Spending Spree

The last few weeks have been a flurry, though not in quite the direction I’d expected.  Getting a bunch of snow dumped on Columbus meant that several things got rescheduled, and life (mostly in the form of roller derby) has gotten in the way a few times.

But we did make major headway in the furnishings department.  We took one whole weekend day and went in search of mattresses, a washer and dryer, and a dishwasher.  So far, under budget, and they have all been delivered, though none are actually functional at this point. Needing to gut the kitchen means the dishwasher is in the living room; a banister needs to be removed and the basement floor levelled before the washer and dryer can be installed; and we need to decide once and for all on a bed frame before the mattresses can be moved into a horizontal and usable position.

But still, it’s progress, right?

We also made major progress in the area of furniture.  Columbus has a furniture bank (kind of like a food bank, but with furniture).  If you watched the first episode of Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days” you might be aware of this. In any case, every year they have a benefit auction, where retailers donate their floor displays and they hold back some of the better or antique stuff, and raise some funds by auctioning it off to people like me.

This place was thick with Crate and Barrel: box lots, rugs, floor model sofas, shelves, whatever you can think of. There were also tons of bunk beds, leather sofas, a set of Hermann Miller fiberglas chairs, the most bizarre lamp I’d ever seen (featuring a sea captain and a lighthouse and topping out a bit taller than me.)

After a whole day of bidding, we emerged just at our budget (including delivery) and with quite a few goodies.  We stuck a few things in our friend Stephen’s SUV, and then the rest arrived today.

We got a decent hall bench, which luckily fits perfectly:

a rocking chair with a leather seat, and a Victorian chair covered in green velvet:

a nice little Mission-style cabinet (which I think will be used as a bar in the dining room):

and a Victorian sofa with a crazy print. I am reasuring myself that it’ll fit since it does include orange:

Yep. Gaze upon that for a second.  Purty, huh? And relatively comfortable too (I laid down on it to test once the delivery guys were gone.)

Not pictured: the spiffy trash can and rug.

To say the least, the downstairs may be a bit eclectic as we mix these auction finds in with our existing furniture. How on earth I’m going to tie that sofa in coherantly with my boxy beige loveseat is yet to be determined, but after seeing the sofa in the actual room, I do think it’s possible.

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Yellow in the Hallway

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Originally uploaded by wittyknits

Mom came up on Saturday, and roughed in the edges for the yellow we’re painting the hallway and stairwell. Sunday Nadja and I got the rest of it painted. It desperately needs a second coat, but this shot proves to me that I wasn’t totally nuts when I decided the stairwell needed to be yellow. It brightens the whole hallway up so much, and now the dining room looks like candy colors.

Once I get one of the sheers cut up to become curtains for the smaller windows, it’ll be drawn together a bit more too.

You can also see the drywall for the closet project covering up my pretty purple wall in the foreground. Sigh.

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The curtain is perfect. The curtain rod….

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Originally uploaded by wittyknits

I couldn’t wait to hang up those curtains from modcloth.com. They really do look perfect in this room. And once I get a third coat on the bay window, they’ll go up in the front room as well.

But we’ve got to move that curtain rod. It’s clearly about 4″ too low on that window, so you can see the entire top frame, and the curtains drag the ground. Very odd.

This room is starting to look complete. Now we just have to figure out furniture. And oh yeah, that closet in the corner is a project or 3 unto itself. It’s destined to be set up as a bar, andwill also be the a/v closet for my ridiculous music-through-the-whole-house-project.

Awesome.

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The downstairs has….drama!

I have no idea what possessed me to paint the downstairs purple and orange. I actually think it was just that two paint chips jumped out at me from all the rest, and then I ended up picking more and more related colors until somehow we went from this:

to this:

That’s a mere one coat. The second is drying now, so we’ll get some better shots in a bit.

Of course, with such a super dark color, there’s also the tinted primer.  So there was this intermediate greyish step:

That’s Poetic Purple and Toasted Coffee.  And I think they’ll be set off nicely with these curtains which came today, from modcloth.com:

We’re painting the hallway and back wall of the stairwell yellow, so that’ll even work with that. I got seven curtains, so will be taking that odd one and cutting it up and sewing shorties for those case windows in the stairwell and entry way. Fun.

We’re very lucky that the built-in bookshelves in that first room are still in the original wood finish.  The really interesting conundrum we’ve got right now though, is that there is just one coat of white paint on the woodwork throughout the house–and we’re pretty certain that what’s underneath is the same oak of those bookshelves. So, for now, we’re not touching up the trim. We’re going to get an estimate on stripping and refinishing the woodwork, at least downstairs. I think it’ll look fantastic with these colors. Here’s hoping!

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