Furniture Dreams.

Ugh. I've had contractors crawling all over the place today. Everyone wants to be paid and to be on their way. Of course, as 'general contractor,' it's my job to be sure the job is done right before people go on their merry way...which often means tough conversations about nit picky details that I want just so before I start dishing out the dinero. The vent-hood re-remodel went spectacular! I think it turned out so charming. I'll share more with you on that soon. The refrigerator cabinet, however, did not turn out so charming and had an eye sore of a seam that was not floating my boat. So, more work to be done on that cabinet next week. Eyeyeye.

Now on to something more fun...FURNITURE! I mentioned before that we won't be making a huge splurge on furniture right this minute. We need to get the project paid for and assess where we are at (and likely go into recovery mode) for a bit before we start making any big investments. I'm sure our families are incredibly disappointed to hear that being that they are the ones stuck sitting on the floor at our house during family get togethers;-) However, we likely won't have both our families over again until Rosemary's September birthday. My goal is to have a few pieces we can enjoy by then.

What are those pieces you ask? Let's start with the dining table. I REALLLLLLLY wanted a pedestal table of some kind and have been loving the limed oak/gray-ish finish I've been seeing on wood tones lately. Jeff wanted a table big enough to seat our immediate family down to dinner (NOT an easy task at 14 nieces and nephews) but this table will allow us to sit the adults together (and put the kids outside!) Here it is:

We are going with the medium size of 96". We didn't want it too big since it doesn't have leaves or get smaller/bigger. This will seat 8 very comfortably...but I imagine we'd be able to squeeze 2 more in if we needed to (like any number of my tiny sister-in-law's!)

For the dining chairs, I knew I didn't want them all to be the same. For the side chairs (6 of them), I'm leaning towards this Queen Anne style chair that I've been in love with for years in the white painted finish!

I'm sure we would do something fun for the upholstery fabric. And of course, I'd pick up two washable slip covers for the girls chairs with a plastic liner underneath that would keep those puppies stain proof 99% of the time.

For the end chairs, we will do a bigger arm chair that will live in the corners of the dining room on either side of the fireplace during off-peek entertaining hours (aka - most of the time). They aren't hugely oversized and are more dining chair scale than accent chair, but perhaps in a bold fabric (red velvet?) they could be statement makers. Love these.


For the couch, I've had my eye on this Martha Stewart sofa for AGES (remember, it's been 2 years since we've had a couch)!

I knew I wanted a 'tight back' sofa vs a pillow back being that I like a tidy look and my children + pillows = not tidy. I also love the little hump back and the turned legs. In my perfect couch world, it would have nail head trim, but we'll look to incorporate that on the side chair and ottoman.

Side chair and ottoman you say? Yes, a nice little side chair and ottoman to kick your feet up on in the family room. It will reside in the corner of the room in front of the French doors. I have no ideas for this yet, but it will be great to have the additional seating.

Other pieces we need are a large rug for the dining room (9' x 12'), said side chair and ottoman, an end table and coffee table for the family room and a media cabinet to house our tv components. We have decided to mount the tv on the wall above the media cabinet vs doing some sort of a media armoire simply to keep the room feeling spacious and open. By the way, we don't own said tv yet and it's lippity low on the totem pole of needs;-)

The final piece I am trying to include is this little desk/chest of drawers I saw in the Ballard Designs catalog.

I just love it and would love having a place to check email/pay bills while the girls are playing nearby (vs being up in the office on our upper level). Hopefully the corner in the family room will work next to the sofa, but we'll have to see. I'd pair it with a Tolix chair (maybe in red to compliment the red velvet arm chairs in the dining room?) Oh fun, fun, fun.


Back to reality now:-( No furniture downstairs, but that's OK because it takes time to find those perfect pieces and working hard to achieve them means enjoying them that much more once they're here. We are hoping to start by purchasing the couch (nothing like coming home from a long day of work to lay on a wood floor), so I'll keep you posted on our progress as we go.