House Tour: Making Progress After 4 Months of Ownership

It seems impossible that we’ve already owned the Dream House for four months and yet the math all adds up. We closed on the house in mid-November, it’s now mid-March – that is indeed four months! In our day-to-day lives it feels like we haven’t made much progress at all. But then every now and then we’re able to step back and really see how the house is coming together. And you know what? It IS coming together!

To refresh your memory on what the house looked like when we took possession, you can take a look back at the house tour that I posted back in December. Back then the rooms were all painted in vibrant colors and we only had a couple of pieces of furniture. In the past four months we’ve painted almost every wall in the house Campfire Smoke (gray) and have practically filled the rooms with secondhand furniture. The master bedroom, with its two twin beds, amateur art and Flokati rug, is my favorite room so far. It came together almost effortlessly, first with the beds and then with the accessories and other furniture.

The guest bedroom in the front of the house also came together easily. The vintage sleigh bed pretty much fills the room. We added in a small cabinet and a new-to-us rug and that was all the room needed. There are a still a number of finishing touches for this room – window treatment, art, etc. – but in the meantime it looks finished and feels comfortable.

The smallest of the three bedrooms, which we’ve deemed the writing room, is the one room that hasn’t gotten much attention yet. The walls haven’t been painted, there’s an odd collection of pieces “artfully” arranged in one corner and it was the scene of our first wood stripping experiment. We’ll get back into this room and start making it over eventually, but it’s definitely toward the bottom of the list of projects.

Besides painting the walls and adding in a little furniture, there is still much to be done in the living room. We plan to remove the mantel, replace the tile surrounding the fireplace and order new blinds before we start to really invest in furniture. Still, we did find an American made sofa that helps the living room feel worthy of its name. And the cheap library table that sits in the corner seems perfect for our Prairie style house:

The table’s in pretty shabby shape but it fits perfectly under the window in the living room. Once warm weather arrives I’ll be able to take it out into the workshop and give it a refreshing. Meanwhile, a few blog posts and emails have been written while seated at this table.

Although it means sitting in fairly uncomfortable vintage folding chairs, the dining room has become the official hang-out room in the Dream House. Now that we have our $29 table, I’m on the hunt for upholstered chairs to soften up the space. I just scored a couple of amazing West Elm chairs that I’m excited to get into the house and bring into the dining room. Someday, of course, we’ll replace the dining table with something nicer. But first we have a vintage bar with sentimental value that’s coming our way this summer. Since it will be the most important piece in the room, we’re going to let it dictate the rest of the furniture.

We thought the kitchen would be one of our first projects once we got into the house. I had dreams of painting the cabinetry and floor and doing a quicky replacement of the painted counter tops. In reality, the cabinetry is too shabby to even try to resuscitate with paint and the flooring needs to be replaced all together. We’re pushing the kitchen rehab off for awhile as we try to figure out what we want to do and how much we can (or are willing) to afford. Meanwhile, I’m happy to see that painting the wainscoting in the small side entrance has had such a brightening effect. I want an all-white kitchen so it’s nice to see that the white wainscoting works in this vintage house.

There’s still a lot more to do, of course. It was actually really helpful to photograph the house in its current state. Not only has it helped me see the house from an outside perspective, a difficult feat when you’re living in it, it has also helped me realize that we’ve come a long way in just a few month’s time.

To see even more photos of the Dream House at the four-month mark, click over to the HOUSE TOUR page for a gallery of 20+ images.

— J. Blandings

Images: Mr. and Mr. Blandings