The Great Living Room/Dining Room Reveal....

Saturday morning and oh, how I am itching to head out to some estate and yard sales. Can't do it, tho. Hubby is physically out of commission with a badly inflamed foot and is now comfortably ensconced in front of the t.v. with a whole schedule of upcoming football games on his plate. Darn the luck. Now there is NO way I'll be able to get him to come with me to help lift or carry - or give his "valuable" input on something. And I'm thinking it probably wouldn't be very nice of me to leave him on his own with no one around to step and fetch for him.... bummer. Oh well, on the bright side - at least I'll be saving money today!

Well.... Mom's furniture is now here at the house and set up. Here is the china hutch, complete with all her china and knick knacks - and the dining room table, which sorely needs to be refinished. Note Mom's beautiful turquoise blue Wedgewood China which she bought when she was teaching in London during the 1950's:

And here is her brass table- purchased Christmas day, 1958 in Delhi, India - beautifully highlighted on my vintage shag rug find:

And now, here is the whole look put together. The marble topped end tables are my mom's, lamps are thrift store finds. I'm starting to not feel the need so much for a room divider anymore...

Looking from front entry door near built-in planter:

Posters still need to be framed. Note vintage sixties lava lamp (!) on mantle.

"Dino" presiding over his retro-kingdom. Mirrored console from TJ Maxx on clearance.  Blue vase - thrift store find. Vintage ashtray - a $7 thrift store find. The hat rack and bowler hat were Grandpa's.

View looking toward kitchen - The diamond pattern is what hubby taped up to give us an idea of what it would look like if we painted something like that there.... I do think I like it.

Looking toward the front picture window with my $20 thrift store recliner!

Those footstools need to be re-vinyled - the little one was my grandmother's. As was the  1907 table in front of the window (I may be moving that elsewhere).  The lamp?? Yeah, crazy, isn't it!  One of those 4 estate sale lamps they practically paid me to take - says "Fujimato" on the base.  Sort of "so ugly, it's cool", if you know what I mean! Still have to figure what kind of drapes to get for here.

Here is the built-in kitchen hutch - holding some Salem North Star china I found at Goodwill, along with some mid-century embossed cocktail glasses and melmac plates/cups:

Here is a shot of the kitchen with craigslist counter bar stools -

I'm seriously thinking of painting those kitchen cabinets a turquoise blue - a 'la the following gorgeous inspiration pic I found at Retrorenovation.com, thanks to submitter, "Ann" there: Retrorenovation.com painted kitchen cabinets . What do ya' think?

 So... Now you have at least some idea of how my living/dining room will hopefully look when all this is said and done. Still lot's more to do - but at least I'm starting to make some headway in all of this - that is if I don't get a wild hair and decide to change everything all up some day before it's all said and done!  

Now... I still need to concentrate on the kitchen, family room addition - and think about how I'm going to decorate those super cute pink and blue vintage bathrooms :-)  Fun, Fun, Fun - Stay tuned!

Estate Sale finds...

The day before yesterday I left you with a "cliffhanger", saying that I would show more photos the next day. That day came and went. No pics - or even a posting showed up. Why? Well, you know that old saying about life sometimes getting in the way? Pretty much what happened here with me. I went over to the house to work on some things with the full intention of posting from there. Only problem is, I forgot to bring my computer!  Not wanting to stop what I was doing and head back home for it, I figured I'd just post when I returned home. But when I arrived back home late that afternoon, I remembered I had to make dinner, take son to Karate, check daughter's homework, walk the dog, empty the dishwasher, finish the laundry, etc., etc. blah, blah, blah. You guys know how it goes. I actually never even had a chance to get online  yesterday. So... TODAY will be photo day, instead!

This is the chair I picked up at the estate sale:

And the rug? Here are the tags I found on the backside of the rug:

And... finally, here it is, THE perfect mid century rug to match my sofa - and to think I got it for free!  Yeah, Baby!

