Sheltering at Home, Monday, March 23, 2020
OK. If our contractors are going to be smart about the COVID-19 virus. If they’re going to stay home and practice conscientious social distancing. If, while they’re at it, they are going abandon our remodel project half way through. Then Jon and I are going to reclaim our turf. We’re taking back our dining room. We’re taking back our living room. We’re taking back the pretty views from what used to be our breakfast nook.
Ready or not, we’re moving in.
We are getting out of our overcrowded den, where, since Nov. 1, we’ve been holed up — eating, reading, watching TV, emailing, storing dislocated furniture, and overseeing a disruptive home remodel.
We’re moving the old kitchen table out of the den and into the construction
zone, into what used to be our breakfast nook and — now that the wall between kitchen and dining room is gone — our new dining room as well.
We’re stuck at home here, practicing self-isolation. And, by golly, we are going to make the most of it.
New Mantel, New Paint Job
We’re going to take in the pretty new paint job in the living and dining rooms (Benjamin Moore’s Mayonnaise [double formula], with BM Sage Brush on the fireplace wall). We’ll admire our gorgeous new custom-milled walnut mantel, designed by Blake Gilmore.) Also the numerous ceiling can lights sweetly lighting up the place — as planned by our designer Jill Loman.
We will ignore the yet-to-be-installed windows leaning against the dining room wall. We’ll pretend there’s no lumber in the living room. We’ll leave in place the saw horse, the compressor (too heavy to move) and that dusty old blanket.
We’ll set the table, sit down to dinner. And count the days until, once again, the carpenters’ hammers rouse us from sleep at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning.
To see “before” pictures of our kitchen-dining room wall removal, go to “Too Many Walls and Not Enough Bathrooms.” More redecorating thoughts at “Over-Wrought Iron — Those Curlicues Had to Go.”
