Come On In

Now that you have seen the outside of The Main Street House, why don't you come on in and check out the inside.

The first room you enter when walking through the side entryway is our dining room. Well, we call it the dining room but it is also the office and the playroom.

I debated about staging the room to make it look extra nice but then I decided that I want to show you all how we actually live so you will see some things in here that may not look like they belong. (i.e. dog, backpacks, Handy Manny tool bench, etc.)

There was a lot of work to be done to this room before we moved in. You can see from the pictures below that we ripped up the carpeting to expose the wood floors. We also took down some of the random stuff like the old doorbell and the cornice boards. Finally, we painted. In fact, we painted a lot! I don't know whose decision was worse, the previous owners decision to paint all the trim black or our decision to paint it white. We also added new crown molding and a new light fixture. Finally, I think the biggest impact can be seen in the third set of pictures where you can take a look at the french doors and the basement door that the Father-in-Law so painstakingly stripped and refinished for us.

There is still a lot of work to be done in this room. I don't know if you can tell by any of the pictures but this room has an old tile ceiling that I would love to replace - maybe with some sort of tin ceiling. We also need to refinish the floors but my biggest fear is that someone is going to tell us that we actually need to replace the floors. Finally, I don't know if you can see the weird wood paneling on the walls but that is actually old barn siding that I would love to rip off and replace with a great board and batten wall treatment.

But what we have done so far has made me pretty happy. Here is a little closer look at the pieces/parts of the room.

The first area is my work spaces where I write to you all on most days. Because this is an entryway it was kind of important to us to find a desk where we could close everything up when we were finished with it. Enter this great desk that we found at Wal-Mart. Yes, you heard me correctly, we got this at Wal-Mart! I was just as surprised as you but it was a perfect fit. The chair is just an extra we had from our table but I love this pillow from Nena Von and the yellow matched perfectly with the yellow in the rug under our dining table. I also love our little "L" that is sitting atop the desk. I am not a huge monogram/initial kind of person but I think this fits so nicely there (that an it is from the $1 bin at Michael's). And the icing on the cake - the two Sea Urchin Tidepool shadowboxes I have been in love with for three years and finally decided to treat myself to this past spring.

Moving on to the hutch area - I don't want you to be fooled into thinking that this hutch hides all of my fine china because in fact it holds a whole bunch of toys. Inside these doors you will find some art supplies, a whole lot of Disney Princess stuff, squinkies, Mr. Potato Heads and a whole other world of primary colored plastic things. This hutch also came from Wal-Mart and once again I cannot tell you how perfect it is for the space. The styling idea I stole from Kelly over at The Polished Pebble. Although, it doesn't look quite as good as hers - I am pretty happy with it. I nearly flipped when I found the burlap drum shades a Target because they were just the finishing touch I was looking for.

And finally, this is where we eat. The table is nothing special and is pretty beat-up but there is absolutely no reason to replace any furniture when you have a 3yr old and a 6yr old in the house. Especially the kitchen table - a whole lot of playing goes on here:) I would also like to direct your attention the the bamboo shades you see hanging in the background. I love, love, love these! Living on Main Street we get a whole lot of foot traffic and I have had a hard time transitioning from a wooded cul-de-sac lot to this house - let me just say that our blinds were closed a lot! I like that these are semi-transparent so that even when the blinds are closed, I feel like I have my privacy but am not completely closed off from the world. Plus, those were just one more thing we got from my favorite Lowe's store, along with the curtains you see and the rug under the table. Finally, the real reason I took this picture was to show off my amber glass pitcher and tumblers. I am obsessed with amber glass and will swipe it up anywhere I see it, no matter if I need the item or not. This pitcher was on of the first amber glass items I bought and I love it!

Linking up to the Open House Party over at On Sutton Place