Category Archives: Decor

The Endearing: My favorite part of our house

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Sometimes it seems as though we always talk about the improvements we’re making to our house without thinking much about the parts that we actually like as they are. I’m sure many people are the same way–it’s always easier to point out weak points than recognize strong points. So today I want to talk a little about the part of our house I like best the way it is and later this week I’ll spend some time on the part I can’t wait to change.

The Endearing: Pine Paneling in the Den

We’ve mentioned it plenty of times by now and you’ve seen parts of it in pictures, but we’ve never fully addressed the pine paneling in our den, I don’t think. So our den is covered with pine paneling (which we think originally came from the pine trees they cut down to build the house–we’re the only house in the neighborhood to mysteriously have zero pine trees), and when we first moved in it seemed like something we’d want to change. To call it dated would be like calling my dog, Ripley, excitable (she’s basically wired when she’s not asleep).

But it didn’t take long for me to move in the vintage stereo system and record collection. If anything fits with vintage electronics, I think, it’s pine paneling walls. I like the paneling so much because it makes the room seem warm in the way that used bookstores or cabins seem warm. Or like a really old British-style pub that’s full of real wood and leather. Which all this seems to boil down to the fact that it’s old. You won’t find real wood as the walls in many new houses, I don’t imagine, and I like that this room makes records and 60′s style couches look appropriate.

Kristen seems to have come around on the walls as she’s gotten furniture that matches the vintage (accidental) style in the room.

As long as I can keep Kristen happy with the old-timey pine paneling walls, I’ll be happy with this room just the way it is.

Are there parts of your house that you haven’t changed and you’re nuts about? *Stainless steel appliances don’t count.

 

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And up in the nursery an absurd little bird…

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…is popping out to say… Oh wait, we’re not there quite yet. First, a quick back history. For my birthday a few months ago, Ed’s parents gave me a gift certificate to Crate and Barrel (cue choir singing the “Hallelujiah Chorus”). Yipee!

Oh, how I’ve hoarded this little gem in my e-mail inbox. I’ve perused catalogs that come in the mail, browsed for way too long on the website, and generally thought about this wonderful gift no less than once a day for the last few months. Okay, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I was pretty excited about what it might afford me.

Then I read the fine print. In addition to Crate and Barrel, I could also use it at CB2. Holy cow, my head nearly exploded (in a good way). I heart CB2 like crazy.

So I got on CB2′s website and started looking. My first inclination was to look through the sale items, so I could try to get as many things as possible. But then I remembered this wonderful little guy I saw in a catalog one day. Back then, Ed had dismissed it with a sarcastic little laugh, and I couldn’t justify such a frivolous purchase, so I forgot about it. But birthday money is meant for frivolity. “Buy something special!” “Get yourself something you’ve been wanting!” “Use this to get something you wouldn’t buy yourself!” These are statements people always say when they give you money or a gift certificate.

So I did.

And it’s here.

And I did the happy dance when I got home from work yesterday and found this on the counter.

 

I scrambled for the scissors and got to this.

I removed all the bubble wrap and pulled out a smaller box and opened it.

Do you know what it is? No? Well, I suppose I didn’t give you much to work with. I’ll give you a hint.

Still no? Okay, I’ll give you another hint (from The Sound of Music).”And up in the nursery an absurd little bird is popping out to say ‘cuckoo’ ‘cuckoo’”

 

Agh! I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I realize this post is a bit too excited, a bit too ecstatic, a bit too loud, but is that not the most amazing clock? I have a thing for birds in a big way, which I think I’ve failed to mention before, so it’s yet another way I get to incorporate birds into the decor. It also will be a perfect addition to our midcentury modern-styled den. In fact, I have big plans for it to go on a custom cabinet we’d like to build to house the stereo equipment.

But for now, I will just enjoy its cuteness. And once I get some C batteries, that bad boy is going to be cuckooing all over the place. Or actually, once an hour between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Happy birthday to me!

 

Do you have a favorite Crate and Barrel or CB2 item that you’re just ga-ga over? Are you swooning for this guy like I was a few months ago?

PS. You can get your very own here.

PPS. Disregard the poor photo quality. It was dark, and I was excited.

 

We weren’t paid or perked to talk about CB2 or this clock, Kristen is just that excited about it.

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Classic Yuletide

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The holiday season is one of our favorite times of the year. We get to have lots of friends and family around, cook delicious goodies, and take a few extra days off work. We also enjoy pulling out the decorations, putting up the tree, and setting the table with our holiday dishes. Okay, so maybe that last one is more up my alley than Ed’s, but he indulges me my pretty table.

Because Yuletide is only a few days away, we’ve put the final touches on the bathroom on hold to enjoy sitting around the tree, eating goodies, watching holiday movies, and visiting with family. And I thought I’d let you know what this season looks like at our house.