I will be posting photos of my mom's furniture next, so you can start to get a vision of how I'm going to put all of this together :-)

The Evolution of a room...

Now that we had a couch - what to do next? I tried it in various positions, but the darned thing was so long that it really only looked decent sitting parallel to the fireplace.

We tried it in this position, but it was too close to the planter and just looked awkward:

So, we decided to stick with position "A" - and added an inexpensive floor rug I'd picked up at Tuesday Morning just to give it some grounding, along with a few throw pillows. This pic also shows what the slipcover would look like on one of the cushions, had we opted to go that route.  

While out antiquing one day, I discovered an awesome painting of Dean Martin that I simply fell in love with. If it were mine, I knew exactly where I would like to put it - my entryway wall was just begging for something like this. Maybe it would help give the room some more direction - perhaps I could go with a retro 60's "Rat Pack" type theme? Unfortunately, the price on it was out of my (cheap!) budget. However, luckily for me, the store owner just happened to also be the artist. I think she eventually took pity upon me after my showing up there several times admiring it, as she eventually offered to sell it to me for half the tag price - YES! Half! I didn't think twice and quickly whipped out my wallet.  Unfortunately, poor Dino had to hang out there at the shop for another week until hubby came back in town to pick it up with his trailer, as  - at 5'x4.5' - it was way too big to fit into my little car. 

Ok, so now I was starting to make some headway.  Even with the addition of Dino, everything was still unfinished and too "blah". I needed chairs. And some kind of "pop".  Hmm.... why don't I throw a zebra patterned rug down just to see what it does? And how about a chair or two? But what kind? And perhaps I should consider a room divider/partition type thing? So I decided I should throw together an idea board of sorts to help get my brain juices flowing:

Then I found the perfect chair - at a thrift store for $20! A very retro, mad men looking gold colored reclining chair. Somehow I squeezed that baby into the back of my car and with half of it hanging out the hatchback, I zoomed back home - praying over every bump I hit that it wouldn't bounce out onto the highway - or God Forbid - the long bridge I had to cross! Finally I made it back to the house, where  the chair now sits in all it's mid century glory!

The chair in "recline" mode - only problem is the reclining mechanism is broken - yet another project for hubby to fix!

Anyone know who made this chair?
I can't find a darned thing about it online - but who cares? I love it!

Eventually, with the addition of a temporary side chair (I would have preferred two of the same style next to each other there), the rug, and a couple of end tables/coffee tables I picked up for a song at the consignment shop, and a few accessories, the room started to look like this:

Still not exactly the look I want, though. The rug... hmmm? You can't see in this pic, but it does go great with the Dean Martin painting on the wall to the right... However, I'm really just not really feelin' it. Oh well... maybe when my Mom's furniture gets here and I can change things around a bit ....?

 While waiting for the moving van with my Mom's dining room set, brass coffee table and other knick knacks to get here,  I decided to check out an estate sale one weekend. TONS of mid century stuff there - but most of it was out of my budget, unfortunately. HOWEVER...Serendipity struck unexpectedly while I was there - and more than once, too! 

I managed to find a great mid century style chair in the perfect color to match my other gold chair... AND.... drum roll, please. Another rug!! Yes. An original, authentic, mid century shag-type throw rug was on the floor in one of the bedrooms, looking all abused and forlorn. I don't think it had seen a vacuum in years. BUT.... I loved it! The colors  and pattern of it just made me smile. So I asked the lady in charge how much it was. She looked at it, then me, and said she'd give it to me for...... FREE!! Hello?!! Did I hear you correctly, lady? FREE? Yeppers!  So, once again, I didn't skip a beat, and quickly had the guy working there roll it up and shove it into my little car next to the gold chair I'd bought. And the t.v. And the vintage atomic boomerang floor to ceiling drapes (those drapes are gonna' deserve a separate post at some point)! 

