I have emerged from the shadowy depths of baby hibernation a butterfly transformed by your kind comments. Thank you for reading all about my room tour last week, and double triple googleplex thank you for letting me know you’d like to see more of them. I’m working up a tour of the nursery for next week, so please do tune in for that there goodness.

Today is not so much goodness. Both kids have/had crazy high fevers and I’ve gotten 4-5 hours of broken sleep every night for a week. Right about now I’d like to punch winter in the face. Since winter is an intangible being with no face to punch, let’s talk kitchens for a minute or two.

You knew it would come to this, right?

So, Ben and I tried to strip a door in the hopes we might turn our dated glossy honey oak cabinets into something with this vibe:

And the door laughed in our faces. I’m guessing the finish applied to our cabinets is some kind of super space age polymerized diamond hard coating designed to resist grease and terrorists, because it is NOT COMING OFF. At least not like it does on tv, when you apply the stripping compound and 72 layers of paint slough off in one fell swoop, revealing clean and sparkly wooden goodness beneath.

First we tried denatured alcohol, then we tried lacquer thinner. Then we glopped on the citristrip and left it on for 30 minutes. Then we glopped on more citristrip and left it on overnight. Then in desperation we tried acetone. Basically, we dumped every chemical we could find on that door and only a fraction of the finish was removed.

And so, paint it is.

I’m pretty sad and keep mooning over this kind of stuff:

But maybe for the next house.

I did consider trying to copy this look by refacing our cabinets, but I think it’s just not financially feasible. We may as well gut the kitchen and rebuild at that point.

Sadly, we are not rich. We’re real people on a stupid real budget that makes me real mad. But at least we have a house and food and cars, so it’s time to get over it and move on. Maybe to this?

But with light uppers, yes?

I’m still pricing out replacing our doors with paint grade shaker style doors. What we spend on new doors miiiigggght save us a few bucks in paint labor. Maybe. I’m not sure if it’s going to be worth it or not.

While my kitchen plans continue to incubate, go check out the power of paint over at Styled Thing:

Not too shabby, Miss Julie.

See you dudes next week for the next tour.

[pinterest]

That title really draws you in, right? Oh the nostalgia. The oozing sentimentality. If you’re scared already, you’re really going to hate the rest of this post. If not, read on brave souls.

So today is my 36th birthday, and — not to put too fine a point on it — that sucks balls. How did I get so old? When Karly and I started this blog four (yes, FOUR) years ago, we were two young(ish) and carefree girls out on the town, boozing our way through shelter mags and thumbing our noses at chintz.

Well, chintz and Ruthie Sommers would like to know who’s laughing now… oh, how times have changed. Acid Wasp is back.

So I may have trolled the DC archives and come up with a “Where Was Erin On Her Birthday Back Then?” compendium of posts from days of old.

Check it.

In a fit of tortured self examination, four years ago I was lusting/questioning my lust for Julian Schnabel’s Gramercy Park Hotel.

So pretty! So full of amazing art!

So unbelievably pretentious. A friend and I made it to NY a year or so ago and checked in at the Gramercy for $50 drinks and terrible service. Blech.

And of course three years ago in July, I had Sweet Baby Ike. Apparently October is a special time for me and the hubs…

There he is, all of one week old. Cute as a button. Can’t believe I’m doing this again…

Luckily kids get older and the job becomes more rewarding, and also there are endless opportunities to redecorate their rooms.

At least that’s my overlong mantra for now.

And this did not happen on my birthday, but it did happen when I had some extra time whilst nursing tiny Ike and watching football movies (creepy baby hormones!), plus it’s still one of my favorite posts ever so you must read it:

I love moodboards, and just figured David Bowie’s labyrinth needed some sprucing up. Nothing special. Maybe I will redecorate the forests of Legend when I feed #2? You never know what might happen around here.

Anyhow, back to my timeline: two years ago we were still on the endless house hunt, perhaps thinking we may have found the one.

