball rather than House White, which I mentioned in the original post because I decided it was a bit too yellow) and to paint the trim the dark gray/blue. As of now it will remain De Nimes by Farrow & Ball, I may end up going a touch darker though. Whichever color combination, this is a great compromise for the dark and light colors and will look really sharp. I love dark trim with light walls.

Here are the fabric and finishes layout along with the furniture placement for the upstairs:

If you would like to go into some more detail, I've got you covered here: Bedroom One, Bedroom Two, Bedroom Three, Hall Bath, Master Bath, Laundry Room, and Master Bedroom.

Onto the basement. There are no changes from the original basement decorating post.

This is the paint color shot! So much contrast!

The finishes and furniture layouts:

I cannot tell you how excited I am about the way it has all come together! It has been a labor of love designing the renovation and decor of this house. I feel really good about all of the decisions and choices. I have been walking through this house for over a year plotting and planning and finally feel completely at peace with the results. Now, the waiting begins. The architect drawings are based off of the measurements on the original set of blueprints for the house (because of you know, COVID) and now we are scheduled for detailed, in person measurements in the first week of October. I am very comfortable with my designs, I am not opposed to revisions based on amazing ideas from the builder either though and I am certainly not blind to the fact that unforeseen problems may arise that will affect the design too if we are to stay on budget. Nonetheless, I am very hopeful that the design process with the firm will move quickly and we will be on to ordering materials in no time.

I will begin to talk much more about other design related topics here - more on that in the next post - I will blog with updates on my house whenever I have something to report though. And on that note, as of now we are scheduled to have the exterior of our home painted, new decks and patios installed, and new landscaping planted beginning in the third week of September. To celebrate John took off the shutters this past weekend. We will be replacing the old ones with wood ones. Yay! Here is the listing photo of the exterior and one I snapped this weekend after the shutters came down. The old girl is looking better already!

Thank you for following along on the revisions for my sixth house. Please share any comments, ideas or questions you have. I would love to hear from you!

Until Thursday, Kerry