Open House - Dec 2, 11-3 pm

  Highlights include an open floor plan with a bright new kitchen

Sunlight streams through the brand new windows in the Living Room

The master bedroom is an inviting space with two spacious closets

Two other bedrooms complete the second floor

The house includes a completely new family bath and first floor powder room


































There is a two car detached garage with a wide driveway for ample parking.





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Contemporary Cottage Kitchen - Before and After

It's taken us a long time, but at long last our Contemporary Cottage Kitchen has gone from a plan to reality.  It's a bright, open space - leading to both the Living Room and the Dining Room.  A far cry from our starting point!

Remember this?  The bathroom was in the kitchen, the ceiling had water stains from burst heating pipes and the plastic 'tile' was falling off the wall.

Kitchen - Before

Now, the walls have been opened up, the family bath is upstairs and there is lots of counter space, seating and storage throughout the kitchen.  Don't you love the Martha Stewart cabinets?  The beadboard insets look amazing and the stainless pulls add a nice mix of contemporary with traditional.

Kitchen - After, but I wish I'd taken the drill of the counter before snapping the photo!

Kitchen - During

Here is a 'during' photo, showing the wall coming out between the living room and kitchen.








Now, the boarded up window is gone and both have been replaced with larger windows.  We have lots of lighting - recessed, pendants and under the counter task lights.

 Kitchen - After

So what do you think?  Will someone fall in love with this kitchen?

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Today's Guest Post - Nautical Powder Room

Hooray!  We were featured on Justin & Cassity's Remodelaholic Guest Post today.  So cool that we got highlighted.


Be sure to check out the other great decorating ideas they have for using maps and charts.  I love the table setting with globes as the centerpiece.  What a clever idea!!!  And the map in the glass of a french door - brilliant!

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Living Room - Before and After

It's hard to believe how much this room has changed!  We started with a long, boring room that only one way in and out ........through the dining room.

Living Room Before Walls Were Removed

But after removing 2 walls (one to the kitchen, the other to the dining/foyer),  it's now open to the entire first floor, which lets the sunlight come streaming through.  And it creates a great circular floor plan - great for parties & family living!

Living Room - During

Once the walls were out and the new beams in place, we could start thinking about decorating the space.  From a design perspective, we wanted to maintain the neutral color palette we used throughout the first floor. So the walls are Early Morning Mist and the trim is Dove White.  The sofa and wicker chairs are also neutral.  The window treatments echo those colors, but add a couple of accent colors - steel blue and moss green.  We used the accents on pillows, rug and accessories. This way you could easily change the color scheme in the future, without a lot of cost!







The result: A much more livable floor plan and a warm, comfortable room.  What do you think?

Sources:

Wicker Wingback Chairs - Pottery Barn
Rug - Angela Adams Munjoy Hill Pattern
Coffee Table Trunk - Pottery Barn
Sofa - IKEA
Blue Leather Chair - HomeGoods
Small Wicker Chair - IKEA
Curio Cabinet - Ethan Allen
Pillows - HomeGoods, Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn
Baluster Lamp - Pottery Barn
Nautical Table - Simply Home



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Powder Room - The Reveal

The powder room  is one of my favorite rooms in the house  It's a jewel box of a room - with beautiful features and finishes.  That's one of the fun things about a powder room.  It's a small space (and you don't spend a lot of time there!), so you can be a bit dramatic!  What are the highlights?

-  The espresso wood vanity has a gleaming, solid glass top.  And to play it up a bit, I added these bubble glass knobs.  Sconces flank the oval mirror, providing lots of light in addition to the window.

- The back wall is covered in old nautical charts (and yes, it provides interesting reading material, LOL!  I know a lot more about Monhegan Island now).  Above the dual flush toilet is a Pottery Barn glass shelf, providing space for collectibles.















































- My favorite feature - the marble floor, which is made of three different types of marble, all ovals.  It was a splurge, but worth every penny.  It makes such a statement!









 










And just for the record, here's the 'before' photo.  There's not much of the original space left.  We tore out the ceiling, closet and cabinets, because it didn't start out as a bathroom.  It's a bit of an improvement :-) don't you think?

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Made in the USA

As we've put this house back together again, I've been pleasantly surprised with how many of the products are made in the United States.  Frankly, I thought a lot would come from low cost manufacturing locations around the world.  But in reality, a lot of products were made in the US - particularly the big ticket items!  Here's the breakdown:

-  Martha Stewart Kitchen Cabinets - made in North Carolina.  No wonder they could make them and ship them to us so quickly!

-  Windows - Certainteed Windows

-  Therma Tru Exterior Doors - Butler, Indiana

-  Drywall - Georgia Pacific

-  Subway Tile for Kitchen & Bathroom

-

Original light fixtures.....I love this 'Union Made' sticker on the inside!

And from our neighbors to the north (aka Canada):

-  Interior Doors 

-  Granite Fabrication

Pretty cool, don't you think?  Would you have guessed this much was made in the US?

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First Room is Done: Kids Room!!!

We're still a week or so from holding the Open House to get this place on the market.  There's just too much to be done!  But I wanted to get at least one room staged - just to feel like we're getting close to finishing our project.