Oh it looks pretty, but don’t be fooled. Way out in the middle of nowhere, weird labyrinth of rooms on the ground floor (one of which opened into a real life CAVE), and then there were the worms in the toilets… broken septic line apparently. Eeeeeewwwww!

Have I ever mentioned that Austin real estate is murder?

Kinda like this house:

Oh yes, there is a tree in the middle of the kitchen.

And merely one year ago we were still in our old house and I was busy buying and selling beds.

Goodbye, old bed. I kinda sorta miss you, but you were really too much for me. I think I like the setup in our new house better:

Man, I really still need new lampshades. Can’t believe that craptacular whip stitch has survived as long as it has…

Trite though it may be, I suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And that’s it for Nostalgia Cruise 2012.

Hope you didn’t get too seasick.

I am possessed by the urge to paint EVERYTHING.

Ceilings.

Floors.

Woodwork.

Chairs.

Paintings.

Kitchen cabinets.

Kitchen cabinets.

Kitchen cabinets.

I’ve visited Benjamin Moore so frequently of late that Sanders is probably wondering if he should set up a cot for me.

Yesterday when I went to the high risk doc, I frantically interrogated him about the possibility of harming the baby from SO MUCH PAINTING. I mean, I use the fancy low VOC Aura paint, but still… there are nights I go to bed with paint in my hair. And under my nails. And who knows where else — I can’t see down there anymore.

He said not to worry one bit, to paint away.

So in case you were wondering, our little peanut probably will probably come out with only two eyes and sans vestigial tail.

Although extra parts could come in handy someday?

Gotta peruse some paint chips. See y’alluns later.

[House and Home, Mary MacDonald, Veranda, Jamie Meares, Laura Day, unknown kitchens all via pinterest]

Hello fine friends, thank you so much for all of your comments (and mockups!!!) on my lighting score and dinette drama post. There was kind of a lot of feedback to process there… so I got overwhelmed and did absolutely nothing towards addressing the dinette/kitchen problems last weekend. Instead we painted ceilings and stair risers.

Sexy.

Not really, but it feels nice to get a neutral base going so I can hear myself think around here. I’m getting the tiniest bit closer to solving all of the (my) worlds’s problems, so here are my responses to some to your questions and comments.

1) The dinette is the dinette and the front room is a playroom because the front room is kind of secluded and will never ever get used as a dining room. Also it is very very wee.

Hi, front room! Don’t worry, paint for the shelves is still on the docket. It’s looking like wall color in high gloss.

I am the decider. Boom.

2) I am feeling very wiffle waffley about our current dining table. I hate to put time and energy into painting it properly (it will have to withstand childocalypse), so I am trying to decide between leaving it suburban brown and saving up to buy this:

$1100 shipped. On one hand, I am a little gun shy about the quality… it has a cast aluminum base which is a plus, but that sucker really has to be heavy to stay upright when tiny monkeys hang off the edges. On the other hand, I think a simple pedestal table would solve a lot of problems. In all white, this guy would go with almost any chair, bench, settee, etc, imaginable.

3) You may have steamrollered me into painting the kitchen cabinets. MAYBE. I have about 800 things to do before I propel a watermelon sized human out of my vagina in a few months, so this is low on the list. But it’s on the list.

Now I will just have to decide on a color. I will tell you now that I want cream, and you will probably tell me to go gray green. It’s going to be an epic struggle.

4) Speaking of baby, if you think the dinette drama is a hot mess, you should see all the paint swatches in the fetus’ room. Sanders has been very patient with my umpteen sample requests, but he probably secretly (or not so secretly) wants to kill me.

This was my inspiration, and while it’s very cute I just can’t find a green I like in that room. It gets a lot of light and everything goes neon pastel babytown in there.

Meet my new inspiration. It’s perfect — well, except for the sharpened obelisks of doom. But I think I’m going to go creamy neutral tone on tone, with a pop of cobalt. Lots of texture.

Ok, so that’s only four things but it’s four more than I had last week.

