Big Green in Big Pink

The long awaited couch is here! Thank you Rosemary! First some befores just to remind myself how far we've come!!!

The couch arrived last night and it's been test driven already to 3 episodes of Damages, season 1. Our only complaint is that it's too comfy. It's hard to get up once you're in it. 

It's a Rowe couch with a custom made slip cover. Rosemary picked up all the fabric samples in Boston and we decided on this one. And now a big green velour monster has taken hold of our living room. Coze factor is in the red zone.

And cause we are so excited about it and it's such a perfect fit for the room and for us all we want now is a good rug, drapes, big crazy art for the walls, lamps, plants, aquariums, stuffed fish for over the fireplace (we would settle for a susaphone or a wagonwheel if anybody's got one)....!!! And the perfect accessory for any comfy piece of furniture. A cat. Named Todd.

Here's the start of the white bathroom. Go away pink -you are not wanted here.

We love Clintondale and feel so lucky to have found this place. Now we want more people to find it! We looked at both these houses before we found Big Pink and they are still for sale, you young house hunters you...

I call this one Cute Guy. It's about 100 years old and completely finished inside. It has a cool barn, about an acre of land and a great view of the mountains. It was a little too small for us and we also wanted a little bit of a fixer upper.

This is the crazy house across the street from us. The one with the domed ceiling in the dining room and the LED water fall art on the wall. She's a gutter for sure but a gutter in foreclosure and someone could make it a terrific house. It has about 4 acres of land and giant barn.

This is the back of the crazy house and the red barn that belongs to the house.

And this of course is the Gunk Haus and this is the first of many reminders - they open for business March 21st and it's gonna be great! Hope to see you there!

And finally an herbal update. It's still illegal in the United States of America. Oh - right my window sill herbs...

My thumb may be green but it's a little confused. I thought I planted 4 different kinds of herbs but 2 came up as Parsley and one as Cilantro. And one not at all. But parsley is good to keep around, grandma Anna Lisa thinks it cures just about everything.

Progress

The dining room is green from floor to ceiling. The right color and an amazing paint job by the significant other. He hates it but he's damn good at it. Here are some befores... Stinky floor and pukey yellow.

At he top you can see MORE wall paper, no house has ever had this much wall paper. This little nook is especially charming with its random baskets, teacups and country crap. The only thing missing is a goose in a bonnet.

The living room before... Bad wood paneling, 3 layers of wall paper, cheesy fireplace...

The 3rd layer revealed these houses. I liked them for about 5 minutes and then continued my mission. James saw something in my eyes that weekend that scared him. He thought he was going to find me in the neighbor's house in the middle of the night peeling their wallpaper. It's highly addictive. Oh man sometimes you get those looooong strips off....

This is from the weekend when we tackled the bathroom ceiling. Satisfaction.

Scraper in hand, wall paper lovers - beware

And now:

The couch corner.

Rosemary is working on a couch for us. She has gathered samples and more samples trying to find the PERFECT GREEN. The riddle goes: What's green at night and turns brown in the morning? The answer is every single swatch we've picked out. It looks perfect under the tungstens but in the daylight it turns into some hideous swamp shade that wouldn't even befit a 70's den.

This weekend we got down to these 4. Rosemary put us on the right path thinking of a lighter couch. We were always seeing a dark green monster that just eats you up. Buuuut... thinking further and visualizing the bright white living room and the adjoining dark green dining room... we settled on

this one.

Totally casual and comfortable but in a kind of medium, grown up shade.

Thank you for all your help Rosemary and we can't wait to watch movies with you in our new living room!!!

I don't feel like I feature our lovely temporary bedroom enough. It's such a beautiful room with it's wood beams and bay window. How I've kept my fingers away from peeling the wall paper off is a mystery. I guess there just has to be a safe zone somewhere and this is it for now.

The big question is what will happen to this room when we move upstairs. Den? Office? Screening room? Hat storage? Monkey farm? Something that rhymes with "ursery"?

Scott, our contractor is about to start on our windows and that is a huge deal. We might fall behind on all other progress so this blog may very well turn to movie reviews instead. And pictures of trees...