Casa Gill

There have been some sweeping changes to Casa Gill lately with more on the way.  We have the luxury of a great, large apartment here in Buenos Aires, although there are a few items that need attention.  The challenges of the apartment as far as I see it are as follows:  1) We moved from a much smaller place in DC and now are trying to fill up our apartment with furniture, 2) Our new place is filled with all wood floors and we own one small carpet, 3) We have extremely tall (maybe 15 feet) ceilings.  All of these things combined means that our apartment is large, semi-empty and every sound echos. 

Our first project, the great room:

This is a huge living room/dining room combo with elaborate chandeliers a functional marble fireplace and on the wall not shown in this photo, a complete set of built in bookshelves.  Not bad for a starting block.   We have focused mostly on the "dining" part of the room.

The hutch in the upper right-hand side and the horseshoe wine rack on the left-hand side were our first furniture purchases here.  Belgrano Street in the Centro neighborhood is knows for it multiple blocks of furniture shops and we found a gem in there called Rincon de Campo, Belgrano 2459, which is where we bought both pieces.  All furniture items are made by hand and they sell quite a few "one of a kind" unique pieces like the wine rack.  I love the rustic look to the piece and then to use horseshoes to hold the bottles in place is genius.  The hutch is handmade but we've seen other very similar items in the same store.  The display case is great and it serves as extra storage for serving dishes as well as a place to store our Spanish books (of which we have many). 

The next item, in my opinion, is the hardest item to choose for a household, a rug.  Standing in the Bazhars showroom in the Buenos Aires Design Centre trying to imagine what the rug will look like in our place made Jon and I both virtually crazy.  I think we did a pretty good job, as The Dude would say, it really ties the room together.

The most recent addition to this room is that ficas tree in the corner.  A friend has recently moved back to the US and needed a home for four trees, and I was more than happy to take them off of her hands.  Aside from the drama getting them to our house and the dead worms that we found near the pots afterward (apparently they were outdoor plants...) they have been a nice addition to the space.

Next up, our new guest room bed!