My brain is getting ahead of me

I spend a lot of time thinking about house projects these days. Like,
a lot, a lot. To the point where my inspiration file is starting to
get way too large, and instead of actually doing anything, I just
think about more things that I'd like to do. And constantly eyeing my
home with improvement in mind, adding to the mental "to-do" list.

I have tackled a pretty big project - we spruced up our deck! It has
been so nice lately, and we've spent nearly every evening outside
lounging, playing in the sand table, grilling (!) and roasting
marshmallows in the firebowl (!!) Due to my generous friends and
family I was able to procure the things I wanted to make our deck more
usable this summer with gift cards. I purchased a Char-Broil electric
bistro grill (perfect for condos!) and a table top firebowl from
Menards. Matt gave me a whole patio's worth of flowers for mother's
day, and Sebastian got a sand and water table for his birthday. I will
post some photos and description of where we sourced everything from
and how we arranged it all soon.

So here are some of the things I have twirling about in my mind that
hopefully we will do soon:
-A gallery wall a 'la YHL in our hallway. I've been collecting artwork
and frames, and should be able to do it soon, like maybe this weekend!
-I want to tie our bedroom furniture together in a more cohesive way.
We have wrought iron, light wood, medium wood, dark wood and glass
furniture in here, and it's such a mishmash. I've been intrigued by
some of the two-toned, medium wood and white mid century modern stuff
I've been seeing in the blogosphere lately. There may be some bedroom
furniture hacks in my future.
-There will also be new bedroom curtains and blinds, coming soon.
-Our living room still needs some oomph. I think our artwork is hung
too high, and is too sparse for the big couch. But I'm really
struggling with a way to improve it.
-I also am contemplating the idea of getting DVD storage boxes from
Ikea to make our entertainment unit look less cluttered and college-y.
-I haaate our carpet, but that's probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
-I want to paint the tiles above our bathtub a glossy white. I am
probably crazy to think about attempting this, but because they don't
really get wet (there's only a tub, no shower), I think it could work.
-I also thought about painting the countertop in our laundry room to
look like granite. I saw it on a blog and it looked awesome.
-We're also planning to actually start the slow process of remodeling
the bathroom this summer. The first phase will be subway tiling the
enclosure, removing the door tracks, repainting and getting a new
mirror. Phase two will include reglazing the shower pan and getting
new doors. Phase three will probably not happen for a long time, but
would involve new flooring and maybe a new vanity too.

So yeah (insert eye-roll here) that's all. In some ways, though, it's
exciting to think about these things, because even after living in a
place for five years, there are still always things you can be doing
to make it more fun and homey.

New Bedroom Art

In the last five months I have owned three new cameras. It's a long, sordid story, but basically camera #1 (a Christmas gift) was stolen, so we bought another one of the same camera. Then #1 was returned, so we sold #2 to a friend. Then #1 broke suddenly. I just turned it on, and the LCD screen shattered. This happened to be on the same day I tried to make the new artwork for our bedroom.

Remember this idea? I had wanted to replicate this silver/blue birch tree art that I spotted on Apartment Therapy.

So, I tried taking pics with the broken camera as I created the art. As you can tell, I had no idea what I was aiming at (since the LCD screen was broken), so the pics aren't exactly framed well.

But what I did for this project was purchase two pieces of foam board (since they were cheaper and in more of the orientation I wanted than the canvases they had at Michael's). I pulled up the tutorial about making this pattern, and sketched the birch trees freehand. I painted the trees with gray blue craft paint, in a matte finish, and the background with a mix of the same blue and a silvery gray in a glossy finish. Here's the final product.

Then we nailed them up above the bed... but not until after I'd already sent away camera #1 to be fixed under the warranty. A couple weeks later, Fuji contacted us claiming that there was "impact damage" and they wouldn't fix it. Of course, there was no impact (the camera resided in a padded case at all times), but by then I was completely fed up with the camera. After a night drinking wine with a girlfriend, we stumbled across a deal on Woot.com for a Panasonic Lumix for $130. I snapped it up, and a couple weeks later, camera #3 landed in my hands.

So... I finally got to take some shots of the new bedroom art!

I really like how it brightens up the space, ties the gray blue sheets and blue lamps into the room, and it's much more in scale with the bed than the previous artwork.

I hope that now that I finally (knock on wood) have a camera that works, I will be doing more projects and updating my blog more frequently!

Through the Ceiling

So if you're ever planning on walking on an attic ceiling, and don't know the first thing about it, follow this advice:
http://hometips.gregvan.com/be_extremely_careful_attic.htm

Otherwise, this might happen.

M decided to tackle our storage room over his spring break, and then had a whim to go into the attic of our townhome building, which wasn't accessible before because it was blocked by stuff, and take down this stupid Christmas start that's been in the little octagonal window since we bought the condo.

He took one step, and crash, through the ceiling of our garage. Eight feet down, and he fell onto the side of his car.

Thank God he wasn't hurt. I am still shaken up by the whole experience.

Clouds and Bots: Kid's Room Themes

First two photos from Apartment Therapy (Ohdeedoh).

This cute room posted on Ohdeedoh today jumped out at me. http://www.ohdeedoh.com/ohdeedoh/my-room/my-room-gavinnew-york

It reminds me a tiny bit of Sebastian's room already, with the blue and green scheme and the clouds, but it also incorporates his other two loves: robots and Ugly Dolls. I was trying to think of a way to bring robots into his room, which has more of a flying theme with clouds, airplane and hot air balloon decals. This room does it really well... I love the robot/cloud painting and the cloud shelf.

