A New Nest

2011-08-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember this?

No? How about this?

Well, now it looks like this:

We added shelve and storage boxes to the little alcove in the office. Now it isn't just useless space anymore!

The boxes are from Ikea, their Kasset line. They're holding assorted office supplies, printer paper, computer manuals, computer/accessory cords. The printer is an HP Photosmart Premium all-in-one. I have 2 of these at work and they're great! They can print, scan and copy, they can be run wirelessly or via network cable (or both, in our case) and they're pretty slick looking. It's so nice to be able to print from my laptop downstairs rather than lugging it upstairs and hooking it up to the old printer. I believe they're about to be discontinued so you can get a good deal on them right now.

Notice, though, that the scanner lid can't open all the way because of the shelf above it.

We needed a solution for this, since I am going to be working on a big scanning job in the near future, scanning a bunch of old family photos of Adam's family. I didn't want to be messing around with holding the scanner lid up all the time. If you look closely you can see that the printer is sitting on top of its own little shelf.

That's because we installed it on horizontal drawer runners, so that it could be pulled out and the lid would open freely. But it can still be tucked away when we're not scanning.

We're pretty clever if I do say so myself.

It actually turns out it's going to be shelf mania in the office by the time we're finished. We had planned on replacing the railing in the office with, well, another railing. But while browsing Pinterest one day (that site is Trouble with a capital T) I ran across this picture:

Originally from Houzz.com

Um...yes please. Though it's much bigger than a railing, it's also a lot more functional and easier to build. It also looks very similar to our fireplace remodel, and I think it would help tie the two spaces together - you can actually see the fireplace in our living room from our office.

Also, our bookshelf in the den is overflowing with books, so the added book storage will be nice and we can maybe do something else with the space in the den if we don't need the bookshelf there. We've been talking about a bar cabinet in the den for a long time, since our kitchen is small and there's no storage for liquor. All of our adult-beverage ingredients have been sitting in a cardboard box under our guest bed since we moved in. If only our guests knew they could be living it up when they slept over!

Adam is much more on board with this idea than he ever was with the railing, so I've been prodding him to start planning construction and get moving on it. I'm crossing my fingers, but since the weather is starting to cool down here in the mid-Atlantic I have a feeling we'll be back in the yard again, tearing out old bushes and weeds. We lost steam on that project when temperatures got into the 90s and 100s.

Office Update: 4 Months Later

2011-06-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I gave you a little update on the progress in the office. And when I say a little while, I mean 4 months (sheesh!).When last we saw the office I looked like this:

Well, the honest truth is that not a whole lot has happened since then, but we have done a few new things. Here's the office today (pardon the different lighting - I'm working on using the white balance on my camera):

Not a huge change, but a few things have gotten done.

1. New light fixture!

I was going to get the Eden pendant from Crate and Barrel (which has since been discontinued and replaced by the Finley) but I found this one at Tuesday Morning for $20 more. With this light I wouldn't have to wait for shipping and it had 3 bulb sockets in it, as opposed to the 1 in the Eden; meaning more light, which is important in a work area. We'll be adding a dimmer to the wall switch, though, for maximum lighting control.

So, we love the light, its much better than the old off-center flush mount fixture that was there, but there was a problem when we bought it. Can you see it?

How about a closer look?

Whoops! The cover I bought for the box in the ceiling is too small. We were not interested in cutting a new hole in the ceiling, running new electrical wiring. and patching the old one, so we swagged the chain. Home Depot and Lowe's didn't have bigger covers. What's a girl to do?

We didn't want to make the hole smaller with drywall patching, because that would require painting the patched parts. Normally not a problem, but we've yet to be able to find a white that matches the ceiling color, so anything we painted over would be the wrong white, necessitating repainting the WHOLE ceiling, which is a messy, unpleasant job in a room with a lot of weird corners, a portion over a stairwell and a hallway attached. So, what did we do? Like any normal, lazy homeowner, we cosmetically covered it up!

This little ceiling medallion cost us $25 from Architectural Depot.com and did the trick perfectly. It also added a little detail to the ceiling, which is nice. I need to buy a screw for the other of the silver cover. That's on my list of things to do today.

Next on the list of things we've done in the office:

2. Refinished a little side table.

I got this baby for $4 at a yard sale:

I was on board with the concept here (stained wood top, white bottom) but the actual finish was not so good.

Distressed white-wash? Not my gig.

The top was down right beat-up. And the underside? I won't show it to you, but it was full of old spider egg-sacks (ewwwwwwww...).

So, down to the basement with it where I took it apart, cleaned of all remnants of spiders (hopefully there were no baby spiders inside...) refinished the top and repainted the bottom. All to become this:

The top is Minwax's Walnut Brown stain (I think I put on 5 coats of it, and I let them sit for 15 minutes each...I wanted it D-A-R-K) and the bottom is Sherwin Williams Roman Column (the same color as the trim in our whole house). I had the stain, the polycrylic and the paint all on hand, so this table really only cost $4 - it's holding up a $125 lamp...that evens out, right?

3. I've recovered both of our office chairs in a cool diamond print fabric:

I'd like to point out that I did not throw in a "cat lumbar pillow". That made its way onto the chair all by itself. What can I say? No matter what I'm doing- she wants to be in whatever room I'm in. She has no regard for important blog photography.

The wide shot from the start of the post is a little old, and only one chair is covered there. I did the second one a few days ago.

4. All the "stuff" that was stored in our old corner desks (remember them?) has been transplanted to Ikea Kasset boxes:

We also purchased that pretty vase (and the lamp on the little table) from some potters in Pennsylvania during a little pottery trip we took with my aunt this winter (she's our pottery guru). It's filled with sticks from Ikea and some over-sized faux pheasant feathers I found on clearance at Pottery Barn. There's going to be a couple more, but I have to transplant all of our CDs from jewel cases to paper sleeves to minimize the space they'll take up. CDs are obsolete and I don't think we even own a cd player, but we're not ready to let go of them yet. Maybe someday our kids will laugh at our ridiculous technology, just like I laugh when I find my Dad's old 8-tracks.

The boxes will be residing in some shelves we're going to build in the alcove there. We're planning the shelves this week, hoping to install them next week. Once that's done we can hook up our new printer.

5. I finally framed our diplomas! Adam graduated 5.5 years ago, I graduated 4 years ago. It's about time. Hanging them is going to require scaffolding (seriously...the wall is over the stair well) so it might be a little while before we actually get them on the wall. I tried to keep them simple, none of the fancy frames degrees are usually in. While we're both proud to have college diplomas, so we wanted to hang them up. On the other hand we don't want to boast; which is why they're in simple frames upstairs in the house, not on the 1st floor for all our guests to see.

Hanging diplomas is a hotly debated topic in the comments over on Apartment Therapy.

6. I put up a couple of little shelves for Adam's computer surround sound speakers on the wall behind his half of the desk.

His speakers used to always sit on his desk, so he didn't actually have surround sound, he had "front and sides" sound. This looks better, too. It was like he had a little wall of speakers around him before.

There's still a lot to do in the office, and it's slow going, but we'll get there. It certainly looks a heck of a lot better than it did!

Out back at our house

2011-06-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

After a long, unannounced hiatus I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath to see what's going on around our house.

And when I say "unannounced hiatus" I mean I didn't make time for blogging and that I was generally ashamed at the lack of work going on with the house. Now that I'm on Summer break, hopefully posting will go back to being much more regular.

We've been taking a break from decorating the office to work on the back yard. Our back yard is, in short, a jungle. It would be one giant hill sloping toward the house, but at some point someone who owned the property installed terracing. Lots of it. Climbing up and down the terraces can make gardening a challenge.

The previous owner, as far as we've culled from our nieghbors, didn't do a whole lot to keep it landscaped. Understandable. Maryland summers are hot and humid and generally unpleasant to do any work in. Also, our back yard has insane mosquitoes, double trouble. Last summer was incredibly hot here, so we didn't do anything in the yard either. But this year, we decided to take advantage of the Spring weather to start clearing out the mess and putting down new landscaping cloth and mulch. Who knows how much we'll get done this summer, but the point is, we've started and we're really happy with our progress, even though we're not actually planting anything just yet.

Anyway, here's how it looked when we started.

Yes, very green, but very overgrown as well. Here's where we're at now, after several weekends of tearing stuff out and putting down mulch.

Much less green, sure, but we'll get to that in the future. It doesn't help that lack of rain has sort of fried the grass, too. We are not believers in watering the lawn.

I made a slide show of our progress. We didn't do it all in one go, for sure. We've been tackling the terraces in sections, so here it is one section at a time.

We saved the few plants that are decent looking, including a couple of evergreen shrubs, some kind of shrub of unknown variety, some vine-y things growing on the terrace walls and a hydrangea that I bought last year and never planted and somehow it was still alive this Spring even though it sat in pot on our patio for 6-9 months.

We've got a whole lot left to do, for sure. But we're happy that SOMETHING is getting done. We've got plans to put in bushes, take out some trees, and even have a small portion of the terraces devoted to growing vegetables and herbs. We are both fiends for rosemary, and used to have a huge rosemary plant in the yard, but it didn't make it when we transplanted it 2 Autumns ago.

Excuses, Excuses

2011-04-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

Lots of things are going on here at our house, unfortunately, none of them are actually being COMPLETED. More correctly, I shouldn't say that they're "going on" so much as they're sitting there, staring at me saying "finish me" and I'm saying "um....just one more episode of Teen Mom 2, or Real Housewives of Someplace".

But here's the list of the things I'm juggling right now.

1. I bought a small side table at a yard sale for $4. I'm staining and painting it. I started that project, oh, 6 weeks ago. Literally. It should have taken 3 days (when you consider drying time).

2. I have 2 more rolling office chairs to recover. They are sitting in the guest room where I don't have to look at them every day, mocking me with their unfinished-ness.

3. We bought a storage bench to put under the dining room window. That also needs to be painted and a new seat cushion sewn for it. When it's done, it will hold cookbooks and other kitchen overflow. Right now it holds 12 cans of cat food...and the seat cushion is covered in cat hair.

4. The office saga continues. We've still got next to nothing on the walls, no realistic storage and a light fixture that is about 3 times brighter than we really want or need. We need to fix all those things as well as hook up our new printer (which has to be networked to 5 computers...) cover the holes in the ceiling, paint 3 doors, install new door knobs, and numerous other things I don't really want to think about.

5. Don't get me started on the railing upstairs. I think we're both pretending that it doesn't need to be replaced.

Why hasn't any of this been done? I came down with bronchitis, which took 3 weeks to get over, and then Adam got it from me, in addition to some kind of weird flu thing, so he's been sick for about 4 weeks. Our home became a den of sickness, full of tissues, cough drops, soup an Robitussin. Lots of bottles of Robitussin. I think we went through 4 bottles. Neither of us was sick at the same time, but when one of us was sick, the other one was just trying to keep the house from collapsing under piles of laundry and dirty dishes. And as we all know, men don't get sick, they get a Man Cold

And so it went. Husband care took priority over most other things. Poor little bunny.

But, the coughing has subsided around here, so I'm hoping to be back on task! I returned to refinishing the end table tonight. I purchased a ceiling medallion to deal with the holes in the office ceiling (which I'll explain later). I'm investigating solutions for putting our new printer on a shelf, while still accommodating the scanner lid. Hopefully the ol' blog will be hopping again soon.

Also, 4 more weeks of school. Then it will be summer and I will be more inclined to work on house things. I can taste the freedom.

A much needed update on the office.

2011-02-22T13:01:00.000-08:00

I felt bad signing off yesterday without updating about the office. So, here we go.

A few weeks ago, the office ago the office looked like this:

In the last few weeks we've repainted, removed the old desks, put in a new dining room table to be used as one large desk, as well as a chaise lounge, hung new blinds and curtains and some artwork, as well as some shelves. So, here's where we're at now (click the photo to see it larger):

Note the cameo by Miss Daisy on the chaise at the left there. She was too cute not to use this picture.

Check out another angle.

Painting this room was an important milestone. It had the last of the stained wood trim. All of the trim in our house is now white. It only took a year and a half.

So far, we're digging the office. But we still have work to do.

In the second angle above you can see we need something on the wall over the chaise. The shelves need to be dressed in a practical way (I don't want to fill them with fluff. An office should have purpose) The large vase to the left of the chaise needs some reeds or sticks or something to go with the giant pheasant feathers I found on clearance at Pottery Barn. The junk on the filing cabinet needs a home. I'm on the hunt for a throw blanket for the chaise (I like this one, but I'm not sure I can force myself to spend $50 on a throw blanket).

We also need to add shelves to this alcove. It's where our new printer and network access server (which is what I discovered a networkable hard drive is called...but don't hate on me if I'm wrong) will go. It will also be where our wireless internet thingy will go.

I also need to recover two office chairs with this fabric.

We need some kind of cord management solution, like whoa:

And we still need to rebuild the railing. That will be our biggest challenge:

Oh, and hanging the light fixture over the desk is also on the to do list. I don't have a picture of that, but the fixture has been purchased.

All in all, we're moving right along. I also got the stairwell painted and some art I've been eyeing up on Etsy hung up there. I used Glidden's Natural Linen for the paint on this. It was left over from when I painted the hallway last year. Here are some befores:

And Afters:

The art is this print from Studio KMO on Etsy. The two together are a map of Baltimore city, all made up with little tiny lines for all the city blocks. No text or street names.

Hope you enjoyed this little update on the office/stairwell. I'm hoping to have all the simple jobs done in the next 3 weeks or so. The railing is a daunting task we've yet to plan out. Stay tuned, friends.

All I want is a room somewhere...with amazing wallpaper.

2011-02-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Last night My Fair Lady was on TV. I love that musical (who doesn't?). I haven't watched it since I got into this whole "decorating a house" thing. It turns out whoever designed the set for My Fair Lady (George James Hopkins) had a thing for awesome wallpaper. (Click to see these larger)

Professor Higgins' House

Whoa...I'm in love.

Mother Higgins' House

Wait, no NOW I'm in LOVE.

I'm still working on the office, but the upstairs bathroom is up next, and I'm thinking wallpaper, thanks to this movie. Something BOLD, maybe on just one wall, or two. Wallpaper is a challenge for Adam and I to agree on, but I think we can make it work. I was thinking wainscoting, but Adam seems to have a visceral hatred of wainscoting (I don't know why...) Perhaps we can talk about board and batten.

P.S. George James Hopkins also did the set decorating for Auntie Mame, Hello Dolly, and A Star is Born. If ever I wanted to see the inside of someone's house, it's this guy.

P.P.S I know, I know. No office updates for too long. The room is painted, the table is in, curtains and new blinds are hung, some shelves are up and one piece of art is on the wall. Still to do is add shelves to the alcove, hang some more art, find a throw blanket, work on my computer and possibly store it, figure out some kind of cord management solution, cover the chairs and replace the railing.

I haven't updated with pictures because while many things have been accomplished, the room is a mess and I'm not going to show you pictures of a messy room. Sorry. Your day will come, I promise.

Many unrelated things

2011-01-27T19:50:00.000-08:00

This is a post about lots of things, mostly unrelated to each other.

1. Adam got a new job...or he's transitioning to one. He's staying at the same company but changing positions, so he'll be training his replacement as well as training for his new job at the same time. He'll be traveling a LOT less when he's doing the new job full time. Probably on the road only a few times a year, rather than 2 weeks every month. I'll be glad to have him home, but it will be change on the homefront, too. Our entire relationship we've either lived far enough apart that we only saw each other on weekends, or he's had this job where he's gone most of the week and home weekends. We may have to set some groundrules regarding sharing the TV...

2. On a less "big life step" note, we picked a color for the office upstairs. It was between 3 Valspar colors - Fishnet, Shade Green and Marine Reef (in order, left to right)

We're going with Shade Green, in the middle.

I've bought the paint, I just haven't started painting yet. It'll happen when it happens. It's a big job because Adam uses his desktop computer on a daily basis and I need access to my printer for Etsy purposes, so it's a bit of a pain to disassemble the room.

3. We bought this little lady to be our "comfy reading chair" in the office. Okay...so it's not a chair. It's a chaise (which is only 2 letters off "chair"). She is small, as chaises go. With my bum in corner, my heels are at the edge on the right side. It's like a love-seat sized chaise. The cats LOVE it, and we find them on it constantly. I found her at Marshall's, marked $300, down from $550 in regular stores.

But I got her for only $200. Why? This is why:

A little hole, about the size of a nickle on the side of the arm. For $100 off I can find some matching thread and sew this bad boy up so it doesn't get any bigger and make it less visible then cover it with a throw blanket. We probably would have put a throw on it anyway, for cuddle up with a good book purposes. Two birds, one stone.

Now we just have to hope it fits when the table comes. We'll make it work, Tim Gunn Style.

