more tour goods: dining room and kitchen

here are some more pictures of my parents house from the home tour back in october. you can read about it here, here and here. i must admit, my camera is way too fancy for my knowledge and experience as a photographer; i barely know how to take it off of "auto". some of these photos are taken at night while some are in daylight. i feel the need to post them all since, in my opinion, they each have a different "mood" about them. enjoy!

dining room:

the table and chairs were my great-grandparent's. their house was right down the street from this house.

the painting on the left was done by my late grandmother.

my mom picked up the buffet for around $75, i believe??? crazy considering i've been looking for one for my dining room and where i live i am hard pressed to find a decent one under $400.00.

the white circles you see in the floors are the vents for the air conditioning. when i grew up in this house our "air conditioning" was a box fan in an open window. a few years ago my parents bit the bullet and put in central air. since this home doesn't have air ducts they had to install a system of tubes. the tubes run through the walls, floors, ceilings...pretty much wherever they could fit them. some of the holes are in the walls but most are in the floor. can you imagine installing something like that? from what i hear it was quite a challenge.

they don't make crown molding like they used to...

if i remember correctly, we've gotten up to 16 people at this table in the past. this is our spot for thanksgiving, christmas eve and easter meals. many many memories in this room.

pantry:

this pantry connects the dining room to the kitchen. it's a wonderful space with tons of storage. i would give anything to have a space like this in my home. these are original cabinets and hardware. the wood floor is brand new.

i love the wood bowl filled with cookie cutters.

kitchen:

about fifteen or so years ago my parents completely gutted and remodeled this kitchen. they took out a wall and rearranged everything. during this recent re-do, they repainted the walls, changed the cabinet hardware to chrome and installed a new wood floor.

on the very right of this photo you can see some brass handles sticking out. (i can't believe i didn't take a better picture of this.) this is an old refrigerator that is original to the house. it has four compartments with wood doors and still works! my parents use is to store beer, soda and water.

the florist who decorated for the tour did a candy theme in the kitchen. it was really cute.

this is one of my favorite things that the florist did in the whole house. she took an apothecary jar that she purchased at pier one, filled it with marshmallows, added a scarf and hat and voila! a snowman! isn't he just adorable?

here you see a wreath that the florist did adorned with chocolate suckers, so cute! makes me crave chocolate.

a few pieces of my mom's huge quimper pottery collection.

my brother is amazingly talented. this is one of his watercolors. it's one of my favorite paintings of his. there are actually four apples. (not sure why i didn't take more/better pictures of this part of the kitchen. the reflections on the painting are horrible.)

i hope you are having a wonderful december!  hopefully i will get the rest of the first floor pictures posted soon!