Now you can decide whether I should splurge on the table and what color to paint my cabinets.

But fair warning: despite the fact that it’s now covered in paint swatches and the ceilings are painted with raggedy unfinished edges, that area is kind of on the back burner (until I start tearing my hair out over its horrificness). My ever expanding belly is urging me to prioritize…

Baby here in T-14 weeks. Also car #2 is dying.

Deep breaths.

[nursery via Apartment Therapy, amazing room via Wendy Schwartz Designs]

It’s getting nervous up in here. I love to make decisions for other people, but when it comes to myself I will waffle endlessly if given the chance. So, on one hand it’s probably a good thing that the baby is theoretically coming in four months. On the other hand, I’m starting to panic that we’re going to end up with a patchwork quilt of insanity because I have to make too many choices too quickly.

Mostly I’m freaking about all the colors I’m slathering all over the walls. Teal, coral, peach, navy, oh probably some green while I’m at it… how many colors can one house reasonably (gracefully) hold?

I’m kind of a colorphobe. My downstairs closet is full of gray and black and navy. But my secret upstairs closet (the going out closet) is full of orange and pink and gold and turquoise and acid green. It seems that I almost always chicken out at the 11th hour when deciding if I should slip into something more colorful — I pretty much have to be hitting the bars at midnight to fluff my peacock feathers.

But I know that while there’s definitely an allure to cool and aloof, everyone wants to party with the crazy girl in color.

Am I right?

Still, I don’t want to go berserk in here. Crazy should not equal slutty. I just don’t think I’d be comfortable most of the time dealing with that much stimulation… from color. Duh.

I will admit to loving just a restrained shot of color — that perfect foil for an otherwise neutral and serene palette.

But I don’t know… once I get going I kind of can’t stop myself.

And then things get interesting.

I’d like to know what you think about “the rules” regarding color in decor. How many colors can you balance in one room? Three? Five? Infinity?

What about in a whole house?

I mean, we’re definitely going beyond light beige, medium beige, and dark beige here.

But can every room be a different color?

Please discuss.

[Pinterest, Porter wallpapers/fabrics, AD, Jeffrey Bilhuber, Pinterest, World of Interiors, Luxe Interiors]

I’m a jacked up nightmare of snot, plus Ike is home for the “holiday” today (seriously?! Jesus is already risen — back to work, teachers!) so I’m not sure how witty and entertaining I can be this morning. However, I really wanted to say thank you for your comments regarding my shelving dilemma. I read each and every one, and thought very deep thoughts about them. Here’s what I came up with:

#1. I think the tan leather couch would look better in here, but I did some measurements, ran some calculations, assessed the wind speed, etc, and Alexis the hot uncomfortable couch just won’t work in our family room. It’s way too low. So for now, tan couch stays where it is, and someday (hopefully maybe this year) when we replace it with something bigger and sexier, tan couch can move into here and I will pimp out Alexis on craigslist.

#2. I decided the painting wasn’t working in here. I love it on dark colored backgrounds, but you were right when you said something horizontal would look better. But how about something round? Cuz that’s what I came up with.

#3. For now I plan to go with gloss wall color for the shelves IF they stay on that wall… I’m still a bit undecided here. I think we may need to address the door situation first and see if the shelves intrude on the walkway. If the shelves don’t go there, they can go on the opposite wall — just as soon as I figure out what to do with the thousand pound limed oak hutch currently holding court on that wall.

#4. Exit coffee table, enter rug.

#5. I realized all I want in the world is for the office to look something like this room by Amy Howard (minus the wtf roses):

Mmmm mmmm delicious. I love the dark, low contrast wall paired with light sofa and peachy pink pillows/rug.

So here’s my mockup, designed to head in that direction. I painted one shelf charcoal and the other wall color… I think wall color wins. I replaced the lady painting with a large round brass tray I already had (how to hang this behemoth?!), flanked by some small vintage lithos. Don’t hate my peachy salmon pillows because they’re beautiful. I already own the vintage malayer rug, but it’s redder in real life and I fear it may overpower the space…

 Plan B

I think this may be better — more masculine. The rug is definitely lower contrast in real life, so I think it will blend with the floor rather than chopping up the tiny space. And you’ll just have to imagine that both shelves are wall color. Don’t worry — my paint job will look better than that in real life. I HOPE.

