When I described the light fixtures we need to replace as being befitting of a Western Bordello, did your mind conjure anything like this:
Or this?
Please note that you might be perceiving a slight haze in the air. No, it is not evidence that a malevolent spirit lurks in my home. I had the oven set to clean, you see. Since it was one of the few times the sun has deigned to grace us with its presence, I had to act quickly, ghosts of roast tomatoes in the air or no.
Here's a picture of the new paint job:
And here you get to see the sickly beige, and the tremendous mess of moving, all in one. Yes, it was the messiest of times, it was the most chaotic of times, etc. etc.
Just for grins, here is what those two rooms looked like when we looked at the house:
Furniture for the living-room will be delivered this week, so if you're picking up on the entire wide open, empty spaces thing, there's a reason for that. At present there is nothing in the living room. Other than a haze of oven smoke, that is.
Then finally we bring you the baby of the hideous light fixture family. The wall-hugging sconce. His days are numbered, oh yes they are.
38 comments:
LOL If we lived closer, I'd buy the smaller one from you! It looks like a Celtic Knot and would be great in my office over my reading chair. ;-D
Love your paint selections!
Thank you, Teri...and without kidding around, I'd be happy to send it to you if you would like it.
Interesting. I find them incongruous in situ, but not hideous in themselves so much. Not a fan of wall sconces usually, though I've seen them work in art-deco style settings.
Our dining room fixture is a Tiffany-style pendant, which I adore and you don't have to. No fixtures at all in our surprisingly large living room (!) - one Tiffany floor lamp and another table lamp on the opposite side.
I have decreed that my kitchen will forever and always be white with red check curtains. My stove will forever and always be gas and if I can trade my modern one for a 1940s era Hotpoint with a double oven and a pilot light, I will.
Forever and always there will be a cast-iron skillet on the stove, one larger and one smaller hung nearby and feel free to stay the hell out while I'm cooking, thank you, unless I'm in the mood for company.
But you know all about my dream house, anyway. I'm sure you will do something beautiful and personal with yours, which is how it ought to be - paint your ceiling orange if it suits you and HGTV be damned.
Thanks for sharing the pics.
Oh, well done! Love the teal, too.
Thanks for sharing such lovely pictures and looking forward to see how it looks after a week with all the furniture properly arranged.
The idea of designing the interiors and colouring the walls and shifting into it later has always excited me a lot. I know it very well whether how much time and energy it will squeeze out of your system but once in a while it’s good to keep changing them.
You have a good eye for transformation hon, the after shots are soooooooooooo much better than the before! But I also love the open, airy spaciousness of this place, it's a house to breathe in - wide, warm and welcoming. Bet you can't wait for the rest of the furniture to arrive?
Alane, Good job! Love the gray and the openness!
We just got back a few days ago and I read your post on Ivan and haven't stopped thinking about it since! You are an incredible story teller.
Very nice. I quite like the second fixture too, by the way. It's fun to see your place transform, isn't it? I also wouldn't mind Cricket's described kitchen.. except maybe the red part. Make my gingham blue and I'll take it!
WOW! Lovely color change (even with ghost tomatoes). And so BIG - my entire cottage would fit in your living room!
I'm always amazed to see decorating in progress. I like the colors you've chosen. Fun project.
Lighting is key isn't it? There needs to be enough, and in the right places, and it needs to cast the right amount and hue of light. Windows help too. Nothing beats sunlight.
I don't have a dining room but if I did, I think the fixture would be high up (tall people live here) and rustic looking.
I do have a dream kitchen in mind and one of the perks is a separate little walk-in room to store all of my dream appliances. Luxury.
Here's to you & your transforming home. Enjoy the process!
Jo
Funny. The lights you show remind me more of public school than a bordello. Perhaps I was educated in a bordello and they only told me it was public school? That would explain why we had fifteen different janitors every day, as well as why Mr. Afflalo, the principal, wore a huge feather in his fedora. Hmmmm.