4. Speaking of the table (the Mission Dining Table from World Market that we'll be using for a desk) the freight company tracking website says it's not longer in California, and was loaded on a truck in Indiana yesterday. It should be here sometime in the next 7 days.

5. I am counting down the days until I can pre-order an iPhone with Verizon. No, it's not house related...but I don't care. I really want that phone.

6. I had a snow day yesterday, so I recovered this office chair with some lovely fabric by Dwell Studios for Robert Allen Home. It's going to my office at school.

One chair down, 3 to go.

I got these for free from my Mom's office. I'm not sure why they were getting rid of them, there's nothing wrong with them, except maybe the fabric is worn out, but who cares because I'm recovering them. The big one on the left is going in our office at home with a diamond print fabric I'll reveal later. The medium one on the right is going to my classroom at work so I can have a cushioned seat as opposed to the hard plastic one I have now, I'm deciding among several fabrics for that one. The little one...doesn't have a specific home yet. I might just put it in the basement until the need arises for it. Or Freecycle it. Or recover it and sell it on Craigslist.

And actually, it's 4 to go, because I'm recovering this chair, too. So that both our office chairs will be in the same fabric. (This photo is from the apartment we lived in 1.5 years ago...ugh, so cluttered.)

UPDATE: I started painting upstairs today, it being my second snow day in a row. While the office itself is going to require some semi-serious thought when it comes to coordinating painting the room and continuing to USE the room, the hallway was a breeze. Got the trim painted, 1 side of 1 door painted and 1 coat of wall color on. Touch-ups tomorrow and continued door painting through the weekend. Pictures at some point, when the doors are done and I've peeled all the tape off.

Snow Day

2011-01-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

Like I said yesterday, I love snow. I know not everyone does, but I do. Even when we had over 2 feet of the white & fluffy on the ground last year, I didn't care. I love snow. Maybe it's because school has been my full time job for as long as I can remember, whether I'm a teacher or a student, so snow means sleeping in or a day spent snuggled up on the couch with a hot drink (hot chocolate when I was little, tea in high school, now coffee) watching the flakes quietly fall to the ground.

I think I also like how quiet everything gets when it snows. Everything slows down. And what I've always found funny is that snow is that we always end up talking to our neighbors when it snows, because we're all out there shoveling and you wave, say hello, talk about the snow and how it's changed our plans for the day.

But possibly one of my favorite things about snow is how pretty it makes everything. All covered in crisp, clean white. All the leafless trees and gray landscape of winter in Maryland is covered up and it's just so nice to look at. At least for the first few days, eventually the salt and plows and traffic and shoveling kick up the dirt onto the snow, and it melts in patches, and it's not so nice.

It snowed here last night. And we got just enough to cover everything, but not enough that it's a pain to shovel or terribly inconvenient. The plows kept up with it (even ahead of it) so the roads are clear. Perfect snow? I think a about 3 more inches would have been even better, but then, I love snow. While everything was nice and clean this morning, I just had to go out and take some pictures of the house covered in snow.

I look at this picture and think about painting the outside of the house. Eventually, we'll do it. I needs it, the shutters are all bleached out and it's overall painfully bland.

One of my favorite things about our house in the snow is our evergreen trees in the front yard.

They are beautiful when covered in snow. Sadly, it never lasts long on them, the wind blows the snow off and the branches bend and it just falls off. They had more than this on them this morning, but I'm glad I got in a picture before it was all gone.

Making it Office-al

2011-01-11T19:47:00.000-08:00

New Year, New Room. I am unable to not have a project, it seems.

On Friday night Adam and I drove to West Virginia, and it was not a fun drive. It should have taken 5 hours. According to our GPS we were making good time in the beginning, and we shaved nearly 30 minutes off our arrival time. Have I ever mentioned that my husband has a lead foot? Ultimately however, we were on the road for 6 hours (and if you count the 30 minutes we WOULD have saved, we ended up adding 1.5 hours to our trip). Why? Snow...and mountains. Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE snow. I'm a teacher for heavens sake, snow is the greatest thing ever. And mountains are okay, they make for nice views. But snow + mountains + dark + West Virginia State Highway Adminstration deciding it wasn't worth plowing or salting once the sun went down = not driving more than 40 mph for the last hour of the drive. We got in at 1:30 am went to bed, got up the next morning, stayed in Wheeling, WV for 5 hours (we were there for a funeral and there's not much else to do there), and it was time to head home again. Luckily the drive home was much easier, all the roads were dry and the sun was out, so we made it home in 5 hours (not counting the hour we took to eat at The Black Hog in Frederick, MD...delicious).

So, even after this exhausting trip. And even though we were excessively happy to be home and should have just wanted to relax, there was no stopping me, it was time to work on a plan for the office/hallway/stairs.So, that's precisely what I did.

The blog keeps me accountable. I get things done when you all know about it, because I think you're thirsting for more updates. (are you?) Let's see what's what then.

First off, I'll show you what we're working with. Starting with the stairs, since they're the entrance to the room. People often walk into our house and ask, "Wait...how do you get upstairs?" Our stairs are tucked away behind the living room and people often don't even notice they're there. Look at this old picture from a few days after we moved in.

You see, our house was built in 1947, and back then it was a single story, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom home. Sometime in the 80s or 90s the owner blew off the roof and added a whole 2nd story, and it became a 5 bedroom 2 bathroom. That why the stairs are in a strange place, the home was never intended to HAVE another set of stairs.

What that means for you, dear readers, is that the stairs are all but impossible to photograph. I laid on the floor and took a BUNCH of photos, and these are the best I could get from the 1st floor.

But it makes a little more sense when you're on the 2nd floor looking down the stairs.

Now, lets give the space some context.

Notice the paint chips on the wall...color choosing has begun, and you're getting a little preview here.

There in the bottom right corner is the stairwell and the railing keeping you from falling into the stairwell (sort of...we'll get to that in a moment). The rest of the room, you can see, is open. The office is kind of a sitting area at the top of the steps. It doesn't have a door or anything, We're using it as an "office" for our computers and want to keep using it for that. I feel weird calling it an office, it's not like we do business there. Adam plays games, I blog, do creative paper crafting stuff and maintain my Etsy site. It's more of a computer room, not an office. But we're both working on corner desks from back in our not-living-together days, when we were fine facing a corner, because we were probably talking each other on the computer (remember, Adam and I met online). Now, however, It's weird to be in the room with our backs to each other, and also it's time to move on from our tubular steel and particle board desks. We're not in college anymore. We can do better.

Also attached to this room, across from the stairwell, is the hallway off of which the 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom upstairs branch off from.

The smallest bedroom is on the left, with the door cracked (I use that as a closet/dressing room) the door on the right is the master bedroom, and the door at the back is the bathroom. The medium sized bedroom is behind and to the left in these photos.

As you may have gathered, we'll have the stairs, office and hallway to deal with at once on this decorating project. It's a difficult space because it's 3 different sections that are all connected. And then, there's this.

Yes, this space above/behind our stairwell TOTALLY looks like a crows nest on a ship.

My father literally wiggled his way back there when we were considering buying this house and shouted "Ahoy There!" We know, it's weird (both my Dad and the space). And from what we can figure out, there's not much we can do to eliminate it. And it's going to be horrible to get back there and paint that space (we're still trying to figure out how to even do it).

Did you also notice the railing around the stairs, and the width of the gaps between the spindles? Whenever we walk someone through the house who has small children, they get to this room and get very paranoid that their child is going to fall through the railing. We can't blame them, it could happen. This railing is actually really unsafe for anyone under the age of 12. We're going to be replacing it in this makeover.

With all that said, what's the plan, Stan? Let's go to the Mood Board!

1. Curtains. We already own these Ikea Stockholm Blad Curtains. We hung them in our den in our apartment and I love them. I'm excited to get them hung up again (also, they were not cheap as Ikea curtains go, so I'm not ready to give them up)

2. Color Scheme. You know me, I might end up changing this. But for the most part I'm pulling colors from the koi fish batik art (more on that in item 4) I'm trying to connect this space to the master bedroom next door by using the yellow.

3. This is the Eden Pendant Lamp from CB2. I'm still working on convincing Adam that it would be great to hang a pendant lamp over the desk. I'm usually pretty good at convincing him of things, though.

4. This is a batik print of koi fish we purchased at a craft fair quite a while back. It's by Janice Cline and we've been trying to find a place to hang it since we moved here (and struggled to find a place for it back when we were in our apartment). I'm pulling a lot of our colors from this print.

5. A new printer. This is a big requirement for the new room. We want a good quality, wireless/networkable all-in-one printer (printer, scanner, copier). We have 5 computers, right now and it's a huge pain to hook up 3 of those 5 to our printer via USB cable. We want to be able to print wirelessly or via network connection.

6. A external hard drive, again, networkable. With 5 computers, my photo taking habit for the blog, and Adam's habit of downloading huge quantities of music, we need more computer memory storage. And we want to be able to save to it without having to physically hook up to the hard drive. This a 2 Terabyte

(thats right, terabyte) Western Digital hard drive.

7. The desk. Were going to rearrange and use the Mission Extension Dining Table from World Market as our desk. We'll be sharing it, and facing each other, a la this layout from Made By Girl

We will be placing our desk/table (deskable? tabesk?) under the large double-wide window with our chairs facing each other. Can't you just see it with the curtains behind it, some new mini-blinds (yes, there WILL be new blinds - I'm so SICK of those copper ones) and that pendant light hanging above? I can see it.

8. Wall color. The final wall color is still TBD, but we're choosing among versions of this muted sage color.

9. I'm loving this zig zag fabric and I want to use it to recover the leafy office chair and a second similar chair. I can frequently get these office chairs for free from my Mom's work. Usually all that's wrong with them is that the upholstery is beat up, but I recover them anyway, so it doesn't matter. You can see how I recover these chairs here.

10. A comfy chair for book reading and laptop work. This room gets fantastic light, and the 2nd floor of the house is usually pretty quiet. It's prime book-reading space. I'm loving this chair, but no promises. We spent big bucks on the table (we had to have it shipped to use so tack on beau coup dinero in freight charges) so we'll have to play some limbo and see how low-can-we-go with the chair. I'm thinking I'm going to find an inexpensive used chair and recover it.

11. Same for the ottoman, small, cheap, recover in something fun! I'm also on the lookout for an inexpensive pouf...because I want a pouf like nobody's business.

12. We already own this filing cabinet. You can see it under the windows in the picture above. But, it's "putty" colored (that's actually the name of the color when you shop in Office Depot). Putty reminds me of The Putties from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Yes, I just busted out a Power Rangers reference. It was bound to happen. I'm surprised it took me THIS long into running a blog to mention them. Anyway, back to the filing cabinet, I'm working on finding out a way to paint it (spray paint? getting it professionally powder coated?) I think this will end up being the thing that fills in any "this room needs a little flair" gaps.

13. The railing. This will be the absolute biggest job of the office, because we'll be building this mission/arts and crafts style railing ourselves. We want the standoff handrail to be stained wood (close to the color of the table) and the rest to be white, like the rest of the trim in our house.

Other goals? We're going to finally hang up our college diplomas (um, how long has it been since we graduated? 6 years for Adam, 3.5 years for me...it's about time). I want desk space to work with a Wacom Tablet. Whatever happens as far as color goes in the office will extend into the hallway. Also, all the doors up there need a coat of paint. The old owner slapped on 1 thin coat just to make the doors look good for showings, but when you really look at it, it's not a good situation. Plus, our trim is slightly off white, not pure white.

The little alcove under the small window will become shelves, and that's where the printer and hard drive will go. I'm thinking I might paint the back wall with a pop of color. I'm also looking for a small storage cabinet for assorted office-y things (paper, envelopes, etc).

The hunt for desk accessories will be an extensive one.

Wish us luck! I'm already starting to do some painting this week!

Year In Review - 2010

2010-12-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

I just got to thinking about all we've accomplished in the house in 2010, and I'm surprised to say that I'm really proud! Did I have delusions of grandeur when we moved in, thinking I'd have the whole place decorated in 6 months...yes, yes I did. But we got a lot done this year and the 1st floor is basically finished...except that we want to renovate the downstairs bathroom, but that's actual renovation, not just decorating. We don't expect to do that until sometime in 2012, at least.

But let's take a look back at everything we've accomplished this year, the first full year in our house.

January:

We took our fireplace from dirty grungy brick to clean white wood:

February:

We survived the Snowpocalypse...but not without having to climb into our attic and scoop snow out of our turbine vents with a spoon into a bucket. Did I mention our attic has no floor? Also...shoveling was ridiculous.

Also, we took our hallway from yellow with stained wood trim to beige with white trim.

March:

We got a rug...

We made some art:

April:

Nothing got finished in April, per se. Sue me... I can't be fabulously productive every month! Work began in earnest on the guest room in April though.We got the walls painted and nightstands went from boring to...a more modern boring. Sophisticatedly Neutral...that's what we'll call it.

May:

We bought me a new car. No, it has nothing to do with the house, but I don't care, I love my car.

Also, work continued on the guest room. For instance, I made over this rocking chair.

And I made cornices (by far my most popular post of the year)

June:

Apparently nothing happened in June. Or at least I didn't blog about anything.

July:

I added a little privacy to our back door.

And I finally finished the guest room.

August:

Despite a stifling hot summer, I got the porch from here

To here:

September:

Work began on the den. Chairs were recovered

October:

Work continued on the den. There was much green and I rejoiced.

Some new friends came into our lives:

And an old one left:

(I did eventually find that last handle for the new, smaller buffet)

November:

Another month of fluff posts, including this one about those risque Swedes at Ikea.

December:

Den finally completed.

So that's that, 3 whole rooms completed, that's one every 4 months...not a bad rate I'd say, considering I work full time and Adam travels constantly for his job. And that doesn't include the little odd jobs around the house.

What's in store for 2011? Hopefully a new office, finally finishing the master bedroom and then taking on the upstairs bathroom (the one room I have no clue how to decorate).

Stay tuned.

Better Late than Never - Holiday Edition

2010-12-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

I've gotten a few requests from people to see my Christmas decorations for this year.

Christmas was 2 days ago...

But, you know, I have to give the people what they want. So here we go.

The dining room table this year was much more subdued. I had a crowd over on the 19th and that meant I had to make room for food rather than decorations. But I did return to the bear under glass from last year, and added a hedgehog friend in the smaller stand.

I am pretty proud of the table runner this year - a pretty crewel number that I picked up at the William-Sonoma Outlet near Sterling, VA for a cool $10 (normally $80)

I made a little arrangement in my white "stump" vase...but it's really not photographing well. Trust me, it looks much better in person.

You saw my mini-tree in the den in my last post

And I got a new wreath for the front door...it's sparkle-city.

But the living room is where the impressive stuff is.

I bought these little white wreaths to decorate the house for our January 2008 wedding, they got put to good use again on our walls this year.

Adorable ceramic owls from Hobby Lobby (one just opened near us!) These guys stay out all year, but the little rosemary bush from my cousin give them their own little tree.

The mantle/fireplace follows my standard "add more stuff" rule of holiday decorating

Real antlers I found in an antique store - luckily no one pointed them out to the children at our party or else we might have had a "what did you do to Rudolf" situation.

And, of course, the centerpiece of Christmas - the tree. I went for white and silver this year. It was time for a change from the jewel tones I've used the last 3 years.

I'm pretty sure my mother has bought me every owl ornament in the tri-city area. There are 5 or 6 on the tree...one of which is an owl playing the accordion. Because when I think Christmas, my mind jumps straight to musical woodland creatures. Below is one of the more classy owls.

Adam and I do not go nuts with presents. 3 or 4 things from each of us to the other one. We try to keep it below $150. Also, I took a cue from Sherry and John at Young House Love with my tree skirt - two sheepskins from Ikea.

So, that's it this year. Actually, not true, we put some lights up outside the house, but it's way to cold/windy/dark for me to go out there and take pictures. Sorry kids. They're really not that exciting anyway, trust me.

If you'd like to see my decorations last year (and the old fireplace...whoa! I forgot it ever looked like that!) you can take a peek here & here.

What happens in the Man Cave stays in the Man Cave...

2010-12-24T09:05:00.000-08:00

Until I post it on my blog.

Now that the den is finished, the house is decorated for Christmas and the big family party is over I can finally do a little blogging.

First things first - the den. I have 1 more piece of art to make (a companion to the beetle art I made a while back - this time butterflies/moths)and eventually I'll refinish the side tables, and I'm on the lookout for a large/medium art piece to put on the other blank wall behind the couch, but I like to buy art when it speaks to me, not when I just need something to fill a wall, so this can wait. I'm calling the room done for now. Let's look at the overall before and after:

See? Blank wall with lonely surround sound speaker needs something...it will come to me eventually.

We finally hung Adam's Star Wars: Empire Strike's Back poster...on the left there. It's from the original 1980 release and it should have been destroyed (they released a new one because this one didn't picture Billy Dee Williams and it was in his contract that he be on the poster). Adam's aunt used to work in a movie theater and got to take the posters home sometimes, and she gave this one to him. It's pretty hard-core nerd...Nerd-Core if you will.

