Living Rustic

Living Rustic, our blog about weekend living in Adirondacks is hatching!

                                                          Check out this photo my daughter
                                                           Victoria snapped last weekend-

                                                          Looking forward to sharing all
                                                                   that we experience!

Renovating the fire pit!

Franklin Falls New York

                                                                                    
It has been a crazy ride these past few weeks- and our house renovation has slowed down a bit.  We spend most weekends in the Adirondacks, leaving little time to work at home. We feel blessed to have the opportunity to live rustic as Adirondack weekenders. We enjoy the solitude  and serenity of the woods and water.  We are always improving our little cabin in the woods, most recently - The fire pit-

Renovated Fire Pit

                                                                                

Jared did a beautiful job of raising it up a little bit and making it even more beautiful to look at. Soon we will get to work on another pit. A bit more private in the woods, should be fun to see that come together!

Follow me soon on a new blog dedicated to the Adirondacks and living rustic. This will be a great outlet for me to share interesting places, people, activities and cabin life. We are also planning to get married at our cabin, Labor Day weekend 2013. We look forward to sharing our family style Adirondack wedding.

Image from Pinterest

                                                                                         
I hope you will join me!

Building walls for artwork- My Imperfect Blessed Life

Jared said, "Well honey, I don't think we need to build walls , you have so much art we can  build the walls out of art"!

He was right, I love art. On the other hand , he loves photographs. He had so many photos on the walls of his daughter, Anna , it was like a shrine. Every photo ever taken , every drawing she had ever drawn, every where. It was clear we were going to have to make some hard decisions about art and photos. Its a small space!

In figuring out the first floor plan, I had to decide how to group up the art and provide walls large enough to accommodate them. At the same time, I was taking walls down to create an open floor plan to make the house feel more spacious. That was my challenge. 

Grouping always works when deciding what to do with art. I group together subjects with similar colors first. The same with photos. All photographs together, with frames that relate to each other.

These are my favorite photos of my kids- A great time for us as a family-

I got the paint samples out and started the process of matching up art to room color/formality and created "Art Gallery" walls in the house.

This is a gallery wall in our Master Bedroom

Artwork grouped by color  - these large pieces work well together-

 Blending and editing - all part of the process of making Jared's home our home-

Next blog- Finding a space to be alone- in a small house with 2 kids and 2 dogs- Challenging!

 

Blending a Family and Furniture, defining our own style- My Imperfect Blessed Life

I can't help but think of the song Donny and Marie Osmond sang in the 70's-

I've worked with many couples who have different style preferences.  I can always hear Donny and Marie singing in my head..... I know its hard to find common ground for everyone to agree on. Even still, a blend and direction has to be established.  Jared's style is more natural. He likes wood and country furnishings. I like a clean traditional look, and antiques. As mentioned in a previous blog post we decided what furniture would work for both of us and I started to assign the pieces to areas of the house. I decided we would arrange the different styles by formality. I call it, "front of the house/ back of the house." My antiques would find a home in the front of the house, (New Dining room, foyer, Master Bedroom and Library suite) and Jared's the back of the house, (Family Room ,Downstairs Bath and Kitchen)

After we agreed on the new locations based on style, I needed to start thinking about color. I know it sounds nuts, but the process of selecting colors for paint really helps further solidify your design direction, and if its not working for you, its early enough to change direction.

I have always been really good at selecting paint colors, so this was a no brain er for me and I kept it simple. I went to Ace Hardware, (because Jared likes their paint) and gathered up paint chips. I focused on a warm neutral for most of the walls for the front of the house and added  ceiling colors as accents; For instance our Master Bedroom has neutral walls and a green ceiling.  In a small space the ceiling can be a great spot to add color. I taped the chips to a piece of paper and labeled their destination. Hung it on the fridge for a while and rechecked my selections for a few weeks. No fancy presentation needed, I needed to see all of the colors on paper to make sure they flowed well.

My Mom asked me what our color scheme was and I snapped this picture and emailed to her- No fancy presentation needed , It works!

