Since I was so focused on finishing my masters’ degree the last few years, a few projects around the house were postponed until now. A big one that we’ve been talking about for a while is a radical overhaul of the “conversation pit,” or small area behind the half wall in the kitchen. It was too small to really contain the furniture that was there, and it was kinda removed from the kitchen, so that people sitting there weren’t really able to talk to the cook much. So we moved the furniture out and hired Matt, the carpenter who did an awesome job on the basement, to build a counter.
Also, though those chairs are present in the pic above, they have since been removed completely, to the upstairs area by the stairs.
The living room has also been caught up in the home-improvement frenzy. As Colette in particular may remember, I’ve long had a love / hate relationship with our couches. I bought them for $75 (for the two) from the Salvation Army store on Milwaukee (now gone) in 1995. We tried getting rid of them when we moved to Ireland, but our tenants kept them in the house, and they were here when we returned. I recently started researching replacing them and have decided that actually they fit our requirements pretty well, but that we just had a bunch of other weird stuff going on in the living room. So we’ve moved some things around and it’s still a work in progress, but here’s the latest configuration.
Oops! Christmas decorations in the foreground, must put those away! Oh, and those green chairs in the living room (provenance: garage sale) were just brought to the Salvation Army yesterday.
Interesting changes! Yes I do remember a bit of a rant about the yellow couches but its hard to imagine visiting without them there!
I like what you’re doing with the conversation pitt… You’ll remember we have a similar high stool set up in our kitchen and it works well.
Enjoy all the time you now have I focus on house stuff!
I really like the counter and bar stool concept in the area formerly known as the conversation pit! Looks really nice 🙂
Also, the new banner on your blog looks nice–your reflections in The Bean, I assume.
Thanks! We are loving the new counter, and looking forward to having our new chairs delivered. Yep, new banner for a new year 🙂 that’s us reflected in the bean, indeed!
Counter and bar stool set up is a great idea-easy on cook for food serving too.