The Beach House Has Furniture!: a house log
If you folks follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve already heard the news: not only does the beach house officially have furniture (!!!) we at last got the spend the night there this past weekend! Two nights, in fact!
It is still a far cry from “done.” There is a lot of remaining furniture that we need to get (nightstands, dressers, headboards, a top for our coffee table, etc) along with various other decor stuff that is missing (rugs! art! lamps!). Not to mention some bigger tasks like installing the kitchen, adding built-in bunk beds upstairs, and constructing bench seating in the breakfast nook. But even so, simply having some furniture (a couch! beds to sleep on!) and flushing toilets & working showers feels like a LARGE MILESTONE in this year-long renovation. Especially when you consider how things looked last October when we picked up it:
We spent a couple of days there this weekend unpacking, arranging, and making lists of what we still need to move and/or shop for, and I stole a few minutes on our way out to make a big ol’ video tour of our progress. This video is not short, but I truly hoped to show you folks every nook and cranny (including one I have never shown before that some of you have asked to see!). I also explain what else is on the list, why we chose some of the stuff we did, and share a general rundown of what is happening in each room. We will cover some of the details via photographs in this post, but the video has allll of the juicy details for ya, so it is worth coming back to watch if you are somewhere that you cannot watch it right now. Note: If you are viewing this in a reader, you may need to click through to see the video player.
UPDATE: You can also view the video here on YouTube
Last Sunday we loaded up a 15′ U-Haul packed with furniture, all of our flat-packed Ikea kitchen boxes, and our pink stove! These things have all been stealing space in our own house over the last several months so it was so exciting to stuff that truck with everything and at last get it out to the beach house. It was a mix of some new buys, a lot of thrifted finds, and even some leftovers from our previous rooms. Hi green office chairs from our second house! (You can hear my ideas for them in the video)
Then on the Monday after packing the truck, we drove it out to Cape Charles and spent a few hours unloading it and arranging things. But it was not until we went back again this past weekend for our first two overnights that it in fact began to feel like we were making progress. The entryway is likely the most “settled” feeling space of the house thus far (look ma! we hung a mirror!) since we knew it would assist the whole place feel more wrapped up if the first thing you see from the front door looks pleasant.
Do not mind that wood railing that still needs some enjoy to get all of the marks off it. Our to-do list is longer than Santa’s toy list at this point, but we are slowly chipping away at things – like that house number you see reflected in the mirror that we proudly brought in to our transom window (more on that in a minute).
Simply beyond the foyer, the kitchen is still looking fairly nuts. The kitchen cabinets, counters, and even the sink and microwave are in approximately 243 still to-be-opened boxes. So right now there is simply a mountain of cardboard that is hiding behind my chorus line of stools (you know I took strong joy in lining them up simply to imagine them sitting happily behind the island that’ll be there someday). One coup is that the stove is in place and even installed!
As expected, the stove was a beast to move. In Richmond, it took me and John and a few other neighbors (plus a dolly! plus a ramp!) to get it up on the truck. And when we arrived in Cape Charles, our contractor kindly sent over a couple of his folks to assist us get it into the house. Looking at this picture makes me so itchy to start building cabinets, you do not even know.
The big progress upstairs was beds, glorious beds! We slept on air mattresses the first night, so when the truck full of mattresses, boxsprings, and frames arrived the next morning, it felt even more legit to spend the second night in actual beds. We got three queen mattresses and two twin extra long mattresses (for the bunk room) delivered from the same place we picked up our own house’s guest room mattress and our daughter’s mattress, The Original Mattress Factory. We get compliments on the guest room bed all the time (it is 6 years old and still feels strong!) and we lay in our daughter’s bed all the time and it is excellent – even when all four of us are piled in there.
It was only $1,800 to get all five mattresses for the beach house, including two boxsprings, two frames, and delivery! When they told me the price on the phone I was fairly sure they were doing the math wrong (I expected to pay at least $500 per bed, which meant $2500 at least plus other fees), but they are simply especially affordable and well made with inner springs and high durability testing and all that stuff. They are also rotatable (it is surprising how many new mattresses are not) so we think that’ll assist us get maximum life out of them.
We are using good ol’ Ed the Bed in this middle bedroom above (for now at least) which means the mattress rests on a wooden platform, but the other two bedrooms got the full frames-and-boxsprings treatment. And the twin extra long mattresses in the bunk room will eventually get built into a sweet little bunk bed that runs wall to wall along that left side of the room, which the kids are especially excited for. We are simply excited that our measurements were correct and the mattresses fit perfectly in that space. Phew!