Just to mix myself up a bit, I tried painting the shelves green since I like the teal/jade/coral color combo, a la Kelly Wearstler:

My version:

I got lazy with the photoshop… sorry. So, the green isn’t quite right, but it doesn’t really matter because the wall color isn’t accurate either (it’s darker and greener in real life). I don’t care for this much color on this wall, but I think muted jade shelves might look nice on the opposing wall, flanking the window with a neutral desk setup in front.

So maybe that is Plan B.

And that’s what’s happening with the office — largely lots of photoshopping, head scratching, and fondling of paint chips.

Speaking of paint, I got a zillion samples from Sanders this weekend. We painted an attic closet that Matt enclosed for us, and I also started the process of selecting a whole house color palette that includes every bedroom plus wallpaper. So you know… I’m not overwhelmed or busy or anything.

Don’t worry — you’ll be hearing much much more about this business later.

T minus 17 weeks until my due date…

!!!SHITBALLS!!!

Hi, my name is Erin, and I’m two people. Ok, well to be perfectly literal I do in fact have another person growing inside my belly (weird!), but what I’m talking about is the other person inside my brain — her name is Stacy. You can blame this identity crisis on my mom, who called all three of her darling children by their middle names, thereby ensuring an uphill battle to maintain a consistent persona. Mostly I have learned to answer to any name by which I’m called, but still I cringe when I hear “STACY!” barked out at the Dr’s office and know the clueless registrar means none other than Yours Truly.

Let me tell you about Stacy — she’s a nutcase. She thought her name was really Anastasia and someone (talking to you, Mom) made a terrible spelling error. Stacy revealed herself in high school, tired of finally fighting the good fight to just be Erin, dammit. Stacy was kinda grungy, dyed her hair purple, got a nose ring, went on to college and did, ahem, the things college kids do — namely pull in a near 4.0 in between partying. Hard.

She likes a lot of color and for you to feel slightly uncomfortable in her presence.

Because there is a special kind of cognitive dissonance that occurs in the push/pull between organization and entropy.

She’s a wild child, but the floors better be clean or she will whip your ass.

And of course you know me, little ol’ Erin. My last house was pretty much black, white and gray, with a hefty dose of brown, because that is where I feel safe and comfortable. I am a rational being, and I don’t need any overly decorative crap chintzing up my life.

‘

That’s not to say that Erin, I, whomever, doesn’t have a sense of humor.

She just thinks you might feel more comfortable if the lines are clearly drawn, if things are proper and orderly.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

Now, if you can’t yet tell, there’s a hole in my brain and I’m struggling to balance the two personalities within. For a long time, the neutral, sensible side has been in control. But lately the crazy party ho has been yearning to break free.

Don’t worry — no part of me is actually a ho. That was just a little poetic license.

Anyway, I learned long ago that it’s better to balance Jeckyll and Hyde, lest a monster break free and run rampant all up in my house, or it get so dreary and overly polite in here that no one feels free to do other than take tea and eat crumpets.

Not that I would kick a crumpet out of bed.

And there you have it, I AM a ho — a carbohydrate ho.

At least there are some things all my personalities can count on.

Stay tuned to see how the other issues resolve themselves. My house is a battleground.

Advice (both decor and mental health related) is always appreciated.

[little blue deer, Poppytalk, Kriste Michelini Interiors, NYT, The Aestate, NYT]

Please go to my Pinterest to visit all the wonderful friends I stole these images from.

It’s Pinterest day, which basically means I don’t have two spare seconds to rub together and must, therefore, rely on the goodness of the internet to provide fodder for today’s post. Thankfully I follow some fantastic pinners, so busting out the jams is easy breezy. Trust.

