The Den at Stone House Lane~Before & After

 After remodeling our den/great-room on Willow Creek in January, we started looking for another house! Which was totally CRAZY !

One thing I knew, if we were going to buy another house…the den would have to really ‘WOW’ me since I loved the remodel we’d just finished.

I can’t tell you how many houses we walked away from because the den was small and cozy. I love small and cozy, and will probably have small and cozy one day, but right now while our grown-up kids and my sisters grown-up kids keep having babies, we need some space to have our family get-togethers!

When we walked into Stone House Lane I was sold. The den has a mile-high ceiling, an expansive stone fireplace and sunlight pours through the space. The photo below is the how it looked the day we walked in…

Here’s a picture from the real estate website when the previous owners lived here…I love it. Several things were different then, they had their TV in a cabinet instead of over the fireplace and if you look closely you’ll notice that the room is a little more closed off to the breakfast room…only 2 arches in the original room.

The Stone House Lane house is a brick Tudor and traditionally, the Tudor style house has arched doorways so we loved that arches were incorporated on the inside.

Because we loved the arches and wanted a totally open feel,  the first idea we had was to add a third arch between the two that were already there. So of course we called our favorite contractors, Mr. Max, Buck and the crew at The King’s Carpentry.

We had a long list of projects for them…but the first exciting thing they worked on was that beautiful third arch!

And just like that the room opened up!

The stone fireplace is such a focal point in the room and we really wanted to do furniture placement so that the fireplace, the windows and the TV were all front and center, so the television would have to go over the mantle. But the stone on the fireplace isn’t a facade. It’s for-real, heavy, misshaped stone, which made it more difficult to run electricity and mount the TV…but again Mr. Max solved our super-big problem!

And then came the painting…

As you guys know, I paint a lot. I paint everything, all the time. But there were certain rooms at Stone House Lane that I didn’t want to tackle…the den being one of them.

So Max and the crew painted the den…(honestly, it was all ‘the crew’ …Mr. Max hates painting!)

I love the wall color, but when they were done…I came face to face with the most glaring yellow ceiling I’ve ever seen.

Before the wall color changed I promise you the ceiling didn’t look all that YELLOW!

In a moment of  “oh-my-goodness-my-ceiling-is daffodil-yellow”  panic I made the decision to go (way) over budget…I had to have that ceiling painted. Immediately! After I broke the news to Tony (The awesome painter at The King’s Carpentry),  I fired myself as project manager before The Husband could fire me. He was so frustrated with my bad planning that he didn’t speak to me for days. (Actually it was about 45 seconds but it felt like days 🙂 )

But when it was all done, we were both sooooo happy with the tranquil result.

The walls in the den are Behr Chocolate Froth from The Home Depot! (You knew I’d use Behr paint! didn’t you?)

Another thing that Max and Buck did in the den… the built-in bookshelves. I’m at home only when I’m surrounded by my books.   We brought four of our bookshelves from the Willow Creek house and The King’s Carpentry made two built-ins…one for each end of our bookshelves, giving us a whole wall for my beloved books!

And just for the record, it’s not just me who loves the books, when I finished putting them on the shelves The Husband said: “It feels like home now that the books are in the room.” He loves them too.

Max and Buck are first and foremost carpenters, they have done four built-in shelves for us, two at Willow Creek and two here. Those bookshelves are some of my favorite treasures.

My thanks to The King’s Carpentry for all their excellent work…I’ll be showing you the other projects they did on Stone House Lane soon!

(And I’m so excited! Max and the guys are coming back Monday, to build in a pantry! You’re gonna LOVE the fun pantry door they’re building! I can’t wait to show you!)

Moving is a long process of total upheaval, but when I’m here in this room serenity envelopes me.

 ~ Sending you Love and praying for serenity to envelope you today my friends~

***PS~ You’d think that Mr. Max was 70 years old since I call him Mr. Max! I feel the need to clear this up considering that I’m pretty certain I’m older than he is…my son, Timothy worked for Mr. Max for awhile and always referred to him as Mr. Max.  Around here it stuck…he will always be Mr. Max, I don’t care if I am his elder!***