Sad…Attachment 4241
too light. Entirely my fault. The workmanship is fine. Materials great.
In real life the floors are lighter than what appears in this photograph. Isn’t what I wanted, I wanted a darker floor
Printable View
Sad…Attachment 4241
too light. Entirely my fault. The workmanship is fine. Materials great.
In real life the floors are lighter than what appears in this photograph. Isn’t what I wanted, I wanted a darker floor
Is that angled floor section, where a wall was removed?
no,the angle piece of wood are ornamental. A pretty floor ruined by iris. Sigh.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff
You did not ruin it. In the immortal words of William Maxwell, my favorite Midwestern author, "Time will darken it."
Sorry you don't like it, IL, but I think it is very pretty!
Edited to add: If it doesn't grow on you, throw down some rugs you like!
Yeah, dH said it will start to darken in 3 to 4 years but by the time it gets its 80-year-old patina back I will be long dead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
The only thing that’s positive is that it is quality material that I hope will service this house well for many years, years beyond me.
Well, the patina is going to take 80 years no matter what color it is. I think it's a very rich color. If it were darker, maybe the beautiful grain wouldn't be as apparent. Does it impact your vision for the color palette of the room?
Yes in a major way. That’s why I’m reeling. I’m now considering buying pine furniture and I have never ever in my life considered pine furniture. I was going to do this house in English country style, and to me that means dark wood floors or at least medium colored floors.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
I’m having to rethink everything. I already have two walnut pieces of furniture that I love and I will not give up, so a little bit of dark furniture is going here no matter what.
it took me a week to calm down over these floors ( I know, First World problems!) and then I needed a guiding hand, so I read up a little bit on the Internet and got this wisdom:
Mixing wood tones in your house means that you should choose a dominant wood tone. If you have wood floors your job is already done. It doesn’t mean that everything has to be that same tone, it just means that you have to remember it and let it dominate.
So I will have furniture that is in the light wood colored range, 3/4 of it that way. I may have a medium colored piece or two, and then a couple of dark pieces.
In my first house that we laid pergo I picked a very light floor and after we installed it thought I made a huge mistake because my bedroom furniture and living room was dark oak and fairly new. It actually looked really good to have the contrast.
Yeah, I agree with Terry. I think different woods can contrast nicely, and from what I understand it depends on the undertones of the wood. So if you have a light color floor and a dark mahogany, they should both have the same undertones (i.e. warm v cool).
Scroll down in this article and they have a little cheat sheet
https://www.chrislovesjulia.com/how-...es-like-a-pro/
I have pine floors and I still have my greataunt's mahogany Governor Winthrop desk and I think it goes fine (although I was a little worried at first).
How was the floor finished?
Wondering if the clear coat could be removed (like they do with furniture that has been through a fire), with something like denatured alcohol, and then a darker stain applied?
Two coats of poly something.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff
Sure, it could be refinished. it would have to be sanded off and stained then re-polyed. It would cost a few thousand dollars and my marriage.
And yet another thing that is pretty awful in Hermann. I range from thinking it is just sad to thinking it is hideous.
Attachment 4253
I’m talking here about the big concrete block wall. We hired a landscaping company to get rid of the big little hill. Instead they made a hill that is even bigger. They actually brought in dirt!
I had envisioned some thing that was at two levels. Well this is not that. At least I have no responsibility for this design, this was entirely managed by DH. He’s not happy with it either but it is what it is. It’s very suburban. The whole back of our house looks very suburban now. Blech.
I’m trying to be philosophical about these last big projects on our Hermann house. I tell DH that you can’t do a project of the size and not have a thing or two go bad. We’ve been super happy with our contractor throughout the entire thing. He is 98% done now, he just has to come back to hang doors and install smoke detectors. We are happy with all of his subcontractors. DH himself found our neighbor to lay the floor who did a great job, and the neighbor’s buddy did the finishing job, a good one despite my poor choice of “no stain.”
