Phase Two

Phase Two of our renovations is now underway. While Phase One concentrated mostly on making the house livable, Phase Two is more about aesthetics and picking up where Phase One left off. On the agenda is:
Remodeling the last remaining bathroom
Finishing the attic, to be used as our home gym
New HVAC
New roof
Painting the exterior
Upgrades to the pool
In-ground drainage system
New fence
New terrace area
New landscaping

Photos to follow upon completion!

Bedrooms (and some bathrooms)

Our house originally had eight (!) bedrooms: six upstairs and two downstairs, and seven (!) bathrooms.  At some point, someone converted one of the downstairs bedrooms into a laundry room.  As stated in an earlier post, we took out the wall dividing the laundry room and the adjacent bedroom and made them into the playroom.  That still left us with six bedrooms.  One of my first thoughts when we first looked at the house was, what the heck are we going to do with all of these bedrooms? We even discussed closing off an entire section of the upstairs, because we were sure that we would not use certain rooms.  In time, we came up with ways to use these rooms.  Our six bedrooms are used as follows:

1.      Master Suite, which includes the bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, walk-in closet, and dressing/sitting area.

2.      The nursery, which is accessible both from the master suite and the main hallway, is Lilah’s room.

3.      Sophie’s room

There is a full bathroom between the girls’ rooms, which they share.

4.      Guest bedroom, with its own full bathroom

5.      My workroom, which I use for sewing, scrap-booking, gift-wrapping, and the occasional interior decorating job that comes my way

6.      A rec room, which we use for watching movies, playing wii, and working out.

There is another full bathroom between my workroom and the rec room that we have not yet renovated.  We really, really just did not need another bathroom.

In most cases, we just removed wallpaper, shelving, walls of cork board, and other forms of ugliness, and then painted.  The renovations in the master suite were a little more extensive.  We completely renovated the bathroom, moving things around to better accommodate a corner jacuzzi.  There was originally a walk-in closet and a hallway with four separate closets, each with its own set of louver doors.  We converted the walk-in closet into a laundry room.  We made the hallway of closets one large walk-in closet.  The original hallway of closets had opened both from the dressing/sitting area and the master bedroom itself.  We eliminated the door that opened into the bedroom.

Here are the rooms in their before and after states:

Master Suite Hallway and Dressing/Sitting Area Before:

Master Suite Hallway After:

Dressing/Sitting Area:

Master Bathroom Before:

Master Bathroom After:

Master Bedroom Before:

Master Bedroom After:

Lilah’s Room Before:

Lilah’s Room After:

Girls’ Bathroom Before:

Girls’ Bathroom After:

Sophie’s Room Before:

Sophie’s Room After:

Guest Room Before:

Guest Room After:

Rec Room Before (My Workroom looked very similar):

Workroom After:

Rec Room After:

As with the rest of the house, we are constantly making changes and additions.  We will never be quite finished, but we’ve come a long ways!

The Kitchen

The current kitchen was once several separate rooms:

A sealed bar room (built during Prohibition, the room could easily pass as a closet off of the foyer):

A walk-in pantry:

The kitchen itself:

A butler’s pantry (complete with the receiving end of the house’s complex system of buzzers and bells):

And a breakfast room:

These were completely separate areas, with walls, doors, and their own distinctive (read: hideously outdated) décor.  The first thing we did was remove the walls.  Once it was all one big open area, we could visualize how to make it into the kitchen we wanted.  We knew we wanted a meat area, a dairy area, an island, and space for a kitchen table.  Our contractor also suggested finding space for a mudroom since pool traffic would most likely be coming through the kitchen.

The main kitchen area, plus pantry and bar room became the meat part of the kitchen, with a large island.

Because we lost the walk-in pantry, we installed an entire wall of shallow cabinets to be used as pantry/storage.

The butler’s pantry became the dairy area.  Look closely at the before and after pictures.  We eliminated a window that would have otherwise cost us cabinet space on that wall.  And I sold the old farm sink for a nice sum on Craig’s List!

I was in love with the cabinets from the butler’s pantry and wanted to keep them for the renovated kitchen.  Unfortunately, they were built onto the wall, and were not really moveable.  We managed to salvage one run of cabinets, which we painted red and put in the breakfast area.

The breakfast room became the space for the kitchen table, only turned the other way since it was a much more open space.  There was a full bathroom off of the maid’s room (now the playroom).

We closed off its doorway and created a new one in the breakfast area.  We removed the gorgeous claw foot tub to make way for a stackable washer/drier to be used for pool laundry.

Underneath the asbestos-laden linoleum floor was hardwood.  It was completely ruined; however, so we installed new hardwood flooring.  We chose granite for the counter tops, and a different granite for the island.  For the backsplash I chose Jerusalem gold stone tiles with hand-painted Mediterranean tiles interspersed.  For the backsplash above the range, I designed a wrought iron gate, which I hired an artist to paint directly onto the tiles before having the tiles installed.  The cabinets are a glazed maple, and I chose a different stain for the island and range hood than the rest of the cabinets.  I chose stainless steel appliances.

The décor is still a work in progress (as is the case with most of the house).  Overall, though, I am in love with the kitchen.  It is definitely one of our favorite and most lived-in rooms of the house.

The Library

One of the house’s more charming and typical rooms of the era in which it was built is the library.  Its walls are paneled in pine; it has built in bookshelves and cabinets; and a really interesting fireplace.

We loved this room as it was, minus hideous window treatments, so it became Shimmy’s work-from-home space.  (He prefers a couch to a desk, which, though unconventional, works for him!)

The Dining Room

The dining room also had an elaborate chair molding, as well as crown molding.  Its walls had been covered with a dark peach grass cloth.  I did like the texture of the grass cloth, but found the color to be old and out dated.

We painted over the grass cloth with an eggplant color in a semi-gloss finish to give it a shiny look.  The marriage of a rich color with the interesting texture of the grass cloth worked wonderfully.  We painted only on top of the chair rail.  Underneath the chair rail we added wainscoting to give it a very formal look.  There had been a small pass-through room between the dining room and breakfast room, which seemed extraneous to us.  We closed off the door on the breakfast room side (adding more wall space) and kept the door on the dining room side.  We use this tiny room as a storage closet for table linens, folding chairs, and table leaves.

The Living Room

The living room had previously been stark white, which was a pity considering all of the elaborate moldings that were just begging to pop against the right color.

Since we do not have a separate family room (den/library is being used as an office and the playroom is no place for the grownups to hang out), I didn’t want the living room to feel too formal.  We painted it a beige with gray undertones, both on top of and underneath the chair molding.  We gave it an inviting feel with our leather furniture and family photographs.

In one corner, we found a home for the house’s bar, originally in its own separate wood-paneled room, which was lost in the kitchen renovations (more on that later).

The Foyer

We didn’t need to do a lot with the foyer, whose most attractive feature is its breathtaking staircase.

Its walls got a paint job like the rest of the house.  I chose a medium beige/taupe to make the white moldings pop, and continued this color throughout all of the hallways in the house.

We painted the cream colored front door a bright red to compensate for the lack of natural light in the foyer.

There were three separate closets, the largest one being a walk in coat closet that had a small powder room attached to it.  This felt awkward, and since there were two other closets in the same area, we decided to ditch that coat closet and enlarge the powder room.

I wanted to give it a glamorous feel, so I chose a bright turquoise for the walls and some crystal sconces to flank each side of the mirror above the sink.