I realized the other day that it’s been a while since I shared updates on our home renovation. In the past many of you have expressed an interest in seeing “construction” and behind-the-scenes images of the process (thank you!), so I thought it would be fun to talk about some of our latest projects. As a warning, these are not pretty images, nothing is finished yet as we’ve been pacing ourselves time-wise and budget-wise to make sure we’re up-to-date with our financial goals and we’re not investing too much too soon into a house that is already at the higher end of prices for the neighborhood we’re in. But we do want to change things here and there, seeing that the house, as pretty as it is on the outside, is literally a 1960s time capsule on the inside, warts and all. The bones are good but the interior architecture is lacking the kind of interest that suits cute cottages like this one so we postponed purchasing the more expensive pieces of furniture until we’ve gotten the envelope, the architectural elements of the house right. 

Thank you all for stopping by and reading! In case you were wondering, I’m still here. A little bit swamped, quite tired and behind on sleep, but still here. I am very happy to report that our living room renovation is well underway and grateful that the first phase of the project, and the messiest one (I hope) – construction- is behind us. After moving into our cottage a little over three months ago, we found ourselves in a whirlwind of renovation that keeps on gaining steam. Our updates have been mostly cosmetic (like replacing stair railings and adding picket fences here and there) but our latest one involves opening up walls and is by far the biggest we’ve done yet.  For those of you who are new to Café Design (welcome!) here’s the idea… Our home is a simple Cape Cod style cottage with a center hall layout. The second floor is pretty straightforward but the first floor was chopped up into multiple tiny rooms. The living room was quite charming with ample south-facing windows and a fireplace but it felt quite small and closed off. On the other hand, right next to it there’s a tiny  bedroom (roughly 11’x11’ ) that we rarely got to use because 1) it was small and rather bland 2) it had an awkward entrance right next to our coat closet.