The Big Reveal

Last night was the big reveal - the night we tore out the main floor carpet to find out what has been hiding under that discolored carpet all these years. Sure enough, it's hardwood - and sure enough, it's covered in paint, has moisture issues, 1/4" gaps between boards and a plethora of other "character." In the remodeling of the main floor, our initial goal is really to leave this front room alone. The kitchen will be moving into the dining room space in order to accommodate a main floor powder room and a new mudroom. That area of the house will be taking a beating...and it'd be very easy to start opening up walls, running new electric, installing recessed lights, adding built-in speakers, making windows larger...the list keeps going and going and going. But we really are trying to hold tight to the budget we have set in order to not put more into this house than we could get out of it IF we were to decide to sell it in the next, say, 5 years. While we truly HOPE moving again is not in our near future - we also want to be savvy remodelers and put our money where the most value can be added...and that's kitchens and bathrooms. Here's a couple before pictures of Jeff taking out the carpet (I'm not seen working in this picture because I was cheering him on from behind the lens):



So, while these floors show lots of character, we'll do our best to preserve as much of them as we can. We know for sure a portion of them are unsalvagable and would have needed to be replaced anyway once the kitchen starts going in...but hopefully there is a natural ending point where we could begin to feather in the new wood with the old. Here's a shot of the worst part of the floors:


The reason we were at the house late into the night pulling out carpet is because it was NUMERO UNO on our list of priorities when it comes to actually moving over to the house. I have no idea how old this carpet is...but I can tell you it has been there for a long time - and been treated with some sort of solution that caused it to become completely discolored. The LAST think I was going to do was lay my infant on it to ingest whatever has caused this carpet to morph into echto cooler green. Here's what I'm talking about:

This shot is of the pad (no idea why that has also become discolored), but if you look to the left, you'll see how different the color of the carpet was under the furniture vs where it was exposed. Yikes!

All in all, we both agree removing the carpet was another step towards making this house our home. We love the character of this home and the established hardwood floors show the homes history for now until we get around to making them our own. Here's how the front two rooms looked after we removed the carpet:



Another agenda item of mine was picking out the light fixtures for the upstairs bathroom. There are currently two small wall sconces on the sides of the medicine cabinet. I wanted to replace them with something that had a bit more style and would blend nicely with the wallpaper. So I set out looking for a polished chrome fixture with a small shade on it. My first find was this one from Restoration Hardware:

I love the style of this one, but when I held it up to the mirror, it's a bit too stalky. The mirror is quite narrow and with two chunky fixtures on the sides, it looks a little over kill. So I continued my search at Southern Lights and found this one:

The proportion of this one is just about perfect and I absolutely love the detail in the shade. The problem with this one is that it only comes in polished nickel...not polished chrome. While they are similar finishes, they are definitely different and next to the sink faucet - I feel like it might be too obvious. Just as I was about to leave, I took a quick glimpse at the Schonbek catalog (all crystal) and found this little number:

Now this is nothing like what I was going for but I loooooooooooove it. It comes in 12 different finishes, so I know I could find one that works. Here's the bathroom wallpaper again as a reference. Which fixture do you prefer?

Maybe I don't do the chrome finish at all? Maybe I go for something dark that would match the door knobs and hinges on the bathroom door...which look like this:

So there is my latest design dilemma. Any input is greatly appreciated:-)

Well, this post has taken me three days to finally complete as we've been back and forth from the house getting things clean and ready for our belongings to start settling in. Move in day has been postponed until Tuesday due to the fact that the third seal coat couldn't be done on the floors until tomorrow (Monday). So we have the main floor all clean and will clean the upper level tomorrow night and be ready to spend our first night in our new house on Tuesday.