Pineapple Express

I mentioned in my last post that I would soon elaborate on my plans for our Family Room. Well I am even more excited now than I was before based on some recent news/ feedback from my last post. Apparently more people than I thought were reading my new blog, and a friend Cara commented on my paint dilema with some good info. She used Grass Cloth in her old house and loved the color! She even e-mailed me some pics... I will only post one... she might hate me for this... but it was so helpful to see it in a real room! It was very reassuring to hear first hand from someone that they liked the color too!

So the theme we are doing on the first floor of the house is pineapples! The pineapple is a symbol of hospitality that dates back to 1493! You can read all about it here if you're interested. The store I used to work at in Virginia, Country Curtains, sells a collection of pineapple pieces called "Welcome Home" that I always thought were so cute! I decided I wanted to use the valances in our house and kind of picked everything else to go with the colors and work around them. It was kind of a hard sell to get Andrew on board with the pineapples but after compromises on some other things, he agreed. So here are pictures of the valance and the matching pillows. The windows already have nice blinds on them so I will be doing just the valance without long curtains underneath.

You can also check out the website if you are interested, I linked it on here. They have really cute things and not everything is "country;" there are many traditional, casual and contemporary styles as well. I sure wish I had my employee discount still!

So now that you've seen the paint color and the fabric, its on to furniture! We went to four different furniture stores before we found what we were looking for. We aren't made of gold or anything and we can't afford something too expensive or with custom upholstery. We were really glad when we found furniture that looked nice, felt super comfy to sit on (Andrew's number one priority) and worked well with our color scheme. We will be ordering the furnitue from Room Store in the near future so it will be delivered after all the work is done on the house.

You have to imagine the furnitue without the ugly accent pillows and substitute them for the cute pineapple ones! The color of the upholstery is called "Sand" and its kind of a dark goldy/ brown color that sometimes takes on tones of green. It goes well with the colors in the pineapple fabric and I'm really excited about putting this room together. We decided instead of getting the loveseat we would get the big oversized chair with the ottoman. I've sat in chairs like this at other people's houses and thought they were pretty heavenly. In fact, it was Andrew's idea to get the chair and ottoman, which I was totally on board with. I was glad he had an opinion about something! It's also good because the chair is a bit narrower in width than the loveseat but still can provide seating for 2 people. Being narrower will help it fit better in the room. With the cute pineapple decor, big comfy furniture, stone fireplace, fabulous paint color and hard wood floors this room is going to be awesome!

So to top it all off, we even designed the layout for this room! Andrew found the Bassett Room Planner and I LOVE this website! It is so fun to play with, even for pretend rooms! Once we had fallen in love with the furniture we wanted to make sure it would actually fit in the room. We tried to take measurements while we were over at the house but its more complicated than it seems. I love this website because you can put in the exact dimensions of everything and it makes the picture to scale. So barring any great oversight on our part this is how we will arrange the room.

The picture is even complete with Beamer and Macy sleeping on the couch and a pair of slippers next to the ottoman! I have seen several area rugs that I like for this room but I haven't settled on one for sure yet. I may just wait till we have everything done and set up and then I will decide what looks best.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, the green paint will carry over into the kitchen. There is a window above the sink that I will put the Welcome Home valance on as well. The family room, breakfast area, and kitchen are going to look so cozy and welcoming! I can't wait to have you all over to our pineapple house!

What a Behr!

One good thing that came of our almost-meeting with the contractor this morning was that I had to settle on paint colors. We have probably been to Home Depot and Lowes about 10 times in the past two weeks. On Saturday we literally went to Home Depot three times and Lowes once. We finally decided that we could get everything we needed or liked at Home Depot, so we don't need to go back to Lowes anymore. This is a good thing for me, because the less options the better. When given too many choices I get frustrated and overwhelmed so I prefer to narrow my options. Narrowing options also meant settling on Behr Paint from Home Depot. This was helpful because I only had one section of paint samples to scour instead of five. I have collected stacks of samples over the last week and agonized over every different shade. I've asked for several different people's opinions and asked Andrew about a hundred times, "Do you think this looks ok?" He always answers, "Yes." Last night with this morning's meeting looming, I finally made some decisions.

I scanned in the swatches I brought home, but the scans are not really true to color. At least you can get an idea of what they look like. And if you're ever in Home Depot and find yourself without something to do (yeah right, like that will ever happen) you can wander on over to the Paint section and check them out for yourself.

Castle Stone is the neutral color that will kind of ground everything in the house. We are using it in the formal dining/ living area, up the stairs, and in the hallway on the second level. In real life it looks more like a beige/ khaki kind of color than how it shows up here. I like it because it's very neutral but still gives off a warm tone.

The next color, Grass Cloth, will be in the family room and kitchen. Picking this color was probably the most nerve racking for me because it's green, and perhaps a little outside of my comfort zone. I think it's going to look awesome but its a little bolder of a choice than I would normally make. Again, it doesn't show up too well on here. Actually, in real life it looks like something in the middle of how Grass Cloth and Grape leaves looks on here. Again, it is a warm color and I think it will look fabulous with everything we are going to do in the family room (more to come in a later post). I think the family room might end up being my favorite room in the house. This green was hard to pick out because the family room isn't a huge room and doesn't get a ton of light. Although a little nervous, I knew I wanted to do a green but it couldn't be a dark shade because it would really close the room in. I think I looked at every green shade Behr makes before I settled on this one. This color will also be in the kitchen, but won't cover much area since we have a tile backsplash. It will only be around the boarder above the cabinets.

