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Renovating a Cape Cod Style Cottage | Living Room | Choosing Paint Colors

Hey friends! Hope you’re enjoying a fun weekend, wherever you are. It’s a clear day with lots of sunshine here in Western Mass, though hats and gloves are still a must, and rosy cheeks and cold noses are pretty much the rule.  There’s a lot going on at our house and in our neighborhood these days. We recently joined a Buy Nothing Giveaway Facebook group and this morning participated in our first neighborhood event. We set up a station at the end of our driveway and pilled it high with things we were ready to part with, sort of. I gave away all my duck prints and decoys (reluctantly) and passed on my waterfowl obsession to a sweet old lady who took the whole bunch. Giving up something you really like sucks, but it can also be freeing (and creates room for new obsessions 🙂 ).

Our living room, and my ducks, two houses ago
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Our Cottage Living Room Makeover | Part I

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Hey, friends! Anyone still out there? I apologize for my silence last week… I meant to have a couple of stories out but we’re in the middle of a new & exciting project at our house and it’s all I can think about these days!!! Since we bought our cottage, some three + years ago, I’ve been looking for ways to make it look, feel & live a little bit larger than its tiny footprint, without ruining its cottage charms. Some of my ideas were sensible, others downright outrageous (we won’t talk about those). But slowly we made progress. We tweaked the floor plan to improve the flow between the rooms, and added windows & French doors wherever possible to bring in natural light and garden views. You can read more about our Cape Cod style cottage HERE, HERE and HERE.

Our living room the day we moved in
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Renovating a Cape Cod Style Cottage | Family Room Reveal

We all dream of beautiful homes that are comfortable, welcoming and deeply personal yet, ironically, creating a home that is easy to live in can be at times a daunting process, even for those of us who happen to do this for a living.  If you’ve been following Cafe Design for some time, then you may know that our family room has been the main object of my efforts since we bought our cottage three summers ago. We began implementing changes slowly over time and it’s taken me the better part of the last three years to bring the family room to a place where it makes life in our house considerably more pleasant and comfortable.  It has also required every ounce of patience on my end, but we’ve recently completed the final steps of this renovation and I’m excited to share the finished room with you!

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Dining Room Progress

If you’ve been following us on Instagram @cafedesignhome, our account dedicated entirely to the renovation of our little New England Cape, you might have noticed that we recently completed some construction work at our house. Big changes have happened that I’m very excited about and thought I’d share them with you. Over the last couple of months my husband and I have been working at warp-speed, in between Zoom meetings and home-schooling efforts with our second-grader, tackling little projects here and there and checking things off of our humongous, ever-expanding to-dos list. Keeping our minds and hands busy has been the only way to retain sanity and a sense of normalcy during these difficult times… 

The dining room, the day of our move last summer
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On My Mind

I had different plans for today’s post, wanting to show you Caroline Gidiere’s fabulous Mountain Brook, Alabama, home that everyone’s been talking about, featured in Veranda’s colorful Spring issue. But instead, I got sidetracked and hung up on my own myriad of thoughts about our own home renovation and decided to share with you what’s been on my mind lately. Writing this blog always helps clear my head and I’ve included a few images found on Pinterest that best reflect the mood & feel I’m after with our little cottage.

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