Welcome

If you were able to visit me in person, you'd pass through the foyer, pass the stairs, pass the entrance to the basement...

and this is what you'd see: 
 

 Our Main Room

On the back wall on the floor between the window and pictures, those are our iPads. lol We use that electrical outlet as our charging station. Typically, I sit in the chair with ottoman, so that's my pile of books and things propped against the chair under the end table. I should have tidied up before taking pictures for the blog :) Matt merely left his green cup on the table. 

A slightly different vantage point (with the hubs watching football :)

This room is the one that is mostly done. For those of you who saw my house in TN, it's clear I haven't changed much in this room. I'm the kind of person who likes what she likes and doesn't get tired of it. The benefit is that I remain satisfied with what I have. The challenge it creates is that my things easily become dated and I may hold onto them too long.

Since all of the ceilings are 9 feet high, the curtains I had didn't work in this room. They were standard 84 inch curtains and I needed 95 inch curtains with valance for them to hang long enough. (Without a valance, I'd need 108 inch curtains.) It took me a while, but I found these curtains and valances at Bed Bath and Beyond. They don't look much different than the ones I had before. Since there are a lot more windows in this house, I needed more curtain panels than I had anyway.

Other than that, I hung our family master calendar and cork board in a nook to the side so it would be slightly concealed but still visible and functional. A lamp blew out when plugged in after the move, so I had to buy a light kit and replace the damaged part. We had an electrician come in to put in a cable outlet where we needed it and move a surround sound speaker outlet behind the t.v. as well. This has probably been the simplest room overall since it was already painted the color I wanted.

The downside is that the previous owners left the speakers they had wired into the walls. They are in the wrong places for the way we have the room arranged. In the next few months, we hope to buy a new surround sound system and have the electrician reposition the speakers left behind. You can see two of the four speakers in the shot above. 

My least favorite part of this room is the wall with two pictures hung between the windows (see second or third photo). That wall looks somewhat empty in person (and really empty in photos). Behind the wall is a bump out for a fireplace. That just means the builder built the exterior to accommodate a fireplace on that wall, even though the original owners didn't choose to have a fireplace installed in the building process.

At some point we plan to have a gas line run from the existing line to that wall, drop in a gas fireplace and logs, and add a hearth, wooden mantle and trim. Then, we'll shift the loveseat, end table, chair and ottoman deeper into that corner so the chair sits to one side of the fireplace. We may bring down the matching chair and ottoman from our room to flank the left side of the fireplace (but we hope to need that space for baby paraphernalia). 

When we put in the fireplace, we'll move the pictures from that wall to this one: 

The space to the left of the t.v. needs something for visual balance. I think those two pictures will fill that empty space just right. The speaker that's high on that wall will be gone by then.

It may not appear to be so in the photo above, but that is Matt's wide screen t.v., not my smaller one. It's difficult to take representative pictures. You just need to visit us to see the house for yourself :)

At some point we'll replace the carpet too, but we're in no rush for that. The more I think about it, the more I think I'd rather have carpet in the main room than hardwood flooring. Hardwood flooring would look really good, but I like the feel of carpet. We'll see.

There's more to ponder and more to do before I consider this room done, but I am satisfied with it and the house. I don't want to give the wrong impression by mentioning all of the things I'd like to do to "finish" the house. These are merely things I'd like to do to make our house more our home.