Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Here's a bit of Christmas nostalgia for you. When Grandma heard about our aluminum Christmas tree, she found this picture of my mom with their aluminum tree from 1965. I found a nice little frame for it and put a couple of silver ornament balls around it as an accent.

The Paneling Is Up (We Finally Have A Complete Wall)

Granted, it did take a bit more time than we anticipated to get the paneling up (but, hey, December is a busy month after all, and we were out of town for two of those weekends). However, Daniel did get the paneling up with one coat of varnish today. While the color doesn't match exactly yet, I think the additional coat will even things up nicely.

Hurray. It's nice not to have a gaping hole in the wall anymore!

With the paneling in place:

Ready to add the varnish:

Applying the varnish:

Voila!

The Paneling Has Arrived

Good news! The paneling Daniel and I ordered to fix the gaping hole in the listening room has arrived. I just picked it up over my lunch break from Southern Lumber and Millwork. We had to special order it, and, of course, we could only order in packs of four (and we need five panels to fix the room), so we have three extra pieces. However, at least we have room to store the extras. They should be easy to install (Daniel told me he would be tackling it this weekend while I'm in North Carolina) and finish. The Southern Lumber people told Daniel that the current wood wasn't even stained only varnished, which means we should be able to match the rest of the room with relative ease (although we will have to consider how the aging process has affected the old paneling).

Daniel also got a quote on refinishing the hardwoods (sanding and matching the finish of our current floors), so I'm hoping we'll be able to get those taken care of soon. While he was getting the quote on the listening room floors, Daniel also asked about the kitchen floors (which we had intended on replacing with matching hardwood); however, the flooring guy suggested that we explore other options aside from just hardwood (in terms of upkeep and maintenance to one of the more traveled and heavily used rooms of the house that, not to mention, also uses water extensively).

Everything seems to be on a roll though, and I'm anxious to see the results (and get the room finished).

A Sparkly, Retro Tree

Christmas is just around the corner, and Daniel and I have been working on decorating the house (well, we've been dragging boxes out of the attic). We plan on doing two trees this year, one in the living room and one in the den. We haven't bought the tree for the den yet because it's going to be live. However, we decided to do a retro theme for the living room-- complete with a vintage Evergleam aluminum Christmas tree! We ended up with a great eBay find (and deal because it didn't have it's stand, but Daniel was successful in finding an original stand as well), and when combined with a color wheel (found through Amazon), it is quite the sparkly wonder.

And since we have such an enormous window in the living room, our neighbors have been admiring (and reminiscing) as well. Thanks to Mom for providing us with tips on decorating the tree in an authentic vintage fashion (large, round ornaments in one color that aren't super shiny).

Here's the end result. I absolutely love it! It's so much fun.

With the color wheel turned on:

A closer shot of the color wheel:

Another indoor shot:

And the outdoor shot:

A Couch for the Listening Room

I found this awesome retro couch at Urban Outfitters when Mom, Dad, and I were out and about in downtown Charleston. I really think it would look awesome in the new listening room (we're thinking of refinishing the floors in a lighter color, so the wood is not as overpowering). Not to mention, it also folds into a twin bed, which would make even more room for overnight guests.

A NEW Room

We found more hardwood floors!

As we were giving Mom and Dad a tour of the house, we were hyphothesizing what the room directly off to the kitchen might have been (a bedroom at one time since it had a closet, a dining area since it had linoleum flooring, and so on). (We're currently using it as a listening/music room). It has three doorways: one to the kitchen, one to the bedroom hallway area, and one to the den. It also had identical linoleum flooring to the kitchen, a set of built-in cabinets in what used to be an old closet, and a really large built-in desk and bookshelf system. Now, while we liked all of the storage, we hated the arrangement because the built-ins made it impossible to put any type of furniture in the room without making it impossible to walk through. Furthermore, we HATED the light-colored, faux wood paneling. Everything about the room was so neutral and light in color that it was just blah.

Dad posed the thought that we might have hardwood floors in the room since it wasn't part of the addition made in the 70s. Well, with that thought, Daniel immediately started peeling back layers of linoleum and subflooring, and sure enough, we had hardwood floors!


This was a major source of excitement because it meant we didn't have to wait until we redid the kitchen in order to work on this room (in order to redo all of the floors at the same time).

So while Mom and I painted, Daniel and Dad worked on pulling up the floor.

They began by pulling up the existing flooring.