When you get bored I have a house that is in need of some redecoration!
It si fun redoing a house and making it yours, no :)?
Too funny!! Yes I can see why you want to replace them!!
Thanks so much for stopping by my blog and leaving such wonderful comments. I am so glad you enjoyed viewing the piece.
Hugs
SueAnn
Oh my goodness, you're all awfully nice, taking a moment to leave a comment about what is a very mundane sort of project, thank you!
Cricket, you're making me laugh, sir. It's good to know what you want in life, isn't it? No waffling about for you, is there? Ah well, we have that in common. Although, I avoid the "decree" as Rob is every bit as definite in his own determinations.
You know, it's only the largest chandelier that really rounds that corner into "UGH! That's so hideous." ...and God in heaven, you should see the webs a spider can weave in the bloody thing. Thankfully, I've got an extender on my vacuum hose, and can rout them, horse, foot and artillery on a regular basis.
Ooooooooh, I do not like that biggest chandelier, but even I am willing to own that the kitchen light isn't anywhere near as bad. However, Rob has a positive gift for ringing his bell on it, so it must be banished!
Thank you, ds. Again, it's such a commonplace sort of thing to do, but it's fun to make a place your very own. I'm not saying I have better taste, but rather that ...it's nicer when things are done to our own taste.
Hello Asif, my fellow time-traveling enthusiast. If time really is happening all at once, then right now it is done. But for my here and now perspective, I'm driving myself completely mad looking for a piece of artwork I like for that wall. Nothing is quite right...but at least the internet helps me look.
By the way, I love your avatar picture. It makes me think you're about to produce a poem with calligraphy, painting on canvas scrolls :-) Isn't that a nice association to evoke?
Shrinky, I think it's better too, and thank you. I do know that the colors I'm choosing are much "cooler" or "colder" which is evidently not recommended for such a large space. I like it though, makes me think I'm living the Fortress of Solitude or something ;-)
By the way, I painted both the accent walls in the living and dining room...and whatever you do, don't ever paint anything that particular burnt orange you see in the pictures. Not only did I prime those bad boys, I had to use FOUR coats of paint to cover that color.
You know a color is ...not aging well, let's put it that way...when that horrible, chalky white of a primer is restful to the eyes comparatively.
I do wonder if part of the problem was that after nine years, those colors had just taken on a jaundiced hue.
God help people standing in there when the sun hit that room, I'm serious, we looked like a group experiencing mass liver failure. On top of everything else, it rendered everyone near it unattractive.
Amy, thank you. I think it is becoming ever clearer that the previous owners and I were on opposite ends of almost all spectrums.
Do you know, I can't think of anything nicer than being told anything makes someone else think past the point of reading it. That's the highest compliment, really.
Hehe, Hilary...as mentioned above, the true problem with that fixture isn't how it looks, it is that I don't have a kitchen table. We eat in the dining room, and it would feel silly to me to have two dining tables separated by less than twelve feet. So that fixture hangs down over a now empty space (it's too crowded with a table there, in my opinion)...and so every single one of us has bonked our head upon the danged thing.
Flint and I learned fairly rapidly to avoid it, but it's metal. It's every bit as solid as it looks, and Rob just keeps beaning himself with the danged thing.
Sooner or later he's going to end up looking at me curiously and inquiring, "Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?" because that many whacks to the head is bound to take a toll.
Pauline, it is a large house. We'd lived in a house a bit too small for us for ten years, and we decided to solve that problem by A LOT. It's actually quite nice...but oh the echo!
Thank you, JoMO. It's the sort of stuff we all do, and it is fun to see how different a place can look through color choice. As I said, I seem to be creating the arctic cave in there, but I like it.
And yes, lighting is key. That monster, hideous Western Bordello chandelier is insane in how much light it provides. It's got something like TEN bulbs.
Every time I turn it on I feel like my house is haunted by the illumination of the lighthouse at Alexandria.