Since this is the room where we spend most of our time I put a little mini-Christmas tree in, just so we can feel festive.

Ahhhh...isn't that so much better? The whole room feels much more cozy now. We didn't do a WHOLE lot in here. Just some paint, recovered some furniture, new mini-blinds, new pillows and curtains, hung some art. The paint color, if you're curious, is a 50/50 mixture of Valspar Bullfrog and Valspar Meadowlands. We just couldn't find the right shade of green on any chips or samples we had, and were torn between the two, but neither was just right, so we tried mixing them together (my sister-in-laws suggestion - thanks Christy!) and VIOLA! Perfect shade of green.

The most major project was replacing the trim around the windows. As you can see in the before photos, there used to be really wide planks of wood around the windows. We figured this was just a taste decision on behalf of the old owner, in addition to him not wanting to miter the corners of the trim.

Ha.

When we took the trim off we discovered this.

There was a 2-3" gap between the windows and all the walls, which of course had no kind of insulation or anything, which explained why there was a constant draft from these windows despite them being quite new compared to all the other windows in the house. Well done previous owners. Seems they bought replacement windows that were smaller than the original ones, and just covered up the gap with wide boards. So first we filled everything with expanding foam to fight the evil draft monster, put drywall pieces in, drywall tape and mudded everything. After all THAT we were able to put up the new trim.

Some of my favorite things are the velvet curtains, and the pillows. The antler pillows are by far my favorite. Complete with faux bois fabric on the back. LOVE!

Those Naughty Swedes

2010-11-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

I love Ikea. It's my go-to place for lots of our furniture. I never go into the store without buying something. Recently I went in to buy some of those sheepskin things they sell and a bath mat...and left with $100 worth of other stuff. My brother and his wife live 5 minutes from our nearest Ikea and every time we visit them I think "hmmm...perhaps a side trip?"

Last year, Ikea made TIME magazine because, of all things, they changed their font. Seriously.

But this morning, while looking for this video to post Facebook, I ran across a commercial from Ikea that was apparently too scandalous to air. Then another. Then another.

Who knew those Swedes could be so racy?

Halloween Recap and Den Update

2010-11-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

So, yes, I AM a bad blogger. It's a week AFTER Halloween and I never did post pictures of my decorations. Let's pretend it's because I'm trying to keep you in suspense, and that it's NOT because I enjoy afternoon naps. Yes, let's pretend that.

Anyway, there were pumpkins and mums on the front porch (mine promptly shriveled due to no rain and over carving - lesson learned)

There were spooky wreaths - purchased on sale at Pier One last year

There were also LOTS of glittery skulls (or as my friend, Emma, called them Disco Skulls)

The dining room table was decked with spooky things under glass, more disco skulls and an "attack crow" - Sic em' Squaky!

The mantel boasted it's usual excessive holiday "stuff"

Because my holiday decorating philosophy is "Add more crap!"

And lastly, there were vast quantities bats...and I mean vast.

But it was all worth it in the end for these guys, my niece and nephews. How adorable are they?

In non-Halloween news the hideous light fixture in the den has been replaced with a ceiling fan

See that bundle of wires that was too long from the base to the lights? Yeah, that was bundled with a twist tie...classy previous owners...well played. Here's the new fan.

We converted a drawer into a shelf on the TV cabinet so that we no longer have cable boxes and other electronics sitting on the floor

New blinds have been mounted, new end tables bought and awesome orange lamps purchased

And I found these Lee Jofa fabrics at a thrift store for $10 and $12 a yard. Normally these fabrics run in the $100s per yard. That thrift shop my new go-to source for decorator fabrics. The houndstooth is actually from Joann Fabrics.

Did you notice I'm adding some orange to the den? It's going to be good.

Still to do? Make curtains and pillows, patch some holes in the wall, make a table runner for the TV cabinet, refinish the side tables (bought them at a used furniture store) and hang artwork.

Staying Open

2010-10-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

Today, Bryn, over at Bryn Alexandra posted about bathrooms.

I WISH I were redoing our bathroom...HA!

But she posted this picture, which has given me new motivation to return to making the open weave roman shades for the living room...which I started so long ago I can't remember, but I was wearing a winter coat when I bought the fabric, let's put it that way.

I was starting to doubt how good the open weave fabric would look, but now I'm back on board baby! Now I just have to actually DO it.

In other news, blinds for the den have arrived. We converted a drawer into a shelf in our TV cabinet. We've purchased side tables, lamps, the ceiling fan and a surround sound system for the den (which one of those things do you think Adam picked out?). The old buffet in the living room has been sold and a new smaller version will be getting it's last coat of Polycrylic tonight.

Also, pumpkins have been carved, my costume is 75% complete and I'm cutting bats out of black paper until my fingers bleed. My niece and nephews will be at our house for Halloween. I'm pretty excited.

Lastly - my Mom bought us a bat house over the weekend...bird houses are for weenies. We'll be putting that up outside soon.

Coming up roses...

2010-10-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

I have several good things going for me right now.

1. I'm eating Twizzlers. Not in the "I'm on a Twizzlers kick right now" way. But in the "I found some Twizzlers in the cabinet and I am enjoying them" way.

2. My Mom found these awesome pillows at Tuesday Morning the other day. She took me over there to check them out. I had these babies bookmarked months ago on ZGallerie, where they were $40. Tuesday morning had them for $20. Go Mom. ZGallerie no longer has them in the green (but they do have them in purple and blue/green). I bought 2 of them.

3. I bought a hydrangea plant...jury is still out on where to plant it, or if we'll kill it, but for now, it's lovely.

4. It's officially Fall. It was cold enough that I had to put on slippers this morning. I love my slippers. They are big and fuzzy and have a ridiculous sequined flower on them.

5. In addition to being Fall, it's October. I can now decorate for Halloween...possibly the most fun holiday to decorate.

6. My new chairs came for the living room on Saturday. They are fantastic.

Check out the fabric pattern. LOVE.

Sadly, though, the buffet is too big to fit all three things along the wall.

I knew that was going to happen. I spent a long time looking for chairs so that the buffet and the chairs would fit along the wall, but then I said "why am I looking at spending a mountain of money for chairs that will fit to suit the buffet I got for $20 at a yard sale?" So the buffet is going buh-bye as soon as I gather the gumption to put it up on Craigslist.

7. The den is 90% painted. I have to do the back of a door and a little bit around the windows. I wish I could sleep on a cloud of this green.

8. I found gorgeous large scale brown and tan houndstooth fabric at Joann's. On clearance for $12.99 a yard. I also found special order fabric samples for sale for $2 each. They are the perfect size for a pillow. I bought 3.

I just realized this post is very green...I'm on a green kick. It's all green all the time, baby.

Pull up a chair

2010-09-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

On Monday my Mom and I recovered the two club chairs in the den. Remember the chairs?

Sure, they look okay here, but let's take a closer peek.

And what did all this?

Look at those little sabers on the ends of her toes. We bought these chairs before we ever had cats. Attempts to keep them off of the chairs were a waste. For one thing, the house (then apartment) was empty 8 hours of the day, and we were asleep for another 8, so we could only scold them so much. Our two furry friends LOVED to run across these chairs when they chased each other. We gave up when the damage became extensive enough that it jut didn't matter anymore. There was no hope of saving them.

On behalf of Bessie and Daisy, I'd like to say they are not claw-ers. This is the only furniture they've ever ruined, and it wasn't from clawing. It was from running across them and climbing on top of them. And the way they played was so adorable...

So, about 2 weeks ago Mom and I stopped into Hancock Fabrics to get some fleece for a project she was working on. While we were there, I found 5 yards of this in the decorator fabrics remnant pile, at $8 a yard.

It was durable, with some kind of rubbery backing, possibly for outdoor use. It was in the color scheme we're going for in the room. It was masculine. There were 5 yards, exactly what I needed. It was cheap. It had me at hello.

Then I discovered I could get 15% off with my school ID (sometimes, being a teacher is good).

Sold.

Recovering the chairs was pretty easy. The seat was no different than wrapping a canvas or recovering some dining room chair seats. The back was just a matter of cutting it to size, stapling around the edges and applying some trim.

Oh, yeah, and I found trim that matched perfectly on sale, too. Imagine that.

So, want to see the finished product? $45 later?

Much better, right? And just wait til you see it with the green walls. It is a thing of beauty.

A Letter to a Lamp

2010-09-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Crate and Barrel Leighton Lamp,

You would be so perfect in our den. You are everything I want in a lamp. I would even order 2 of you. You would never be alone, Leighton Lamp.

But why must you be $179?

Perhaps someday you will be mine. I will have to gaze upon you from afar, between trips to Home Goods, looking for something to rival you...but we know nothing will rival you.

Your cheapskate lover,

Molly

P.S. I painted one wall of the den today, and I am in LOVE with it. The chairs I reupholstered on Monday (post to come, don't worry) look fantastic in front of it and the color feels positively rich. I desperately want to paint the rest of the room, but can only do one wall at a time right now.

Bemz out of shape

2010-09-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

...and then my brain reminded me of something.

Bemz

Bemz is a 3rd party company that makes slip covers for Ikea upholstery. I remembered looking at them last year when we bought our Ikea Ektorp corner sofa in the den. Remember the sofa?

I recall thinking, "oh, store this away in your brain". And then I did - in the file marked "Only to be opened when you think you've figured it all out".

Because, see, I planned a lot of the make-over around the fact that I don't really care for any of the other slip covers Ikea offers, so I wouldn't be changing it out. But now I'm looking at the Bemz website and wondering:

Hmmmm...or maybe

Or perhaps even....

Bold, no?

As a side note, we got a white slipcover for free when we purchased the couch as part of a promotion at the store that day. I might put the white one on for Christmas.

The Bemz covers would of course dramatically up the total cost of the redesign for the room, they range in price from $425 to $900+. But the couch could be so much cooler...

On the other hand, it's not part of "The Plan" and I know that when I try to change "The Plan" mid-stream, things go awry. I can't change my mind in the middle of the Mississippi, that's how my oxen die*. And I already bought paint and reupholstered the club chairs, so things are less flexible now.

But that nubby brown and white fabric on the first one is so...wonderfully nubby.

*Oh yes...that was an Oregon Trail reference.

You so crafty

2010-09-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

Adam validated my obsession with decorating the house today. Here's the conversation. Caution: It does contain the "S" word...Adam doesn't have the most gentlemanly vocabulary sometimes.

Adam: Hey, you know what?
Molly: What?
Adam: You're awesome.
Molly: Why am I awesome?
Adam: 'Cause you so crafty. (sic)
Molly: What do mean?
Adam: You figure out how to do things. You go all McGuyver-y on shit.
Molly: Well thanks, hon. I'm glad you appreciate the fact that I am a cheapskate and prefer to do things myself rather than pay other people to do them.

He brought this up because I found fabric today to recover those leather chairs I mentioned in the previous post. I got it for $8/yard, plus another 15% off as an educator discount. Mom is coming over tomorrow to help me reupholster them. Pictures next week, hopefully!

A den of green.

2010-09-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

With the completion of the front porch comes the next project.

Our den/tv room/man cave/family room is the room where we spend the most time in the house, when we're not sleeping. We watch TV, play games, work on the computer and just generally hang out in the room. Sometimes we're uncivilized and we eat dinner in there, too.

And with the chances of us hosting my Mom's family for Christmas this year being very high, the first floor needs to be in order (save the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom, which are projects too big to tackle right now).

That would be my deadline - Christmas. Actually, December 19th would be the day everyone comes over. That's 15 weeks, or 106 days.

Let's take a look at the den as it is currently.

For one thing, it's khaki-city in the corner shown here. The walls are khaki, the couch is khaki, the rug is khaki-ish. The first thing that will go is the wall color. It's left from the previous owner, and you can see the paint choosing process has started with swatches on the wall above the couch and next to the TV (below).

Don't get me started on the trim around the windows...why the previous owner put in trim that doesn't match anything else in the house, I do not understand. It's not even moulding, it's boards that have been poorly stained. That will be going and we're going to replace it with something that matches the rest of the house. Provided we don't take it down and find horror behind it.

Most of the furniture is staying in the room. Strike that...all of the furniture is staying in the room, except the little coffee table you see in the corner there, that's our old coffee table.

We like everything in the room except the couch, which we are not in love with. But we have small doors and hallways and this Ikea sofa was the only comfy thing in our price range last year (when we thought we had to have it) that would fit through our doors and around the necessary corners. It's only a year old and we're not ready to replace it yet. And we do like having the big sectional, and it being a sectional was the only thing that would get it in the room.

I can't say I really TRIED in this room. I bought the larger coffee table, and hunted down the couch, but other than that it was just a matter of putting in the furniture we already owned. There's nothing hanging on the walls, no curtains, and everything is black, brown or khaki. Boring.

But since it's the room we use the most, it will also be the most disruptive to our day-to-day getting painted and such. I think that's why I've been stalling so long. That and the fact that it's supposed to be "Adam's Room" and he's not exactly gung-ho about decorating.

So, I'm taking the reins. It will still be his room...sort of. I'll be asking his opinion a lot more this time than I normally would (making the shift from "never-ish" to "on most things"). Unlike those couples on the other shelter blogs who work together, I am a ruthless dictator that throws Adam a bone every once-in-a-while. I don't really think he minds, believe me.

The leather chairs seen here were cheap. $100 each at Big Lots. But they're good chairs. Comfortable and sturdy and they come in really handy when we have guests over. But the leather (possibly pleather?) is ruined. The cats like to run across them while they chase each other and their little claws have put a million pinholes and scratches in the leather. So, they will be getting reupholstered in some kind of durable fabric.

We'd like to add another book case. Adam reads a LOT, because he travels so much and he reads in the airport, in the plane, and while he's got down-time at customer sites. The amount he reads would bankrupt us if we bought books retail, but we started going to Daedalus Books a few years ago, and we make a few trips there a year, where Adam buys 20-30 books at a time.

This is one thing that NEEDS TO GO. The hideous disco ball track lighting fixture. It was left by the previous owner, and yes, that is a twist tie holding the excess wires together...classy. We'll be replacing it with a ceiling fan. The TV produces a fair amount of heat, and this room (for some reason) does not get good air circulation so the fan should help with both of those things.

The popcorn ceiling will be staying for the time being. Our Christmas deadline won't be permitting re-drywalling the ceiling. Someday we'll do away with it, but not now.

So, what's the plan? I made up a little mood board. Let's go over the play-by-play.

1. Colors - The walls will be green (still settling on the exact hue), and the trim will be off-white (the same Sherwin Williams Roman Column we've used throughout the house). I'll be tossing in brown, beige and ice blue accents.

2. Ceiling fan - something with mocha colored wood and sleek lines

3. Bookcase - again, hoping to add another one

4. Artwork - Adam likes buying art. We try to pick up a piece by a local artist as a souvenir whenever we go on trip somewhere. We have a whole stack of black and white photos just chillin' in the guest room closet. I'm hoping to bring them out and give them a home on the walls of the den.

5. Lamps - Sometimes I do some hand sewing on the sofa (as part of filling orders for my Etsy Shop), and need a good light source. The track lighting was doing a good job of that but it's going bye-bye, so the plan is to build a sofa-table level shelf in the corner along the wall behind the couch, that way we can add some lamps there and move the couch away from the wall (the air return behind the couch doesn't get air like it should, so moving the couch out should help with the air flow problem in the room).

6. A new throw blanket is in order. The off white afgan will be staying, it's fantastic and it was a wedding gift from my aunt, but we'll be adding new blanket, I hope.

7. The copper colored mini blinds are outta here. Replacing with wooden blinds, hopefully that will match closely with the fan blades.

8. The Ikea Ektorp sofa - she's staying

9. As is the Ikea Hemnes coffee table.

10. We need new/more throw pillows, in a bigger variety of sizes.

11. Adam loves our Toshiba Regza TV, though I doubt he'd mind upgrading to something bigger than the 42" we currently have, we're just not going to mention that as an option.

12. We already have 6 baskets that fit perfectly and serve as storage to stash remotes, game controllers, my wireless mouse and a few other odds and ends that would otherwise take up residence on top of the coffee table.

13. A stand in for the leather chairs. I'm digging the three fabric swatches shown at the left to recover the chairs, but I'm still on the hunt for something a little cheaper.

14. Rug...staying

15. This cabinet used to be in my bedroom in my parents house, and it was white. It was from Target, but they don't carry this line of furniture anymore. We painted it a couple of years ago and made a few alterations to it and it's now perfect for housing AV stuff. I'd like to figure out a better solution for the stuff that's under it right now though.

16. There is currently a brown table runner on top of this cabinet, I'd like to replace it with something to tie in the ice blue, and the zig zag stripe is very popular now.

