At the bottom of the stairs in the Caroline house there is a room which I guess would be called a den, maybe a family room, but we always refer to it as "the kids living room under the stairs" because I guess we like to hear our own voices. It currently functions as our only living room because there is plywood flooring in the actual living room, or as we like to call it "the real living room, you know the one when you first come in the front door." We have to work on our abbreviation skills
Here is what it looked like the day we closed:
And here's what it looked like while in transition:
And today:
It is a bit cluttered, but I'm mostly happy with how it turned out. This is what it looks like on a day-to-day, including the kid eating goldfish on the table and the baby on the couch, though I'm usually in there somewhere too. Without pants.
Get out of the shot you incredibly adorable kid! These people want to see the coffee table!
Mike hand painted the coffee table from a cast-off, it's getting a healthy bit of use, and is a bit knackered but you would be too if you got abused by a three year old on a daily basis.
Painting on the stairwell is a splatter map by
Micheal Tompsett. Mike forbad me to buy any more maps (I am a mapophile. Actually I just made that word up, but there are map obsessed people out there like me. Ken Jennings is one, even wrote a
book about it) so when it arrived I had to pretend I hadn't realized it was a map "oh well, would you look at that! That splash of paint does look like Australia!". I don't know if he believed me, but it looks good in the space, so he let it ride
The formerly pine-on-pine-on-pine theme has been muted with a whitewash of blue-grey paint. It's just regular latex flat paint mixed with about 20% water and applied with a brush. If you look closely, you still get the grain and character of the wood without feeling like your in a 1970's mountain cabin.
Sailcloth fan was a totally-worth-it splurge. The "Seaweed" sign was painted by muah for my dad's old boat which was named (obviously) Seaweed. He regifted the sign to me for Mother's day this year mostly because he's cheap (it's where I get it from) but also because he's sentimental. But mostly just cheap.
The kids toys stay pretty well corralled in this oversized cubby-hole thing. This was a side of the road find, actually have two of them. We painted an ombre stripe around the outside and it fits the room perfect. I have no idea what it's former life was, but it's well-loved here. Now we just have to figure out how to get the toys to stop breeding at night.
Octopus poster is currently just pushed pinned onto an oversized canvas. I'll get a frame for it eventually. Maybe
The INVINCIBLE ship masthead was a Habitat for Humanity find. I grabbed it the minute I spotted it, and was carrying it aroud the store, knocking things over like a dope because I was afraid if I put it up front someone else would snag it out from under me. Getting it into the Mazda was a whole 'nother debacle. I briefly considered tying it to the roof, but ended up wedging it in somehow, someway, at the expense of my ability to see out the passenger mirror. The whole time I was envisioning what great history this thing probably had, patting myself on the back for finding this treasure, a real piece of art that had a story. It is super heavy, solid, hand carved with a patina that comes with age. I pictured a swarthy captain with a can-do spirit traversing the seven seas, narowly escaping danger and perhaps finding romance, or, err, something like that. Turns out, according to the guy who so kindly helped me jam the thing into my car, that it came off of the side of a Red Lobster. How underwhelming is that?
We were concerned that the white banister would get grubby fast, but so far so good thanks to 197 coats of super high gloss paint.
Don't mind our houseguest, Morgan Freeman. Sometimes we let him babysit.
A captive audience enjoying handsewn pillows from my ecclectic fabric collection. They came out awesome as long as you don't look too closely
Rag chair that was mine when I was small. Sometimes it's weird and embarrasing that my dad has every.single.item from my childhood, and sometimes, as in this instance, it's pretty cool
We paid $100 for the Ikea couch secondhand. I think it's the
Ektorp. The super best part, besides the pricetag, is that it comes fully apart and the slipcover can be washed. Great for kids, parties, dogs . We have all three
Side by sides:
So, If you have ever wondered where I watch The Real Housewives of...I mean CNN, now you know.