Oh, did I forget to mention??! They had a small portable t.v. made in 1970 (I know, because I looked it up when I got home) with the price of $1.50 on it. What they heck, I'm sure it doesn't work at that price, but why not pick it up for nostalgia's sake, anyway? I'm sure I can find something to do with it. And amazingly, the darned thing DOES work - well, at least as well as a t.v. not hooked up to cable and without an antenna can. It picks up UHF signals like nobody's business, too. Ya just gotta love the old tube technology!

BTW - when I got the rug home and unrolled it, I found original tags on the bottom. The rug pattern is called "Inca" and it cost $149 when it was originally purchased. Score!

Sorry to leave you with a cliffhanger, but it's time for me to start dinner, so you'll have to "stay tuned" for tomorrow's episode of "As the Room Unfolds" for the great rug and chair unveil, and to see how it all looks with Mom's furniture ;-) Ciao! (Or should I say "Chow"?!) 

What I had to work with...

Yep - so that's pretty much the living/dining area I had to work with. Now what do I DO with it? I was at a bit of a standstill - so many directions to go in, ya know?  Staring at a blank canvas, for most of us decorating-challenged mere mortals, makes it hard to envision a final picture when you're overwhelmed with so many options from the get-go. I knew at some point we were going to clear out my mother's estate and that I would definitely be bringing back her colonial style china hutch and table - sans the chairs we kids managed to destroy over the years. She'd told me time and again that they were to be mine someday. Shameful, but truthfully, I wasn't all that excited.  As I said, Colonial revival really wasn't my style - but how could I tell her that? So anyway... I figured that would just be something I needed to work around.

Mom's "Dixie Furniture Co." dining room table & china cabinet (bought new in 1960)
- too bad we kids ended up destroying all the chairs -
And yes, that would be "Yours Truly" in the high chair - ca. 1962/63 ;-)

At least I knew the table and hutch were of the same time period as the house. The home where my family lived when I was born was, coincidentally, built in the same year as the house my husband and I just purchased - 1960. And Mom always said she'd bought all the furniture when they moved into it, as they were newlyweds just starting out. Prior to marrying my Dad, Mom had been a teacher with the Department of Defense, teaching American Military children on US military bases throughout Europe and Asia. She took full advantage of the opportunities available overseas, so when she wasn't teaching, she traveled - everywhere. At Christmas time in 1958, right after meeting my dad, she took a trip to India and purchased a beautiful brass tray with teak spider legs. That thing has been a part of my past for as long as I can remember... I vividly remember as a kid being tasked with the polishing of it, having to use what seemed like gallons of that nasty smelling Brasso stuff. Thankfully, Mom eventually had the thing permanently coated with a clear coat of something like polyurethane - and we kids were never forced to polish it again - YES, there IS a God!  Anyway, I knew I was to get that table, as well. So those were the 3 things I definitely knew mom wanted me to have that I'd need to work with.

I also knew I would be using some of my TWA David Klein posters on the walls.  As a former flight attendant for TWA, those vintage posters were part of my special airline memorabilia collection. I didn't have them framed yet, but that would come once I figured out the color for the frames, etc.   But after that - I pretty much didn't have a clue. All I knew was that  I needed something that could be my "inspiration", my "jumping off point", but what??

THEN.... I found it!  While out browsing our local Salvation Army one afternoon, I spied a sofa that could be the one. Yes, I think it IS the one!  It's definitely of the era I'm aiming for. It's in pristine condition. It's showing it's "legs".  No, not those highly sought after mid-century danish modern legs. These have more of a regency look to them. But still. It definitely had the bones I was looking for. And, barring some loose piping trim that could easily be re-glued, it was in immaculate condition. Best yet - it  would only set me back $70!  The tag on it said "Century, Furniture of Distinction". Never heard of them. But I knew it was quality - the thing was heavy as hell  - and solid as a rock.  They really don't make them like that anymore, that's for sure. Ok - so it wasn't my favorite color. More like what my dad used to refer to as "baby-poop green", actually.  Come to think of it - my first car - a butt-ugly plymouth that had once belonged to my dead uncle - was also that same lovely shade - and I had many happy memories with it. Oh - and by the way, the sofa also came with a "lovely" updated floral slipcover of late 70's vintage, just in case I just couldn't stand the puke green color after all. How could I go wrong? So, yes, this could be it... No, this definitely is it. Cue the harp music.  I have officially found my "jumping off spot".  Thankfully, hubby felt the same way.  So we quickly paid and  (who knew Salvation Army would deliver for a small fee?) set up a delivery date.