There is also talk about adding surround sound speakers. Adam has wanted them for a long time, and who am I to deny a man surround sound in his man cave?

With any luck this will be an easy make over, consisting of painting and swapping some things out.

106 days and counting...

Go Go Gadget Stove!

2010-08-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

I think it's worth noting that I am a gadget lover. I think it has to do with my love of shopping (and buying stuff...) and also I'm always hoping this new thing will make my life better.

I get it from my Dad, who has a new gadget related hobby every year. Photography, grilling, bartending, the weather (he's completely addicted to knowing the temperature wherever he is, at all times and has digital thermometers out the wazoo). This extends to his dogs, too. The quest for the perfect harness and leash is never ending. He's a gadget kind of guy, and he fades in and out of these interests (except the dogs...they're like his children).

So, when I saw this today, I hoped in my mind that someday when we decide to renovate our kitchen, that this will be in our price range.

I like to think that this is something Adam can get behind, too.

The Big Porch Reveal

2010-08-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

My new camera has arrived and I LOVE it! It's the Olympus Pen EPL-1. I won't spend a lot of time talking about it, but if you're in the market for a new camera and a DSLR intimidates you, then look into the Pen line.

Anyway, with the arrival of the new camera comes what you've been waiting for. The big front porch reveal!

So, as you'll recall, this is what the front porch looked like when we bought the house (or at least in the listing photos, with the prior owner's furniture).

And this is what it looked like for the past year.

But I'm happy to say that it is much better now.

It is much brighter and cleaner out there and I'm really happy with the way the whole thing turned out.

Check out some details.

Terra cotta pots of ivy hung from bird hooks. I'm hoping the ivy grows and cascades over the pot and down in the next few years...if my black thumb doesn't kill it.

Canary, Blue Jay and Cardinal - $7 each, on clearance at Arhaus

Bench from Target - $160 on sale. Pillow fabric from Fabric.com

I think the pillows really made everything look much more cozy.

Garden Stool from Big Lots - $20, plus $6 can of copper spray paint

Stripe Painting - FREE! Wood my Dad had on hand, and paint I already had.

$15 in materials to hang it, though.

New light fixture, with motion sensor - $55 at Lowe's

New vinyl screen door - $135 at Lowe's

And who is enjoying the front porch most?

Okay, really Bessie and Daisy couldn't care less how fabulous the porch looks, they're just happy to be out there chasing crickets and watching the birds.

Care to know what it cost? About $600 for the whole thing. The biggest ticket items took up most of that, the bench, the door, the light fixture and the door knob for the door (which we had to special order since a inward swinging screen door is not the norm).

Next, I'll be taking on the den. The room where Adam and I spend most of our time. I'm planning on assembling a mood board this weekend! See you then!

Such a Tease

2010-08-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

I bummed a camera off my dad (the man had 3!) until I get my new one. That means I have some pictures for you! I'm not quite ready to expose it all yet, the porch still isn't QUITE done, but it's rounding the last corner. Hopefully this weekend...cross your fingers!

So here are some teaser pictures. Some are a little blurry, my Dad's camera has a bit of a learning curve and a much smaller screen than I'm used to, making it difficult to tell if the photo is blurry before I download them.

Keep an eye out next week for the big reveal! We're just a door knob and light fixture away!

Excuses, excuses

2010-08-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

On Sunday night I wrote up a lovely post updating what was happening with the front porch, and the progress that's been made. I saved it to add some "Teaser Pictures" later when the light was better for photo-taking.

Today, I went outside to take some pictures for all of you, got a few and then...something bad happened.

My camera died.

I dropped it a while back, which wasn't the first time I dropped it, believe me, but it did do some damage this time. It was having some focus problems and the zoom lens wasn't moving like it was supposed to. But I was getting it to work okay. And then today, something happened, I don't know what, and the lens jammed and now the camera won't even start up.

I've been looking into buying a new camera anyway, and I was just kind of stalling, but the time has come and I'll be ordering a new one as soon as a minor glitch with my PayPal account is cleaned up.

In the meantime, I have this for you, since I've been very light on the pictures lately. I imagine Adam feels I talk like this all the time. (Click to "Embiggen" it)

from Wondermark

And because I'm excited about the little bit left to do on the porch, here's the remaining to do list.

- hang pots planted with sweet potato vine
- install new door knob on screen door
- install new light fixture
- paint and install screen trim
- paint garden stool

My original plan to hang something on one of the walls isn't going to work out, so I'm going to have to come up with something else on the fly.

Getting there...

2010-08-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

Front Porch Progress Report:

- The "walls" have been painted. They're hardly walls, though. There are only 2 of them and they only come up to waist height.
- about 80% of the trim is painted
- The 20 ft. wall has had all the screen removed and the wood that was behind it has been painted.
- The ceiling has been scraped and sanded
- A new screen door has been ordered and is supposed to arrive at Lowe's on August 8th (which is a Sunday...so we'll see).
- A ceiling color has been chosen and purchased, I'm going to try the blue.
- Pillow fabric and pillow forms are sitting in the dining room ready for sewing
- I got a bench to put along the wall by the front door at Target, on sale!

Still to do:
- Paint remainder of trim
- Paint the ceiling
- Remove about 10 more feet of screen and paint the wood behind it
- Replace the screen we took down and reapply the trim that was on top of it.
- Pick up and hang new screen door
- Hang decorative "bird hooks"
- Buy some sweet potato vine, plant it and hang pots from bird hooks
- Make pillows
- Talk Adam into replacing the light fixture, then purchase light fixture, then install light fixture
- Paint the blue ceramic stool

I was all excited about the progress made so far, and now that I've written this list I feel really behind. The weather is supposed to be nice for the rest of this week though, so hopefully I'll get the rest of the painting done, the pillows made and the sweet potato vine planted.

I hope to have progress pictures with the next post. I don't want to reveal too much just yet! This is a fairly small make over, and of course I want to suck as many posts out of it as possible.

I'll show you what it looked like before though.

Note to self: Remove tags from the back of the chairs...

I got the furniture last year on sale at Home Depot (Originally at $400 3 piece set, marked down to $200. I managed to get them to throw in 2 extra chairs for $100...so, 5 piece set, $300). The rug was $25 at a Pier One that was going out of business, and the blue stool was $20 at Big Lots and I'm going to paint it...something. I'm thinking something punchy and fun, but we'll see.

You can see my paint samples on the wall, I went with the more muted green. All the trim will be Ultra White. Nothing is happening to the stone walls.

I've got a mixture of green and terra cotta fabrics to make pillows. The fireplace doors that have sat out there since January were taken away by a lucky Freecycler (I got two Craigslist offers for them a few days later...after the listing had been up for a MONTH). I bought a bench at Target on sale that is sitting against the wall where the fireplace doors are in this picture.

I'm hoping to replace this light fixture:

With something a little more like this:

Here's the kicker. 3 weeks until I go back to work...I want to get this porch done before then.

Will I make it? Stay tuned.

Treasures of the internet

2010-07-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

Did you ever start out looking for something on the internet and through a random series of clicks find out something you never knew? Here's what happened to me.

I've been noticing small groupings of white spots all over our terra cotta tile on the front porch. I never knew what this was until a spider made a web between the screen and glass of one of our windows and I noticed the same spots appeared under the web.

It's spider droppings...or if we're being crude, it's spider poop, on our front porch tile.

Just to double check my hypothesis, I started Googling "spider poop" (it turned up some surprisingly tame results). Apparently spider poop is a big problem for people who detail boats. It's tough to remove. I learned this as I was power-washing our front porch and nothing was removing these white spots.

Various boat detailers were offering up noxious chemicals to take care of this problem, but then one guy had a suggestion that amazed me:

Paint the ceiling where your boat is stored sky blue.

Apparently this does something causing the spiders not to build webs there and can even deter wasps and other bugs. They think it's the sky, which is not a good place for bugs to hang out in order to not get eaten. I remember lots of sky blue ceilings on porches when my husband and I went to Key West, and it's a popular color for wrap around porch ceilings, especially in the South. The color is called "haint blue" (haint's being evil spirits, and the blue was also meant to drive them away) When you Google the topic of sky blue porch ceilings, reviews are mixed. Some people say it helps with the critter population, others say the bugs couldn't care less. There a possibility that the make-up of paint, since paints in the "olden days" were made with lye, which is a natural insect repellent. Modern paints without lye would not likely have the same effect.

(image from Apartment Therapy)

I was on the fence about painting the porch ceiling a color. I had been thinking about doing a nice blue shade up there, and had finally decided that I was just going to go with white, because blue wasn't part of the color scheme out there. But now I'm seriously considering trying the blue to see if it fools the spiders.

Because I need to prove my mental dominance over spiders...

Getting it done

2010-07-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

1. After weeks of stalling, paint has been applied to the front porch. The process will continue today.

2. Chairs for the living room were ordered last night. They will be here in 6-8 weeks. I neglected to take photos last night at the store, and the pictures on the website are not very good (it's a more sofa/sectional oriented store, so chairs are a bit of an afterthought in their pictures).

Accomplishing these things is super exciting.

The Guest Room: Completed

2010-07-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

The art I ordered from an Etsy seller arrived a little less than I week ago and I framed it today. Do you know what that means?

It means the guest room is FINISHED!!!

This is the first room in the house I am officially calling finished. That, friends, is very exciting.

I taped a little video today to summarize the room, because I don't have a camera with a wide angle lens to photograph a small room like this.

How big of a dork am I? And also, listen to me say "open" when I refer to the closet...that's the Baltimore in me I guess. We'll be 'goin downy oshun later.

I know the video isn't exactly high quality. I dropped my camera a few weeks ago and have been having some minor focus problems since then, plus the lighting was less than ideal, plus I compressed the movie to upload it. But don't worry, I have old and new photos recapping the whole room so you can see some more detail. And if you stick it out until the end I'll tell you how much it all cost.

First, recall what the room looked like when we FIRST saw it, about a year ago, with the old owner's furniture. Not bad, could be worse, but not much personality either.

Then, during the big snowpoclaypse in January, I painted the whole room. Ralph Lauren's Hopsack

The nightstands came next. You can see them in the photo above. A little sanding, a couple coats of paint and some new hardware and they were totally different.

And I love the lamps on the nightstands.

Then I made over the bed. About 5 cans of spray paint took it from red to white (Krylon's Almond)

And then we dressed it up with linens from all over (Target, Ollie's Bargain Outlet and Ikea)

Then came the free dresser (formerly my Dad's, then held by my Brother and Sister-in-law and now on permanent loan to me, until they decide they want it back).

And then there's the rocking chair. Probably one of my favorite things in the room.

And then of course, there's all the details. Like the knick knack shelves.

And the window cornices and roman shades

The artwork, including the You Are Here Now print from Etsy user Farouche

I love the way the chair and the Farouche print look together

But no room is ever completely done, right? I'm sure I'll be changing things and moving things around, and I really want a red and white striped rug to put on the floor between the rocker and the bed. But for now, I'm calling this room done.

Of course I have to do a source list and cost breakdown.

The following things I had around the house or got for free from relatives:
All knick knacks on the shelves except the foo dog and the turquoise flasks, the roman shades, the foam from the cornices (left over from previous home owner in basement), the Key West photo, the night stands, the quilt, the throw pillows, all the red bed linens, the iron bed, the rocking chair and the dresser - total cost for these items - $0 (I'll be covering the cost to make them over below)

From Ikea: Turquoise flasks - $16, Ekby Hensik shelves - $36, Clock - $13, Towel hook hooks - $4
From Home Goods: Foo Dog - $12, Soap - $6, Trash can/flower pot - $10
From Michaels:Frames - $12 and $20, Spray paint for large frame - $3, Scrapbook paper - $3
From Hancock Fabrics: Roman Shade Ribbon - $5, Rocking chair fabric - $2
From Fabric.com: Cornice Fabric - $32
From Target: Towels and washcloths - $10, Sheets for the bedskirt - $12
From Marshall's: Lamps - $48
From Big Lots: Mattress and box spring - $375, toiletries - $14
From Lowe's/Home Depot/Ace Hardware: Paint for walls - $25, Paint for nightstands - $25, For the rocking chair - $8, Spray Paint for bed - $15, wood deglosser - $10
From Ollie's Bargain Outlet: tuquoise sheets - $20
From Restoration Hardware Outlet: Nightstand hardware - $18
From Anthropologie: Toothbrush cup - $6
From Etsy: Here and Now Print - $40
From Khol's: Pillows - $20
From the yard sale: metal tray $10
Odds and Ends: $50 (this includes various glues, caulk, sandpaper, etc. some of which I had around the house and others of which I only used partial amounts of, so I can reuse them for other rooms)

Total cost: $880

The mattress is what put me over the top. I originally only wanted to spend about $100 on the mattress at the local thrift store (which carries never-been-used-mattresses) but I was sucked in by the amazing comfy-ness of the Serta mattresses at Big Lots.

I'm very happy with the room, and now all we need are some guests!

Sheer Ease

2010-07-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

It's a rainy rainy day here. You would think that would mean things would be cooling down, making painting the front porch more feasible, but weather.com says no. Yes, it's a lovely 72 degrees right now, but it's pouring buckets. And it looks like the buckets will keep coming for the next couple of days, and then the temperature will shoot back up to 93 on Thursday.

Maybe I should have started working on the den in the summer and focused on the front porch in the fall.

Anyway, I did do a little something around the house today. I added a pretty sheer to the back door.

Here's our back door.

And, look at that, we have a trash can. I always feel like you never see trash cans in shelter-blogger's pictures. I will not be ashamed of my kitchen trash can. I've never been a fan of the trash-can-under-the-sink thing. I don't like it when I'm in someone else's house and I have to ask where the trash can is.

Anyway, back to the door. I've said many times that Adam travels for work frequently. And, as a young woman home alone I get a little...jumpy at night. And whenever I walk into the kitchen, I'm a little afraid I'll see someone standing at the back door. I wanted to put something up to give a little privacy from the porch.

This is, of course, ridiculous, because there's a giant picture window in the dining room, just to the left of this door that I don't want to put any kind of window treatment on. "Privacy" is a bit of a joke.

Okay, bottom line, truth be told - I just don't like the look of this door that much. It's blah. And our back porch is equally, if not more blah. Since replacing the door and/or remodeling the back porch is not in the cards right now, I was just going to cover it up.

So, I bought a couple of these magnetic adjustable curtain rods at Big Lots ($11 each). Cheap, adjustable and totally non-permanent.

And enter 1 panel of Alvine Rund curtains from Ikea. My Mom used these to make some new sheers for some french doors in her house and had 1 panel left over, so she gave it to me.

It has a pretty but modern pattern to it

These being curtains, they had one pocket already sewn at the top. So all I did was attach the magnetic rod to the top of the back door (which is metal of some kind, probably steel) with the curtain on it. Actually, first SOMEONE interrupted my curtain hanging

Bessie knows that in order for any decoration to truly work in our house, it must first have cat hair on it. That way everything matches. So, after our fat little furball was gingerly removed from the fabric, I hung the curtain.

Enter furball #2, Daisy. But she only sniffed and moved on. With the curtain hung, I slid the fabric behind the bottom curtain rod to get an idea of where to cut the fabric. I then marked that spot with a pin.

I took the curtain back down, cut the bottom off and proceeded to measure, fold and pin the fabric to get ready to sew it. I knew my curtain needed to be 68" long, since I measured from the top rod to the bottom rod.

Then it was a quick dash up the steps to my sewing machine to sew a straight stitch across the top edge of my fold. If you're not skilled with a sewing machine, you could easily do the same thing with some Heat 'n' Bond.

That done, I rehung the curtain and DONE.

Lovely, no? I might cut the width down one day, so it's not as wide and would just be a straight panel, with out the foldy-pleaty-ness, but I like to live with something for 2 weeks before I decide to really change it. And I think my favorite part might be that this is easily taken down to wash. I also really like how it doesn't really block any light coming in.

And, as always, how much did this whole thing cost? $22. Go me.

Hoping to be showing off the print I finally got for the guest room as soon as it arrives and I get it framed, and then that room will be done! Hooray!

On keeping cool and heating a house

2010-06-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

Well, needless to say I did NOT get the front porch painted when it was 87 outside the other day. What can I say, I've never been one to jump the gun. It's been in the mid 90s outside since.

I did buy the paint, and I'm just waiting for the gods of summertime to get the temperatures down below 90. A quick peek on weather.com says it will be 80 on Thursday. 80! Did you read that (of course you did). Let me stress it one more time...aaaaaay-tee. It's hard to ask for anything much more pleasant than that in July in Maryland.

And what am I doing Thursday? I'm probably working. ::sigh:: Ain't it always the way?

I can see that what I'm going to end up doing is A) painting in the heat and being generally miserable while doing it or B) busting out the work lights and painting after the sun goes down, when it's cooler, but of course making the house look like the Starship Painter-prise from the outside. I can just see my neighbors now; looking out their windows thinking "what on earth is going on over at THAT house? Weirdos..."

