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Thanks Judy!

The rest of the house is ... well... words like "disaster" "frat house" "pig pen" "college student" all come to mind.  Lots of boxes and stuff on the floor.  My priorities will be to get the living room entrance area and the family room done next, I think.  Right now the living room is basically the "piano" room because that's about the only thing in the room that will be permanently there.  I'm using it as a dumping area for empty boxes and misc items as they're being moved about.  Since the livng room is not very large, I'm going to have to buy some 'small' furniture for it.  But very soon there will be a Christmas tree in front of the picture window to improve the view.  I'm looking at possibly some "barrel" chairs or maybe a small love seat (possibly a convert-a-bed).  The piano is black-brown, and that's a very "hot" color right now for contemporary furniture.  A lot of black and gray furniture has black/brown wooden legs, for instance.

The entranceway is an embarrassment, but it suits my purposes for now.  The two floor rugs are great, but the furniture is just temporary.  I would like to have a nice decorative table to toss stuff onto when I first come in - perhaps in mission-style black-brown wood or black and glass wtih a sculptured pedestal base.  Trying to figure out how to go from that antique piano to a really modern style is my special challenge for this entire area.  It would be nice to find something Deco or Atomic Age to make the room transitional.  And a good ceiling fan would really help.  If anyone has photos of interesting items to suggest, please post them!

A lot has been happening since the last update.  My new refrigerator, after taking so long to order, broke and had to be replaced!  The painters came last week to do accent walls, and started to furnishing some of the bare areas downstairs.  Library shelving comes next! 

To show how far things have come, I have "before" and "after" photos of the updated areas.

Starting on the first floor living room and entranceway areas, I bought some new furniture.  The couch, ottoman and chair are leather, and the wood is black/brown (to match the piano).  I hadn't planned to start on the living room, but I found the right stuff right away.  And so it's coming together.  I have a few "final" things on the display shelves, and the rest is junk I put there to just hold a place until the right stuff comes along. 


The stairs are also "snot finished".  The dark wall will be a photo gallery of B&W images that will all be framed in black with white mats.





Above, main entranceway, before and after - it's "done" unless I find something attractive to replace the phone books on the table.

Below are views of the stairs, which I wanted painted more than anything else.  I hated the all-white bannister!  In the last shots you can see the accent wall in the Great Room at the back.

Downstairs powder room. 




above, before I moved in.

Below, after decorating but pre-painting.  It's better, but I think the window still needs something...a valance maybe?

Most of the loft area was painted - and you see the two tones of gray very well in here.  I think the dark gray on the stairs/pony wall looks like Battleship gray.  The lighter gray is Platinum - both have an eggshell sheen (several levels upgraded paint) and have a wonderful finish.

For comparison's sake, I wanted to have as many 'before' photos that showed full white paint with finished flooring. Unfortunately, I didn't get some of the same views to match the photos....but they do show what a great evolution happened at the house.  The first pic below is from the drywall "taping" stage and shows the 2nd bathroom and window seat (office) rooms.

Main part of the loft pictured above.  It's still a huge mess and nowhere near completion.  My goal is to have all of the bookshelves in and everything unpacked/organized by Christmas.

It's strange how the lighting plays tricks on your eyes - there appears to be little difference in the tones until you look at the base boards and wall sockets/light fixtures.  They really stand out against the gray but disappear on the original white.

Shelving planned: 

Behind the couch - 4 full sized bookshelves (or maybe 3 full and two half-widths, alternating--the half-width shelves are great for magazines). 

Front of the couch - see the white papers on the floor?  The wide area indicates where the Bella contemporary electric fireplace will be (in the middle of the wall) with a full sized shelf on either side followed by a half-width shelf on the extreme sides.  Since I need to get to the light switches, the one on the right side will also be half-height.  They're "Billy" shelves if you want to check them out on the IKEA site - my boss has them in his library, and he's never had any problem with shelves bowing over time.

Window - was going to have short shelving since it's 6' wide.  But when I measured the shelving, I discovered that IKEA half-height shelves are 5 inches too tall to place under the window....so I'm probably going to just add some extra and/or a narrow table there instead of additional shelves. 

For the rest of the room - the couch is a double recliner and will be moved down closer to the window so that it sits in front of the fireplace.  I'll add a nice contemporary table to replace the temporary brown one, and probably a chair on either side of the couch.  The fireplace will eventually have a flat screen TV on top of it, so this entire room will also be black and white like the Great Room and powder room downstairs.  All of the other rooms will have a strong B&W theme but will include at least one other color - like the living room - so that will differentiate between the areas but still keep the neutral base theme going.

For the pony wall - I am thinking about getting some narrow glass display shelves to place against the short wall - maybe display some vintage toys/games or some random stuff.  I'm torn because I like having the space but always planned to put short shelves there. Opinions?