New Project: Dining Room Buffet/Bar

We love the built-ins in the dining room and we plan on storing china and other dinnerware in this space. We also want to put in a wine fridge on the lower level and transform this area into something more our style.

A few thoughts... The wood siding on the walls is not attractive and looks pretty dated. So, we are thinking of filling in the spaces with wood filler, sanding it down, adding some dimension and painting this area white. Below are the before pictures and some pictures that we are using for inspiration. This isn't first on the list of things to update but definitely in the top 5. We'll post more pictures as we get closer.

Now:

Inspiration:

Photo from materialgirlsblog.com

Photo from newlyweddiaries.blogspot.com

Day 4

We stopped by the house today to clear out debris in the yard left by the storm. We can't be the messy neighbors before we even more in. And of course, we took a peek at the progress on the floors. It looks like they'll finish up tomorrow and then start prepping for the stain!

Bar area

Dining room

Guest bedroom

Master bedroom

Day 3

Tropical Storm Irene has arrived. There is lots of rain and wind and the lights have flickered here and there. We are at our apartment and we are really hoping the house is not flooding. We are not sure of what the house can handle but we prepped the gutters as best we could. Fingers crossed!

Update: No trees down, just some branches and debris. There was some leaking in one of the basement windows but all in all, not bad! Plus, we kept power all day long. I'll take this for our first hurricane as home owners!

Day 2

We hired Robert Brown flooring to install the wood floors throughout the house except for the kitchen and bathroom. They showed up at 8:30 AM on Saturday and got right to work. Jay (from Robert Brown) recommended that we install unfinished wood and then have it stained. This will allow us to refinish the floors more often than pre-finished wood. Plus, pre-finished wood can be more expensive to refinish. We picked White Oak because it's durable and easily maintainable.

Master bedroom

Hallway

Living Room - Jay sampled 3 stain colors for us to choose from.

Living Room

We picked Dark Walnut for the stain. We wanted something dark but not too dark to show dust and scratches too easily.

Day 1

We left the closing at 2PM and by 4 PM, construction was under way. Bye bye aqua rugs!

Unfortunately, there were no hidden hardwoods under the rugs, only old pine/plywood.

Living room done!

The guest room had linoleum under it and some pipes. We're guessing this was an old bathroom or laundry room.

An old-fashioned feature in the guest room.

More linoleum in the hallway closet.

They were kind enough to leave behind the curtains.

Miller and Mike about to pop the bubbly!

Cheers!

And finally, the pink bathtub gets christened...

Our First House!

We moved from Los Angeles to New England about four years ago and we have been slowly (and patiently) searching for our first house. New England has some very pretty and traditional architecture but the West Coast and mid-century modern houses always felt right to us. And, we just couldn't shake the feeling.

So after a long search, we finally bought our first house! We closed on Friday (after some insurance drama - thanks Hurricane Irene!) and started to get to work right away.

We are going to share the process of turning this 1955 ranch into our first home. We are so excited to finally be at this point.

To start, here are the pictures that were featured on Red Fin where we first saw the house.

*Photos courtesy of Century 21 Annex Realty