Get used to it Neighbors, we are pretty weird.

Although, on the subject of weird neighbors, there's a pretty awesome feud going on between two houses in the neighborhood. One house has a huge banner (that they clearly had professionally printed) saying "CHIMNEY SMOKE KILLS NEIGHBORS" while the guy across the street from him has spray painted "PAY MY HEATING BILL AND WE STOP BURNING" on a sheet of plywood and propped it up in his yard. This has been going on for nearly a year now. Personally, I'm on the side of the guy burning wood in his fireplace. But then I like the smell of woodsmoke when the weather gets cool.

Maryland: where the weather today is completely different from the weather tomorrow.

2010-06-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

Things that stress me out....in a minor way:

I just spent today power washing the front porch in preparation to get painting/improving out there (it just feels so much cleaner now) Obviously I can't start painting until it's completely dry. So today is out. Tomorrow it will be 87 degrees outside. Not horribly hot, but not pleasant either.

The next 10 days? Either 90 + degrees OR thunderstorms. So if I want to paint in at least moderately tolerable conditions, it's tomorrow or sometime after the next 10 days, which might not actually get any cooler.

Guess I'll be buying paint tonight....

Finishing Touches

2010-06-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

I got a little quickie project done today: adding some ribbon trim to the roman shades in the guest room.

I wasn't particularly attached to these roman shades. The previous owners left them behind, and they were about the most neutral thing in the world. Rather than spend the money on something new, I decided to keep them, but I dressed them up a tad with some ribbon. This was a crazy easy project that took maybe an hour...maybe.

Before & After

Before & After

A huge change? No, but it does make the blinds look more connected to the cornices and it makes them look a little more custom.

Quick close up:

And how did I do it? First, take the blinds down and spread them out on the floor. Hook up the ol' hot glue gun and let it warm up.

While the glue gun heats up, mark where you want your ribbons to go. My goal was to hide a stain on one, so my ribbons are 7.5 inches in from the sides. I used a chalk/pastel pencil to mark my fabric. And I made about 10 marks from one end of the fabric to the other.

Next, I lined up my marks with a ruler so I had 2 lines going down the length my roman shade.

Then it was time to glue on my ribbon. I started at the top of my shade, wrapping the ribbon around the back just a little and then running a thin layer of glue in a zig-zag pattern along the inside of my chalk line. I only glued small sections at a time, between each of the ribs.

Then it was just a matter moving down the shade, one section at a time. Until I reached the bottom.

At the bottom I turned my shade over, snipped the ribbon off, folded it over and glued it, and the wrapped it around the back and glued it down.

Repeat on the other side of the curtain (being sure to run the glue on the INSIDE of the line, so both ribbons were closest to the center) and then on my the 2nd roman shade from window number two, rehang and done! Seriously...it took an hour and 2 rolls of ribbon. No biggie.

The only thing left for this room is this wall:

I want to hang something over the chair, and I'm about 95% sure I want it to be some kind of typography in red, but I'm torn between a few options:

1. So Very Happy by DazeyChic
2. The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants by 3LambsGraphics
3. Love Is The New Black by The Love Shop
4. You Are Here Now by Farouche
5. Moka Express tea towel by Mengsel Design
6. How Sweet It Is by Type Posters
7. Big Breakfast by MrPS

And then of course there's always the DIY option. I know how to screen print. I have access to some pretty big screens at work so I could make my own print of whatever I wanted.

Any thoughts?

Did you say "shopping"?

2010-06-07T21:14:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing about being a teacher in the summer, and I think it's especially true if you don't have kids. You're off work all summer but everyone but your other teacher friends (of which I have only a few) is still working 9-5. So you're left with a lot of time off and not many people to spend it with. And if you're like me and your husband travels all the time, you're doubly alone.

So, to entertain myself, I have a little list of shops I'm determined to visit this summer. During the school year it's hard to get to these places because they are a long drive away, and many are closed on Sundays, leaving Saturday as the only day I have to go and it is a rare weekend when I have the free time to go flitting about to far flung shopping excursions.

1. Millenium Decor in Washington D.C.
2. SixteenFiftyNine in Washington D.C.
3. Gore Dean in Baltimore
4. De Bois Textiles in Baltimore
5. Second Chance in Baltimore
6. World Market in Rockville
7. Room and Board in Washington D.C. (Grand Opening June 14th!)

I'm sure there will be others, but it's midnight and that's all I have right now (I've already fallen into the terrible sleep schedule of summer...going to bed after midnight and not getting out of bed until 10 am or later...)

Anyone care to go on a shopping trip?

Summertime and the living's easy

2010-06-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

Molly's Log: Star-date June 7th 2010*

It's day one of summer break. It is a little hard to believe a couple of things:

no. 1) I just completed my 3rd year of teaching. I've been out of college for 3 years (whoa...). I'm no longer a provisional teacher (they can't just fire me because they feel like it...hooray!)

no. 2) I don't have to go to work tomorrow, or the next day or for 12 whole weeks. I am working for my parents during the summer, probably no more than about 10 hours a week, but it is extra money.

Hopefully this will mean lots of work will get done on the house.

Finally complete the guest room!
Get going on the front porch (which will be not-fun...Maryland Summers are HOT and HUMID...perhaps I can work out there if I set a sprinkler INSIDE the screened in porch. This will make painting difficult....)
Clean up the basement, which is a wreck because whenever I finish a project, I just throw all the materials haphazardly into the basement.
Start working on the den

*Yes, that was a Star Trek reference and yes...I am a nerd. I don't actually watch Star Trek now, but I do have two older brothers who were lovers of the Enterprise and the Borg and of "Counselor Hooters" in the 90s. When the remote wasn't relented to me (the annoying little sister) I watched a lot of Star Trek...and I do have a bit of a Nerd Crush on Patrick Stewart.

Cornice Making 101

2010-05-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

I finally got the cornices in the guest room finished. They were a quite easy project that required no sewing. It's been a while since I've done a tutorial so, here we go.

I'm going to warn you though, some these picture are pretty blurry. Taking photos one handed without a flash and and no tripod is a recipe for blur, but you will get the idea, I promise.

Remember the windows before.

Pretty blah, eh?

So this was the fabric I bought, from Fabric.com

And what's a cornice? It's a stiff box-shaped window treatment at the top of a window.

I didn't want to make anything as fancy as this picture, but I do like the clean lines of a cornice.

Here's what you'll need, this is for one window, but some items will be enough for 2 or more just because of packaging:

Tape measure
Pencil and/or Pen
One 4' x 8' sheet rigid insulation foam, 1" thick
Box cutter and several blades
Fabric of choice, about 1.25 yards per window (may need more based on the size of the window)
1 bag low loft quilt batting, twin size
Hot glue gun & glue
Duct tape
Pins, plain old sewing pins
Scissors
Ruler (if you have a yard stick and a small ruler that's helpful)
2 small L-brackets & appropriate screws for mounting to your walls
1 piece of wood, 1/2" x 36" x 2" (this may change based on the size of the window)

So you want to start with an idea of what you want to make. How tall to you want it to be, how wide, how deep, etc. This is a good time to work out the shape you want. I went for a simple pointed bottom.

When you do this, you want to make sure to measure the width of your window OUTSIDE any molding, this cornice will sit outside of this, and your large front piece should be this measurement plus 2" to accommodate the thickness of the foam that will be on the sides. So, for instance, my window was 38" across from molding edge to molding edge, so my main cornice piece is 40" wide.

Then you want to measure everything out on your insulation foam. A ball point pen works best for marking your foam. For my cornice I wanted it to be 16" from top to the tip of the triangle at the bottom so I started with a 16" x 40" rectangle for the main piece. I'll cut the triangle portion out later.

Then I cut out 2 rectangles that were 3" x 14", these will be the sides of my cornice.

INSIDER TIPS!

When you're cutting your foam, use a fresh blade. The sharper the better! If you start to get any snags in the foam, change your blade. I went through about 4 blades making 2 cornices.

Keep the angle of your blade shallow. The more upright you are the more the blade will snag.

When cutting, hold your ruler (it's best if it's a metal one) next to your line and cut up against the ruler. It will keep your cut steadier.

And this style of knife works best, because the blade is long enough to cut all the way through the foam.

Anyway, so this is when I cut out the point at the bottom of my cornice. To do this, I just found the center of one of the long sides, and then measured 14" down on the two short sides and connected the center to the 14" marks to get a nice even point. It helps if you cut from the outside edge in toward the point.

Okay, now it's time to assemble. Heat up the glue gun!

You want to glue the two 3" x 14" pieces to the sides to create the box.

Now, it's important to note that hot glue will eat away at the foam, somewhat. It's just because of the heat. You can use another glue, like Sobo craft glue if you want and it won't do this, but the drying time will be much longer (as in overnight) and I just reinforced my joints with duct tape and all is working out fine.

So if you go this route, just add some duct tape (mine is white) to both sides of all your joints.

Now is the time to check your fit, make sure the cornice will fit around the window. If it does, you're good to keep going.

Next you should mount your piece of wood to the wall using the L-brackets. I had my wood bits left over from our fireplace make-over. You really just want something that's thinner than your side pieces (if yours are 3" thick, you want your wood to be 2 - 2.5") Start by attaching your L-brackets to your wood piece. Make sure they're equally spaced.

Now, you want to mount this to your wall above the window. Make sure to use whatever is recommending for YOUR walls. We have plaster walls her in our house and I bought a box of these anchors and screws a while back and they've worked out really well.

Okay, so mount your wood piece to your wall and make sure it's level. Then you want to measure down from your ceiling to the top of your piece of wood.

And take this measurement, and mark it across the inside/back of your cornice. (I know this photo is bad, you can sort of see the line I marked.

Return to your sheet of foam core. You want to cut one more piece that is 3" by whatever the INSIDE width of your cornice is (for me this was 38"). Glue & tape this piece on it's side inside your cornice, making sure the BOTTOM (closest to the pointed part of the cornice) of it lines up with the line you marked with the ceiling-to-wood measurement. This piece of foam will rest on the wood.

Great, now test your fit again. Your cornice should fit snugly between the wood and the ceiling. If it's not SUPER snug, it will fill out some when we add the fabric.

Before we get to the fabric part, we have to cut the batting. I used two layers of batting on my cornices. More batting will give you a more puffy, pillow-y effect, less will make it more square, but will make any sins that arose while cutting or fitting your foam pieces together more evident.

The easiest way to get two evenly cut layers of batting is to fold the batting in half, lay your cornice on top and cut both layers at once. If you know me you know I'm not much for measuring, just carefully fold your batting over the edge of your cornice to figure out how big to cut it. You want at least 1.5 inches wrapping around your entire cornice. And remember that on the sides it has to wrap over your side pieces.

Now you can lay down your fabric, good side down, and lay your batting and cornice on top. The key here is to center any kind of pattern your working with. If it's floral you probably want the most attractive part of the pattern in the center of your cornice. If it's stripes, you might have to do a little maneuvering to get them centered just right. With my pattern I was able to use the entire width of the fabric (selvage to selvage) and simply find the center with the point at the center of my cornice and line it up.

Cut your fabric 1 inch larger than your batting on all sides.

Now, you would think this is the part where I whip out some glue or even start sewing, but you would be wrong. I simply pinned my fabric to the foam all the way around. Pins, that's it. Mine have been up on the walls for about a week and nothing has come loose, and if I ever want to change the fabric out, it will be super easy.

What you want to do is fold your fabric over on top of your batting...

Then wrap the batting and fabric over on top of the foam....

Then pin straight into the foam. The key to pinning it is that you need to angle your pin so that the point is going TOWARD the edge of your cornice and the head of the pin is going toward the middle of the cornice. This position will keep the pin from being pulled out by the tension of the fabric.

Be sure to push it all the way down.

In a "+" shape, you should pin your fabric in the middle of all 4 sides, pulling it just a little tight, just enough to keep it smooth.

Then you can pin all the way around. The corners take a little extra work, but I use the gallery wrap method of folding them, the way I do when I stretch canvases for painting. See steps 8-11 here, and replace any staples with pins.

With all pins in place your cornice will look something like this.

Now you should just be able to pop it back up on your wood bracket and the snug-ness (for lack of a better term) between the ceiling and your foam piece in the center up against the wood should hold it in place.

If you DON'T want your cornice to go all the way to the ceiling, there's a simple fix to hold it up. Simply pre-drill some holes through your wood piece and after you've got your cornice up, hand turn some screws through the hole and up through the foam piece that rests on the wood. You shouldn't need to pre-drill the foam, it's so soft. You'll have to use a hand screwdriver to insert the screws for this because a power-drill PROBABLY won't fit behind your cornice. The cornice is so lightweight that 3-4 screws would easily hold it up.

I'm sure you're curious, so here are the finished cornices.

I do like they way they bring pattern and color up the the ceiling. I still plan to add a little detail to the roman shades and as soon as I find something to hang on the wall behind the rocking chair, this room will be complete.

And because it all comes down to cost at the end of the day, here's the breakdown:
2.5 yards fabric - $30
1 pkg quilt batting - $8
L - brackets - $8 (for 2 windows)
1 sheet insulation foam - $15
Had on hand - Duct tape, glue gun, hot glue sticks, box cutters, rulers, wall mounting screws/anchors, scissors, wood craft boards, pins

Total cost: $61

Rock and Roll

2010-05-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

The rocking chair make-over is officially finished. Let's reminisce about its past. Here is the chair when I received it, for free, from my aunt.

This is, admittedly, after I did a little sanding on it, because I get about 10 minutes into any project and remember, "oh right, blog". The seat cushion was cross stitched by my Great Aunt Bet.

After gently removing the cushion and giving the whole chair a light sanding, it was time to prime.

I pretty much always give everything two coats of primer before I paint. 2-3 coats of paint and some aqua pillow ticking stripe fabric later, I had a lovely new chair! Man oh man do I dislike painting spindles, though. It was touch up city fixing up the spots I missed.

The color is Behr's Spring Stream from their Premium Plus Ultra line, which is paint and primer in one; but I had it color matched and mixed in Glidden because it was cheaper and I didn't need the paint & primer.

Here's a close-up of the seat.

And for effect, let's do a quick side-by-side of the before and after. You can really see the difference this way.

The red rosette pillow is O-L-D, left over from when I redid my bedroom in my parent's house freshman year of college, nearly 8 years ago. I believe its from the now closed Value City (which is where half my life was from before they went out of business).

Tomorrow I hope to be showing off the cornices and giving you a little step by step on how to make them (they're super easy and require zero sewing).

And Aunty Kathy, if you're reading this, I hope you like the chair! Thanks so much for giving it to me.

Snark attack

2010-05-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

In the last few days I finished the cornices and the rocking chair in the guest bedroom, and took photos of my favorite gift for a bride-to-be so I can make a little post about that.

That is to say...I have things to post about, I promise. It's just that I tend to get the motivation to work on a project at about 8 pm, when I can no longer take my own laziness. This, of course, is after the sun goes down and my photos are dreadful when using non-natural light. So, I'll be taking photos today when I get home and posting tonight.

In the meantime, though. I'm seriously considering some kind of snarky art for the last wall in the guest room. Something to make any guests we do have smile. My husband and I are both pretty sarcastic people, and I think it would suit us. The tea towels from To Dry For (how cute is that name?) are good enough to frame and I would love to hang this in my guest room.

But To Dry For is based in England and I'm not sure I'm on board with shipping a tea towel for framing from across an ocean. I'm pretty convinced that I could make this myself, but I'm also hunting around Etsy for other possiblities.

What do you think? Go snarky? Or be the ever so polite hostess?

A little of this, a little of that

2010-05-08T19:43:00.000-07:00

I am zeroing in on finishing the guest room...I can FEEL it.
And as a result, I'm going to get paint samples from Lowe's tomorrow test on the front porch. I can't finish one project before I start another.
Anyway, I ordered this fabric today to make cornices for the windows (my original curtain plan isn't going to work with the new dresser.

Waverly Parterre Lacquer at Fabric.com

Found a coupon code online for 20% off, so the 2.5 yards I bought are about $30 (and I qualified for free shipping!) When that comes, I can make those, hang a couple more pictures, one more little project and I'll be finito!

A few other new things around the house include:

New light fixture in the hallway! My fantastic husband put it up before I could take a before picture of the old fixture, but this is what it was:

This is literally the CHEAPEST flush mount fixture at Lowe's. Now, I'm not usually a critic of getting things on the cheap, but really...it doesn't get anymore blah than this fixture. Oh previous owners...

The next new thing: Shelves in the guest room!

And lastly, my little project last weekend: Towel hooks in the guest room

This was such an easy thing to make. A piece of wood (that I found in the basement, yay free!), white paint, a little Modge Podge, some scrapbooking paper from Michaels and 4 hooks from Ikea, done and done and adorable.Total cost - $5, which was just for the hooks and the sheet of scrapbook paper, the rest was all stuff I had around the house.

