The first week (and a living area before and after)

Ahh, it is so good to finally be moved in! We are all unpacked, nearly every box gone, and this house is now our home.

There's Willow, surveying her new kingdom. The porch is my favorite place to be, and I waste way too much time there.

The living room project was completed with maybe a day to spare. I think it turned out to be a little more of a challenge than the designer or her contractor had anticipated. But it got done, and now those shelves are full of our mementos. We are very pleased with how it turned out. Here are a few pictures of before:

We had a few issues with this space, which almost made us walk away from this house a couple times. At one point I said to Tim that we needed to just keep looking and quit trying to force a round peg into a square hole. We had looked a few times and kept finding the same problems. Tim was very drawn to it, and there were a lot of things about it we both liked, but I really just wanted to find THE house. The one that doesn't make us scratch our heads and go maybe if this was this way, or that was that way, and so on.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the layout of this living room presented a real conundrum for us. This was where we would be sitting down for Netflix and footrubs every night, but we could only set up the furniture so far back without running into that bar. We needed to leave adequate space to walk through between the couch and the bar. You can see the outline of the previous owners' 8 x 10 rug in the bottom photo (Brazilian cherry turns darker where the sun hits it). We set up a folding chair just inside that line and realized we'd be staring straight up at the TV over the mantel. That's been a pet peeve of ours for years, and something we were determined to avoid in a house of our own. 

Then there was that big hearth jutting out about a foot into an area already hurting for space. Above that we had those weird built-ins with the empty spaces at the top. Finally, the inadequate lighting and dark color both on the walls and ceiling, made for a very cavernous and gloomy living area.

One possibility we discussed was lowering the fireplace and making it flush with the wall. Even still, a mantel would be about "mantel-high," and we'd still be staring up at the TV, though not as far up. Another thing we considered was putting the TV in the built-ins somewhere, but it looks awkward and lopsided to me. We like fireplaces, and we really would have liked to make one work here. But let's be real, we're not staring at a fire at the end of the day (though it would have been nice to have the option!). So when the designer suggested just taking out the fireplace entirely, we had to agree with that. I love how it turned out. It's not quite finished -- the cabinets need hardware and the counter is getting stained, but I'm already so happy with it.

We had planned to mount the TV in the middle of that space, but Tim decided he didn't want to do that. Instead, he's ordered a stand that will make it a little higher.

We put our heads together with the designer and came up with a plan that included new paint, new lighting, and custom built-ins. We had talked about doing something with the floors, but decided to hold off on that. I'm glad we did because with the new paint color, I really like the floors. The color is Benjamin Moore Pale Oak. The ceilings were all painted white.

We had a bit of a hiccup when it came to the lighting. After the electrician came the first time and put in new LED lights, we turned them on that first evening and it was kind of like womp-womp. Tim and I knew we didn't like the new lights, but we weren't sure what it was about them that bothered us. At first we thought it was just the temperature -- 4000 kelvins. (I now know way more about lightbulbs than I ever thought possible. We found this article to be very helpful.) Was it too cold for a living room? we wondered. I texted my mom and siblings frantically, asking all of them what kind of kelvins they had in their houses. Would it look better when all of our stuff was in there? We were seriously confused. That first night we became convinced the kelvins were the whole problem. My mom told me her kitchen had 3000k lightbulbs, and I had admired the light in her kitchen.

2700 kelvins on the left, 4000 on the right.

The next day, after much research, Tim concluded that while the kelvins might be a problem, the lumens were a bigger problem. The room was still too dark and shadowy, and if the room isn't bright enough, it doesn't matter what temperature the light is. We spent hours swapping out and comparing light bulbs in the kitchen, and analyzing. At some point I got very stressed out and kind of flew off the handle at Tim. About light bulbs. 🤦 It's embarrassing to admit how the decision fatigue affected me. Those vaulted ceilings in the living room are high, and those LED bulbs are expensive and meant to last a lifetime, so there was a lot of pressure to get this right. I composed myself, apologized, and then he told me, "Don't worry, I've got this. I will make a decision about the lighting that we will both like." I said, "OK," and never worried about it again.

He ended up meeting with the electrician at the house and requesting four new bulbs, each with 3000 kelvins and 1200 lumens. It was a guess on his part since neither the designer nor the electrician were able to tell him how many lumens the first set of light bulbs had. This article helped him with his calculations. Whatever the case, we are happy with the end result. The electrician put in the new lights yesterday, and when I flipped the switch I said, "THIS is more like it." We're not even sure the bulbs are 1200 lumens. Tim saw a box that said 800 (but 3000 kelvins!). They're definitely brighter than what was there before, the space is now beautifully lit even at night, and that is worth the pains taken.

I share all of this here, because there was precious little to be found on the subject in blogs and social media, even all of those home improvement and design ones. I know I'm little, but maybe I can help one person.

I'll leave you with a few more photos of our first week here. I know this is the honeymoon still, but I am so happy we moved here. There is this huge group of boys here ranging in age from about 7 to 13, and they are literally an answer to prayer. You can see them outside almost any time of day, living an '80s childhood, running in and out of our backyard and others, playing hide-and-seek, baseball, and shooting one another with airsoft guns. Timmy comes in sweaty for a drink of water, and goes right back out again to play with them. We could barely get him out the door in our last neighborhood because he never had anyone to play with. 

Willow is doing very well with her invisible fence training. We were all skeptical, but she immediately got the hang of it. Today we tempted her at the flag line with family members and bacon at different times. She passed with flying colors and was rewarded with bacon and belly scratches.

And, of course, Tim has been enlisting the help of kids with this thing called yard work. I have not contributed much myself -- yet -- but I did pull a few weeds and I planted a hydrangea in the front of the house. It's a start.

Tim retires from the Marine Corps in a week, and then he has the whole summer off to spend with Delaney. She can't wait.😜