New Old House--First Things First

The new old house is feeling like home after a couple weeks of shuffling things around and adding homey touches. The first places, however, to come together in the house were two of the most important (well, in my opinion): the reading nook and my writing desk.


The reading nook is in the den, a space originally intended by us as the dining room and probably originally the house's kitchen--and the writing desk is in the great room, a space originally intended as our living room and probably originally the house's, well, great room. Was that confusing enough? The original portion of the downstairs is divided in two rooms. One was likely a kitchen/general workaday room, and the other was likely the great room/parlor/space to entertain people. We decided to keep the spirit of the original great room, and made that our dining room and parlor. The den evolved partially out of the fact that it had a convenient outlet to plug in the TV and DVD player. Well, when you're dealing with an old house you do what it tells you to do sometimes.

The writing desk, in a corner of the great room, next to the wine rack (um, no implying that those two things go together or anything):

And the reading nook, in a little corner of the den, with a nice bright reading lamp and a close-to-tacky side table/magazine rack that has that distinctive look of something that may have been created by my father in shop class forty years ago:

The nearly-ugly pillow matches my almost-ugly sofa, which occupies the long wall of this room. Stacked hatboxes next to the close-to-tacky table hold, well, hats--a bit incongruous, but they look nice there.

More pictures--of the rest of the house--to come!