This is the second layer of linoleum (which is covering the hardwoods). I really can't imagine covering up hardwood floors with this ugly stuff, but apparently (Mom tells me) it was quite the fashionable thing to do.

It did, however, leave Dad and Daniel with quite a challenge.

Thousands of staples covered the linoleum (attaching it to the subflooring before the most recent linoleum was added).

They kept at it though and began working the sides of the room to pull up the molding in order to reach the edges of the linoleum. It was at this point when we discovered yet another hidden gem in the room.


The ORIGINAL tongue and groove pine paneling! We were definitely shocked by this one-- fake wood paneling was covering real wood paneling!


In essence, we were uncovering the original house... but it was not without an intense amount of work.


Demolishing the built-ins

Both he and Dad pulled up staple after staple.

One tip they found online was to use a snow shovel as leverage in order to pull up the layers of linoleum and subflooring. Since we live in Charleston, the land of 50-degree winters, they don't even stock snow shovels, so Daniel had to make do with a regular shovel.


The room's transformation is absolutely amazing. It doesn't even begin to resemble what we started with. The condition of the walls and floors is pretty incredible as well. The floors will just need refinishing.

The walls will need a bit more work. We did make the surprise discovery of what used to be a very large window overlooking the backyard. With the addition of the bedroom and den on the back, the window was split, with one half to become a doorway and the other half to be covered by the fake paneling. We plan on keeping our eyes open for any remodeling projects that might be going on in the neighborhood (with the hope that maybe they'll be throwing out some of their paneling). We're also planning a trip to Charleston Building Materials and Salvage Yard to see if we can find replacement panels (we only need five).

It's definitely falling into place though!

A Fresh Coat of Paint

Okay... I'm finally getting around to the finale to my Thanksgiving posts (sorry it's taken so long). Mom had promised to help paint while she and Dad were in town, so we definitely held her to her word and picked up four gallons of paint. Rooms to paint: main living room on into hallway, accent wall in kitchen, and half bath as well as some trim work (bathroom doors, windows, etc.).

In terms of choosing the colors, I knew I wanted to do two different colors in the living room, and I really thought a chocolate brown would work well combined with a lighter brown. I also wanted the living room wall color to coordinate with the accent wall in the kitchen since the two colors would meet one another at the doorway. At Lowe's I stocked up on a huge assortment of paint chips until I discovered Valspar's Martha Stewart collection. And I really have to give Martha a hand here-- she (well, her company) definitely knows how to do it. Her paint chips came with three coordinating colors, so I picked out a couple of colors that I liked and was able to see quickly which combinations would work (definitely saved some time trying to compare the colors on my own).

Since I knew I wanted brown in the living room, my next focus was on finding a good color for the kitchen, and I narrowed it down to three colors: deep orange (pumpkin-like), a deep chartreuse (called Chardonnay Bottle), and a teal blue (called Cabana). Ultimately Cabana won out-- the paint chip really made the wall pop, and we also really liked the coordinating browns.

Here's a before picture of the kitchen (we're only painting the one wall since we have plans to re-do the rest of the kitchen)

Here are some shots of the in-action work in the kitchen (Mom took charge of the trim work while I did the rolling... which worked out extremely well since she is a pro with the trim, and I end up painting everything I'm not supposed to when I attempt trim work).


I definitely like the teal MUCH better than the cream. I'm also extremely happy that the Kartell lamp still looks great against this color too. As a finishing touch, I framed two pieces of Snow & Graham wrapping paper that I found at Lesesne in the Upper King Street Design District of downtown Charleston. Right now I'm just leaving the frames unfinished until we get everything worked out for the kitchen. It's a definite improvement though.

The after shots:

An up-close of the Snow & Graham paper (fronds is on the left, and eucalyptus--whose color matches the lamp-- is on the right)

We also painted the half bath (which is located off of the master bedroom) this same color, and it's amazing how different the same color can look in two different rooms. The half bath was pretty much a boring white room before. All of the wall tiles had been reglazed white (from an overwhelming 50s pink), and the floor tiles are 1-inch squares in gray-specked white, light blue, green, and pink.


After (sorry the lighting is so bad)

the original light fixture, which I love (the circles are awesome)

Now, on to the living room. Here are the before shots:
as looking from the doorway to the kitchen

the other side of the living room

during the painting process



Now, on to the after shots (and more pictures will come when all of the art is back up on the walls). I'm very happy with the chocolate brown. Daniel and I were a little worried that it might be too dark, but the lighter brown/tan really balances it well, and the richness of the color actually makes our favorite part of the room, the window, stand out.