Oh, and we added this to our lives last weekend, too. My new (to me) 2008 Mazda 3 Hatchback...it's a total accident that she matches the guest room...seriously. Oh, and the mustache is just to hide my license plate number, but I would totally drive a car with a handlebar mustache.

Stay the night, I'll make pancakes in the morning.

2010-04-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

Guest room update!

The end is nigh on the guest room. I'm hoping. It seems like every time I think I'm almost done with this room, something else pops up.

Anyway, the bed is finished. So now we could actually let people sleep in the room, which is kind of the point, right? We started with an iron bed frame that was free from my Mom. She had all antique iron beds in her house, we all had one (me, my parents, my brothers) and Mom always said we'd each get to take one when we moved out. This was not the bed I slept in, this was my brother, Josh's bed.

Lets see the before.

Red, with brass detail. I could have kept it this color, but I decided white was just prettier. So, with a trusty can of Krylon Spray Paint in Almond, away we go! That's why this photo was out on the lawn, up on bricks with newspaper over them. No spray painting inside! First I had to tape, because my Mom asked that I not paint the brass.

Then, cover all the brass with plastic, and tape it in place, so it didn't catch any drifting over-spray in the breeze. I just used an old plastic drop cloth from the dollar store that I had around. It was more than enough to cover both ends of the brass.

Then, many coats of spray paint. It took about 3 and a half cans (which I know, because after can number 2, I had to go to Lowe's and get more...). It's always better, with spray paint, to use many thin coats rather than a few thick ones. Helps avoid drippage.

Huzzah! All that was left was to disassemble, carry inside, reassemble, add a mattress and dress! Here's the bed now.

I'm glad I kept the brass.

I started this red & aqua color scheme because I had this red comforter, as well as a bunch of red linens from when our bedroom was red and gold. So, they're all kind old. But if your curious...

Red quilt - Target - birthday gift from a friend
Red pillow shams - Ikea, part of a duvet set.
Red throw pillow - Tuesday morning
Aqua flannel sheets - Ollie's Bargain Outlet, $20
Aqua throw pillows - Big Lots, $8 each over a year ago, used to be on our couch

The dust ruffle is another story. Because of the height of this bed, finding dust ruffles is always hard. It requires an 18" drop (or as my Mom says, "18 inch flounce") which can be a little difficult to find. My Mother always had a king size dust ruffle UNDER a regular full size to make it work without having to buy "special" sizes. So I actually sewed this dust ruffle using 2 twin size bed sheets from Target ($8 each). I would have made a tutorial, but to be honest with you, it was not easy and I was kind of figuring it out as I went along...and I definitely messed up in places. If you have rudimentary sewing skills you could probably figure it out on your own. If you don't have such skills, I would recommend buying a dust ruffle, not making one.

Did you notice the lovely art piece above the bed?

Mourning Walk by Katherine Fahey

It was a gift from my sister-in-law, Christy. She bought it at a local craft show put on by the Charm City Craft Mafia. Their shows are the best. Katherine Fahey is a local artist, in Baltimore. It's always nice to buy from locals. Thanks Christy!

Also accomplished this week in the guest room: dresser! This is another hand-me-down from my parents, to my brother, and then to me.

This was my Dad's dresser. Then my brother and his wife took it for...something. They never said what. But their plans for it are another 4 years off, apparently (I'm thinking it had something to do with a 2nd child?). So, it's taking up residency at our house until they want it back. This is a system my family has developed called "permanent loan".

I was considering refinishing it in a darker color (cherry-ish?) but now that it's in the room, I kind of like it. What do you think? Keep it as is or refinish? I'm torn.

Oh, and look at my adorable tray on top.

I got the metal tray at an estate sale for $10, it was black with flowers painted in the bottom. I sprayed it white and covered the inside with some scrap booking paper sealed with Modge Podge...adorable much? And the bird bowl? That's my little souvenir from the Johnathan Adler store in Boston. She arrived safely and with a lovely little note from whichever employee shipped her. I'm only slightly in love with her.

So, what's left? I know I do this every time, but I like lists.

1. Frame and hang pictures
2. Make and hang towel hooks
3. Hang and accesorize shelves
4. Recover rocking chair seat
5. Find a throw rug, the floor needs something
6. Make some valances or cornices for the windows
7. Add ribbon detail to roman shades
8. Add ribbon detail to towels

Blog-iversary

2010-04-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

A little event passed yesterday and I didn't even notice. My Blog-iversary. It's been 1 year and 1 day since I began A New Nest and that's a little weird to imagine.

A year ago yesterday Adam and I were trying to get our hands on a house not far from here. A bungalow priced at $289,900 that we were trying to talk down to $275,000. It's a little laughable, now, looking back (suffice to say we did NOT pay $275,000 for this house). But then that house DID only have 1 bathroom, for 4 bedrooms. And that one bathroom was on the 1st floor. So if you had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night you would have to stumble down the stairs. But the floors in it were gorgeous, and Adam would kill for that garage now.

Oh well, this house is bigger. Much bigger. And I'm happy to have the space, and the second bathroom, and we've been brainstorming solutions for the garage thing.

I'm excited to think of what the next year will bring. Big bathroom renovation? New driveway? Replacement windows? Who knows! All I know is blogging is a big motivator for me to get things done, so I'm pretty sure this little corner of the blogosphere will still be around come next April 24th.

Timing is everything

2010-04-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Sarah over at The Estate of Things posted this today and I'm in love. These tiles are on Overstock.com and I want them so badly for my downstairs bathroom floor it's not even funny.

This is our bathroom currently. *shutter* I don't know what they were thinking with that teal ceramic tile on the wall and navy/teal stick on floor tile (that is rather poorly applied, by the way). Also, notice that the tile below the black line is original to the house (1947) or close to it. The not-quite-the-same-white tile above the black line was added later.

The bathroom, unfortunately, is a renovation that will not be easy...we have a sneaking suspicion that there are unholy things going on behind that tile that will require us to re-drywall everything. It's a project that is a long way off to be sure.

So no tile from Overstock, bad timing. Hopefully in a couple of years they will still have it, but I doubt it.

Nightstand by me

2010-04-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

Something exciting happened today. My fabric samples came from Mood!
Or I thought they did, until I opened the package and there was only one sample. (Sad Trombone)

I called Mood and apparently there was some kind of location change and not all the samples were available. So, I was refunded my 50 cents but I had to REORDER the red Oscar de la Renta twill. On the upside, though, the Tiffany blue canvas is the perfect color for the rocking chair! So I'll be ordering a half yard of that. Look at how fantastic this match is.

And yes, I painted the rocking chair. This rocking chair:

Doesn't get much more Granny than that chair, eh? Complete with cross stitch seat cushion. Fear not, as soon as I get the seat recovered with the fabric from Mood, you'll see the full reveal.

Today, we're talking about the nightstands. We had two nightstands that came along from Adam's childhood home when he moved into his first apartment after college, and then to the apartment we lived in together, and then to our house. Adam was pretty sick of them, having had them since he was a little tyke, so when we got new nightstands for our bedroom, they went to the guest room.

Pretty 80s, right? Needless to say, they needed a little updating. So, after some sanding, priming and painting, and some new hardware (thanks Restoration Hardware Outlet!)...ta da!

Much better, right? And it doesn't hurt that they were FREE! The paint is the same as the trim in the room, so that was also free, and the hardware was pretty cheap, at around $15 for all of it.

And are you noticing the nicely made bed next to them? That's because I got a mattress the other day! I couldn't help but make the bed when I got it. Adam is very happy to have a second bed in the house where he can go when my snoring gets out of control (I was sick this past week. My stuffed sinuses = no sleep for the hubs). I'm not going to be showing off the bed until I get the dust ruffle situation sorted, which will mean disassembling all my nicely made linens.

The room is quickly coming together. What's left?

- Hang pictures

- Hang and accessorize knick-knack shelves

- Make a coat/towel hook

- Refinish dresser

- Complete rocking chair

- Complete curtains

- Find a small rug

- Alter dust ruffle

My goal is to have it all done by the end of June. The dresser job will be the hardest, everything else is just little stuff. Once it's done I can start on the front porch! I was originally going to tackle the den, but I'd like to get the front porch looking cozy so we can really enjoy it while the weather is warm.

In the Mood

2010-04-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

I have to admit something. I am a little bit of a sucker for labels.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm no Carrie Bradshaw. I don't have designer clothes or shoes, and most of the decor in my house were free from family members, or purchased cheap. Adam and I do live within our means. But I do like to be able to say, "oh that? That's just my Johnathan Adler Bird Bowl...just a little something I picked up, you know."

Anyway, I found out today (via Material Girls) that Mood Fabrics (yeah, the one from Project Runway) is now selling their fabrics online. They do carry home decor fabrics, but the selection is much smaller as compared to their clothing fabric options. And after going to every fabric store in town yesterday (even Wal Mart...I dread our Wal Mart, it's enormous constantly busy and I don't go there unless I'm desperate) with no luck finding fabric for my guest room curtains, I was overjoyed to find these two on Mood's website.

Tiffany Blue/White Floral Canvas designed by Mood - $35/yard

Red and White Twill designed by Oscar de la Renta - $14/yard

I'm more in love with the Tiffany Blue Floral, but I want red fabric for the curtains. Plus the red is cheaper and probably a more suitable fabric for the job. So I'm thinking the twill is the way to go.

I have a couple of curtain panels I got for free from my Mom, that I plan to use in the guest room and I'm going to give them the same treatment as the curtains in the master bedroom. Remember those? Plain white tab top curtains from Target with a stripe of color sewn down the inside edge? Let's review.

(As a side note...I can't WAIT to get rid of those copper colored metal mini blinds...the ones on Adam's side of the bed are broken anyway, I will use this as an excuse other than I just think they're ugly).

So, I'm very excited to get Oscar de la Renta fabic via Mood (although I tried on Oscar de la Renta sunglasses at WalMart yesterday, so I don't know why I feel like this is some kind of schmancy label). I'm going to order some swatches today just to be sure of the color and then hopefully I'll be all set for curtains.

As a side note, the guest room is coming along. I'm hoping to be done soon. Here's the list:

~~Paint walls and trim~~

Paint bed

Paint nightstands

Paint rocking chair

Get dresser (I have a choice of 2 free ones, one from my Mom, one from my Brother's house, I'm thinking)

Buy Mattress

Buy pillows

Buy lamps

Hang art

Make curtains

Make decorative pillows

Accessorize

Trends I am NOT on board with

2010-04-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

Generally I like to think myself a somewhat trendy person. Whether it be fashion, food or my home, I will jump on the bandwagon when it comes to the current trends, provided that the fad is cheap. I am perfectly willing to admit that by the time a trend falls into my price range it is "so 5 seasons ago". This might actually make me completely non-trendy by definition. Perhaps I'm middle-class trendy?

Anyway, I have something I want to say about a trend I am not feeling.

Ikat fabric.

It's seems to be everywhere lately, or maybe it's just that I spend too much time on the shelter blogs.

I know it takes a great deal of skill to make, I won't deny that the actual patterns are lovely. It was around way before me and will be around long after I am gone, but I just don't like it.

But I'm sorry, the blurry edges just make me feel...well...drunk when I look at it.

I'll be glad when ikat goes out again. Just like I be glad when Tyra Banks stops wearing jumpsuits to America's Next Top Model panels. Seriously, Tyra... this look is going one of two ways:
1. the alien chick William Shatner finds on random planet
2. Florida retiree (all you need is a big matching sun hat).

Pahk your cah in Hahvad Yahd.

2010-03-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I posted. Last week was bonkers. Does anyone else find that right before you go on vacation, that's when everyone wants a piece of you?

Oh, I didn't mention our little vacay? Adam and I spent the weekend in Boston! We have friends up there that I visit about once a year (hi Mike and Emma!) and my hubby being the gaming geek that he is wanted to go to the giant video game convention, PAX East. So, we flew up Thursday evening and got home Sunday around 10 pm. I am feeling the late homecoming this Monday morning. I'm sure Adam is feeling it more, though. He's headed right back to the airport today to go to Missouri for work. Poor thing.

There was much swag grabbing at the convetion. And while our husbands tried all all the latests and greatest in the world of video games, my friend Emma and I did beau coup shopping, and despite heading up with what seemed like bags bursting at the seams (sue me, I like to have clothing options when I travel), we managed to get it all home. Here's what we came home with:

Some easter chocolate from Hotel Chocolat
Adam's book choices from Brookline Booksmith
A bottle of Lollia Relax Lavender and Honey perfume from Anthropologie
Loads of literature from various colleges that offer degrees in game development, for the ever growing pile of college brochures we keep in the art rooms at work. Lots of our students want to go into this field.
My book choices from Brookline Booksmith and Trident Cafe
Battlefield II tee-shirt (FREE!)
Power Gig tee shirt (FREE!) P.S. this game is kind of like Guitar Hero but it teaches you to actually play guitar
The Devil's Tuning Fork tee shirt (FREE!)
Sarge of Red Vs. Blue tee-shirt (not free...)
Our PAX program/guide for the weekend.

And a bonus: here is Adam playing Split Second at the convention.

Only one thing didn't make it back down with us. My big goal for the weekend was to go the Johnathan Adler store in Boston and buy SOMETHING, I didn't care if it was a matchbook, I was bringing something home with me from that shop. And this little lady should be arriving in the next few days.

Jonathan Adler just calls it a bird bowl. I say partridge...but don't tell him. Who am I to argue with Jonathan Adler?

I opted to pay the extra $6 to have her shipped, because I knew that if she was broken on the flight, I'd be heartbroken when I got home. I don't know just where she will go when she arrives. I could put her in the guest room where I won't see her everyday, but she will be safe. Or I can put her out where I can enjoy her, but the cats could knock her over (like they've done with plenty of other things I've loved).

Also at Jonathan Adler there was a floor sample sale happening. And this fabulous Montmarte coffee table was marked down to $500, from $995.

I was pretty tempted, but this is not the sort of coffee table I am in the market for right now. But if you are, I suggest paying a visit to their Boston location.

And now that I'm home again it's time to keep moving on the guest room. Spring break starts Thursday (11 glorious days off) and I'm hoping to get the guest room rocking chair completed, as well as give you some updates on other items in the room that I've revamped in the past few weeks.

See you then!

Beetle Mania

2010-03-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I drove to York, PA with my Mom to go to an antique/home & garden show. While we were there I saw some beautiful framed silhouettes. One in particular caught my eye. It was a long thin frame with 4 beetle silhouettes.

I LOVE beetles. They're one of only a few bugs that don't scare me. And design wise they have that great science-y feel I love. One of my favorite things in our house is a beetle statue. See him in the back there?

But while I loved the beetle silhouette art, it was $60 and I didn't even like the frame. It wasn't worth it for me. I would have taken pictures, but it would have been really rude in that I-am-going-to-make-this-myself-and-not-buy-yours kind of way.

So, what does a DIY savvy girl like myself do? I make my own!

First things first, make beetle silhouettes. I used the gallery at Living Jewels to pick out a few beetles that had great shapes. If you haven't gotten me a birthday present yet, this book would be a winner.

I copied and pasted about 7 beetles onto a Powerpoint slide (that way I can alter the size and fit several on one printable page) and printed them out. I did 7, intent on using only 4, figuring I would give myself some options. Then, I used rubber cement to glue that page onto a sheet of black paper. I then proceeded to cut out the beetles with an X-Acto knife. Cutting tip: go slow, and do all the little legs and antennae first, THEN cut the body.

When you're finished cutting, gently pull the printed picture and the black shape apart and rub the rubber cement off (use a pencil eraser to do the small areas).

And again, I'm a bad blogger, who didn't take pictures because I did most of the cutting during my lunch at work and couldn't really take pictures. But I think you get the idea.

I had my beetles, and on my way home from work I picked up a frame at Target for $25. I could probably have found a cheaper one elsewhere, but I wasn't in the mood to drive all over town, and I pass Target on my drive home (Note: This is trouble...I stop at Target a little TOO often). I didn't know what I was going to do for a background, but I figured I'd find something around the house.

A peek around the house showed me the giant roll of open weave fabric I've been using to make roman shades for the living room (and when I say I've been "using" it, I mean I started making them, got about 2 almost done and then got distracted by less laborious house projects). There was my background.

So I had all my materials. 4 beetles, 1 frame, 1 scrap piece of open weave fabric.

Step one:
Disassemble the frame. Toss that mat, it doesn't work for this project. Oh look, the piece of paper with pictures of scenery that comes with the frame is white on the opposite side...that will go behind my open weave fabric. Nice.

Step Two:
Glue open weave fabric to white paper that came with the frame. I suggest keeping the fabric a little to big on all sides at this point, it's easier to cut down after it's glued down than to try to get it exactly the right size from the start.

