TOUR THE FIRST FLOOR OF OUR NEW HOME IN NEW ENGLAND WITH ME!
Today I am taking you around our new house! I am documenting every room with pictures and videos to show you nice before/after videos later on. They are so satisfying! This house is very large, about 10.000 SF, and since it was built 157 years ago, the architecture reflects the needs of the time. There is the family’s main wing and the servants’ massive wing. It is truly a time capsule because things are almost the same as they were a hundred years ago. I aim to make it a large, beautiful, and functional home and use all the space for the family since we definitely won’t have servants! The main house has a very large entrance, and many rooms are open on that. On the right-hand side, there is the library. There are beautiful built-ins and a huge mirror. We are keeping those and building new bookcases because we have many books. I have inherited books from my family, some antique, and I love to carry them around with me, and I still find the time to read them! I kept adding on, so I need room for at least a thousand. I love white trims and build-ins, so we will repaint them and restore the fireplace. I envision marble here. We also have to change the flooring because it is not antique, just old and not in a good state.
On the other side is one of my favorite rooms, the drawing room. This was and still is a formal room of the house, and it opens onto the dining room, so it is the perfect place to sip a cocktail before dinner. I wish I had a butler-like Carson calling us in! The windows are so large that this room is always filled with light. The dining room is spectacular and very large. Now it lacks sunlight, though. We need to add a lot of lighting options in the house because I want to have it well-lit from above but keep it cozy with wall sconces and table lamps if we decide to.
There is only a junction box where the dining table would be so we will add wall sconces all around the room. The fireplace must be restored, and I plan to have a piece of art over it. I envision chinoiserie wallpaper here, but this is a decision we will take later. Also, we need to decide if painting the trims and windows white or keep them blue, maybe opting for a dusty blue. Adjacent to this room, two rooms were used as an office. One is the perfect sunroom. I have a thing for sunrooms because the inside meets the outside. We are planning to open up the space replacing the windows because this room overlooks the woods, and I can imagine how magical that can be when it’s snowing outside! Then there is a home office that we envision being more masculine, with wainscoting and an excellent desk.
The kitchen is an addition, and I think it’s incredible. It’s a large space, and the room is all windows. This will allow us to create a kitchen that will truly become the heart of the house. I see it as white, with brass hardware and marble tops. We’d love a breakfast nook too, but I am unsure if that can be done. The flooring needs to be addressed, which is common in old houses. Every family that came in before us changed a bit of flooring here and there, and sometimes they are just not matching or working well together.
I will show you the second floor in one of my next posts, and we are almost ready to start so I’ll share the renderings of the project too!
