our cottage kitchen dining area

Hi everyone!

I posted pics of the kitchen in the mountain cottage we recently moved into yesterday.  Here is the adjacent dining area. A dining bench and pillows finally arrived this week. 

The table is an antique from Dovetail Antiques in Cashiers, NC. I will visit one day and take photos to share on the blog, a great shop. A woodworker is going to raise the legs next week to accomodate the chairs and allow for more legroom.

The arrangement is a group of mountain galax leaves formed into rosettes, available at Vivienne Metzger Antiques, also in Cashiers. Another post worthy destination, I love her shop too.

The pillows are Kravet's Kashmira in Mineral.

The interiors of the cottage will be hard to photograph because of weird light. The skylight is over this area. The wall color is not yellow, but a creamy light beige. The photo below reveals the real color.

There is another dining area in the corner of the living room, our kitchen table from the old house, so we can accommodate a larger group when needed and also use it as a work area. The lamps on the buffet have matching bulbs and shades, why are they looking wonky in the photo?

The buffet is waiting for a mirror that I have yet to discover. Hope I can find something rustic and modern. Also need to style the tabletop, this area is the next project.

Thanks for visiting!

Cindy

our cottage kitchen

Hi everyone!

I thought I would share our little kitchen today. 

We really like the size of it. Plenty of cabinetry for a small kitchen. I even have one empty drawer which is crazy because our last house had a kitchen that was three times the size of this one. 

There is a small freezer-on-top fridge. We miss our old Sub Zero fridges but they would never fit in this kitchen. The opening allows only a 30" width. This one came with the house, it is a nice KitchenAid, we would prefer a freezer-on-bottom model, not found one yet that would suit the space and I am too practical to swap out an almost new fridge in perfect condition.

There is no natural gas in the mountains. Gas cooktops can only be installed after burying a propane tank in the yard to provide gas. This house does not have a tank, so there is an electric cooktop that we surprisingly love! It heats up quickly, boils water much faster than our Wolf gas cooktop at the old house did and allows pan handles to stay cool. The other thing that we were concerned about is the lack of a vent hood. The little circle on the ceiling is the vent. It is very quiet but extremely efficient. I have no idea how it does it, I was assuming the house would smell for days after we cooked something stinky. Not one bit and we broil fish often when the weather does not allow for grilling.

The kitchen was remodeled ten years ago and has the popular granite from that time. Fine for now. Nice to keep herbs from the garden in a vase ready for cooking. Thai basil and parsley have done well in the mountains for us this summer,  sweet basil not as much, needs more warmth. The walls of the kitchen are covered in an attractive vinyl grasscloth that wipes clean, a great product.

I would like a set of sconces on either side of the window. The sellers had a nice antique wood piece over the window that we forgot to request to purchase during the negotiations. This house relies on lots of can lights because it is rather dark, being in the canopy of the mountains. The ceilings of the cottage are low with the exception of the vaulted living room adjacent to the kitchen. 

We love the pantry doors with reclaimed wood that compliment the wood used over the mantle and fireplace. I found extra vinyl grasscloth in the basement, will have it applied inside the pantry. You can see the skylight over the dining area which provides nice light and has an attractive metal grill attached.

The canisters house the tea, cardamom, fennel and spices for the morning chai my husband makes. The framed orange tree is an English Ehrman Tapestry needlepoint I made years ago. I made Ina Garten's white bean soup with rosemary on Saturday when I took this pic, that is the open cookbook page. It is yummy. The striped pitcher is French art pottery. The enamel bowls in the cabinet are vintage Kaj Franck from Finland. I have loved them since I was a teenager and have four of them, I have bought them for our kids apartments too.

So that is all from the little cottage in the mountains today. The sun is shining and I need to get out and enjoy it with some exercise and gardening!

Thanks for visiting!

Cindy

chalk painting our french style buffet

I banished more brown! I lightened the dark buffet in our family room/kitchen with Annie Sloan Versailles paint and both her clear and dark wax. Seeing this photo, I think I need to put a bit more clear wax to get it less muddy looking. That is the challenge of using the dark wax on light paint- avoiding a muddy look. I also used Antique Gold Rub N Buff on the dark hardware. I  kept standing back and evaluating but was losing confidence as I waxed.  Asking husband for his opinion was useless because he kept saying it looked great,  I needed a critical eye to help me evaluate.

 The buffet was too dark, there is plenty of dark in the space anyway with the kitchen. Our kitchen has a lot of dark cherry cabinetry and dark counter tops which despite being off trend and not my favorite look (my pinterest kitchens are all white) is warm and cozy during our long winter. With a lot of light from the large glass windows and doors on the back of the house, the warm wood is comforting. 

Our twenty year old home is very traditional (with the exception of the high ceilinged family room bump out). It is very typical of the area we live in, The Connecticut Western Reserve, settled by New Englanders in Northeast Ohio in the 1700's. Century homes, inns and old barns are common throughout our area and new homes tend to follow the same Colonial style.

Had the windows open today, 70 degrees! Our kitchen chairs and table made by McGuire of San Francisco were purchased for our last house twenty years ago and don't exactly work here but are staying because they are beautifully made and holding up so well they still look brand new (had the cushions recovered a few years ago).

Next painting project is the hallway of bookshelves that leads to the master bedroom, you can see below, (you can also see husband's recliner that I am SO nice to not complain about). I have wanted to paint the shelves white since moving here twelve years ago, husband disagreed, he now likes all the changes I have made with the chalk paint and is gung ho for any ideas (although painting the kitchen would NOT be up for discussion, quality is great and they were custom, may consider it in the future, would take a big effort to convince him). May have our  handyman paint the bookshelves, depends on the weather. If we start having spring temperatures, I would rather focus on the outside, colder temps, I am happy to have an indoor project.

What about you? Are you painting anything these days? I think it is so addictive and fun! Gives a fresh look and adds personality to our home.

dog art

Suellen Gregory

My talented friend Pam, author of the inspiring Simple Details blog wrote about adding art to her kitchen this morning. She included this kitchen by Suellen Gregory that I love. The dog painting, the floors, the windows, the furniture, the slipcovers, the wallpaper, the basket, I just love the whole thing. Anyway, we have dog art in our house that is bright and fun and comes at a very reasonable price.

Ron Krajewski paints dog portraits in watercolor. He prints them on quality watercolor paper and sells them on Etsy and his website Dog Art Studio. These two are in my art room/studio. I purchased them because the one on the right looks just like Andy, our boy golden retriever, the left one resembles his sister( not from the same mom), our old girl that is no longer with us, Dinah.

This one is in our basement on the staircase wall. I think it is so beautiful.

Check out Ron's portraits here and more of Suellen Gregory's work here. She is another talented Southern designer whose work is as beautiful as Suzanne Kasler and Phoebe Howard. She tends to use more color than they do.

the stylish smeg

 Hard not to love the cute Italian made Smeg, the fridge of small apartment dwellers dreams...

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HB kitchen of the year part 2

Yesterday I featured our daughter's photos of the Mick De Giulio designed Kitchen of the Year, here are the official ones from House Beautiful for some more views....

HB kitchen of the year

Our daughter works in advertising for House Beautiful, here are some shots she took of The Kitchen of the Year 2012 at Rockefeller Center a few weeks ago. To learn more, go here.