All the big construction is done now and DH will do the finish work. He’s installing interior window framing right now. Then he will move onto window and door woodwork and baseboards. Fortunately we have already wrangled about what the woodwork will look like, and it was surprisingly devoid of marital disharmony. (!) We are pretty much replicating what was in the house in 1941. And it is very very simple.
He will have to take a couple weeks out to install kitchen cabinets which is coming up very soon. The kitchen cabinets were delivered last week but they’re sitting in our garage in boxes because DH wanted to get a coat of primer on the kitchen walls before anything went up in the kitchen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
Sanding is a big job. Ask the installer about things like a tinted poly, or chemical removal.
Tinted poly, now that would be a Possible solution, especially since we have not started moving furniture in. It’s just that we waited three weeks since the top coat was put on just to make sure that it was fully cured. I am going to talk to DH about that tonight though to see what he thinks. In every room but the kitchen, it really would not be a big deal to wait another month to start moving in furniture.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff
Thanks for the idea.
That is a super idea--tinted poly for a third coat.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
With the wall, why not plant fruit trees in front of it, to give the impression of a walled garden?
It would be a fun place to put espaliered fruit or grape vines, something viney attached to it. I had not thought about that. I just assumed that we would be putting up arborvitae and junipers at its base to —not camouflage exactly— but to soften it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
Yours is an interesting idea.
Arborvitae or junipers??? Aughhhh!
Maybe a few turrets or some graffiti would be more interesting.
I like the idea of espaliered fruit trees.
I actually am fond of arborvita, but Junipers become ungainly pretty fast unless you buy one of the Dwarf kinds. But see the problem with espaliered trees that somebody has to take care of them, and we have to wait many years for them to get to a point where they would actually be interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
It doesn't get much more suburban than arborvitae and juniper. Just saying.
What else did you envision? If not suburban, what were you hoping for?Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
Oh, I didn’t think the cheap-ass cement landscaping blocks would make such a massive wall. I expected it to be shorter, and tapered.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
DH asked if we should use limestone, but that would have been a ridiculous amount of money. This is supposed to be a fairly modest house.
My MIL had a "roundel" (pronounced "roondel" in her Scottish accent) in her back yard. It also was a cement wall--a half-round section of the back yard that was about 3 feet higher than the regular back yard. There was a small tree in the center, and she bordered the circumference with flowers. It was really pretty, even if it was suburbanish.
How about trailing vines? It might make the yard look a little more Tuscan than suburban.
Attachment 4254
that is pretty. A trailing plant on top, hanging down, would break up the massive-ness.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
We had a short cement wall around the patio. We went to Home Depot and bought brick that was made to be cemented on and it came in sections. It looked really nice.
Here are some kitchen cabinets set up in their proper place. You can see they are a light green. This is a U-shaped kitchen, and comes out a little bigger than I thought.
I am getting used to the floors. I keep telling myself the material is lovely and the workmanship excellent. Those are the things that really matter.
Attachment 4273
I seriously mulled over changing the finish of the floor, but decided with our time constraints we’re just gonna leave it the way it is. There’s probably a solution that would make it a little bit darker without major change, but I just want to be done with it. Thank you for the suggestion though.Quote:
Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff
Here is an example of why I sometimes wonder where DH stores his brain. I want to iterate that he is totally brilliant in fixing and building stuff. But his design aesthetic is —problematic.
This Hermann house is charming to me because it is on Stone Hill Highway, it Is a few houses down from the Victorian winery called Stone Hill winery. Lime stone is a feature of Hermann. My house has a charming setting where you walk down three steps into a stone covered area with stone half-walls.
Get the idea here? Stone is the theme.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 500 times in DH’s hearing: I love the front view of this house. It’s charming and cottagey and I don’t want mess with it. I don’t want it modernized or made slick.
So yesterday we both went to Hermann for the day to make decisions about finishes.
