Home Sweet Carolina Home Tour 1
We’ve been in our new home nearly six month and I thought
y’all might like a tour of our South Carolina Villa (that’s what So Carolina
real estate agents call these homes.)
Enjoy.
Entering the front door you can see the entire length of the
downstairs.
From front to the rear are
the kitchen, dining and living room areas. We had a lot of custom features
added to the home while it was being constructed.
Tile floors downstairs, display cabinets, and
a fireplace in the living room were just a few of the upgrades.
(Also notice all the ceiling lighting …. I
will write more about that topic in another blog.)
I love the spaciousness of the downstairs. I want to paint some very large paintings to
match the scale of the room. Until I get around to this project, I decided
to leave the walls bare and soften the view with houseplants (as opposed to
cluttering up the view with smaller paintings).
Viewed from the rear of the house you see the dining room,
entryway, and a portion of the kitchen. All of the furniture in this area (except the
carpets) is new. As you probably know,
I sold a lot of my big antique furnishings before we moved here. I
really wanted a fresh start with a more contemporary look.
Hah! As it turns out, Bruce didn’t want contemporary. After
much negotiation we settled on an Island Colonial look which fits in well with
the local historical plantation setting in which we now live. Finding
furnishings that we both really like is easier said than done. It is taking
forever, but the place is coming together nicely.
At the front of the
house, to the right of the entry is the kitchen. We upgraded the granite countertops, and the
cabinets to cherry wood, and added a number of small appliances (e.g. a hot
water dispenser) while the house was under construction. Bruce put up the pot rack over the sink.
At the far rear of
the house, off of the living room, is a large room that was originally designed
as the master bedroom. We are using it
as our recreation room… It holds our piano, TV, and exercise equipment, as well
as a lounge chair and sleeper sofa. (It has a large Jacuzzi & shower
bathroom off of it. Hence the room can
double as a guest room in a pinch).
Again, we are holding off on wall decorations. It’s not pretty, but it is very functional
During the
construction we upgraded most of the upstairs to teakwood flooring.
Above and below are views of the master
bedroom.
I love the way it looks out
into the tree-tops of the woods behind us.
We are currently having an electric fireplace installed in the master bedroom.
There are four
bathrooms is the house…two upstairs and two downstairs. The bathroom off of the
upstairs master bedroom has been turned into a ladies retreat.
It is completed
with pretty pictures (painted by yours truly) and other girly accessories.
There were
originally four bedrooms in the house.
Three of those now serve a dual purpose.
One of the upstairs bedrooms serves as our office. It has our desks, our main computer
equipment), new bookcases and a new leather sleeper sofa (with a padded air
mattress so our guests get a good night’s sleep).
The final room is
my art studio. It was the last room to be finalized as we were using it to
store all the miscellaneous stuff that would eventually go into other rooms of
the house. I just completed setting up my art studio last month,
and have painted three pictures since then. Two of them can be seen in
these photos. (Do you like them? I will
do another blog in this topic later.)
For obvious reasons we installed heavy grade vinyl flooring in this
room. All of the storage cabinets and
bookcases were bought off of the web, and Bruce put them together for me. Not
shown here is a small washroom, and a 10’X10’ climate controlled attic which
adjoins the studio. Both are used for art storage.
That pretty much
completes the inside tour. The front
exterior of the house is still very bare looking. It hasn’t changed much because the front yard
will be torn up when the builder repaves all of the driveways next month. HOA rules restrict me from planting anything
in the ground that is not in a container. I am getting around doing a lot
of container gardening on my screened porch and on my deck.
Deck as seen from
the office.
Deck Herb Garden as seen from the master bedroom.
Above: Screened Porch
tropical plants.
In the back of the
villa there is a small strip of community flowerbeds and grass separating us
from the woods.
We have all of our
birdfeeders set up here, so we can watch them feeding from the office window
and living room. They are also good at attracting squirrels and raccoons and
hawks feeding on the birds.