Salvation Army sofa with floral slipcover piled on top

So... we bought a house

So... we bought a house. A mid century "modest" house. Surprisingly, it's in pretty darned good shape considering the age. The living room/dining room layout is a bit awkward, however - one long room with an apparent add-on fireplace smack dab in the middle of a long wall. Oh well... I can make this work, can't I?

Let's start with the entryway and living/dining room area:

Blonde Brick entryway planter near front door - paint color is from previous owner - It's a tad dark  in this light, but not bad so I think we'll keep it for now - "Benjamen Moore Chestertown Buff"

Clockwise from front door - picture window and fireplace

Fireplace w/ faux stone - a later "add-on" at some point. 

Why does it have to be smack dab in the middle of the wall?  That and the brick planter make dividing the room into separate areas not as simple as you'd think!

Looking from dining area toward laundry room (which we plan to make into a small 4th bedroom) and family room area - made from a converted back porch - sloped ceiling and all!

Looking toward the kitchen and bar - we will be losing that light fixture at some point - too modern for the style of the home.

Once again looking toward the kitchen and bedroom hallway. Built-in hutch is on right kitchen wall. White door is living room hall closet. 

Grief Therapy

It is said that grief therapy comes in many forms. I personally found this out during the past year, upon the death of my dear, much loved mother. Mom had lived a good, long life and passed away fairly quickly- although unexpectedly - at the age of 90 - 2 months shy of her 91st birthday. She was a bright, independent woman who had lived on her own as a widow for 13 years. She had numerous friends and activities in which she was involved. Mom was the proverbial rolling stone which gathered no moss, so I thought nothing of inviting her to come stay with our family over the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays. To our great delight, she took me up on the offer! Not wanting to deal with the rigamaroles of flying again (they practically gave her a complete physical the last she time tried to get through airport security in a wheelchair, which I had insisted upon her being in for the sake of convenience and timeliness). So I flew there, rented a car, and drove with her here. As we were pulling out of her driveway, little did either of us know that would be the last time she would ever see her own house again...

The evening of December 7th, Mom became ill. So ill that she insisted I call an ambulance and take her to the hospital. Upon arrival, we found she needed emergency surgery for a supposed hole in her stomach. It was scary, but she put on a brave face - and several hours later emerged doing better than expected, considering her age and the huge gash they had to cut into her belly.  Everyone was happy she seemed to be pulling thru so well - then we got the news. The "hole" in her stomach was not caused by an ulcer of some sort. It was from "lymphoma" cancer! We'd had NO idea she had this - nor had she, I think. Regardless - suffice it to say that the rest of December was a complete blur - 24/7 one of us sat at the bedside with her at the hospital. She would improve, then a side effect of something would knock her down again. Finally, On January 6th - Epiphany - Mom's old body finally had enough and she went home to be with her savior.

I went home in a fog.  Actually, all of us did. We made the necessary burial arrangements, etc. but none of it felt real. I'd had this woman in my life for almost 51 years. Hers was the first voice I ever heard, the first touch I ever felt, the first love I ever knew. Adjusting to not having her around to visit, reminisce with or telephone when something was on t.v. I knew she would enjoy watching, was not easy. Oh - I know I am not the only person to ever have gone through this. Death touches us all. It had touched me when my father died, 13 years earlier. But this was different. I was the only daughter. I was the one who knew mom better than anyone else. I was so close to her. We never had the standard mother/daughter relationship with all of the arguing and competition. Mom and I always got along great.. And who wouldn't ?! With her cheerful, optimistic personality, that woman could've gotten along with Satan, himself!