DH outlined his plans for the front of this house. He’s going to pull up all the stone and make red brick patios and red brick walkways. Yes red brick.
So, yeah. Not happening. Hard no.
As an amusing aside, our Hermann house needs a final inspection from the building department.
Guess who will be doing the final inspection? The man who did the work on this house. Haha. Our contractor’s employee left his employment to go to work for the city of Hermann as building inspector.
This is small town business at its finest.
Haha! IL, I hear you. DH is the same. I usually lead the horse halfway to water and then he sees a salt lick and runs pell-mell towards it, thinking it's water.
Just this morning I had that happen to me. The center section of our house is quite dark, and lacks cohesion. I have been trying to pull it all together. There is one bright yellow wall in this center section that the natural light from the "front room" can barely get to, so I want to keep that as bright and cheery as as possible. In this carved up small space on that same yellow wall there are the two bedroom doors. Cheap doors--cheapest contractor grade you can get. I'm not planning on replacing them yet, but I am going to paint them and buy nice vintage knobs. Now if that yellow wall were something closer to a neutral, I would paint the whole kit and caboodle--walls, doors, moldings the same color to minimize all the visual clutter.
But it's yellow. Yellow is a little different. So I will probably go with a soft, warm grey or a bright white for the doors. But I was still contemplating the idea of yellow--repainting the walls a more mellow yellow-- and painting the doors that same color--so I asked DH, "So, you do you think we should paint the doors the same color as the walls?" He apparently didn't hear the last part, because he said. "Yes. I think we should paint the doors periwinkle blue."
No. The blue and the yellow would compete horribly and break up that space visually even MORE. Plus a cool blue would make the room even darker and cooler. So I said, "No, definitely NOT blue." And then he said, "See. That's what you always do. You ask my opinion and then you shoot it down." He hadn't realized that he didn't really listen to what I was asking.
((sigh)).
Yep Catherine that’s how it works. It is a wonder we get anything done with our spouses.
I have Art that needs hung at our condo and I am not looking forward to those interactions.
Catherine, if I were you, I'd go with a creamy white on the walls and a periwinkle door. I love periwinkle doors, however, so ymmv.
IL, the green cabinets are terrific!
hmmmmm, periwinkle door. File that away for later consideration. Me likeee periwinkle muchly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
me too--like this blue and white combo, although I know it is fancier than Catherine's doors. speaking of which, why not sub in antique doors painted? We did that in one house and what an improvement over those hollow core doors:Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/...h-5ea0e2f7.jpg
Wow, that front door is beautiful! We do have buying vintage doors at our local Habitat for Humanity store eventually, but we have other projects we want to get to first.
As for the color--keep in mind that on the adjacent wall I'm wallpapering with this: https://www.birchlane.com/wall-decor...-tcbj3934.html
So it has to go with it--and the little bit of blue on the leaves is more on the grey side, so I think periwinkle is out of the question. But thanks for the suggestion.. it is really pretty.
Cute yellow marigold wallpaper with white background should add a very cheerful atmosphere. Soft white doors should pull it all together.
That's my thinking, too. Yes, I gravitated toward that large, cheery print wallpaper after living here this winter with some dreary days and two weeks of sub-zero temperatures. I thought I would decorate with the winter in mind--to cheer myself up during those long months. I really love that wallpaper, and I also like the decorating style in the inset on that link. It's the look I'm going for here.Quote:
Originally Posted by razz
That's lovely wallpaper Catherine. I decided to paint my hallways a pale yellow for similar reasons: the existing beige with a peachy undertone just looks dreary on cloudy days. This yellow is just so pretty. Looks good when its sunny and when its raining.
That wallpaper is absolutely adorable! It’s whimsical and modern.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
I just pinned the pink version for consideration for my attic bedroom in Herman. I keep visualizing it with at least some wallpaper, if not all walls wallpapered. Thanks!