the things they carried...to the truck

Remember when I said we're having a party this weekend? Like, as in a day from now? Yeah. This is what our downstairs (aka, the playroom, aka where we will probably have the most people hanging out) looked like yesterday:

a portrait of the downstairs, starring my favorite appliance

When we were going over our party to-do list, I stated my (what I thought was) ingenious idea of covering that mess up with a interlocking series of antique doors that we have currently lying around. It would be artsy! It could totally hide all of that! But no, RJ dreams far larger than I do. He wants it gone. Ultimately, I think it will be a hybrid of these two ideas (only without the doors, so maybe not a true hybrid...) Basically, he wants all or most of that gone. And I do too! I just try to work in a more reality-based world.


Wanna know what it looked like a couple months after we bought it? Well, it looked like this:

yay for broken chairs and indiscernible antique farm equipment!

See, the former owner had been moonlighting as an antique dealer and this was his ad hoc antique shop.(Which again, in my mind, begs this question: where did the employees go to the bathroom??) So we were left with whatever the closeout liquidation sale couldn't get rid of, he couldn't move, or was simply garbage. Yay! Three of our favorite things. 

So while it may appear that all we have done in the 11 months of owning this place was fill the downstairs with crap, there's a an important differences, small steps toward progress that you can find if you look hard enough:

The front windows have been replaced with french doors (as portrayed by the blinding white portions of the top picture). This was/is a big deal because while we want to highlight the awesome view of the water from that vantage point, we also didn't want to really historically alter the character of the building. And what 19th century home do you know that has fancy french doors? But the views! So we compromised the historical accuracy a bit....sorry Grange.

Another thing about the doors: they currently lead to a 6 foot-ish drop-off. Oops, you say, you forgot the stairs! Well yes and no. We want to eventually put a big wrap around porch on the front and sides, and the doors will provide wonderful access points to said porches. Until then, we are using them as super fancy, vertically opening windows.

Contrary to what the "before" picture implies, we brought the bar and the church pew in. Those are RJ's babies. We went to yard sale and he could not leave without that pew. So, now we have it.

Either way, we're going to absolutely attack this as soon as we get home today, and hopefully the mess will at least look a bit more organized. I'll keep you updated!