I have many takeaways from this image: I need to paint some supergraphics up in this joint, that sofa must be mine, and Acid Wasp is alive and well.

Still loving curtains, may have to throw some jade into the mix.

I know I am going to offend someone, but I loathe those chairs — mostly because I had a similar set and they are so freaking hard to pull up to the table. But I do love that crazy antique lion paw table paired with fresh, clean chairs.

This is eerily similar to our office layout — similar paint, couch, room size, etc. That’s even where I plan to put the desk. Digging the french doors and garden stool cum coffee table. Want to burn the Union Jack (sorry, England — it’s not you, it’s me).

Ike’s new room. BOOM.

Or wait — maybe this one? I mean… dayum.

I kind of let you down during Wallpaper Week, but can I make up for it by telling you my new secret wallpaper crush is Schumacher’s tortoiseshell? I really hope the sample doesn’t win my heart because it’s $350/roll.

And finally, tomorrow I theoretically fly to Hawaii. With a two year old and a bleeding hole in my uterus. The doc has given me the ok to fly, but I go in for one more sonogram in a couple of hours to make sure the situation looks stable.

Cross your fingers for me because my mom is getting married to an awesome dude and I don’t want to miss the wedding. Also I could really use a vacation from staring at these walls. I’m hoping the rental looks something like the picture above.

So maybe I’ll be back tomorrow, but hopefully I’ll be boarding the plane and I’ll next see you all bright and early Monday, April 2, rife with reports of volcanoes and saltwater.

Kisses!

[Jay Jeffers, Katie Waddell's pinterest, AD via My Interior Life's pinterest, Albert Hadley, no source]

After a relatively upbeat week I am heading into the weekend as a major grumpasaurus. Why, you ask? (Or maybe you didn’t ask, but since I have control of this here convo I’ma gonna tell you.) It’s because I went to the doctor yesterday expecting better news regarding my dumb pregnant problems, and instead they are worse. I am working really hard to be angry because anger trumps the wimpy weepies every day, and it is working. Sorry that you all should feel the flinty edge of my wrath — you really don’t deserve it. And we’d all been having so much fun lately.

So never mind bad things and let’s take a quick look at entry hall ideas instead.

I could spend eternity attempting to transform our rather modest foyer into something as grandly delectable as this one, designed by Isabel Lopez Quesada. But good architecture is a lot like cheekbones: either you have it or you don’t. And those of us that don’t must resort to seedier means of coquetry, namely makeup.

In decorating terms we’re talking wallpaper and paint and fabulous objects, and if anyone knows anything about dressing up a space, it’s Tony Duquette’s ex partner Hutton Wilkinson.

Our entry definitely falls into the “needs more makeup STAT” category. In the interest of moving that along, you may recall that I’ve been painstakingly collecting enough wallpaper samples to paper every house in the neighborhood, but I think I’ve finally narrowed my choices down significantly. I’ve yet to photograph the samples in situ, but here’s a hint about one of them:

I called the nice folks at Twigs and they were kind enough to send me a sample in every colorway of their Pheasant wallpaper. It is bananas, people. INSANE. Maybe too insane. I don’t know.

We’ll talk about it next week. Until then, I hope you have a lovely weekend filled with donuts and down pillows… or whatever it is you’re lusting after. Being pregnant does weird things to you.

I probably shouldn’t complain about our cushy soft middle class life, but when one of your two (old and paid for) cars blows a head gasket and the other is taking in water fast enough to sink an Italian cruise ship, it hurts. Right now I am adding up couches and upholstery and wallpaper and getting very very very sad, because something has to give. Maybe food? Prenatal care? Preschool daycare?

Oh hell no. Anything but daycare.

In other news, I really like this color:

With this couch:

Our front room/study is painted almost that exact shade of peacocky teal (thank you, Sanders!), and Alexis is currently presiding over the room in all her 70s raggedy oatmeal tweed glory. You remember that bitch, right?

