sofas, round 2

The store only had the second sofa in stock, which was declared to be too soft. I think the one with the built in cushions would be more firm but to order it without trying out first...

Christoph liked this one (which also comes in a sectional, in a few different grays), and oh boy is it firm!

Winner winner!!

The gus modern sectionals I love are currently on sale for $600 off! And this is pretty much the first piece of furniture I wanted to get (our little Habitat love seat is going to be lost in that sea of a living room. Score.

We are going to go check them out this weekend.

I'm thinking of one of the darker grey fabrics, and there are two different models I like, any favorites between the two??

Carter:



Jane:



I originally fell for the second one, but the first one is kind of growing on me and gaining ground. But I wonder about the practicality/durability of having the bottom cushions attached? On the other hand, it means they cant slide off like they do with our current couch...

Inspiration

Saw this picture on apartment therapy:



And it immediatly made me think of this picture from the new house:



It is just off the living room (which i plan to paint a shade of light grey), so im thinking a wall of grey/white/black wallpaper could look really cool right there!

In the long run I would love to change the railing on the stairs to something more modern, it isn't one of the highest priorities now but it goes on the list.

true gray

I was doing some digging online about Sterling and found some references to the Munsell Gray Scale. I had never heard of it before, but what I understand from reading a little is that the axis of this scale is neutral gray (well really the spectrum of gray from white to black). It turns out Sterling is quite close to a neutral gray, which seems to confirm my idea that I am looking for something along this scale.

I want to find out more about this scale, and if I can find other paint colors along it (lighter and darker).

Paint

This is what the floor looks like right now. I went to Home depot and got all the grey/gray paint chips they had.

So far I really like Sterling (780E-3), it seems to me to be the most pure, without blue or purple or yellow undertones. It is a bit darker than I was thinking of for the living room, but more or less what I had imagined in the bedroom. I know they can mix paint, can they just mix it with a pure white to make it lighter, or does that change the tone? The next color up on the card I don't like as much, it looks more purple to me.

There are various pictures of the color online but they all look way more blue to me than the card does.

simple bed

Back to the drawing board for the bed question. IKEA has a new metal frame Rebbenes that might be just the thing:



(simple, right?)

what i cant figure out is if it works the same as all their other bed frames? As in can it be used with the wooden slats and just a mattress (both of which we have from the last IKEA bed)? The description here does talk about "mattress bases in the SULTAN series" but does this mean only the box spring style ones IKEA started making? Something to be investigated...

As for the nightstands, I haven't come across anything I love yet. I think they will be the only furniture in the room really (the closet is large enough for Christoph's clothing) so I'm willing to spend a little more to have them be just right.

I do like the low knoll side tables but the husband is insistent on something with drawers to reduce the clutter (and i am known to have piles of books, magazines, jewelery, etc, so it is a fair point)



So the search continues...

Bedroom photos

This set of bedroom photos from Judith Wilson has me rethinking the bedroom plan. I think instead of the metal bed (which I'm still afraid of hitting my head on when reading in bed), I'm going to start with just a support for the mattress




And this is an idea I hadn't thought of, I have a yellow throw blanket and yellow shams but otherwise white sheets. I like the idea of putting the yellow sham under the white pillows (earth shattering i know)

Inspiration pictures

Some pictures from different books by Judith Wilson - these are mostly living rooms.

bathroom sinks

I was wandering around IKEA today (went to pick up some cheap dishes for the cats and sheets to protect our friends couch) and came across their (new?) line of bathroom furnishings. (click on the picture to make it bigger)



In particular, the sinks were just what I had always had in mind for a bathroom, a molded counter with the sink built right in, meaning no area for stuff to get stuck in. and in a nice shiny white finish. They had double sink counters, and also more narrow counters with one large sink but 2 faucets:



Love this!

I'm not at all sure what will take priority with renovations and updates when we get into the house. What is clear is that the furnace will be replaced (boring but necessary to prevent it from breaking when it is -30, and also because it is 55 years old and thus is something like 40% efficient, as opposed to the 80-95% you can get today, how can the previous sellers not have replaced it??), and we will paint the house. The rest (including furniture) I will start making a list and making some choices once we are moved in and its clear what I want to tackle first.

cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater?

I contacted an interior designer today to inquire about her rates for a single room. I am thinking about hiring her for the living room, I have all these ideas of how I want it to look, but the large size and almost totally open 2 walls has me stumped.

On the one hand, I feel like it is a little bit cheating, like this is my project and then I'm just going to get someone else to do it
On the other hand, I think it could make a big difference, it is only one room, and I love her style and the rooms in her portfolio.

Then there is the question of price, but her fees seem really reasonable, and it would be less than the cost of a new piece of furniture I'm considering for the room, so probably worth it to get it right in the first place.

My room

As described below it looks like plans are shaping up to give me my very own room for sewing/crafts/closet space (this is partially because I have a totally awesome husband, and partially because he knows I make a mess of my sewing space and this way he won't have to look at it).

I haven't even started to think about how this room could be arranged. I know I want to use one of the BIG tables we have as a workspace, it will have my red ikea cabinet to store the crafty supplies. There is a small closet in the room, but maybe I will put a second IKEA wardrobe in there for more space?

And what about the colors? I am going to do very pale gray, along with white, and a slightly darker gray in the rest of the house. But this room?

I do know that we want to get all our stuff in and live with it for a while before we go crazy getting new things, but I'm excited to see how this unexpected space will turn out.

Beds, beds, beds

I love the look of two twin beds in a guestroom:





Something about the symmetry is really appealing. And on the positive side, it means you can have two guests who might not want to share a bed (friends, etc) at the same time.

But is this really mean for guests who do like sharing a bed? Would you be annoyed if you were staying at a friends place and you had to sleep 1 or 2 feet away from your loved one? Would you be less annoyed if it was in a really pretty room?

master bedroom?

The house has 3 bedrooms upstairs, a big master bedroom (15X9.5 ft, this seems big since our last bedroom was about 7x8), one small room, and a good sized third bedroom (10.5 x 9.5 ft approx).

The current thinking is to use the second biggest bedroom as our bedroom, the master bedroom as an office/guestroom, and the littlest room as my sewing/knitting/crafting and also dressing room space.

this leaves the third level (the low one) as the cats level, but at this point, with only two of us in the house, it seems to make sense. we dont end up buying extra furniture just to fill space, and i get the luxury of my very own space to make a mess and have a dressing room.

it also means the guestroom won't just sit empty when it is not in use, and it (for the time being) doesn't have to be on the third level with the cats litter box (so come visit us fast before we change our minds).

Inspection

We had the inspection this morning (2.5 hours!). On the whole it was quite good, the main issues is that the furnace is original to the house (over 50 years!!, we knew it was old when we offered though) so on the one hand it could break at any moment, and on the other hand it is realllyy inefficient. As it isn't broken it is unlikely the sellers will give us anything towards fixing it.
Otherwise there were little things that should be done eventually, and mostly it was just overwhelming to hear all the the things you have to do when you own a house! Can we really do all of this? I guess lots of people own houses so it must be possible right?

As for the furnace, I think we will probably replace it when we move in, both to get something more efficient, but also to avoid having it break in the dead of winter. There are various energy and renovation tax credits so that should help reduce the cost some.

The good news is we still loved the house :) After we heard everything from the inspector we also made some measurements of the rooms (um, huge compared to our dinky apartment), so I have lots of thinking to do about the furniture.
And for now we are just waiting to hear back from the mortgage broker, everyone says it should be fine but we will be much more relaxed when we hear the loan has been approved.