I of course don't have any appropriate glue. What do I have?

That's right, Elmer's disapearring purple school glue. But I really only need something to hold the fabric in place, so the key was to use TOO MUCH glue so that it would squish through the open weave of the fabric and hold it in place. Glue away!

Step 3:
Cut away the excess fabric. Easy peasy. Don't worry about being TOO exact, the frame will cover up any fraying edges.

Step 4:
Flip over your backing piece and place the beetles. Figure out the spacing you want before gluing. Once you know what order you want your beetles, how far apart, etc, glue them down. Again, use a little TOO much glue, glob it up...unless you have more appropriate glue. Use what you have on hand.

Step 5:
Allow everything to dry, and pop it in your frame. Then, up on the wall it goes!

Here's the thing, I've made this and I have NO IDEA where to put it. I just wanted to make it, it doesn't have a home yet. It's propped up on a chair right now. Someday I'll figure out where I want it, but for now, I'm just going to love it as is.

Remember, my inspiration piece was $60 and it was about half the size of this. My costs?

Beetle pictures: Free (thanks internet!)
Black paper: free (paper I had on hand)
Rubber Cement, Elmer's glue, X-acto knife: Free (All stuff I had around)
Open weave fabric: free (leftovers from another project)
Black frame: $25

Total cost: $25
And had I the energy to try a few other stores I am convinced I could have found a cheaper frame.

Be our guest!

2010-03-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not I have several post ideas in the hopper right now (with pictures to boot). This is exciting for me because that means when I have a week with not much to say, I can pull something out of my little post stockpile (is this maybe how the pro's do it?)

But I figured today that I would post about the thing I've been talking up for weeks now? Okay...maybe months even.

The guest room is painted. It's been painted for weeks, actually. I painted them during the snowpocalypse in early February. Posting about it was just being held up by the fact that I was using the room to paint doors.

If you'll recall, I picked out Ralph Lauren's Hopsack for the room.

Ralph Lauren paint is now defunct at Home Depot, so as far as helpful blogging goes, sorry folks. From what I can tell you have to go to fancy Ralph Lauren stores to get his paint now. And I won't lie, part of the reason I got this paint was that it was on sale for a really good price because Home Depot wasn't going to carry it anymore.

And here is the before and after.

(This photo is from the listing when we bought the house. It's deceptive because I'm pretty sure the agent took it with a fish-eye lens because I found it pretty impossible to get both windows in one shot)

And here is with the RL Hopsack paint and Sherwin Williams Roman Column trim

The Big Rug Debut

2010-03-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

The dining room rug is finally solved!

I told you a couple of posts ago that we had ordered our new dining room rug, and we went to pick it up last night (or rather, my Mom and I went to pick it up). Wanna see? Of course you do.

First, a little before shot with the rug that moved to our den in October. Too dark.

The floor was bare in there from October until last night. Here she is!

View number two. Daisy approves of the rug.

And she's ready for a close up.

We ended up going with a carpet remnant from a local carpet store. This is a Karastan pattern that had been cut and the edges bound and it was $189 for a 9'x12' rug. I'd tell you the pattern name, but it's not on Karastan's website (either not pictured or maybe discontinued?) We had them cut it down to a 9'x7' and had to pay $1 per foot to have the one edge rebound. We got to keep the leftover piece, too, which may become a floor runner or something in the future, who knows. I just can't throw stuff like that out.

With taxes and the binding it came down to about $215 for the whole thing. Really not bad. And we both really like it. The color is perfect and I love that it has a pattern but it doesn't compete with the wallpaper.

So, HOORAY! No more wincing every time we move a dining chair and fear scratching our hardwood floors.

Oh, and what of the rag rug? My poor math skills got me in the end. Originally I thought a rag rug in the size we needed would be about $400...but when I emailed a couple of weavers for quotes it was going to be more in the neighborhood of $1200...oops. We went to look at this the next day.

The Decorator

2010-02-27T16:32:00.000-08:00

I know things have been pretty dull around here lately. Believe me they've been pretty dull around our house, too. Right is one of two times per year that the school play takes over my weekends. I'm hoping to have a proper update soon.

In the meantime, I'm leaving you with this Norman Rockwell picture that's been the picture on our calendar for the month of February. I think it rings pretty true for the way things go around our house.

The Suspense Will Kill You

2010-02-20T17:30:00.000-08:00

We ordered our rug for the dining room today! Hope to be picking it up next Wednesday or Thursday (March 3rd or 4th). I'll just leave you hanging until then.

(No, we ended up not going with the rag rug...because we're cheapskates).

Dirty Little Secrets

2010-02-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

Every home owner has corners that they cut, and things they hide and hope no one ever notices. Whether it be hanging curtains off center to make that window look like it's in the right place, or hanging a picture over that hole in your wall where you lost control of a hammer. Today, I have one of my dirty little painting secrets.

I don't wash my paintbrushes.

Okay, that sounds worse than it really is. I do wash them...eventually. But if I plan on coming back to a project in a few hours (okay...realistically....a few days) I don't really feel like washing out my brushes. So, what do I do to keep my paintbrush bills under control? Aluminum foil.

Like I said a few posts ago, painting the wood trim in our house is a laborious process that takes several coats. I, personally, hate washing a brush only to come back to it a few hours later to add that second or third coat of paint and find it's still wet with water and I'm going to have to get out a new brush. So, between coats, I wrap my brushes in aluminum foil.

This wouldn't be such a dirty little secret if I washed my brushes at the end of the day and let them dry overnight. But it's not unusual to for me to leave a brush in foil for up to a week. It's happened to me on more than one occasion that I go to open the foil and find that the brush has dried inside and is useless.

So, now you know. Hello, my name is Molly and I don't take care of my paintbrushes.

In other news I hope to be revealing the newly painted guest bedroom in a few days and the new plans for our dining room rug (rug hint: I'm bad at math).

Dwelling on it.

2010-02-15T12:18:00.000-08:00

It would happen just this way. On Saturday I go to Target and just about every aisle from rugs to bedding had a little clearance section. So, I find a lovely white duvet with gray embroidery for our bedroom, originally $100, marked down to $25. Sweet!

I bring it home and Adam says, "how many duvets do we have?" Um...just 3, plus our comforter isn't the plain white kind, it's a yellow striped one, so I technically have 4 different comforter options, this is a lot more than we really need, I'll admit.

Then, while checking out my usual shelter blogs, I discover that Dwell Studio for Target comes out with their new line TODAY. ::sigh:: This should be good news, because this coverlet would look stellar in my bedroom.

I'm going to have to wait a while to get it, because I don't think the hubs will be on board with bringing home more bedding. It's not like it's super expensive, it's $79 for the king size (which I might get, even though we only have a queen size bed...but SOMEBODY likes to steal the covers). And I do like to switch from our winter comforter to a coverlet in the spring/summer. Trust me...this will be mine.

Psst....My birthday is in about a month...just saying.

Rags to Riches

2010-02-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

I've been hunting for an area rug for the dining room for some time now. We need something light colored, but that will take heavy traffic and will hide possible stains, since we'd be eating over top of it frequently. I knew I didn't want a flat color, pattern seemed much more likely to hide wear and tear and stains. But we have a fairly boldly patterned wallpaper in the room and on the chair seats. Stripes seemed the way to go, to bring some pattern without competing with the other things going on in the space.

The problem is, it turns out it's pretty hard to find a striped rug that isn't 1) Way too boldly colored for the room, 2) completely blah or 3) had all the colors I wanted, and then threw in something nutty, like neon orange.

We had a rug in the room, but now it's in the den because it was just too dark for our dining room.

With the white trim and white cabinet, the black chairs and black table and brown rug were just not jiving. I've since covered the chair seats in a bright green fabric and I consistently keep a light colored table cloth on top of the table, and the rug is gone. But we're starting to notice wear and tear being taken out on our wood floors now that they are bare.

I've considered several options for a new dining room rug, including FLOR carpet tiles, a braided rug, and having a carpet remnant cut and bound. FLOR, while having many many lovely patterns, just doesn't seem to have what I want. Braided rugs of decent quality in the colors I'm after are also pretty tough to come by, or they cost you an arm and leg. The carpet remnant would be an inexpensive solution (less than $300) but seems like a temporary, place-holding fix.

Today, though, I think I've found the solution to my problem. This morning I read Annie Elliot's blog post about the Soho Dhurri flatweave rug. Up until now I've been kind of avoiding flatweaves, but I stored her recommendation in the back of my mind, and thought I might widen my search to include some flatweaves in the future.

Then, I was leafing through my new copy of House Beautiful* and I ran across this picture:

What's that on the floor? Some kind of blue striped rug? Wait...that's a rag rug! A RAG RUG in House Beautiful? What? I don't know why...but I love this. I want this...oh rag rug you are the answer to my prayers!

If you don't know what a rag rug is, here's a close up of one, it might ring a bell

A rag rug is quite literally, a bunch of rags woven together to make a rug. Remember when you were in your elementary school social studies class and your teacher would tell you all about how the prairie ladies would save every scrap of fabric for years and reuse it over and over to make everything fabric-y they needed? I'm pretty sure rag rugs were on that list. When it was too far gone to make anything else, it went into a rug. Which is why they're often a big mixing bowl of colors.

But not anymore.

A brief Google search revealed to me that there are loads and loads of weavers that will make custom rag rugs for you, according to the size and color you want. You can send them wallpaper and fabric samples, or even paint chips and they will make it happen, and fairly inexpensively as well.

Other rag rug perks?

- They're super green. Many weavers recycle old fabrics, such as old sheets and clothes to make the rugs (although some do use new fabrics as well).

- They wear like iron.

- They're easy to wash. Small ones can just be thrown in your washing machine. Large ones can be taken outside and (are you ready?) hosed off and left to dry in the sun.

- Support those small business owners

And then I was reminded of my Great Aunt Tutti's house in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. We didn't visit them often, I think I only went there 3 times in my life and I haven't been there since I was about 14 I think, but I remember this - Aunt Tutti had braided rugs in her house with very thick, very cushy rug padding under them...and they felt phenomenal under your feet. I think that's what I would do here.

So, I'm pretty much sold on this. And Adam is (surprisingly) on board as well. I thought for sure he'd nix my rag rug plan, but he's been pretty agreeable to most everything since he's only gone to work 1 day this week (thanks snow, you're helping me get a rug!).

*With the snow I managed to get out of the house once this week, and that was only because my sister-in-law came and got me in her 4x4 Jeep. We stopped at the grocery store because we both needed to restock on some essentials before round 2 of the snowmageddon. When most people say essentials they mean the big 3: Milk, Bread, Toilet Paper. For me, it was 4 things: Milk, Bread, Ice Cream, Home Decor Magazines.

Did you have something to say?

2010-02-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

I discovered last night that something was wrong with the blog and comments weren't working. I seem to have fixed it now, and in the process had to get rid of my schmancy layout. Only to discover later that I didn't really NEED to...I don't think.

I might bring the fancy layout back, because this one is pretty dull. I might even set up a NEW one. Swapping out layouts is, mostly, a pain in the tush, though. But, I have the next 3 days off work (oh, snow) so we'll see.

Anyway, hope to see some comments from everyone!

Respecting your elders

2010-02-08T19:16:00.000-08:00

I am about to blow your mind. Are you ready? Here goes:

Two posts in one day. Crazy.

I'll have another day off work tomorrow and there's more snow (I've heard anywhere from 12 to 20 more inches) coming our way tomorrow afternoon into Wednesday, so it looks like I might not be going to work this week at all. Our street has yet to be plowed since Friday. I'm hoping tomorrow someone (either my Dad or my sister-in-law) will come to get me in their 4 wheel drive so I can at least get a gallon or 2 of milk, if they even HAVE any at the grocery store.

Anyway, we started painting the guest room tonight. In the process of doing that, of course, I removed the air vent covers and switchplates while I was taping (p.s. I'm digging Frog Tape right now. While it's not perfect, it does do a much better job that the blue painters tape.) Taking off the switchplates, I found this.

I love that you can see the layers of old paint from this room.

Our house was built in 1947 (do the math, it's 63 years old), and back then it only had one floor, and the basement, which we're pretty sure has never been a finished basement. That means that it was a 2 bedroom house. In my mind, the smaller of the two bedrooms housed a boy (the blue) then a girl (the pink) then possibly the room was shared (green) and then it went white/tan. I also found remnants of wallpaper on the back of one of the switch plates, but it didn't have much of a story.

Living in an old house has its ups and downs. Every job you take on will probably uncover something you were not planning to fix or replace, but it need to be fixed or replaced. Nothing is straight, not the floors, not the walls, not the ceiling, nothing. Your walls might be made of any number of materials. You'll find that previous owners have done bizarre DIY jobs, some of which are clever, others just dumb. There are never enough outlets.

For me though, the fact that our house has history is one reason why I love it. Finding layers of paint behind switch plates is exciting for me. I love that our floors creak. I love that we have funny locks on our doorknobs. I love that this is the neighborhood I grew up in and that my brother's elementary school bully used to live here. I love that all the houses on our block are different. Every time we find one of those crazy DIY solutions, I love trying to figure out what on earth the prior owner was thinking.

From the time I was a teenager I didn't want to live in a planned community. I never liked the idea that my neighbor could come over to my house and already know their way around.

Adam and I looked a townhouse when we were shopping for home that had every single thing we wanted, except a little bit of yard. It had loads of space to entertain, it had a soaking bathtub and master suite. Open floor plan with plenty of entertaining space. A kitchen with double ovens and a pantry. Adam would have even gotten a garage out of the deal. And it was at the low end of our price range. What turned us off in the end? It didn't have a front. The way community was laid out made it so that there was one townhouse that faced the street and was the "front" and another behind it that was the "back". The one we were looking was the back unit, so for us there was no front walk, no mailbox "out front", no windows, no shutters, nothing. This instantly stripped all the character from the house. It was like it didn't have a face. It couldn't smile and greet people.

Not that our house now is a beauty outside, it's most certainly a work in progress out there. But it is ours, and what it says only our house will say, because it's the only house like it.

The Room You Didn't Know Was A Room

2010-02-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

In between sessions shoveling this:

(Yes, that's 26.5 inches of snow. I have a high school friend to described Maryland this way: Where the weather today is completely different than the weather yesterday.)

I've been tackling this:

"Tackling what exactly," you say?

The hallway. See that yellow hallway with the stained wood trim. And see how it does not go with our living room? Ive been taking care of that this weekend. Luckily I bought paint and supplies before the "Snowmageddon" came. You'd think that painting a tiny little hallway wouldn't be a big deal, and really it wasn't a HUGE deal, but here is the thing about our house. The previous owners kept the stained wood trim and doors throughout the first floor. I've slowly been painting it white in each room we decorate. Some might say this is a travesty. In my mind, the stained wood makes the house look dated. Other strikes against the wood trim and doors include:

1. It's not nice wood. It's pine of some kind.

2. It is beat up. Which is kind of the point of trim, I know. It's a lot easier to replace trim than it is to replace the wall. But it's scratched and dinged all over the place.

3. It's been poorly stained. There places with too little stain/poly and other places with too much. There are spots where it's "alligatored" and places where it's chipping off completely.

I heard this motto once on some HGTV show: Just because it's wood doesn't mean it's good.

So, when you paint the trim in our house, there's a lot of prep work involved. It all has to be deglossed (deglosser/liquid sandpaper is my friend). Some places have to be sanded. It MUST be primed. Straight up paint will not stick to our trim. Caulking is serious work with it, too. You can't really see finish nails and gaps between the wood with the stain, but once you paint it white, they just scream at you. Then it takes 2 coats of paint on top of the primer to cover everything.

The actual painting of the walls took all of an hour and a half. The trim, on the other hand, took about 3 days. That little T-shaped hallway has 3 doors, meaning beau coup trim. But, it's done and I'm really happy with it.

Ahhh, much better. Hanging the art helped too. Everything feels more homey when you've got things hanging on your walls. Here's a closer view:

The walls are Glidden's Natural Linen, trim is Sherwin Williams Roman Column. I'm still reserving judgment on the Glidden paint. I'll be using it in the guest room where it will be put to the test a little more (going from white to brown-ish, rather than yellow to tan).

I am not taking on the the doors yet. They have to be taken off the hinges to properly paint them, which means taking them down to the basement, which is somewhat freezing in February so they can wait until spring. I'm also looking into a new light fixture (the current one is U-G-L-Y...it ain't got no alibi) and maybe a rug of some kind, just for some interest at the floor.

Since I can't get out of the house (the plows haven't come to our street yet) the rug and light fixture are on hold. I think I'm going to start painting the guest room today. Can we say exciting?

Are you there, gods? It's me, Molly.

