A Turkey Was Here.

How shall we start this off. Perhaps, forgive me I'm a huge blogging failure?

I meant to post pictures of how we left the house before Thanksgiving. Each room waiting anxiously to be seen. A new table preparing to hold its first turkey. Fresh paint drying all over and beds made and couches and everything! But instead I ate a lot of food and watched lots of movies and stayed far away from my computer. 

The moment for the grand tour seems to have passed, or at least been postponed until things are finished! Which is in a few weeks, which just gave me a heart attack. But that doesn't mean I don't have something beautiful to share with you. To be honest, there is SO much I want to show you. But we'll get there, we'll get there.

For now...the dining room! Or at least the front half. From start to (near) finish.

This is how the dining room looked when we walked in the door for the first time. We instantly knew we wanted to change every single thing about it.

Green trim. Lace curtains. Hand stenciling. 

Those things could look beautiful, but not in this case.

One of the first things we decided was that this little dividing wall had to come down. It created two tiny unusable rooms instead of one grand dining room. Which is exactly what our food and company loving clients needed.

And with one swift blow of his mighty hammer,

Percy knocked the wall down. 

At least that's how he tells it.

Some panels from an old barn door came together to make the perfect long dining table.

Once the wall came down, we realized that under about 5 layers of cheap wood flooring, the original wide plank floors were still in tact. We couldn't just leave them buried under there! Many many days of demo and sanding and sanding and staining and finishing followed. 

We knew we wanted to plaster in the dining room, and loved the idea of having a blue sky like ceiling and slightly darker walls. I read somewhere that people used to paint their ceilings because it was cheaper than painting the entire room, and for some reason loved that thought. Even though we didn't paint, and covered the walls as well, it still makes me feel like there's a story hidden in there.

 It's no easy task, but watching the plaster go up is beautiful. The bottom half of the room was so rich in color we almost wanted it to stay that dark. But once the dry white clouds started forming we fell in love with the new color too.

This is what the dining room looked like around 7am the day before Thanksgiving. 

And...

this is what it looked like when we walked out the door a few hours later. 

(We thought we'd give the green trim one final meal.)

A little lot of turkey and rest did us good, and we were so excited to get back up to the house after a much needed Thanksgiving weekend. It was magical walking back into the house. The plaster had dried to the perfect colors. The sun was shining. The kitchen was incredible. Everything was simply dazzling to the eyes. Such a dramatic change from that first day, months ago, when we curiously opened the front door.

A little paint mixing and a few tedious trim painting hours later, voila. The oh-so-stunning dining room was officially born. There's still some final touches to be done, but we're totally in love already. And hope you are too.

What Day Is It?

Tuesday, right?

Wow. That was an actual guess and I just checked and it's literally Wednesday. I will never be able to prove this to you all, but take my word for it.

We are currently in the stage of this job that I like to call "The Total Worst". That is to say, the total worst part of a situation that overall is amazing, so still not the world's worst, but you know, the awful middle part of something that's pretty great. Did I mention I'm high on floor stain fumes?

The coming together stage feels incredibly close, but as of today we are basically camping indoors, which I've been trying to think of a word for. If glam camping is glamping then we are... Riving? (rough living) Hamping? (Home camping) Seriously, it's the fumes.

I had big hopes to keep this blog orderly and compartmentalized but today I throw caution to the wind. Which according to the weather forecast will also be filled with snow any minute now.

Instead, enjoy this scattered glimpse into our lives (and the house) today. Everything you see is exactly how it really is.

A new kitchen in the works. And PS it's going to be beautiful. 

The future home of one very amazing sink.

Can't wait to get some paint on this wall.

Fire hazards and coffee making.

An old newspaper found behind the cabinets. And yes, those are The Beatles.

Wish list.

Quarantine floor refinishing area. Keds on guard.

One day this will be a dining room.

A door is born.

These floors need some TLC. But I still love them.

The new door. Even better from the outside. 

Refinishing floors means no dust which means, no heat. Yay!

Upstairs bathroom gets a make-over.

One day I will take a warm bath in here.

Sweet homeless dresser.

The great divide & small bedroom #1.

Pillow storage and small bedrooms #2 and 3.

The master bedroom. On the way to perfection.

Plaster makes everything better.

Winter view from the sunroom. Sun nowhere to be found.

Where I'm sitting. Right this very moment.

Paint Swatches & Things Hidden Under Carpets

Things I hate:
Dingy wall-to-wall carpeting.

