The Long Awaited House Tour

So, 3 months and 1 week after setting up shop in our new digs, I’ve finally got some more pictures of the joint to share with y’all.

One thing I’ve learned about moving into a new home is that you can’t expect to fully furnish it within 3 months. You’ll go crazy, and you’ll be broke. As such, there are a number of projects still left to do in this house, but for now, we’re cozying up and are very happy to call this place home.

Et maintenant, Le Grand Tour!

First, when enter the front door, you’re immediately greeted by this:

That’s right. A big staircase with green carpeting. Charming, no? One day, I plan to amass a collection of frames — a mix of modern, Ikea Ribba type pieces, along with vintage museum inspired ones — and put up a big collage of photographs on the left hand side of the stairwell.

Ascend the staircase, and you’re immediately greeted by our mail table.

Just off to the right of that is a new coat rack, and that famous Magritte painting (in print, of course), which Joe charmingly refers to as “that ‘apple a day keeps the doctor away’ painting.”

Side story: We bought this coat/umbrella rack from Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Joe nearly had an aneurysm trying to put the final thing together. See, the original package included a piece that didn’t fit with the others, so the coat rack measured all of like 4 feet tall. Naturally, Joe called the manufacturer and had them send us the correct piece. Five days later, when we finally received it, we found they had sent us the wrong one. So, Joe called AGAIN. And they sent us the wrong piece AGAIN. At this point, we had enough wrong pieces, that we jerry rigged the thing to work the way we needed it too. Any normal person would’ve just returned the stupid coat rack to BB&B, but not Joe. He’s really, really attached to this coat rack. Sometimes, when I leave the random sweater or cardigan lying around the house, I’ll find it dangling from the coat rack a few days later. Men are weird.

Just to the right of the mail/coat/foyer area is the living and dining room.

I’m fairly certain that all of the wood floors in our house are original. You can just see it by the patterns and the wear.

Check out this RIDIC double crown molding! Our house was built in 1914, and you can totally tell:

The ceramic elephant planter is something I have had since sophomore year of college. Joe was instrumental in picking this out. The backstory is I had a resident (yes, I was crazy enough to serve as an RA my sophomore year of college) whose father owned a garden shop, and she wanted to get me a few plants to decorate my room. I had a choice between an elephant planter and something else, and Joe said that under no circumstances should I choose anything but the elephant. His name is Ganesh, and he’s totally a motif in our relationship.

The hurricanes on the fireplace are from Crate & Barrel; the pebbles in the hurricanes from CB2. Various decor on the bookshelves around the fireplace was pre-owned by us, or found on Etsy. Couch, pillows, and coffee table are CB2. The little reading lamp in this picture actually isn’t even in our living room anymore, as we’ve since replaced it with another more appropriate floor lamp from Lamps Plus.

Chair, CB2. Vase, Crate & Barrel. Books belong to your resident food nerd, moi.

Table, EQ3; Chairs and rug, IKEA.

I’d like to take a moment to tell you that I saw these exact pillar stands at Crate and Barrel for $14.95, $16.95 and $18.95 each. These are from Target, for $5.99, $6.99, and $7.99. I LOVE TARGET.

Both the living and dining room are still in need of artwork and other wall decor. I also want to get a little telephone stand to put our iPod dock/music player on. My dream is to get a buffet to put behind the dining table, which would be painted a fun color and have awesome objets d’art on it.

Looking back the other way, you can see the long hall down the rest of our home.

At the end of the hall, the room off to the right is the second bedroom, which we currently use as the TV den/man cave.

It’s pretty much the exact same setup as the living room in our old apartment.

Next door to that is our bedroom. This room is still looking pretty sparse. We need to get new nightstands (Joe is currently using his old mini-fridge from college), nightstand lighting, and hopefully some wall art. I do so love our fluffy comforter though. The duvet is from Room & Board of all places. You can’t tell at all from this picture, but it has a jacquard pattern on it that is really subtle and lovely. I know, I know, in this picture, it looks like a very boring white duvet.

This is the chair I’ve had since sophomore year of college that neither of us ever sits in, but instead throws our clothes on:

If I could have it my way, I’d put a huge pedestal table there with tons of pictures on it. The beautiful mirror hanging in our bedroom was a Christmas gift from Joe’s sister and brother-in-law.

Just beyond our bedroom is a sunroom which we use as a dressing room and pseudo-walk in closet for our dressers. I like to do my makeup in here in the morning because the light is so good. Besides this room, Joe and I each have our own closet to hang clothes in. His is in the TV den, which works out well as he doesn’t wake me up in the morning anymore as he gets ready for work.

Rooms not featured here: my office, our 1.5 bathrooms, Joe’s office and our kitchen. Those rooms have either already been featured on the site, or are way less interesting.

Hope you guys like it. It’s 100% different from our last place (think: high rise condo built in early 2000s versus 1914 Edwardian-style flat), but as time goes by I think we’re both really loving living here. The sheer size of the place means that sometimes, it still feels a little empty. I don’t want to fall into the trap of filling it with tons of junk though, so I’m trying to carefully edit what we add to the space and purchase items wisely. More than anything, I think all the empty walls will look much better once we get some frames on them.

I can hardly wait to see how the place evolves over the next year!