So, what's up first - the kid's room.  It's a south facing room that gets lots of natural light.  And I want it to be light and bright.  But, didn't want to do a traditional boy or girl room.  No pink princesses or primary colored dinosaurs here.  The goal was to have something that would work for either a boy or a girl.

The theme - jungle critters.  Giraffes, Lions, & monkeys.  Those work for boys and girls, don't you think?

I went with a great fabric that has lots of jungle animals in different shades of teal and green.  And I found this fabulous elephant lamp at HomeGoods.  I think that's my favorite detail in the room!

There's a sisal rug on the floor, banded in the same green as the other accents.  The pint sized table & chair set came from IKEA.  And the cute little money and giraffe?  I found them at Kohl's.


So what do you think?  Can you see your little boy or girl in a room like this?  Does the staging make sense?






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Sunset 4:27 pm.....Good Thing We Have Lights!

Farewell Daylight Savings Time!  Hello new light fixtures!

Lighting plays a critical role in interior design.  I was really excited about the lighting choices for this house.  In keeping with our Contemporary Cottage style, we wanted something a little bit different than your typical fixtures.  It took a lot of shopping, but we found some great selections, that really set the house off right.

The piece d'resistance - the Dining Room chandelier.  I bought this months ago and had it waiting in the basement.  It was the last fixture Steve Michael from Elldee Electrical put up.....and definitely worth the wait.  With all the white paneling in the dining room, I wanted something dramatic over the table.  What do you think?  I love it!!!

And to compliment it, we installed this cool industrial style cage light in the foyer.  It has an 'Edison bulb', which lets you see the filament and provides a soft glow when you come in the front door.

We used 4 different levels of light in the kitchen.  The first is recessed lighting to provide general illumination.  Next we have these beehive pendants, to provide light over the peninsula.  Third, we installed under cabinet lights to provide task lighting while cooking (of course the vent hood provides halogen illumination over the cooktop).  Finally, we installed a LED fixture inside the glass cabinets, providing a nice focal point for the hutch, without creating a lot of heat in the cabinet.

The master bedroom got this great new fixture with a circular motif.

And for the other two bedrooms, we cleaned up the original fixtures that were there and reinstalled them.  I love the embossed tulips that are on the edges of each glass shade.

For the exterior, we added new lighting as well.  The craftsman inspired light fixture over the front porch casts a welcoming beacon as guests arrive.

And this barn light over the garage is the perfect accent!   But we also included a motion detector flood light that will come on when a car pulls up in the driveway.  That provides additional safety for the homeowner.

Now that daylight savings time is over, these lights will really come in handy.   It gets dark early in Maine :-)

Sources:

Dining Room - Ballard Designs

Kitchen Pendants - Home Decorators' Collection

Foyer Light - Restoration Hardware

Master Bedroom - Roth & Allen (Lowes Online)

Front Porch Light  & Barn Light - Restoration Hardware

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Classic Coastal Design

I'm so thrilled to have my friend Susan Salomon guest blog today.  Her blog 'Sneak Peek' highlights home design and style inspiration in Maine.  She's graciously sharing her thoughts on coastal design with us as we finalize the design for our Coastal Cottage (formerly referred to as Diamond in the Rough!).  Look at these beautiful rooms!:

Sneak Peek:  "Nothing in a room says "coastal" better for me than crisp white bead board and sea-inspired colors.  Every homeowner, I've found, discovers their own unique way of celebrating a love of the ocean and coastal decorating.  Whether it's a stone fireplace made out of smooth gray beach rocks.  A crisp blue and white color palette.  Neutrals to keep the look indoors subtle and the view out the windows the star of the show.  Favorite decorative coastal accents.  There are so many ways to takes cues from the coast!  These photos are some of my recent favorites.  I hope you enjoy!"

Want to see more of these fabulous rooms?  Check out Susan's blog at http://sneak-peek.me  and let us know what you think!

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Gorgeous Hardwood Floors

The floors are done!!!  It took over a week, but the guys from Abrams Flooring were able to transform our tired old floors into bright, glowing wood.

Before, During and After!

And it wasn't easy.  The biggest challenge was the second floor.  The fir floors had been protected for decades under brown tile flooring.  When we took the tile up (after making sure it wasn't asbestos - see hazardous material testing post), we discovered a black mastic that was all over the floor.  The guys had to use 20 grit sandpaper (I didn't know there was anything coarser than 60 grit!), lots of sanding belts, time and patience.  But look at the difference!

Downstairs, we have maple floors in the living room and dining room.  The first challenge was figuring out how to fill the big gaps that were created when we removed walls.  This flush threshold works really well.

New kitchen floor!!

The kitchen only had rough sawn boards (which Richard promptly fell through, early in the demo phase) under the vinyl floor.  The guys installed new maple hardwood, to have cohesive flooring throughout the open first floor.

I was worried that they wouldn't blend well, but while the 80 year old floors look a little different, they blend together nicely!

Sanding away the old finish

And while we're excited about getting this major task behind us, we still have a lot more to do.  Next up - finishing up the electrical.  I can't wait for you to see the new light fixtures!

First coat!!!

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