Study/Music Room/Yoga Studio

With the house originally having four bedrooms and turning on of those into a dressing room, we still had three rooms to work with. After deeming the master and guest bedrooms, we decided to make the third room into a study...which then also became a music room...and eventually my yoga studio as well - ha!

The face-lift of this room included moving the door frame to the other end of the wall to make the hallway a straight shot and to accommodate the bar we built. We also carved out the extra area above the closet and sheet-rocked it in and installed little doors (the original "doors" you see were dummy-doors and were sealed shut). Then we also painted and decided to do an accent color which is the burnt, red brick tone you'll see. OH, and we had to patch a big spot in the floor & try to match the wood, but luckily we found some old Heart Pine and then we had the whole floor sanded and finished (this room's floors were the worst of the original-wood bunch).

Before:

During:

After/Now:

The Beauty of Two Bathrooms

The beauty of two bathrooms is that you can keep one immaculately clean for guests and then not have to clean the master bath, that you use everyday, before you have company over. This leads to less stress in ones life and I highly recommend at least having one and a half baths.

When I realized I was going to have my own guest bath, besides being elated, I was eager to design it in a charming, soft manner that would be different from any other room in the house - it would be it's own little world. Both of the bathrooms in the house had preexisting claw-foot tubs that were made in 1914. So we had one refinished (traded the 2nd one for labor), got a new toilet, new marble tile floor, new paint & kept the preexisting pedestal sink with old-school brass fixtures. Check out the transformation:

Before:

(I know your shocked we didn't keep the wallpaper)

During:

After:

House Guests

My husband and I love to entertain and we LOVE to host house guests. Nothing is more fun than a weekend showing our out-of-town guests all the wonderful and local gems of New Orleans. It gives us an excuse to get out and do all the fun things the city has to offer that we might not normally do on a random weekend.

So, when I realized we were going to get this house, I was ecstatic that, not only were we going to have a guest bedroom for our friends, but a guest bath as well! This post focuses on the guest bedroom, which is very simple, and next week's post will cover the guest bath which was quite the face-lift.

We didn't need to do much to this room either - as has been the pattern with most of the rooms at the front of the house. We had some paint touch-ups (same grey-blue as the living room) and we put in a different ceiling fan (an old transplant from the living room actually).

Before:

After:

We need to get add wall decor, but so far the calm, serene room as seemed to suit guests just fine. We look forward to having more out-of-towners as we get closer to fall!

The First Impression

I've always been a person that is big on first impressions - I think that they are a make-it or break-it scenario and that is how I feel about Foyers/Living Rooms in homes - they really set the tone for the rest of the house.

Our front door & entry way when we walked in the first time as homeowners

Today I continue our renovation results - following the Master Bedroom we come to the Living Room/Foyer (as I mentioned previously, I am working my way from the back of the house to the front and back again).

The front room is super cool and really sets the tone for the house - it has a free-standing fire place as the walls on either side were removed when it was converted to a single from a double (prior to our ownership). We also decided to hang our flat-screen on the fireplace, and since this is not a working fire place, we ran the wires for the TV through the brick and clay and down the chimney to the DVR & DVD that rest on shelves that were made to fit beneath the fire place.

We didn't need to do too much to this room as far as the renovation went - just aesthetic changes. We touched up the paint (kept the grey-blue color), refinished the original wood floors, installed a new ceiling fan and added our AV touches to the fireplace.

Before:

Now:

First thing you see when you open the front door (we still need a piece for above the bar).
View from the other side of the Living Room & our master AV work.The Living Room
And yes, we will get matching curtains one day. PS- the charcoal grey ones are the permanent ones.