Gadzukes, it's like I'm calling every soul lost at sea, home to shore.
Jim, as long as you don't recall feather boas, at least we know tax dollars were put to good use. Read above for why that blasted chandelier is just one of the banes of my existence.
Every time it gets turned on I feel like I need to reveal my whereabouts on the night of July 17th or something.
Hehe, actually, it sounds like you'd be better off if I loaned you my husband for a bit, Eternally distracted. He vacuums without being asked!
It really is, She Writes, and it is so necessary too. We have to feel like we've properly mastered our own environment, so that all else can fall into place.
At least, that's my excuse.
You are all really so very kind. I didn't check this post for days, as I assumed no one would find anything to say about it. "Yes, Alane. You painted. Whee?"
People are always amazing me with how generous they are with kindness.
Hello SueAnne, you were posting as I was replying. It was my pleasure, truly.
I'll be showing that to my husband when he gets home. He likes pieces that evoke more than just, "Nice use of color". That is a nice use of color, but it's a lot more than that.
I haven't an artistic bone in my body, so I adore looking at what other people create, as I stand in awe of the ability.
I sort of imagined that lights of ill repute were red...
Love the new paint! Can't wait to see it after you're finished and have the new furniture.
I rather like the wall sconce - kind of art deco feel to it. Oh well, you know what they say, one man's meat is another man's poison! And I do see what you mean about the overall effect.
As for the beige .. well. You have to ask yourself one question: are you old enough to have beige walls? Well, are you? You don't sound it to me! ;)
Beige is a very dreary colour for interior decorating, in my opinion. Yes, it's neutral, but it's very heavy neutral. Pale cream does the job better and goes with just as much. Me, I decorated our home in sunny yellow, muted purples, blues and pinks - as well as quite large expanses of off white for contrast. SO much nicer than beige - and it sets off my plethora of Johnny Depp posters so much better. ;)
I love the new paint. I'm not sure I would call the wall sconce ugly by itself, but it does look rather odd in that praticular place.
That sconce is SO out of here! LOL!
Aloha from Hawaii my Friend!
Comfort Spiral
You don't like your light fixtures? I think mine are almost exactly like that. I think that means I am not cool at all! : )
Congratulations on your new home. How exciting!
Ladyfi, that would be fitting, wouldn't it?
Jay, I never thought about that with the beige but that's an interesting point. Like you, I tend to favor colors, although I clearly went for a more neutral color for the large space.
More than anything it was that particular beige, and how it had aged. Plus, the people before the people we bought the house from clearly smoked in the house, so part of its problem was that it was beige to start, was nine-years-old on top of that...and then if you look at the way the color radiated when the sun hit it...you can clearly see that it was simply smoke stained.
No harm, no foul, as far as I'm concerned. If someone smokes and wants to smoke inside, that's fully understandable. It just wasn't doing that paint color any overall favors as time marched by.
Katy, I'm in agreement with you. The only truly "Whoa. The hell?" light fixture is that huge one, which is really almost too big for anything other than a commercial space, and in a home setting it's just...too much. Mostly the light fixtures are not the right metal tone to get along with the colors I tend to favor.
Hehe, the poor sconce, it really suffers only because it clashes with the gray and then...it's awfully near the light fixture that Ate Tokyo.
Life with Kaishon, you pretty much hit the nail on the head ...just not quite in the way you meant it...I don't tend to go for colors that hit the "warm" end of the color spectrum, almost everything I like is "cool" (I'm a Winter ;-) ).
So indeed, those fixtures aren't quite cool enough for me...but in a different way than "hip" or "not hip".
I think I just proved how not cool I am by using the word hip :-)
It's LOVELY, and the smoke gives it a mysterious ambiance ;-)
Congrats on your Glue POTW mention. That was a well deserved recognition!
Very nice captures around the house.