First and foremost, we have the tree. It is always real. Always. And, so far, it has always been a Douglas Fir. Yes, they lose their needles more than a Fraser Fir, but I think they’re prettier, so we just sweep a lot. You can’t beat the smell of a real tree, and they’re generally accepted to be better for Earth and human health than fake trees. We like that, so we buy real.

Our tree looks pretty much the same every year. Lots of traditional-looking ornaments, small colored lights, large colored lights (i.e., Charlie Brown lights), and a big bow on top.

It isn’t exactly the same every year though. When we got married, we decided we would buy one ornament each year to add to the tree. It’s an economical way to add ornaments over time, and it will be a nice time capsule down the road when we’ve been married 20+ years or so. This is our fourth Christmas together (married), so we just picked out our fourth ornament.

And the others we’ve picked over the years.

 

 

We also set out the holiday dishes. True to our taste for the classic ornaments, we have the classic holiday pattern: Christmas Tree by Spode.

This pattern has been in production since 1938 and is what we opted to register for instead of china when we got married. Over the past few years, we’ve acquired quite a few pieces, and they set such a pretty table.

We have a few other places throughout the house where we add a little holiday spirit. This year we’ve been busy with the bathroom remodel, so some our regular decorations didn’t make it out, but we still managed to sneak in a few things.

 

 

 

 

We also keep the mantel decorations the same year after year: stockings, red and green candles, and scrap greenery from tree trimmings. When we buy our tree every year, I just ask for the scraps they have trimmed off the bottoms of trees when they make the fresh cut to the stump. It’s free and gives us decorations we don’t have to store in the house all year long. I usually get enough to drape on the mantel and to make a few swags around the house.

The stockings have a little history. The white one with the Santa Claus is mine from childhood. This sweet older lady, Mrs. Shaw, who lived next door, crocheted that when I was 9 or 10. I’ve had it ever since. Just in case it isn’t clear in the picture, the Santa and little tree are 3-D. It’s really a work of art in my book. Ed’s is the blue one. I bought it for him our first Christmas together when we were dating. It was cheap and definitely isn’t unique, but it reminds me of that first Christmas together.

Dru and Ripley also have stockings that hang on the bookshelf. They get a small dog treat in them on Christmas morning. Digging the treat out of the stocking (and then slobbering all over the stocking) = the best day ever in their book.

So this is what Yuletide looks like around our house. Well, all of this and then us in our pajamas watching lots of TV or reading by the tree. We hope you and your family are enjoying the holiday season as much as we are.

Happy holidays, everyone!

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Flea Market Vanity and the Rest

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Now that we’ve shown you the play by play on the important stuff, we can show you the fun (and easy!) details that really bring the room together.

But before I get to that, let’s revisit the original bathroom renovation list and see how much we’ve accomplished/decided against:

  • Remove sink cabinet and replace with pretty piece of furniture. (about to tell you about this one)
  • Add vessel sink and single-hole faucet. (about to tell you about this one)
  • Tile shower/tub area (details here)
  • Tile floor (details here)
  • Hang beadboard on bottom half of the walls (change of plans, details here)
  • Remove wall paper and paint top half of the walls (change of plans, details here)
  • Install sconces in vanity area (about to tell you about this one)
  • Add floor vent (decided we didn’t really need this right now)
  • Replace tub/shower fixtures (details here)
  • Hang new mirror for vanity (about to tell you about this one)
  • Remove doors on linen closet and paint to look like built-in shelves (in progress)
  • Hang curtain(s) in window
And a few things that got left off the list:
  • Replace towel racks and such, shower curtain and rod, and light fixture (about to tell you about this one)
  • Paint ceiling 
  • Replace bath mat (about to tell you about this one)
  • Replace baseboards, molding, and trim (in progress)
  • Hang artwork on the walls and add other decorative elements
  • Replace door jamb

Boy am I glad we’re almost done with everything. It’s been a whirlwind of a month, and I’m happy it’s finally time to share the little details with you. First up is our flea market find, the vanity.

Oh, but just to tease you for a second, I’ll tell you the back story. We started here with this monstrous, custom-built sink cabinet that took up a good half of the room (or seemed to) and these hideous lights and medicine cabinet.

And the gas heater on the wall (you can sort of see it to the left of the sink) was just more unused space, especially because we rarely even turned it on.

We weren’t quite sure what we wanted to replace the sink cabinet with, but we knew we wanted it to be more furniture-like and less sink-cabinet-like, and we knew that we wanted it to open up the space and not appear to take up over half the floor.

