Our house, the first floor

Our house, the first floor

Hi guys! Hope you had a great weekend. We took it really easy, didn’t do much, and didn’t even really work on ANY projects, which is so unlike us, but kind of nice for a change. We have four projects that we’re in the middle of, and of course a list a mile long of things yet to start, but sometimes it’s good to spend a weekend at home doing absolutely nothing.

Today we thought it may be helpful to show you a layout of our house so you have a little more context for how all the rooms fit together. I drew up this little diagram that’s mostly to scale, ish. For size reference if it helps, the kitchen is 12.5’x 12.5′, the rumpus is 16’x12′, and the dining room is about 15’x12.5′. That squiggly thing in the dining room is the fireplace (it’s coal burning and still works!).

Our house was built in 1890, so it’s pretty much the opposite of an open floor plan! It’s a lot of small rooms with a million doorways from room to room, which would have helped to keep the house warm back before central heating because you can simply close off the rooms that you don’t need and only heat the ones you do. There are huge 8-feet-tall and 5-feet-wide pocket doors separating the dining room and living room and the dining room and entryway, and we keep those open 99.9% of the time. Most of the rest of the actual doors have been removed so we have open doorways, which I guess is as close to open concept as you get around here! Because of all these doorways, you can see into almost all of the rooms from anywhere. From the couch in the rumpus room you can see into the hallway and bathroom, the living room, the dining room AND the entryway.

I color coded each room to give you an idea of how the colors fit together (the living room is white). Does anyone really say “vestibule”? That’s what that room is called technically, I think, but we just say like “the little entry room thingy” or something. That room and the entryway are next to get painted because we’re really not feeling the yellow anymore or, obviously, not that boring beigey tan, but, ugh, we can’t decide on a color. We were originally thinking maybe grey just to keep things nice and calm and neutral, but the paint sample we put up looks awful in there. Maybe a brighter blue or teal since it’s a pass-through room and not a place we sit and hang out… Maybe like this or like this? I like that first one a lot. What do you think?

I hope this helps you get a better grasp on how our rooms all fit together! What did you guys do this weekend?

— Kerry