The most put together bedroom so far is the master bedroom in the back of the house, where John and I slept both nights. We arrived with fresh bedding and assembled the nightstands during our first morning there and even hung some art (we are gonna source everything for you at the bottom of this post, so scroll down for that). There is still a lot more to do (still need a headboard, rug, dresser, and the bed is too low for the nightstands so we are going to raise it) but it was remarkably relaxing to sleep in here even without all that stuff.
I will admit that we were both holding our breaths a little on this room. We worried the bed would feel cramped and too close to the pocket doors (it does not!) and that having pocket doors in front of the back stairs might be weird (they ended up being incredibly charming!) so there have been a whole lot of sighs of relief in here. It is so so hard to picture a room when it is framed out, and even when it is drywalled it is hard to tell if something is cramped or weirdly proportioned until furniture comes in and it is all suddenly clear.
Our stay was not flawless by any means though. None of the door latches are installed, so no interior doors stay fully closed yet. We remembered to bring shower curtains and liners, but forgot the hooks, so we all showered without the curtain, which was not ideal, but thankfully was not too splashy. And we did not like the upstairs blinds we had picked up, so we relied on some scrap cardboard to cover the windows at night… ha! It truly was kind of like camping. Perhaps more like glamping because we had running water and mattresses.
Also, look at that old character in the wood floor above. I kept spying so many sweet things like that while we stayed overnight and my heart would simply swell with excitement. We worried that having to rebuild so much of this house might strip out a lot of the old charm, but getting to refinish the old pine floors and reuse the original molding and doors is such a treat. All that 1920s charm (like the back staircase and the stained glass windows and the curved wall in the foyer) truly do make this house feel old and special.
We see a lot of weekends like this in our future. Spending a night or two while trying to cross a few items off our to-do list (and mix in a little bit of family lively at the same time). It was even hot sufficient to go to the beach on this trip and in fact swim! We also got to trim down a too-tall door in the bunk room, we brought in a bunch of door stops behind doors that were banging against our freshly painted walls and trim, and we put up those aforementioned house numbers in the transom window, which also felt like a especially momentous milestone.
To hang these vintage looking decals we ordered online, John created some guides with green painter’s tape on the inside of the glass (marking the center, pasting up a level baseline, etc) that we could follow while carefully applying the decals from the outside and smoothing them out with a credit card as we went from bottom to top. They were not easily repositionable so we both simply kind of held our breath as they went on, but they look strong. And after months of telling people “it is the pink house with the dumpster out front” or whatever weird description we had been using at the time, we at last got to tell the mattress delivery people “it is 119” because IT AT LAST HAD HOUSE NUMBERS!
We ENJOY how they turned out, although we are considering ordering another “9” and placing it slightly more to the right (because we are crazy people who obsess over tracking and kerning thanks to all of our advertising years). Even though they are technically spaced equally, we think the 9 looks a little close because it is a fuller number than the 1, which has a lot of space on either side of the serif. We are likely being insane, but we acknowledge and accept this obsessive letter and number spacing quirk that was instilled in us many years ago.
So again, if you want to see plenty more of our progress, scroll up to watch the video (you in short get to walk through every cranny of the house and hear our plans for what we are changing or thinking of adding). Things are moving so swiftly over there lately that we are having lively using Instagram (and Instagram Stories) to share things in real-time when we can. Of course, the journal is still the best place for especially meaty info, links, and videos, like the walk-through tour in today’s post – so no worries if you are not an Instagram person, it’ll all end up here eventually, and with a lot more detail.
And since we have been getting a lot of source questions as we share those little sneak peeks, below is a swift round-up of all of the items in the video and these photos. What this does not include of course, are things that are secondhand since we cannot link to those (like the wood dresser in the foyer above) or things that have been discontinued (like our Ikea Karlstad sectional in the living room).
1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Hall Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Master Bedding
And here is the lighting round-up from a few posts ago, for anyone wondering about those links/sources. Also, update: we enjoy the fans! Sleeping with it on low in that back bedroom was fairly dang strong.
1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs
So there it is. A whole lotta beach house goodness. We cannot wait to share these rooms as they evolve. Simply imagine a kitchen with cabinets! A bedroom with a headboard and a big cozy rug underfoot! And a shower with a shower curtain and an actual window treatment instead of a rectangle of cardboard leaning against the sill! WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!
Psst – To read all of the previous beach house posts (this project has been over a year in the making!) here is an archive full of posts & pics for you!
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