There’s a pretty good flea market/consignment shop near Meridian, Mississippi, so we headed there with big plans to find some gorgeous antique that just needed a little TLC (without proper measurements, I might add). Well, we found lots of items that fit this bill, but everything was either too big, too expensive, or too in need of TLC (i.e., dilapidated). But then we stumbled upon this little table piled high with glassware and other typical flea market wares. Lacking the aforementioned proper measurements, we weren’t exactly sure how it would fit in the room. For future reference, always measure before you drive several hours to furniture shop, or before you furniture shop at all.

But back to the table. We weren’t quite sure about it, but it was our best option. So we took the plunge and bought it, thinking we could surely find another place for it in the house if it turned out not to work in the bathroom. At only $90, it was certainly a steal.

Once we got it home, we knew it was perfect. Picture me doing a happy dance, and Ed breathing a sigh of relief we didn’t have to go shopping for something else.

Then we started searching for a vessel sink. We wanted something white that wasn’t too contemporary. We couldn’t find anything locally in our budget, so we went to Overstock and snagged this beauty for $102. We also found this faucet for $129 and ordered it as well.

Isn’t it just so pretty? I think so.

For the details: That’s an old cast iron sewing machine bottom and pine planks for the top. All we had to do was dust it off, sand it down, and polyurethane it for waterproofing. Super simple. And it fit both requirements we had for the vanity. The open base and narrower counter keep it from dominating the room. We did lose a lot of storage by ditching the old cabinet, but we’ve got big plans to utilize open shelving on the walls and the old cabinet area to take away the sting.

I may as well tell you we scrapped the sconces idea. After learning that we would have to double our order for beadboard, we decided to save money and not have an electrician run wires for sconces. And one light fixture is cheaper than two, so we saved a few bucks there as well. I won’t lie, I was bummed at the time, but now I couldn’t be happier with the result.

The mirror was another consignment shop deal. When I found it, the frame was gold and looked a little grandmotherly, but at $34, it was too cheap not to consider. After thinking on it for a day or so, I went back and bought the mirror and a can of spray paint and set to work.

I couldn’t remove the frame without doing damage to the mirror, so I opted for this very professional technique.

I covered it in construction paper I found in a drawer, propped it on a trash bag on the back deck, and started spraying.

It was late and freezing outside, so it wasn’t the best spray-painting conditions, but it worked. We used Rust-Oleum’s Hammered Spray in Dark Bronze. It looks a little more gray than bronze to me, but it fits in the room perfectly.

We found the light fixture at Lowe’s for $49. Then we snagged a lamp from the guest room (another consignment find a long time ago) and reused some bath accessories we already had. When we got married (back in 2008), we registered for these bath accessories, and now we finally have the perfect bathroom for them!

We did buy a soap dish at Tuesday Morning for $5, but we had everything else already on hand.

Moving right along to the shower area. We snagged the shower curtain from our second bath. We found it at Lowe’s a few years ago, but I wasn’t able to find it on my last trip there, so it must be discontinued. I did find a snazzy shower caddy to match all our oil-rubbed bronze in there though. We opted for this shower caddy, which cost about $30.

We bought our shower fixtures on Overstock for a pretty serious steal (details here).

For the rest of the room, we added two towel racks, two hooks, and a toilet paper holder, all from Lowe’s and the allen + roth Forsyth collection and a shower rod and hooks and a bath mat found at Tuesday Morning. For these items, we spent about $130.

So that’s where we are folks. Right now, we’re working on converting the old cabinets to open shelving, finishing up the baseboards, and looking for artwork. We’re nearing the end!

If you want to see the bathroom remodel from the beginning, check out demo, cement board installation, hanging and painting beadboard, tiling the shower, and tiling the floor.

If you love any of the elements we used for the vanity or shower, head on over to our Amazon store where we’ve tracked down the fixtures and lookalikes for you.

 

Post linked up at One Project Closer’s DIY Link It Up #1.

 

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Door Knobs and Broomsticks (Sans Broomsticks)

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A while back, Kristen picked up some little ceramic closet doorknobs to replace the plain door knobs we have on some of our closets. (These are non-magical knobs by the way, unlike those in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Angela Lansbury reference. Pow.)

In our den, we have a sizable coat closet with two shutter doors. The knob on the left door fell off and got lost some tie ago, and the remaining knob was pretty plain looking, so we figured we’d put some fancier knobs on this closet since we spend so much time in the den.

Here’s the closet before:

Taking off the remaining door knob and the screw left in the other door was just a matter of taking out screws. This involved almost getting into the closet to get to the screw heads.

After I got both the old screws out. I had to screw in the new knobs. The threads on the new door knobs were a little larger than the holes in the doors, and the new knob screws didn’t have slots for screwdrivers, so I had to screw them in by holding onto the heads with pliers. This took some time.

After the screws were all the way in, I threaded nuts on the back side to keep them in place.

It’s not a huge difference, but it’s definitely an improvement. Next, we’ll get a few more knobs and put them in some closets we have in the back addition of our house.

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