Yes — despite many reservations I kept her, and actually she fits perfectly into a tight space. So maybe if I eat wonderbread for a year I can afford to have Alexis recovered in some fabulous salmon velvet.

Say it with me: wonderbread grows healthy babies.

Things are going to be just fine.

[interior via Christian May's fabulous pinterest]

And now dear friends, I bring you the last post of the year. Don’t be sad — we’ll be back after all the booze has burned off, but I need a break (ok, I need a chance to get some projects done). Besides, you really won’t care what I have to write after you see this incredible house tour, brought to you by Graham & Co bloggers (and generally cool people) Jeff Madalena, owner of fashion label/boutique Oak, and Jason Gnewikow, creative director at NY Design Studio Athletics. Jeff happened to leave a comment on my terrifying fireplace post, suggesting I take a page from his book and go clean and minimal a la his house. I think I cried a little after I followed the flickr link to his gallery, both because I was a smidge insanely jealous, but also because my faith in humanity has been restored. It is possible to finish things! Your house can look amazing!

MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN!

Just check out that before and after! My fireplace is weeping tears of joy at the possibilities.

So without further ado, I bring you a Chriswanzmukkuh gift for the ages. From tiling to flooring, a ton of this was DIY. You (and more importantly I) can make things pretty, too. Let’s do this!

Location: The Catskills, NY

Size: 2100 sq ft.

J&J: We found the home more or less by accident in early 2008 while visiting friends for a weekend in the Catskills. It had not been inhabited for quite some time and had been on the market for about 18 months. The house itself was not much to look at and was in need of a full gut renovation, but what really drew us to it was the sweeping views of the mountains. The renovation was done in three stages. We started by reconfiguring what was a kitchen, bathroom and sunporch into two bedrooms and a new bathroom. The second stage was incorporating the kitchen into the great-room to create an open concept kitchen/dining/living room. In the great room we raised the ceiling and clad them in pickled-pine wood planks. We also boxed in the original brick fireplace and had it refaced with concrete. The third stage was converting the old garage into a master bedroom with full a bath. We brought in reclaimed, unfinished barnwood floors and replaced the garage door with a floor to ceiling picture window and additional door to the patio outside.

The great room is definitely where we spend the most time. Lighting is a cluster of classic Nelson pendants, the sofa is the Long Life by Ihreborn from Scandinavian Grace. The big picture window in the background we designed to echo the shape of the adjacent hallway.

The refaced concrete fireplace.

This is our Philodendron who is easy like Sunday morning. He doesn’t need a whole lot of attention, just a front row seat at the window and a bit of water here and there. In the background is an odd chair we found at a garage sale that is sort of a mid century style love seat. We stripped it, pickled it and reupholstered the cushions in a geometric black and white Anni Albers print.

This old chair has been dragged from apartment to apartment and here’s the truth kids, she’s from Macy’s….yep,we said it..Macy’s. We’re not hating, she’s cute.

The kitchen is positioned at one end of the great room. We do a lot of entertaining in the Summer so this makes it easy for everyone to be in the same place and also provides easy access to the outdoors where we eat a lot. We used simple Ikea cabinets.

Between the two of us and adobe illustrator, we were able to visualize most everything for our contractors. We didn’t actually do anything too crazy — really just moving walls here and there, so we spent a good bit of time figuring out what would work for us and then did very detailed (to scale) aerial drawings of the floor plans.

The table here is a 10 foot long farm table. We found the top at a barn sale and constructed the base out of reclaimed 4×4′s. A host of bits and bobs live in frequent rotation at the end of the table.

This was our main bedroom before completing work on the downstairs master. The bedrooms are all pretty modest in size. We embrace the low to high — simple white bed linens and pillows from Ikea, throw pillows are Belgian linen Libeco from High Falls Mercantile, the wall hanging is actually a hammock we bought in Tulum, Mexico, and the print next to the bed is a Cy Twombly we bought in Paris.

