the parlor

 

The parlor, which is located in the southeastern corner of the house below the fourth bedroom, was clearly designed by the Smiths in 1860 or so to be a formal parlor. It is the first room on the right as you enter the main entry, and is the best place in the house to curl up on a cold day with a book. Of course, it didn't start out that way...

Upon initial inspection, the parlor looked like this:

     

Get out the shades, guys (I think we've still got the Ray-bans somewhere from Plan A for the exterior of the house) because once we moved in, and the prior owners' furnishings were gone, it actually looked even more teal:

In case you're wondering what the dark spots in the corner of the room on the carpet are, well, they're dirt. Okay, all together now... eeewwwww. So no surprise that after we excavated the floor in the dining room, we motored right across the hallway to slice and dice through the carpet and padding in the parlor, and discovered this:

We discovered, not to our surprise, but a bit to our dismay, the same sea of linoleum tile and underlayment we uncovered in the dining room. Fortunately, our trusty roofing shovel did not fail us, and the linoleum quickly became a not-so-fondly remembered figment of the house's history. Life was looking good from the parlor windows, until the day we decided to remove the evil skinny plastic molding from around the doors and windows in the room. One of the pieces around a window on the east wall was giving us problems, and so we enlisted the help of a wicked crowbar. The crowbar goes in, the moulding's fighting a valiant but losing battle, and with a satisfying creak and a loud pop the moulding gives...

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and so does the floor. After one of us extricates ourselves from the floor (we'll just leave you to guess who) and recovers from the unplanned, hasty, but thankfully aborted trip to the basement, we investigate the portion of the parlor floor that has not clattered down to the basement, and realize that the floor had served as a banquet site for termites (and all their cousins from Brooklyn) rivalled only by the wedding scene in "Goodbye, Columbus." After removing the termite-eaten floorboards, we're left with this:

Hey, no broken bones, no blood transfusions... the paramedics weren't even called. So. On with the show. While we're still investigating options for filling the hole in the floor of our house, we decide the room could use a good coat of paint:

Unfortunately, shortly after that photo was taken, we decided that while the room certainly could use a good coat of paint, it couldn't use one in that particular color-- too green. So the search was on for the right paint color, and oh, by the way, what to do about the huge hole in the floor?

We decided that, however convenient the existing hole might be, relocating the basement stairs to this particular location would not, in fact, improve the aesthetics of the parlor. Thank heaven for other old house fools like us that think old pine flooring is a good thing, and actually manufacture stuff to replace it. We bought replacement pine flooring, and installed and stained it to match the existing. While no patch will ever be perfect, this one's darn good.

We also ultimately did find a paint color that worked-- one that was far more brown than green. Think a creamy brown color reminiscent of "cafe au lait." We do, however, categorically deny that the amount of caffeine we were ingesting in steaming hot, liquid form had any effect whatsoever on our choice of wall color for the parlor. Really, Oswald acted alone...

Anyway, the walls got a coffee-colored paint to set off the crisp white trim, the floor got patched almost invisibly, and overstuffed cream colored couches and chairs make a great place to curl up and read a book in a chair overlooking the front lawn (roll your mouse over the photos below for before and after views, or click on any photo for a larger view):

 

Click either image below for a larger view:

   

 

We're still hunting for artwork above the sofa, but nothing's struck us just yet. We thought the O'Keefe would work, but it's just too small. So stay tuned... when we find something that works, we'll post pics!

Update: We finally found something that works above the sofa. An amish barn star:

Looks much better, and the scale's certainly better than the too-small O'Keefe print. Of course, now that we see the star in pictures, we realize it's hung too high. Sigh. Oh well, our work's never quite done, is it? Have to lower that thing six inches or so this weekend...

 

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