The Maryland Remodel

I found a post I had written back in June but never posted. It included photos I had taken when we put the Bowie house on the market. I was going to delete them and then I realize that there are some friends who never saw the final remodel result. Betsy, I know you saw photos when we first painted the living room but otherwise you'd never been to our place (I'm a horrible friend. I'm really sorry!) Linda saw the place when the cabinets were in but the final version of the countertops weren't in. My family only knew the Bowie house as Rusty's mom's place, though my mom was there for a visit while we were taking down the wall. And now I have a friend that wants to see the photos for a project she's doing with her cabinets (the bathroom vanity is the same in both photos, I just restained it a much darker color and put on new hardware.) And for Laurie, with whom I've been discussing Ikea cabinetry and whether to wait for Ikea to set up shop in Cincinnati next year? The kitchen cabinets in the photos are the Ikea "STAT (White)" which is a farmhouse style doorfront. And since I raved about the organizational options with their cabinets I'm linking to a set I had put on Flickr a while back with some of those options. I typed out a good deal of what we talked about in the email but thought it may be able to visualize with the photos there for reference (I don't have a picture of the silverware drawer organizer which was one of my favorite details!) :

Click here to view the Ikea cabinetry detail pictures

Otherwise, here are the "Before & After" photos I never posted until now:

Letter from home

Dear Maryland (and Linda, Jenn, Jodi and anyone else who hasn't seen us in months),

Hi! How are you? I am fine (aside from a raging case of "I'm a dork".)

Last time we chatted, Maryland (and friends), you asked for photos. Ok, sure. Why not post photos. But only if you promise, Maryland (and again with the friends) that you will not mock me for my lack of ability to walk into a room without painting it (shut up) or drive by a garage sale, flea market or salvage store without buying something old (seriously, if you live in Cincinnati you have to go to Building Value in Walnut Hills - that place is overflowing with character and history and the people are really really nice. I promised them I'd be back... and that I'd bring friends.)

So here now are a few pictures of the house as it stands today...



Ok, photo#1. The dining room. There are a number of things you may be thinking upon viewing this photo. You may be saying to yourself, "That is one big, semi-stripped piece of furniture!" But? You'd be wrong. Because there are actually eight semi-stripped pieces of furniture in that room... I just chose to feature one for your viewing pleasure*. Another thing you may be noticing about that room? The lovely (not really) navy blue paint. We are not responsible for the paint. Now Maryland, you know that I am not afraid of color on the walls ("Your living room looks like a hobbit hole" ring a bell, anyone?) And I've actually seen navy blue on walls and it's beautiful. In fact, my brother and sister-in-law have an open kitchen/living room with vaulted ceilings and have navy on one wall and it looks spectacular with the other colors in the room and the trim. But this? This does not look spectacular. This looks dark and weird. Maybe because of the chair rail running through the middle of it? I don't know and don't particularly care. It's leaving sometime soon. Ummm, what else... ok, the light fixture. It's not "bad", it's just not our style. Coming down when we get to it. Probably sometime after the furniture gets refinished, the paint gets taken care of and I'm able to shower for more than two days in a row (you'd think showering is a priority but for some reason the house doesn't agree with that.)

Ok, let's move on, shall we?



Ah, yes. This, Maryland, is the living room. Or as I like to refer to it? The "let's-put-everything-we-can-possibly-fit-into-it-and-then-decide-to-paint" room. In my defense? This room is actually coming together (it's the one with the french doors that was in the first batch of house pictures we sent out.) I painted and got curtains hung and then decided to paint the bookcase (I don't want to hear it, thanks.) So nothing that went into the bookcase has been unpacked because the second coat of paint went on Friday. So to prove to you (and to encourage myself) that the living room is close to being unpacked and put together and finished, here is another photo of some detail of the paint color (Olympic Willow Tree, the same color we had in the living room in Bowie):



There are a few other random photos on the art blog too but since they're more "detail" and less "real life mess" I wasn't sure they reflect the true condition of our house at the moment. And you know I'm all about keeping it real.

Well, that's all for now. We miss you, Maryland (and friends). But we're settling in and I have the majority of a whole new house to work on. And you know me; I may complain about the messes but I really really like making them. We love you, and can't wait to see you soon (Linda, that is aimed directly at you, sister. I try to check the weekly airfare deals to Philly so you may need to find a babysitter!)

Goodbye and goodnight, Maryland (and friends),

Stacie a.k.a. "Super Dork"

*P.S. The large semi-stripped furniture in the dining room? We bought a dining room set at an auction last month. $150 for a table with leaves, six chairs and a buffet. The catch? They have layers of white, kind-of-white, and not-even-remotely-close-to-white paint on them. And on top of that? All of the detail work (spindles, etc.) have metallic gold paint. Niiiiice.

Gah!

I swear I mean to take pictures. But the site of the post-semi-cross country move mess is making me want to throw up a little.

Our House Photos

So I didn't get a chance to go back to the house photos on Flickr until just now. And can I just tell you how much I adore my friends? Especially those who leave me such lovingly snarky remarks? Betsy and Jodi made my day. Seriously? Our house is not ginormous.

Ok, maybe it is. Especially to us after living in the Bowie shoebox.

We got a great deal on the house; God really blessed us. The couple moving out was being transferred to Virginia and the house had been on the market for a while. And? This house has some things wrong with it. To prove that statement, I will post photos of our mutant master bathroom (our home inspector said he was taking notes to put it in a book he's planning on the "weirdest things [he's] ever seen.") Woo hoo! Go us, with our funky weird bathroom. And the navy blue dining room (seriously.) And the drunken chef wallpaper border in the kitchen (which really contains 100% drunken chefs.) And the vintage dining room set I bought at an auction for cheap a few weeks ago and thought "Hey! I'll just refinish it!" because, you know, I have absolutely nothing else to do with my time. And to clarify? The navy dining room and the drunken chefs were here when we bought the place.

In all honestly, I really meant it when I said God blessed us with this house. We got here at the right time. I'm going to try to take photos of the chaos around here. You know... to keep it real and all. The last photos? Not so "real." Look closely at the only interior photo and you'll see that it's a shot of the upper half of the wall. Cropping out the floor. Because? The floor is full o' junk. You may have also noticed I was all "See the pretty outside of our house? So pretty." But didn't really show much of the inside. On purpose.

I promise to take some realistic photos of the inside of the house at this stage of unpackedness if you promise to not recoil in fear. And remember how nice and neat (and slightly anal) I usually am about my house. Deal? Deal. Ok, then. More photos to come soon...