Thanks for your neat comment about the heron. Just got back from Europe so took a while to get here. FG
It''s so much fun to rip out what is somebody else's choice and add your own! What you've done looks great and I'll look forward to seeing the rest of the changes. What you've done is very calming and restful, including the hazey air! (I hate cleaning my oven!)
The grey color paint on the wall is very 'cool' . Congratulations on your choice!
Looking forward to see pictures of the finished remodelling project. I'm sure I'll like it all as you display great taste in a lot of things.
You are living my dream. I LOVE redecorating!
Your sense of humor is great and just what you need when remodeling and moving. High five!
jj
they're all nice!
don't you just love doing up the house?
Oh, oh, I've been missing comments, I'm sorry!
I'm in the process of trying to adopt a rescue dog, and I don't want to count the proverbial chickens before the hatching, but we seem to be on track for that.
Hello, imbeingheldhostage! Why thank you, that enigmatic decorating ambience, eh? ;-) I roast vegetables a fair amount, and whereas they are delicious, oh the interior of my oven pays a spattered price. Back at you, by the way, I loved your post this week. I felt true empathy with it.
I hope you had a lovely trip, fishing guy! I'm glad you enjoyed the comment, as I loved seeing the Blue Heron, and even loved the memory of that gigantic bird flying overhead. Thank you for stopping by!
I'm in full agreement with you, the Lucy and Dick Show, even the self-cleaning ovens are vaguely awful to clean. The smell is ...not what one might wish the smell of their home to be! But thank you very much, I'm still in the process of picking out accent tables (very involved, hee).
Yes, we really started to love this house, only after we had banished the former owners.
Thank you so much, Duta. I don't think I have an great eye, or taste, but I like what I like. May we all spend more time surrounded by that which we like, rather than that which we do not!
Joanna, that comment definitely had the tang of the kindred! You've done it yourself a fair amount, I take it? Yes, a sense of humor is key. A sense of humor, and access to liquor ;-)
I do enjoy it, 25BAR. It's one of those "what a headache, what a fun headache!" situations. Thank you for stopping by, I'll return the visit shortly!
poor little wall sconce...lol. the changes look great! thanks for dropping by today. i see you over at cabo's often.
I'm so confused about decor at this point that I think I want to live in a cave ;)
thanks for coming to visit the dancer post
I knew you were the kind to have your own 'ladies at the grocery' circle, I could tell
my Nana used to tell me I had a face that people just had to talk to
Oh what fun. Remodeling. But how lovely it will be when you get it just as you want - and then call it home.
It's always nice to put your own mark on your new home. It says, "This is mine, exactly as I want it!" Enjoy the process Alane. - Dave
Hi Brian, I actually visit your blog pretty frequently! Thanks for stopping by, and I've seen you spam the heck out of Cabo ;-) Well done, sir!
Dianne, I am, and had to laugh while reading your post, because I could fully empathize with it. Right down to the "I was in a hurry." moment, before you realized, "maybe not that much of a hurry."
Thank you for sharing that story, I found it delightful!
Exactly, Midlife Jobhunter (and best wishes with that, too!), it isn't that I think I have good taste, but I know what my taste is. Until we've gotten this place to our specifications (be they tacky, elegant or somewhere in-between), it won't feel like home.
It now officially feels like home! Oh how I hated that beige!
Thank you, Dave! I hope the presentation you were preparing for went swimmingly, by the way :-)
Take care, and I'll soon be over to all of your blogs in a few days. Thank you for stopping by!
I'm so with you on the big fixture Alane. I'm not sure about the smaller one, definitely not my taste, but much better than the large chandelier. Don't know what's going on with the sconce (afterthought maybe). Way too small for the space. Love the new colors and the light and spaciousness of your place. Have fun Alane;don't forget to relax.
Lovely house, love the color of the accent wall in the living room.. I am definitely challenged in the interior decoration area, something that comes naturally to most women.. can't wait for the "after" pictures.
Post a Comment