But I also wonder if in someways it's silly to totally deck out a child's room in a theme. S's room is actually more just kid-room, than an airplane room or a balloon room or whatever. He just got a big retro Curious George print that I will blog about later, and he has some alphabet paintings, his "cozy" letters and all the cloud stuff. Maybe I just need to go ahead and bring in some robot stuff (like robot toddler bedding once we switch over to a toddler bed) and not worry that it's not going to "match."

Bedroom Wall Art Idea

I am getting sick of the skimpy-looking three pieces of art above our bed, and have been for awhile now. I found the second picture in this series on Apartment Therapy. It's actually hand stenciled wallpaper, and it obviously looks great with our duvet.

 

I'm thinking of buying a big canvas and copying this idea for above our bed. It would lighten up the orange walls and be a bigger statement piece. Even my hasty MS Paint job makes it look pretty good. I'm excited about it!

Living Room Curtains

I pride myself on being a completionist (which is not a word, but go with me). I am not really a perfectionist ... I just really like to get stuff done. So while my DIY and home improvement projects might not be perfect, they are done in a timely manner. I guess I'd rather have some imperfections then feel paralyzed at the idea of even starting something that might not be perfect when I finish.

Which is why it's so weird that it took me five years to hang living room curtains.

To be fair, I spent many of those years perfectly happy with my lack of curtains. The condo came with 1980s vertical blinds, and those hit the dumpster immediately. We have a very wooded area behind us, and we're on the second floor, so we never really felt the need to have privacy (in fact, these will provide no privacy at all ... more on that in a minute).

But I've spent an inordinate amount of my free time these days surfing design blogs, reading design books, and I came to realize that a sliding glass door with nothing over it was a bit of an eyesore. It just looked unfinished to me. Plus, curtains add that element of softness that this living room, with its cool green walls and angled fireplace, really needed.

So I talked about curtains to M for several weeks, and I know he just wanted to shout, "just buy some already!" but he humored my photo texts of cool fabric I'd found and pondering of oil rubbed bronze rods vs. brushed nickel rods.

In the end, I chose white curtains from Ikea with a subtle gray floral pattern (Alvine Trad in white/gray) for $14.99, and a brushed nickel rod, finials and curtain clips, also all from Ikea. I hung them about five inches from the door, and maybe three inches wider than the frame, to give the appearance of taller ceilings and a wider window. I really, really like them.

(An aside... we got a console table! I bought it from a friend who wasn't using it anymore for $30. I heart it. The red lamp we pulled from our storage room.)

Anyway, the curtains were hung, but it took me a good three weeks to get around to hemming them. I wanted them to hit the floor, but not pool. I finally tackled that project tonight, and used the Ikea hemming tape that came with the curtains. And it sucked! I've made curtain panels (in S's room and our kitchen) using Stitch Witchery or liquid stitch. But the stuff that comes with Ikea curtains doesn't seem to stick quite right. Plus, the instructions said to put the tape in the seam, iron it, and then cut the hem. But that meant the tape kept slipping, and I ironed part of it all crooked and it was cumbersome. For the second panel, I just cut the hem one inch longer than I wanted it, put the tape in, folded it up an inch, and ironed. It was much easier.

So the big thing to point out about this curtain project is that it's completely decorative and non-functional. The bit of wall between the fireplace and the door is really skinny, as is the other corner. If we wanted fully functioning curtains, we'd have to cover a significant portion of the sliders. Since we're north facing, we really didn't want to do this. We need as much light as we can get. And besides, we lived without curtains for five years. We obviously aren't concerned about the privacy factor. I ended up just folding each panel in half, and using only one pack of curtain clips to hang them. So each panel is half the width of a normal panel. I think it turned out nice - they look like normal curtains, but don't cover up that precious window view.

Here is the progression of our living room, from when we first bought it with the ugly verticals, to the bare window, to our nice, soft new curtains.

The Road Not Taken, Part 2

Awhile back, I wrote a post about the townhouse that we fell in love with while house hunting, but ultimately decided against because it was too close to the railroad track (as in, it was 100 yards away) and not in a great neighborhood. And while I've always known it was the right decision, part of me still thinks back to that house wistfully. So much so, that when I get bored and look at the MLS, I check that street to see if that unit or any others in the very small development it was in are on the market.

A few weeks ago, I was surprised to see it pop up. And my first reaction to seeing the images online is that it's not as great as I remember, and I like my house now way better.

I really liked the light wood laminate floors, and when it was on the market five years ago, it was painted a really nice pale blue. I didn't remember the living room window being so small. I liked the dining room, and thought the kitchen was fine enough, but seeing it now, the space looks fairly small. I also remember this place being really modern and updated, but seeing it now I realize it has the same dark woodwork that we painted over in our condo, and the carpet doesn't seem to be in great shape.

After we left that place, all giddy about how much we liked it, we came to the conclusion that a lot of what we liked was the cosmetic stuff, and used some of it as inspiration for the home we bought.

I'm sure there would have been things we would have liked about that house, but it's plummeted just as much in value as our condo, and at least we live in a super awesome neighborhood. I am happy where we are.