The Fireplace Room - We Have to Find a Better Name for It

Sometimes, when I'm explaining to Eric what I envision our house will look like, his eyes glaze over and his gaze wanders.....Whether it's because he's completely uninterested or whether he has no idea what I'm talking about, I don't know, but I do think it's important that he has a say in what we put in our living space. I want it to reflect us both - and I want him to enjoy and feel comfortable in our home.

I've been describing the the fireplace room for a while, but sometimes, I think showing is the easiest way get us both on the same page. I sent him this today at work; hopefully it will help him follow what I'm thinking. Obviously, he's never going to be excited about this stuff as I am (I've become obsessed with home decor), but I do appreciate when he attempts to understand my madness.

Ah, Chairs :)

I had to post another picture of our new chairs :) I am just that excited about them.

Never mind that the rest of our living room is crammed full of furniture left in random locations. These, these belong here, by the window. And look how nicely they match my blanket!

EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Eric let me buy furniture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are now the proud owners of TWO of these chairs!!!!!!!!!!! AH! SO GREAT!!!!!! And we got them at Costco if you can believe that!!!!! I really like the style and the color is absolutely great - they're actually really similar to what I was saving up for at a fraction of the price. OH YEAHHHHHHHH. I think I'll keep them. We also picked up an end table the other day  -

An end table which in reality is three end tables!

It/they were a steal.
Exciting! As soon as the basement and bonus room are done we'll be able to get the TV out of the living room and put all our furniture where it belongs and get the piano in place and hang out by the fire and play ping pong and eat at our dining table and have people over and clean the house even! Yay little grey chairs!

The Fireplace Room

We have a couple of decisions to make regarding our bonus room! This room:

The carpet is gone and now we're trying to decide what to do with the floors. Our first decision is whether or not to tile the entryway. We really want to be able to come in from the garage and take off our shoes and hang coats without tracking up the rest of the floor. A little area like this:

We had planned on doing a square tiled pad, but it stuck out into the room too much....

...which is hard to tell from this picture, but trust me. So we came up with this idea:

Can you tell what this is? We'd just angle the corner of the pad so it didn't take up so much space in the room. But, according to our friend Nick, this is a terrible idea. Architecture school taught him that ANGLES ARE BAD.
Decision #1: Ignore Nick (which we are terrified to do) or forget about tiling the entryway?
Decision #2: Flooring choice.
We are going to do some kind of engineered wood floor, we've decided that much. Finding the right floor, however has proven difficult. We're obviously never going to find a floor that matches the rest of the house, but is something totally different a terrible choice? This is an acacia sample I brought home - I know nothing about this wood and nothing about flooring so I am open to any and all suggestions/criticisms:

Here it is next to our dining room floor (which I feel is much richer than it appears in this photo)

and here it is next to our brick fireplace

 I think this could look nice, but again, I have no idea if I'd be making some kind of terrible flooring faux pas.

Temporary Fix I

We in the Brindle household have been working hard. Out of sheer necessity. We discovered somewhat recently that whoever owned the house before us had a pet - and it must have been using the carpet downstairs and in the fireplace room as a bathroom - and that our cat may have been contributing to the disaster. The carpet in the bedrooms didn't seem to be a problem, they're much newer, but we removed the carpet from the basement and fireplace room. And while we were at it, I convinced Eric that we should do the kitchen too (thank goodness).

We suspected that there was asbestos tile under the carpet and had planned on sealing it in with oil based kilz and a few coats of polyurethane, but after the carpet was gone, the tiles just fell off on their own. It was kind of surprising; we pulled the carpet up and the tiles were basically just sitting there on the concrete.

Before you freak out Mom, it's totally fine to mess with asbestos tiles so long as they don't break - which they didn't. Perfectly safe. And Eric wore a mask with hepa filters and a throw away suit when he was getting rid of the tack strips just in case. Totally fine.

Anyway, we had already purchased a few gallons of kilz which we no longer needed (since the basement and side room are now concrete), so we slapped some down on the old stained linoleum we discovered in the kitchen. Someday that linoleum and the flooring under it will come up, but not until the entire kitchen remodel. For now, it's nice to have a kitchen free of carpet!

The only thing is....the grey kilz kind of makes it look like we have a pink and purple kitchen :)

Christmas Highlights

This year we spent Christmas Vacation with my family in Kalispell. Here's the run-down:
Christmas Eve we went to my aunt and uncle's house.

Uncle Phil really gets into the whole decorating thing.
Eric got to know my cousins a little better....

We had our annual family gift exchange and then headed home to open presents.

.

 Eric got THREE water filters. Count them. THREE.

 Mom crocheted me this lovely blanket.

And Kristi knit this wonderful goat. As modeled by Pa.
 The rest of the week was spent taking naps, 

Terrorizing the cat,

and attempting to ski at Big Mtn.

We had a lot of fun, but I will say it is nice to be home to our own house and our own little tree....

(Thanks for the tree skirt, Kristi)

Craziness

I was looking through one of my favorite design blogs and stumbled across this:

Kinda looks familiar, no?