If you are joining me for the first time, thank you for coming, and welcome to our Family Room.
Have you ever wondered where I am in this old pile of bricks when I'm working on the blog? I got this new laptop in the fall, combined with our existing wireless network, and I now have my choice of locations to work. My favorite place is the family room.
This room didn't always look as nice as it does now. Like the rest of the house, this room required serious work on all of the surfaces and systems. Every square inch of the room has been stripped and refinished ... floors, moldings, and the walls. The beautiful results were worth the months of hard work it took to get to this point.
See, there's the laptop.
This is a nice large room, with an odd shape and lots of challenges when it came to arranging the furniture ... two doors, a huge fireplace, a deep pointed bay, a monster radiator, and two large dog beds. I'm not all that satisfied with the arrangement we have now, but it's functional and I'm going leave it alone. One day, I'm sure the solution will come to me.
Floorplan, to help you visualize what I'm talking about.
Here is the only photo I have of this room before I started tearing it apart. I took this with an ancient digital camera in 2002, when we first toured the house with our realtor. All of the stuff, of course, belongs to the prior owners of our house. You can see that they also had trouble figuring out what to do with the bay window area.
Here we are, about half way through the stripping process. I used a heat gun and a scraper to remove all the paint from walls so the plasterer could do his thing. I stripped all the paint off the moldings (heat gun, again) to get the built up paint out of the grooves and contours, so it would be a nice smooth surface for a fresh coat of paint. The moldings in this house, we discovered, have always been painted a pale color.
Here is a tour around the room, after all the walls were scraped and the molding was stripped, sanded, and primed. The room, at this point, is ready for plaster.
My father-in-law (the electrician) figured out how to snake wiring through these old walls and ceiling, and he installed new lighting throughout the house. This room received recessed lights in the corners of the ceiling.
Door to the Foyer. I see a bag of plaster by the steps, so the plasterer must be getting ready to work.
Fireplace, and double doors to the Dining Room. Everyone has a refrigerator and a couch in their dining room, don't they?
After plaster and paint, the place started coming together.
The color is Restoration Hardware's Silver Sage.
Once the floors were refinished, the place really looked good!
This room, along with the rest of the house, is furnished with items that my husband and I have collected during our 30 years together. We were antique collectors when antiques were cheap, and we were happy to snap them up and bring them home ... not something you can do so easily today, I'm sorry to say. Lots of other things came from thrift shops and discount stores.
Lazy Boy chairs, pillows from Home Goods, antique trunk with a glass top for the end table, painting over the mantle and the chestnut side-by-side secretary were from estate auctions years ago.
I bid WAY too much for this Victorian sheep painting at the auction ... but I was not going to let that other woman have MY painting.
A view the other direction. The turquoise armoire is one of my better finds on Craig's List. All it needed was a good scrubbing. It holds the Grandson's toys, books, and games.
My father-in-law built the model ship AND the glass case that holds it.
Through the door to the foyer, you can see that the staircase is still half taken apart.
Many of you have already seen our TV cabinet, which used to be our china hutch. (If not, CLICK HERE to see how I made it.)
In the photo above, you can see one of the reasons why it's so nice to hang out in the Family Room ... this is where our pets hang out, too. (That's Maggie on the dog bed.)
Emma is sacked out, as usual.
"Whatcha doin', Mom?", says Daniel.
We do just about everything at this coffee table. It's 42" in diameter, with four wedge-shaped stools tucked underneath, and it's perfect for games, or snacks, or just propping up your feet. A friend brought me the greyhound pillow on the sofa ALL the way from Scotland.
We took this painting of Heidelberg to Antiques Roadshow a few years ago ... found out that it's not a 19th century painting, but an early 20th century forgery. I've never heard of the artist that it's supposed to have been painted by, so I can't figure out why someone a hundred years ago would go to the trouble to forge his signature. All I know is that I think it's pretty cool to have a real live forgery.
I love this painting ... we call it Mrs. Chicken. I bought this at the same auction as the sheep painting. I instantly identified with the look on Mrs. Chicken's face, and I knew that I HAD to have it. She would look better if she took a trip to the conservatory in Richmond for a good cleaning ... we can do that later.
Here you can see the stools under the coffee table. The wing chair came from a thrift shop. Ever since I had it reupholstered a few years ago, I haven't been able to stop the cat from scratching on it. She has practically shredded the corners of the cushion. The walnut table was a surprise gift from my husband.
Thanks for coming with me on the tour of our Family Room. Whenever you read the blog now, you can imagine where I am when I create each post.
