seeing the light

We've bought enough houses together now that Ryan knows I won't live with light fixtures I don't love for long.  This house's original 1981 living and dining room fixtures were the worst yet so of course the ones I chose to replace them took 8 weeks to arrive.  It is beyond ridiculous, but I still tear up at having left some of the fixtures at Josephine.  More than once I told Ryan I felt like I was leaving my children behind.   
Ryan traveled 5 and a half of the 7 weeks before Christmas so with both lights, I hurried to pick them up and make sure he could install them in the tiny windows he was home.
The entry came in first......

before 

(3 families have lived in this house and none of them considered changing this?)

 

 

and after

Visual Comfort Darlana mini pendant

Next up was the big kahuna.  Long story short, I almost didn't fit it in my car, but thanks to the help of a stranger, we got her home.

before-ugh!

And my girl........

 

 

 

 

Visual Comfort Darlana linear pendant

We are in love (and I don't mean Ryan and I with her, but she and I with each other.;)

I took advantage of some black Friday sales to order LOTS of drapes to try.  We settled on the white geometric in the last pic above and the one below (before steaming.)  The coolness of the white makes the gray paint look more gray rather than highlighting the blue undertones we're still fighting with all the yellow baseboards.  Nana and I are going to chalkpaint the dining room built-ins in the coming months and all that will be left for these two rooms is tall white baseboards.

I also finally chose some fabric for the dining chairs we've (Ryan) been re-habbing for more than 2 years.

You can see this one has the awkward fabric napkin cover that Ryan would never let me pin.  I could write a novel about the arguments we've had over these chairs.

While I love these chairs, if I had understood what was involved with restoring them, I would never have bought them.  Ryan and I agreed we could just replace/rebuild the seats on all of them while he slowly restored the wood and construction one chair at a time.  The holidays and our looming New Years Day open house were the perfect push to do the seats.  I sat down one morning to prepare them and discovered.....

The filthy mid-90's stripe had been hiding perfect 1950's/60's tweed all along!!

We will still be replacing the seats with the new fabric but this will suffice for a bit while we tend to more pressing matters.   It's fun to consider the many lives these chairs have had and the conversations had while sitting in them. 

While these rooms are coming together, we can hardly walk in the office.  I think we'll push for some unpacking over the holidays and then take a breather for a few weeks while we prioritize what's next in the making of our house into home.