Things I love:
Paint swatches. (even though they drive me insane)
Finding out that original wide-plank flooring is hiding under said dingy carpeting.

 (Above, the floors before a little sanding and varathane.)

And voila! After! (Note the shoe color change. Sanding perk.)

Our First Dream Job : Part II

It's funny, looking back now at Debby's initial email, to wonder what she really had in mind when she hired us to work on her upstate home.

She wrote, "I have a fantasy of the family arriving upstate to a home without boxes and comfy places to sit. I don't think anyone could face another set of boxes to unpack." Somehow in that sentence we saw, "I have a fantasy of you completely renovating, designing and furnishing our new house into the perfect home." If you can't dress for it, dream for the job you want, right?

Shortly after we finished up in Brooklyn, we hopped in our fancy white van and headed upstate for Brimfield shopping and of course, to see the little house that would become our lives for the next few months. It felt like we were going to see our new baby for the first time. Not that I have any idea what that's like but, that's the best way I can put it. 

We've been at our official post up there since late September, though the past week we've been back in NYC on another job, and can I tell you, I truly miss being up at that house. 

Life up there is like a creative retreat. Wall after wall to experiment with. Hidden wood floors. Years of flowered wallpaper to uncover. Endless possibilities. Cookbooks and a fireplace. Leaves changing all around us. 

I worried that I would go crazy with all the silence around me, and miss New York and all its spirit, but to be honest, I've never felt more content. 

We work from sunrise to sunset, and still the days pass all too quickly. We make dinner as the deer tiptoe in the yard. We snuggle up to relax with an episode of Downton Abbey. It might not be for everyone. But for us, for now, it's perfect. 

Debby is an amazing client, and completely trusts us to create a home for her. She has shared her vision for each room, but aside from that, she has left us to our own devices. As any designer can tell you, this  

is a gift in itself. 

We have our own visions for the house, but living where you work creates an intimacy that is invaluable. The house was build in the 1800's and it has a spirit of it's own. We don't hesitate to take our cues from the walls, the floors, the way the light hits, and the energy of each room. 

This is where we spend our days. This is our dream job. 

Our First Dream Job : Part I

I've been meaning to tell this story for awhile now. It's one that has only gotten longer the more I've put it off, so at this point, to cover all of the twists and turns seems almost impossible.

But I think that a bit of distance and perspective has done me the favor of editing out the headaches that no one needs to hear about anyway. Because all that rises to the top is the good. And in this story, that still leaves a lot to be told.

Still, it's a bit of a struggle for me to make this coherent when all I want to do is show you a thousand pictures of what's happening now and say LOOK! But everyone likes stories. So here goes.

Over the summer, which is now light years away, our little Brooklyn sublet was featured on Design Sponge. Transforming that place into a home of our own was a mental challenge, knowing that as soon as we finished we were going to have to pack everything up and move back out. There were many afternoons when I wondered what on earth I was doing, but one email that came our way after that post changed everything.

This is literally how the message began.

"Hi Tara and Percy,

I saw your homes on Design Sponge.

I possibly have your dream job as you describe it."

I had just left the house to go on a run and Percy texted me something along the lines of, "EMAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Debby, a wonderful woman, wife and mother of three was writing to us because she has just sold a house in Park Slope, rented an apartment in Clinton Hill, closed on a house in upstate New York, and broken her hip in the span of a week.

She had seen our post, admired and related to our frequent moves, and was hoping we could work our magic (quickly) on her new apartment and if the fit was right, their upstate home.  Being in the state she was, she needed some help to make this happen. And the sooner their current apartment could go from feeling like a whirlwind to a place they could actually live, the better.

We met with her the next day, fell in love with her family instantly, and were on the job. Debby's husband was away for business, and she was hoping to surprise him with a TV-worthy reveal, which meant we had a week to design, source, and build everything needed to overhaul their Brooklyn apartment. And so the madness began.

I'll spare you the gory details (and there are quite a few) but over the next seven days we completely transformed Debby's home, packed up and moved out of our Brooklyn apartment, attempted to move into a new apartment, decided not to take the new apartment, moved everything into storage, racked up five parking tickets and even managed to get a car towed.

But every single bit of agony we went through that week was 900% worth it.

After days of planning and building, we were finally working in the apartment around day #5. As we walked out that day, Debby stopped us and said "By the way, you're on for the upstate house."

I still get giddy when I think about it.

- - - - - - - - 

Check out the pictures below of some of the magic we worked on their Brooklyn apartment.

Swoon city, right?

Next up, Part II.