The closet door in the second bedroom actually took us forever to find since we had to source the door after we had the framing done; we finally found it at a barn sale in Stone Ridge, NY. Light fixture is an industrial table lamp we found at the Brooklyn Flea Market. Bed linens and pillows again with the Ikea, the throws are the same Libeco Belgian linen from HFC. The print is a Joseph Albers from the 1972 Munich Olympics.

This is the hall that connects the upstairs bedrooms and bath to the great room. We installed and finished a lot of the flooring and then stained the upstairs floors black using india ink for a true black. It’s actually pretty simple — india ink is super black, relatively cheap and surprisingly only needs to go on very thin. The only wrinkle we ran into was that we first tried to finish it with pure tung oil which didn’t really work so we ended up using waterlox to finish it because we wanted a really matte finish. That stuff was kind of nasty odor wise. I think we’re going to use osmocoat next time, which is supposed to be pretty odorless.  Windows in the hall and one wall of the living room were rehabbed factory windows.

The upstairs bathroom is a bit tricky to photograph. On the opposite side of the vanity wall is a open shower. The pillar wall shares all the plumbing for both the sink and shower. Sink basin is Duravit, fixture is an industrial wall mount from Chicago Faucets and the cabinet is from Robern.

We had to build up these downstairs floors as they had previously been a garage. We used reclaimed barnwood for the floors throughout. We did a lot of heavy black and white down here. The doors are some old store doors we found somewhere and painted black, of course. The photos in the background are by NYC artist Ellen Frances and were made for an Oak Gallery event.

The master bathroom houses a black bottomed clawfoot tub. A lot of the fixtures in this room were sourced from really random places. The tub fill is a brass spigot originally used for a laundry basin found on ebay. Subway tile on the walls and Carrara mosaic tile for the floors.

The master we converted from the garage is a pretty straight-forward minimal bedroom. We replaced what was originally a garage door with a floor to ceiling picture window. The throw is a charcoal grey, wool army blanket. Linens are Ikea.

This was our first renovation so the biggest challenge was bringing what we saw in our heads into reality, and communicating with contractors to bring that vision to life. The details are always the tricky things — seeing how a window finishes against a wall or where moldings come together are the things you never really think about until you have to make a decision. The other big challenge is also the fun part — sourcing and buying all the fixtures and furnishings. The style of the house is a mix of Scandinavian modern with touches of vintage industrial pieces, like steel factory windows sourced from a local architectural salvage yard. We are fortunate to have a handful of really talented NYC ex-pats that have established great interiors shops here in the Catskills, like Scandinavian Grace and High Falls Mercantile, so that makes shopping locally a bit easier. Renovating the house was a labor of love and and a real learning experience. Now that we’re just about to embark on a new project in Brooklyn we’re glad to have somewhere escape to on the weekends.

Thanks so much to Jeff and Jason for allowing us to scrutinize their beautiful home via the wonder of the internet! Rest assured I will be stalking this post during the holidays to read all your comments. I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I did.

Happy Everything, homies! See you in 2012!

Sorry about all the drama with that login crap on our site… happy to report that is has been fixed up and we are planning to use condoms from now on. Seriously, what is up internet? How come you keep infecting us with your dumb herpes? Turns out the code in one of the pictures we used was pointing to another site. So rude.

Anyway, I’m still staring at the fireplace and running through various permutations to determine the most excellent outcome. I had almost decided to tear half of that monstrosity down when Karly rekindled an idea first sparked by this picture:

This is commenter MB From Dallas’ gorgeous home (featured in entirety at Head Over Heels — check out the landscaping!!!). I keep thinking about how that fireplace extends all the way to the ceiling and wishing hoping wondering if I could possibly do that too.

A reminder of the horrifying vision that greets us every day. The ceiling actually keeps going for several more feet up there, so extending the fireplace would be quite a job.

Love the ziggurat of white brick, but I think we’d be better off just continuing the fireplace up in a straight line.

So what do you peeps think? Tear half of the fireplace down? Build it all the way up?

Shake me to my senses and say, “just paint the damn thing already!”?