Since we bought this house about a year ago I have gradually been nesting in various rooms of the house, but was mainly focused on the construction and renovations that we were taking on. I made most of our rooms livable, but I was constantly dreaming of the day when we wouldn’t have drywall dust or muddy plumber tracks on our floors, and I could finally hang up curtains in the living room.

This past weekend we finally got around to buying a piano – our Christmas ’09 gift to each other. We had hoped to find a cruddy old thing on Craigslist that sounded good but needed a facelift so we could paint it bright yellow. Don’t ask – something about our passionate love for Elton John. But instead we found a great deal on a nearly new (10 years old!) piano in great shape, so on Saturday we drove down to Murfreesboro with the very helpful Roberts brothers and moved the piano into our living room.

The look is a bit more formal than what I’m going for in the living room, but I can make it work. Having the piano has finally lit the fire under my butt to get the room looking a bit better, so I have ordered my curtain fabric online and can’t wait to get my drapes made. Yesterday while out browsing with Penny I fell IN LOVE with a clearance upholstered armchair and ottoman at HomeGoods which sparked the typical reaction that happens when I fall in love with things.

I couldn’t pass it up. And I wanted to buy it to replace Matt’s chair (The Dragon Throne) which we bought on the cheap under false pretenses a few years ago, and I have nearly-hated ever since.

But anyone who has ever tried to replace a man’s Dragon Throne will tell you that it is worse than pulling a cat’s teeth. It’s worse than having your house burn down. Nay, even worse than seeing an enormous cricket on your cutting board on the countertop. (Yes, the horrors belong in that order.)

Typically Matt doesn’t put  up much of a fight with my design choices. He might roll his eyes or give me a dubious glance, but he has learned to trust me and, in the end, be amazed. But replacing his Dragon Throne with this lovely, shapely, Danish modern chair was not going to happen. Regardless of the ottoman and my puppy eyes.

Even so, I made the purchase and spent last night moving furniture around in the room to see how we could accommodate both chairs as a compromise. I tried. I tried really hard. And I love having two armchairs as well as the sofa for extra seating.

Except I don’t want one of those armchairs to be Matt’s current Dragon Throne. I want the Dragon Throne to live upstairs in the den… and…

Now I want to get another chair.

With a few more aches, pains and divorce papers, I hope to have our living room up and running in the next month or so. Just in time for us to have to move everything around again to put up a Christmas tree.

Because… CHRISTMAS!

The first thing I wanted to do when moving into this house was remove the awful awning above our front door and paint said door red. Here’s what it looked like:

From Daily Daguerreotype

Ick. Uck. Nasty. What were they thinking, right?

Despite much nagging over the past year, my dear husband (understandably) was not eager to remove the awning because there were much more pressing issues (bathroom floor rotting out, a kitchen ripped down to the studs, broken AC). Plus he was nervous about what damage and/or staining there might be to the brick under the awful awning.

Yesterday we found ourselves hanging out with our neighbors outside and decided we were finally motivated to take it down. With the help of our friend across the street, Matt took down the awning to find no damage and no staining! All we were left with was a much more inviting front door flanked by two ugly old lamps. So after I begged for one more quick project, we hopped in the car to pick up new lights at Home Depot and home to install them just before dusk.

Here’s the new entryway with new lamps:

From Daily Daguerreotype

I really need to take a photo this evening when the sun sets because this photo doesn’t do the lights justice and really they are too cute for words when they’re turned on at night. It makes the house look like a tiny little cottage where tiny little turtles live. How very fitting.

Of course now I’m interested in replacing our house numbers with something a bit more visible from the road and install a new storm door. I also need to decide on a color for the front door & door frame. I’m no longer interested in painting it red, and while Matt wants to paint it black, I just don’t know. I am feeling something a bit more creative and inviting – perhaps a tasteful turquoise blue? Or maybe yellow? What about green? Or is that too Christmasy? CHRISTMAS!!!!

So what color would you paint this door?

We’re still recovering from the excitement of having family here all last week, and I just have so little to say. (As an aside, I’m considering a rather substantial blogging hiatus. Sharing has become tedious, and I’m tempted to become reclusive and make other people do the work to know me for a change.) I have a million and one things I need to do, so here is a picture of my not-so-tiny-anymore turtle playing in the exersaucer that used to be her cousins’. She totally digs it.

Life before her was totally unnecessary.

From Daily Daguerreotype

Over the past few weeks we have been diligently working in our breakfast nook and have made significant progress. Matt finished installing crown moulding and building the door trim, baseboard, and corner bench (which opens for storage!), which we then caulked, primed and painted. We still have a bit of touching up to do on the paint, and the whole process has made it such that we will need to completely repaint the floor. But that’s how renovations work. Project begets project.

Here’s what it looks like today:

From Daily Daguerreotype

My mom and dad come into town tomorrow, so I’m excited to capitalize on my mom’s sewing expertise to create box cushions for the bench. I’m hoping to find a gray and white (or will settle for blue and white) ticking to use.

About a year ago we bought this print from Hatch Show Print to hang on the wall. It’s an odd size, so I need to hunt around online for the appropriately sized frame.

From Daily Daguerreotype

I have high hopes of painting all the doors in our house black, including that door to the basement pictured above. Then when Matt finishes the window trim, I’ll put up cafe curtains that I’m going to make from this Anna Maria Horner fabric I picked up a while ago.

I love seeing that which I envisioned a year ago finally coming to fruition. And I so adore my husband for making it all happen.

Penny and I are off to shop for fabric, so I figured I oughtta dress her up all smart-like in her adorable Uff Da dress. Emily makes these adorable dresses as well as bibs, hair clips and hats which are all for sale in her Etsy shop. Buyer beware: you are going to want everything in that shop.

From Daily Daguerreotype

Guess I should have thought ahead and put her in a green or blue diaper. My bad.

You thought that just because we have a two month old baby we have stopped home renovations, didn’t you? You thought I was done blogging about our house in exchange for blogging about our angelic and delightful daughter who refused to nap today! WELL YOU WERE WRONG!

We spent our evening re-priming the wood trim (yes, we didn’t use KILZ the first time so knots would have shown through) around the breakfast nook doors that Matt handsomely recreated. Didn’t he do a fine job? And isn’t that a fine behind?

From Daily Daguerreotype

Then we caulked two walls of crown moulding in the breakfast nook. When we bought this house, none of the disgusting and totally-wrong-era trim in the old kitchen was caulked. You gotta wonder who would go to all the work of putting up trim without caulking!?! What a difference it makes. Look to Matt’s left in this photo below – left of the light fixture has been caulked, right has not. Even in a bad picture like this one you can see the difference.

From Daily Daguerreotype

And in case you needed a before picture, here you go (not the same angle, but you get the idea – taken from the dining room door):

From Daily Daguerreotype

I’m a little bit high on the fumes of oil-based KILZ. We may or may not have also opened a bottle of Cabernet. I plead the fifth.

As for the kitchen… WE! ARE! GETTING! THERE!!!!