Above: We painted the kitchen a sophisticated gray/brown to replace the busy, cornucopia-like wallpaper. The sunroom is visible on the left.

Above: For the sunroom, we chose a light green that complements the brown in the kitchen. With the curtains drawn, the room is enveloped in sunlight.

The sunroom is one of our favorites, but we've never really made the most of it. So to brighten things up, we chose a light shade of green. In daylight, it is pastel pale, but at night the color is quite intense.

We had coffee and toast in the new "green room" on St. Patrick's Day, appropriately enough. This is the perfect space for relaxation. And now that we've painted it and moved some furniture in, the cats have had a hard time staying out. In fact, I had to eject Clive from the chair several times before I could take this picture!

The new paint has utterly transformed the breakfast room. With the dark walls, the white trim and window seats really "pop." (If you watch enough remodeling shows, you know that pop is a good thing.) For a long time, we used this space for my office (in fact, back in '98 I wrote my first business book at the breakfast room table). Now that we've cleared all of my junk out and moved the round table in, the elegance of this space is restored. Like the sunroom, this room's windows are a great source of sunlight, and we've found that the brown walls react in interesting ways to illumination, revealing depth of color the old fruit-and-veggie wallpaper never had.

Of all the work we did, the transformed breakfast room is Laurie's favorite.

Above: The breakfast room is transformed into an elegant space with the addition of Laurie's ornate table and a couple of throw pillows.

Above: To keep our spirits up during the wait, the furniture we've ordered for the new living room is posted on the refrigerator door, along with a fabric swatch.

When we were selling the house, the first thing we had to do was "de-clutter" (an organizing guru word that literally means throwing away Mark's stuff). Eventually, we decided that our tastes had changed radically over the last eight years and that the puffy, comfortable furniture we'd had since getting married would have to go along with the clutter. Good decision, but it left us with an empty house when we decided to stay here for a few more years!

I flirted with the idea of leather Le Corbusier furniture, but even that was not structured enough for my tastes. Out with the pillows! Finally, we found some furniture we both liked (at left) and after the paint fumes had overcome our natural caution, we ordered it.

Of course, the wait is abominable! The leather bench will arrive in 7-10 days, but the rest will be staggered between early May and (at the latest) June. We were crushed when we found out, so we've posted pictures on the refrigerator to help keep our spirits up while we wait. In the meantime, we're planning all sorts of ambitious mods for the house!