2010-02-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Home Decor Shopping Gods,

I would like to run across two of the chairs seen below. Would you call them a fireside chair? Perhaps a modern wingback? Regardless, if the pair could cost less than $600, I would be most grateful. A pretty, patterned apple green green fabric would be lovely. They would go fabulously next to the buffet.

Stumbling upon them in person is preferred, but online would also be acceptable.

Faithfully yours,

Molly M.

Show your stripes

2010-01-30T19:15:00.000-08:00

I'm seriously considering painting Adam's old night stands with a stripe down the front of them. I was inspired by this dresser in Jamie (of i suwannee)'s store, Furbish Studio. Look...

Pretty cool, right? And pretty...um...pretty. And it doesn't hurt that it's in the colors I'm going for in that room (remember the aqua and red?)

Adam's nightstands are in the same style as this piece of furniture, they have similar lines. I like this wide stripe, but since I'd be working with night stands, not a dresser, I would only have one stripe going down the center.

At the same time, I'm not sure I'm going to need a punchy piece like this in that room. I'm already painting the rocking chair a bold aqua, and with the size of that room it is likely that the chair and night stands will be right next to eachother. Or I could always add the stripe later. Things to think about.

Things not to think about: paint!

I went to Home Depot today (braving the snow!) intent on getting Glidden paint samples. I want to try all the paint I can and find a brand I like. Glidden seems to get good reviews from Sherry and John on Young House Love, so I figured I'd try it. But then, there was one of those big orange Home Depot signs saying that Ralph Lauren paint is on super cheap sale. $15 for a gallon. Apparently, Ralph Lauren is going out and Martha Stewart is coming in. Oh Martha...

So, I picked up a bunch of paint chips, and got some samples mixed ($1 per sample jar! That's worth getting 15 different colors mixed!) and got to swatch painting today. I've pretty much settled on Ralph Lauren's Hopsack for the guest room walls.

I know, I know, more shades of gray. We've got a dove gray in the bedroom and a green gray in the dining room. What can I say, I like gray. Also, I just held the chip up to my screen and it is WAY off of this screen capture from the Ralph Lauren website. The real paint is much more brown khaki-ish.

A quick Google image search brings up this picture of a hallway using RL Hopsack. This is a better representation of the color.

I want something neutral in the guest room so that if I want to change out the red/aqua scheme I don't have to repaint the whole room. Since Home Depot had a limited number of cans of the Ralph Lauren paint in store I might go tomorrow to get the one gallon I need. Then I may be very tempted to actually start painting.

A little late for roasting chestnuts...

2010-01-24T17:53:00.000-08:00

Well, our biggest project to date is finally done. The fireplace. I've been talking about redoing this fireplace since before we even had an offer accepted on the house, so I have to say I'm really happy that it's finished, and with the results. If you'll recall, I took my inspiration for the job from Layla's fireplace makeover on The Lettered Cottage. We had to tweak it to make it work for our fireplace, but it was a good solution and I highly recommend this tactic. Also, ours did not cost $82, but it wasn't terribly expensive either.

Let's get to it, though! First, here is the fireplace before.

We had to remove the mantel and the glass doors, both of which were super easy. The mantel was just nailed in and I was able to simply lift it off the top.

This is what the firebox looked like after I cleaned it. There was a solid 2-3 inches of ash in the bottom of it. Tip: don't try to vacuum fine ash out of your fireplace, it screws up your vacuum's filter and you will have to take the thing apart and clean it. I have learned this from experience.

After taking the fireplace apart, it was time to take LOTS of measurements. We made a scale drawing of the fireplace and then made copies of that and drew on the copies to figure out our design. Once we'd ~~fought out~~ figured out the look we wanted, it was then time to start building "The Boxes".

This is, of course, when Adam decided to break his ankle. Insert 6-8 weeks of healing time and my Dad stepping in to build the box parts for us. Thanks Dad.

Now, I should have taken photos of the boxes we built, but I didn't. Suffice to say we made some boxes and L-shaped pieces out of MDF to cover portions of the brick. This is our fireplace at the end of day one attaching the boxes.

Note the big gap in the top of the upper box portion - that where we had to slice through the upper box and spread it apart because SOMEBODY (namely, me) didn't measure accurately. Fear not, we'll cover that gap up later.

To attach the MDF boxes we used masonry screws and borrowed Adam's Dad's hammer drill (which is just more powerful than a regular electric hand drill). We made sure to put the screws in places where the pine boards would cover them. When that wasn't possible we used a counter-sink drill bit to make sure the screws would go down below the MDF's surface and I could caulk over them and they would not be seen.

On the bottom portion you can see the pine boards we attached. We borrowed a 2 gallon pneumatic compressor and a nail gun from my Dad for this. It went MUCH faster than a hammer and finish nails would have.

Note also that we had to remove the baseboards on both sides of the fireplace. We could have cut the MDF boxes to fit over the baseboards, but figured that if we ever had to replace the baseboards it would be easier we didn't have to get them out from behind the fireplace. That was just a pry bar job.

Day 2: Attaching the pine trim and the mantel, reattaching the baseboards.

We spent most of day 2 cutting and attaching the pine boards to the face of the MDF and shopping for/joining/routing two solid wood boards for the mantel. We opted for solid wood for the mantel because MDF will puff up and expand if you get it wet, so if we had a party and someone set a drink on our MDF mantel, it could damage it. However, solid wood won't do this. But we had to get two so that the mantel would be thick enough.

So, we got a pine board and a poplar board and joined them together. We used the poplar for the upper part of the mantel (where things actually sit) since it is harder than pine and won't get little dents in it from use. The pine is on the bottom because it was much cheaper than another poplar board. Here's a detail of the mantel that we joined and routed the decorative edge on. If you look closely you can see where the two woods differ in color.

After all the construction it was time to paint, right? Wrong, lots of caulking of every little hole and seam ensued.

Then there was the priming

Then I finally painted. It ended up needing 3 coats of paint to get a nice smooth finish. This is the Sherwin Williams Roman Column we've used on all our trim.

Next, scrubbed as much soot as possible from the brick and I primed it. Sure am glad I bought that gallon of Kilz Premium primer...it's getting a lot of use.

Finally, I painted the brick black (Benjamin Moore Space Black) and really cleaned out the firebox. I litt And it was time to do the fun part, accesorizing!

The only new accessories are from Ikea, the pitcher ($20), Black sticks ($5), white lantern ($4) and straw ram ($3.75). Everything else is old from our apartment. If you haven't already noticed, there is our fabulous convex mirror from Restoration Hardware Outlet.

So, just to review. Here are the photos of the living room from the listing, to just after we moved in, to now, with the debut of our new couch you haven't seen and our Pottery Barn Tanner Coffee Table which we got just before Christmas, and the now black side tables. I hope to have a post devoted to the side tables in the near future, they need one last thing.

I'm still working on making roman shades for this room, some kind of curtains for the small windows on both sides of the fireplace and getting some chairs to put next to the buffet. We have plans in the works to replace the hearth with marble tile (which we've already purchased) and I'm going to be painting the fireplace grate with black stove paint to clean it up a little. There's always something to do. But at least, now, the fireplace is (mostly) finished.

Oh, and I did end up buying those white birch logs on eBay. I'm only slightly ashamed to admit it. I had money in my PayPal account from my Etsy shop, which I used to pay for them...as far as I'm concerned PayPal money isn't REAL money.

And finally, would you like to know what the fireplace makeover cost? We bought most of the stuff in December, and I've lost the reciepts, so pardon my estimates, please.

2 sheets MDF: $60 (ish)
1 box 75 masonry screws: $15
Pine craft boards: $35
1 12"x6" pine board: $20
1 12"x6' poplar board:$32
Assorted finishing nails: $8
Caulk: $4
Accesories: $34
Logs: $27Sandpaper: Free, had it from other projects
Paint: Free, leftovers from other projects
Assorted tools for the job: Free, borrowed or owned.

Total: $235

As thrifty as I'd like? Not quite. I was hoping not to go over $175, and the accessories are what put us over the edge. I think finding deals is the kind of thing that takes practice and a repertoire of shops that you know will have what you want for a good price. I do think, though, that what we've done would get us more than $250 back if we were selling the house...but that won't be for quite some time, friends.

The Great Fireplace Debate

2010-01-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

The fireplace is rapidly approaching the "finished" mark. I've been talking about it all week on Facebook (sorry Facebook friends...). I just have to paint the brick around the firebox, scrub out the walls and floor of firebox and hearth and do a little accessorizing*.

On the topic of accessorizing, I've been trying to figure out what to do INSIDE the fireplace. Right now we want to get the chimney inspected before we start any roaring blazes in the fireplace and our damper is somehow broken (although it will open, there is something wrong with one of the hinges...peeking my head under there it looks like one of the hinges is actually missing). And the inside of the fireplace is less than lovely. So, I've been browsing the internet and have found a few solutions.

No. 1 - Plant

My original inspiration for the fireplace makeover was Layla's fireplace on The Lettered Cottage, so if I wanted to completely copy her I could go with a fern in the firebox. Do I want to completely copy her? I don't know, her fireplace does look nice.

from The Lettered Cottage

from House to Home UK

Source Unknown

No. 2 Candles

Would this give the fire ambiance without all the ashes?

from DecorPad

from Colonial Candle

No. 3 - assorted vases with flowers.

from House to Home UK

Source Unknown

No 4. - Logs

I'm torn between the logs option below and the assorted vases with flowers above. I like the idea of being able to bring some color to the fireplace with the vases. But I am a sucker for white birch logs.

from House Beautiful

If I were to do the logs, I would want the RIGHT logs; which sounds totally bonkers, I know. But I want those white birch babies. I've already found some for sale on eBay. I might even put clear polyurethane on them for maximum dust-ability. And I could still do the tall vases or candle sticks on the hearth on the sides of the fireplace.

As a side note, last night as I was sourcing logs Adam said to me, "I can't believe you want to buy LOGS on the INTERNET".
I replied "I can't believe somebody looked at their logs thought to themselves...I bet I could sell these logs on ebay." He agreed the seller is the crazier one here, but only just slightly.

What do you think? Adam wants to go with the logs, but I don't think he realizes how serious I am about buying logs online if that's what we decide to do.

*My work computer is telling me accesorize(ing) is not a word. Clearly this PC is not fashionable. I bet my Mac would recognize it.

Free Chair to Fab Chair

2010-01-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

Ahhh, exam week. It's a good week to be an art teacher. Since I don't give midterms, I don't have to grade midterms. So this week I've only had to work 2 days and even then it was only proctoring tests and I was done around 11 am both days. I am off work for the rest of the week! I have a little bit of grading to do, but I brought it home with me.

So, this week I'm working on some little sewing projects that I've been putting off. I'm not going to call myself much of a seamstress, I mostly make things up on the fly but somehow they usually work out...or they're a huge failure. Today, Mom's office chair. Fabulous or flop?

Every once in a while my Mom's work gives away old office chairs that have seen better days. I got one one last summer and my Mom got one a few weeks later. I recovered mine some time ago but didn't take step-by-step photos, but this time, I knew better!

What you need:
One old junky looking office chair
2 yards upholstery fabric of your choice
coordinating thread
strong string or ribbon (thin, 1/4 inch or smaller)
pins
scissors
measuring tape
sewing machine (nothing fancy, mine is a little $129 dealy)

Here's the chair at first:

Now, when beginning a makeover it's very important that America's Next Top Model be on the TV, otherwise you're asking for trouble.

Okay...kidding.

Anyway, that chair is not looking good, is it now? I mean, it was pretty blah to begin with, and then add in a bunch of stains and it's just a sad sad little thing.

1. First things first, disassemble the chair. This is where keeping all those allen wrenches from all your Ikea furniture comes in handy.

2. Lay out your fabric of choice, good side down. Lay the seat cushion of the chair face down on the fabric and cut out a piece of the fabric roughly the shape of your seat but bigger. Probably about 6 inches bigger. I am not big on measuring, just guestimate. Cut it smaller if your seat cushion is thinner.

3. Do the same with the back of the chair, but this time you only want about 4 extra inches around the shape, and you need to cut out one with the front of the back facing down and one with the back of the back facing down.

4. This is the only measuring I did. Measure how thick the side of your chair back is. Mine was 3.25", roughly (are you seeing a pattern here? everything is very "uhhh, yeah, that looks fine" with me)

5. Cut 2 strips of fabric that are 1.5 to 2 inches wider than the measurement you just took of your chair's back and half the length of the perimeter of your chair back.

6. Now, let's assemble the cover for the back. You just need to lay the pieces, right side down, on the back of the chair and then pin along where the seams will be. Your two long strips should meet at the top in the middle so there will be a seam there.

7. You don't want to enclose the bottom of this portion. You want to be able to slip the cover off the chair with the pins and slip it back on after you've sewn. You should leave flaps at the bottom. So, about 3 inches or so from the bottom of the back stop sewing the seams together and leave flaps of fabric on all 4 pieces. Fold the edges of the flaps over and sew them down so they look finshed. (This photo was taken AFTER sewing because it was REALLY hard to show with all the pins)

8. Now, carefully slide the pinned fabric off the back cushion and sew. I didn't take any photos of sewing because there's not much to see. You just want to sew along your pin lines, keeping the fabric inside out and removing the pins as you go.

9. Returning to your seat cushion, take the shape you cut out and fold over and pin 1 inch all the way around the edge. Now, sew this fold down, leaving 1/2" between the fold and the stitch. YOU MUST LEAVE ABOUT 1.5" BETWEEN THE START OF YOUR STITCH AND THE END OF YOUR STITCH. This is where you will thread the drawstring (think of the drawstring on sweatpants, there's a gap between the two holes where the strings come out).

10. Tie a string or ribbon (ribbon was the strongest thing I had on hand, you want something that won't break with tension) to a safety pin and thread the pin and ribbon around your seat cushion cover.

11. Great, now you can put covers on! For the seat, place the cushion in the middle of your sewn/threaded fabric and pull your drawstring until the fabric closes up and is pretty tight.

12. Now you can slide your back cushion cover on and if you need to cut small holes in your fabric to get any screws through. Finally, reassemble the chair, and you're done!

Much better, right? Like I said, this one is for my Mom. Mine is a little more modern looking, with fabric from Ikea, but was made in the exact same way except that it had fabric on the arms that needed to be replaced.

Possibly most importantly, cost. It depends on the fabric you buy, but the total cost of this little project was a whopping $10 ($5/yard for 2 yards of fabric). Everything else I had on hand. You might need to spend an extra buck on the ribbon. And remember, the chair was free!

Enjoy it Mom!

(Actually, Mom uses a laptop on the couch...Dad will get the bulk of the benefit from the chair)

Just when you think you could get something done...

2010-01-10T18:59:00.000-08:00

It's been an interesting weekend here at The New Nest.

No. 1. The major pieces of the fireplace facade have been assembled (thanks Dad!) and we were planning to start the minor demo (removing some old moldings), attachment, and trim work this weekend so that I could work on caulking and painting this week. I had written and entire post about how the fireplace gods were finally smiling down upon us and we could really start this job, but then the skies parted and the fireplace gods looked on us with anger...see no. 2 below.

No. 2. The fireplace never happened because our cat, Bessie, ate part of a lily plant Friday night and ended up at the emergency vet Saturday afternoon and has been there since. Did you know that lilies are extremely poisonous to cats? They cause kidney failure and then a very painful death. I didn't know this, and I'm glad I looked into it the morning after she ate part of the plant. She's not home just yet, but her bloodwork tonight was clear and if it's still clear Monday evening she'll be coming home. This rather large vet bill may slow down house purchases for a little bit.

No. 3. Despite the vet bill, we did make one home purchase today that we'd never thought about before.

Yup, a fire extinguisher. Actually we bought 3, one for the basement, one for the first floor and one for the second floor. On Saturday we were sitting in the den and thought we heard a crackling coming from a light switch. It turned out to be nothing (but we did discover that our wiring is CRAZY OLD) but as soon as we heard it I turned to Adam and said, "We don't own a fire extinguisher" and he replied "yeah...we need to fix that". Another home purchase you don't even think about...hopefully, at least, it comes to mind before it's too late.

I am at that age where my friends are getting married and buying homes. I'm seriously considering making a fire extinguisher my go-to housewarming gift for first time home buyers. Although this may send the message of "Happy Housewarming! Don't let your new home burn to the ground!"

Anyway, I can't work on the fireplace much on my own. And I will have to spend a couple of days doting on Bessie. I'm hoping to work on some sewing projects this week while Adam is away. Hopefully some posts about that to come.

1,051,200 minutes

2010-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Adam,

Today is our 2 year anniversary. Let's get sushi, go book shopping and snuggle on the sofa tonight, nothing would make me happier.

xoxo,

Molly

P.S. If you insist on going shopping for something sparkly for me, I will give in. It is, after all, your anniversary, too.

Happy 2nd Anniversary to my husband, I couldn't ask for a better man.

Photo by Vanessa of Vanessa's Photography