The last color is Honey Bear for the master bedroom. We will actually only be doing it on three of the walls and will be painting one wall white as an accent wall. The master bedroom is way bigger than I ever thought I would have, so we are going to do a sitting area at one end of the room, in front of the white wall. I originally thought I would do more of a yellow color but was a little nervous about making it too bright. I wanted to stick with the warm color pallet and also wanted to avoid having "highlighter yellow" walls. I have some fabric and furniture pieces that I needed to make sure the color would work with, so instead of yellow it became more of a gold color (and of course again, not shown very well here). Before I settled on this one I taped several of the swatches to our bedroom wall next to the fabrics that will be in the master bedroom at the new house. I left them up for three days and of course changed my mind about ten times before choosing. I would look at them in different lighting and try to figure out which one looked the best under all lights. One morning at 7:30 when Andrew was still in bed I opened up the curtains and all the blinds in the bedroom and turned on every light so I could view them in the most light possible. I think he thought I was crazy but if I have to live with this choice, I want to make the right one. And of course, he was no help at all with his "Yeah that looks good" lines. Anyway, I think the white and blue toile is really going to pop against this warm gold color and should look awesome! The gold fabric you see in the picture is a slipcover for a loveseat that will go in front of the white wall. I'm excited to see this all put together! I think I'm going to pick a slightly softer tone in the same color family to paint in the master bath, but I'm not as concerned about picking that right now. We have a matching shower curtain in the blue toile and white towels, so I think that will look good but not too overwhelming for a smaller room.

Alright, enough about paint for tonight. I'm mostly glad to have made some decisions and not have to agonize over them anymore. I really can't wait to see it all finished and enjoy being in the house!

Frustrations before 8 am

Well its only my second post and I'm already having a venting session! I have to say, though, this morning was TERRIBLE!! We had an appointment to meet a contractor at the house this morning at 7 am to get an estimate on some work we want done. Paul, our realtor, was meeting us too, since we don't have access to the house yet and need him to let us in. We got there just a few minutes after 7 and Paul arrived a few minutes later. The poor contractor guy had been waiting since before 7, and at that time in the morning you just want to get things done and over with. The house has one of those electronic lock boxes on the door, so the realtor has to put in a code to get the key out so they can unlock the door. Well apparently some of these lock boxes have limited access times and 7am is not in within those time frames!!! Would have been helpful to know before! Paul was guessing we would have access at 8 am so we decided to meet back at the house then. The contractor (poor guy) said he had a couple other jobs in the area he could check on and meet back at 8, but after that he had work up north for the rest of the day. Paul said he'd go grab some breakfast. We went home and sat around.

Around 7:30 the contractor calls me and says after talking to his partner, he is guessing we won't have acces to the house till 9, in which case he can't wait around. He told me he is leaving tomorrow to go on vacation and won't be back till the 25th, but he will call me then. He said they can tentatively schedule us for the week of September 1st, but hopefully when he gets back to town they can do a real estimate for us.

So I call Paul to tell him to go on home. When he answered he told me that he got ahold of the listing agent, and he said we would have access at 7:30am. Paul said he was sitting in the driveway of the house right then. Great news!! So I call Johnny (the contractor) back and tell him we can get in now and that Paul is already over there. I felt so relieved that I hadn't wasted everyone's time and hadn't woken up at the crack of dawn for no reason. I hang up with him and start to get ready to head out the door and go back over to the house. My cell phone rings and it's Paul. I'm thinking not a good sign. He says that he just tried to get in the house and it was a no go. GRRRR!!! So I have to turn around and call Johnny AGAIN and tell him not to come and we will just talk after his vacation. I felt so dumb!

I was frustrated that we had woken up so early, I was tired, and I felt like I had inconvenienced SO many people SO early in the morning. It's bad enough to feel like you are bothering people, but even worse when they have woken up early for the occassion. Also, the contractor is kind of a friend of a friend and he has basically promised us a good deal on the whole thing. So I feel bad about it all and feel guilty that we caused them so much grief when they are doing us a favor. Of course all of this happened before I officialy "began" my day, so you can imagine how excited I was to go to work after this.

And now I am concerned about the actual scheduling of the work because I don't want it to overlap when my dad will be in town to help us. My dad is coming down for 5 days to help us do a bunch of work around the house and he's already bought his plane ticket and scheduled the trip. Now I'm going to have to make sure that when we can actually schedule the contractor that it won't interfere with what my dad and Andrew will be doing. Since I already feel like we've been a big problem I'm going to hate to be difficult when it comes to scheduling. I'm afraid they're going to say we're not worth the business and write us off. I don't really think that would happen, but I can't help but worry about it. There is just so much going on right now and so many things need to fall into place to get the house ready and to move in. I wish it was October already and I could fast forward time and the house would already be perfect!

Well that's enough whining for now I suppose. If' you've read this far already on my second post you are a true friend!

Two Weeks Till Closing!

Our closing date is set for the 27th and we sit just two weeks away from officially being homeowners! I figured starting a blog would be a good way to let everyone follow our progress and for me to get some of my anxiety and excitement out. I don't know if anyone will even read this, but at least it will be fun for me to post. I'm going to put up the photos from the online listing as kind of "Before" photos. They aren't the greatest photos, but at least they are something. I will be posting plenty more along the way and eventually photos of the finished product.