So anyway... I missed her. Our birthdays rolled around - first hers, then mine a week later, with no cheery "happy birthday" singing phone calls. I missed her even more. Easter came and went without the standard Easter cards from her I'd come to take for granted. I missed her.

 In the midst of all of this, I found that my frugal, simple living, thrift store shopping mother had managed to amass a little nest egg that was to be divided between my two brothers and myself. I debated upon what to do with my "windfall". 100k - a lot of money - but not enough to go completely crazy.  The thought of putting it in the bank and making next to nothing in interest on it, went  completely against my grain. My mom had inherited most of this money from a trust her father had set up - a man who perfectly exemplified the quintessential "rags to riches" story. He was an independent guy who had made it on his own - with no help from others. A man  who believed in hard work and standing on his own two feet. A man who who had grown up so poor - the oldest of 12 children with a father who was an alcoholic - that his family lived in a tiny 2 room shack next to the railroad tracks. A man who only had a 4th grade education. A man whose class picture, taken at the turn of the century in Ohio, shows a group of smiling, happy kids warmly decked out in hats and coats - while he knelt there next to them staring seriously into the camera, wearing just a white shirt and pants - and no shoes. In winter. In Ohio.

Grandpa F.

Whatever I did with the money, I wanted to - and needed to - honor all of grandpa's hard work and the sacrifices he'd made in order to be able to leave this money for our family. I also wanted to honor my mother's frugality and fortitude in making a loving home for our family on my father's very modest income.  A woman less dedicated may well  have spent more extravagantly, knowing that she would someday inherit money from her father. Such was not the case with mom, however. She shopped at discount stores. Dressed us kids in hand-me-downs and patched clothing when necessary, and was not wasteful. She re-used plastic containers, served leftovers and "recycled" writing paper, etc. Despite her thriftiness, she made sure she still tithed 10% to her church - saying that to "cheat God" was really only cheating herself...

SO... back to the point of this blog. I had a small inheritance coming from my mother's estate and I didn't want to spend it stupidly. After much thought and consideration, I finally determined that the best way to respect the gift I was given by my mother and grandfather was to buy a house. Something that would increase in value. Something tangible that I could look at and remember all of the sacrifices that went into giving me this opportunity. We decided to use the money as a down payment on a small home built in 1960 (coincidentally, the same year the home where I was born was built) - located in a great resale neighborhood. We ended up following the age-old real estate advice of buying the "cheapest house in the nicest neighborhood" we could afford.

It's not a fancy house. It's small - 3 bdr., 2ba. 1700sq. ft. . It's old.  It has a red brick exterior and hardwood floors.  It's got a boring, all-one living room/dining room layout. It has a small family room with a low, sloping ceiling, made from a converted porch. AND it has most of the original features that gave it it's charm. A built in blonde brick planter by the entryway door. A built in kitchen hutch. A pink tiled bathroom. AND a blue tiled bathroom! Instead of wanting to tear those down and "modernize" the house, those features are actually what drew me to it.

My own little piece of history. A refuge where I can escape some of the insanity of the world today - at least for a bit. Built during a time when life was good and there was still so much hope for the future. When hard work was not demeaned. When morals and Christian values were not sneered  upon. Space exploration was opening up. Viet Nam had not yet started. Divorce was not prevalent. Dual working families were unusual and not the norm, so most of the moms in the neighborhood were around to supervise their - and their neighbor's - children.  Hippies, drug cultures, free-love with gratuitous sex and the downward spiral of society were still several years away. In 1960, people were looking toward the future with hope and upbeat expectations. It was still an "innocent" time. A great time to have lived - and a great time to build a home!