Next Blog- Building walls for all of my artwork- My Imperfect Blessed Life

Tweaking the floor plan and adding character- My Imperfect Blessed Life

The existing Master Bedroom and Bath took up the entire second floor

The first challenge:

 Finding room for 2 bedrooms- One for Queen Victoria and the other for the Princess of pink- Anna

At first I adjusted the floor plan in my mind - almost daily. I came to the conclusion we needed to consider making the Master Bedroom into two rooms. One for each of the girls and a shared bath-

As with any project,first I draw concept sketches. I draw them because they give me a good sense of the space before I go to the trouble of scaling it out.

Now that I like what I see I can draw it out to scale using  my new computer program to refine the new second floor plan. The addition of the built in desk areas will give the hallway more character and is a great use of the space- with a small home you need to be creative with every square inch!

Dream House Redefined- My Imperfect Blessed Life

Jared 's House

I was really struggling with living in someone else's home. Jared and I spent a lot of time tossing ideas around  about how to make his home work for all of us. We are both self employed and want to live comfortably without some of the expenses other people take on when renovating. Not to mention we wanted to keep the cabin in the Adirondacks. The renovation would be planned and executed without a loan and we would do most of the work ourselves.

I started sketching ideas about how to make the best use of the square footage we had, without adding on.

Step 1-

What furniture would work and what would be stored or moved to the cabin. Making the list of furniture worth keeping and needing to find a home for -My parents dining table and chairs,my antiques would find a home - Jared's king size bed and dresser, as well as his grandmothers dry sink..... So far so good! We know whats staying whats going. Now all we needed to do was to assign the furniture to a new room.

First assignment-     Jared's Grandmother's dry sink-

Jared's Grandparents had this dry sink made in Bath NY

 We will use it as a coffee center in the kitchen - I bought  cute fork, spoon and knife hardware to use instead of the brass hardware it has now.

Next Blog-Tweaking the floor plan and adding more character- My Imperfect Blessed Life

Dream House Revisited- My Imperfect Blessed Life

About ten years ago I found the perfect home for my family to live in

The kind of house I dreamed of living in since I was a child. A big white house on a hill with column pillars and a big front porch. Built around the turn of the century with great moldings and a quirky floor plan. I was in love.

We set out to turn this multi family home into a single family residence. The Interior Designer in me took over and I drew plans that suited our family as well as our lifestyle and construction began. 

 After a few months of knocking down a wall or two , my daughter Victoria was born and my dream house renovation was at a stand still. I was overwhelmed with my life. My son Mike was 11 years old and the active lifestyle of a young boy was a huge responsibility with a new born.  My husband Forrest, was always a work alcoholic kind of guy and seemed to be working even more, he was never home. It was then I realized I was suffering from depression, postpartum  depression.

Renovations stopped , our world was still. and the house, my dream house became a source of disappointment.

It took another few years to come to grips with the idea that not only the house was at a stand still, so was our family life. I spent the next five years raising my son and daughter and putting the idea of my dream house on hold.  Our lives as a family were about to change. My husband got out of bed one Monday morning and announced  he was leaving me and the children. I was blindsided,had know idea he was unhappy. I thought he was working hard and that providing for our family was his goal. I found out a few days later he had met someone new and was moving in with her.

I asked what would happen to our home, He said, "nothing, you and the children can stay." We turned the house back into a two family home. We lived in our family home for another 4 years, and every time I drove into my driveway I felt that old pang of disappointment.

It took some time but I did fall in love again, I met Jared. He had a sweet home in East Greenbush. He had spent lovingly updating and making it his own. He was sure he was never going to meet anyone to share it with. As our relationship blossomed and we started to blend our families the interior designer in me took over.I took on the task of stuffing us all into a house half the size of my dream house. 

The first step was to reassign rooms, for instance the old home office became part of our master suite. That was when one of Jared's dreams come true, he always wanted a office in a private space.We decided to build an office for both of us in the garage and he started building.

Jared working in his rustic office with all of his hunting memories

Next post: Redefining the term "Dream House" - My Imperfect Blessed Life