Friday, June 28, 2013

What Do You Call A Guy Who Hangs Out Against The Wall?*

Pardon the spotty posting-- we've been on the road.  But I did squeeze in a few quick photos of some progress in the dining room before we skipped town, and I thought I'd save them for a rainy day.  And today's rainy, so here goes:



 From the fireplace hearth:


From the front door:


From the kitchen, a better shot of what's actually hanging in there:


Top left and bottom right: two pieces of wrapping paper I bought for $5 each in a Portland gift shop-- the top left is a reproduction of a vintage tourism poster for New York (a special place for us because we've spent a fair bit of time there, got engaged there, etc etc etc), and the bottom right is a map of Paris with drawings of all the monuments drawn on in their respective locations (we have no connection whatsoever to Paris, other than the fact that Ray got mugged in Montmartre and I once got stuck in De Gaulle airport for like 15 hours, but the poster is pretty and it cost $5).  They're in IKEA Ribba frames ($24.99 apiece, so the total investment for these two big pieces of art was $60).  Bottom left: a painting I painted of a lighthouse near our place on the Chesapeake Bay framed in wood my dad salvaged from the deck of an old Navy ship.  Top right: A funky vintage map of the Lewis and Clark trail, found pre-framed at the local antiques shop for $29.  

I'm not quite done yet-- under the Paris map I plan on putting a little bench we can use for extra seating and accessorizing it with a stack of books and perhaps a vintage oscillating fan since we don't have air conditioning.  On the hunt for the right bench even as we speak!

*Art.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

One Step Forward

Remember the other day when I posted this photo of the new screen door?


As proud as I was of the door itself, I kept thinking that there was something (a few things) really sad about this photo.  Suddenly it hit me: ugly, washed-out-looking, unfinished, undefined-looking concrete stairs.  I decided to do something about them.

Behold:


Maybe we should do a side-by-side?

 It's Behr Semi-Transparent Concrete Stain in Loden-- it cost me about $25 for an entire gallon (of which I used, like, 1/4 cup on this project).  I brushed it on, first in one direction and then in the other to get a sort of crosshatch finish. Nice, right?

Next up: new (not ridiculously tiny) mailbox, bigger and brighter doormat, landscaping, window boxes, etc etc etc etc.




Friday, June 14, 2013

Mock-up


I've done it.  I've bitten the bullet and ordered the midcentury-looking reversible-chaise sofa I've been eyeing / drooling over for two years:




Sort of.

You see, I ordered it, but clubfurniture.com will not start manufacturing until I give the okay.  Yesterday I received a ton of fabric swatches (about 1" x 3") from them-- which is all well and good, except I thought I was going to be receiving a larger (like, at least 6" square) swatch of the fabric I'd ordered for my sofa (which-- and this may surprise you-- is not the awful teal shown above).  So I called them and asked them to send me that instead.  Because hello, people-- fifty 1" x 3" swatches in a whole bunch of crazy colors entirely unrelated to what I want isn't going to help me make this decision.

Anyhow, I was checking out their website to see if I could find a picture of a sofa-- any sofa-- in the fabric of my choice, I discovered that I could save around $600 if I just give up on the reversible chaise idea.  I found this sofa:



Which I think is probably upholstered in the fabric I'm ordering.  And then I was all like, wow-- I really like that sofa.  And it's $550 cheaper than the reversible chaise one.  And I'm not really at that point in my life where the extra $550 doesn't really matter-- in fact, I sincerely doubt that I will ever arrive at that point.  But I have always wanted a sofa with a chaise, because (for reasons that are entirely obscure even to me) the idea of stretching my legs out in front of me while still facing the television is, like, the height of my aspirations in the world.  

Since it's not too late for me to change my order, I have a couple of days (until my swatch gets here for approval) to decide.  I called my mom for advice (full disclosure: I do this daily.  I'm thirty-one.  Sorry Mom!) and she suggested moving the furniture around the room to sort of mock up how it'd be with a chaise so I could decide how much I really loved it that way.  I may have mentioned this before, but my mom is brilliant, y'all.

Behold my mock-up:
 



I used my West Elm dhurrie ottoman, placed about 10" to the right of my current sofa (since the new sofa will be about 10" wider) help me visualize the whole situation.  A few more photos:


The whole room as seen from the dining room:



Most of the room as seen from the front door: 

 

Where's the yellow corduroy chair that is totally getting reupholstered this summer, you ask?  Here:



I like it there.  

Actually, I like this whole arrangement a lot-- it feels like it makes sense.  But as you may have noticed in some of these photos, the side tables on either end of the couch create a bit of an issue:




When you walk into the front door, quite a bit of your immediate view is a big ol' lampshade pretty much right at eye-height.  I thought I'd solve this problem by moving the lamps to a long, narrow console table to be placed behind this sofa-- I've been lusting after this not-cheap shaker drop-leaf one:


-- but this morning I tried making a mock-up and putting the lamps roughly where they'd be if I got the table above, and they look exceedingly weird silhouetted against the big picture window.  Like, just bad.  So bad I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture.

And I'm definitely not down with getting smaller / shorter lamps-- my grandmother made those mismatched fire-extinguisher lamps, and together they comprise one of The Coolest Things I Own.  They couldn't possibly go anywhere else in the house.  Those are dedicated living-room lamps if ever I've see such a thing. 

So what to do?  To chaise or not to chaise?  What's the answer to the lamps / table(s) conundrum?  How great would the chaise sofa look with a round coffee table like this vintage Lane Acclaim one?  




Help meeeeeeee!




Monday, June 10, 2013

Big Screen

When we bought our house, it kind of had a screen door.

Kind of, you say?  

Yes, kind of (per this photo from August 2012):


So, yeah.  Not cute.  It was 1) unpainted, 2) torn, 3) incorrectly installed-- see the big silver hinges screwed into the door molding?  And it didn't have a pneumatic closer (obviously), so if you wanted to hold it open, you had to do it like this:


Yes, what you're looking at is the old screen door TIED to the front of the house.  

My dad removed it for us (along with the dead bush that was tied to the house on the other side of the door) about a week after we closed on the house.  He tried to buy a new hinge for it and reattach it properly, but by that point both the door and the door frame had been damaged beyond repair.  There was pretty much no way to make that door work.

So we went nearly a year without a screen door-- not really a big deal except that none of the other windows in our living room / dining room area can be opened.  So when it's hot out, it's also pretty stuffy in the living area.  After a bunch of warm, beautiful days left us sweating profusely as we watched TV, on Saturday we finally decided to head over to the Home Depot and see what they had in the way of screen doors.  

Our minds were totally blown when we walked in and encountered the perfect door for $148: already the exact same color as our front door (how in the hell does that happen?), precisely the right size, in stock, etc.  And it promised an easy install (which we were not stupid enough to fall for-- we know by now that there's no such thing as an easy install).  So we handed over a $50 gift card we had left over from Christmas and coughed up the remaining $98.  Feeling cautiously optimistic, we headed home and started the install.

And really, it was easy!  Well, it would have been easy except for three tiny little things:

FIRST SNAFU: While we were hacksawing the frame pieces to fit into our door opening, our hacksaw blade snapped in half.  That left us to find the other (broken) hacksaw and change out the broken blade for the whole one.  If you've ever tried to change a hacksaw blade, you know you have to fit two microscopic pins through two microscopic holes on either end of the tiny blade, then quickly jam the whole thing into the hacksaw frame before the pins fall out.  Time lost due to the broken blade: 15min

SECOND SNAFU: We were supposed to drill the holes for the door handle with a 5/16" drill bit.  We didn't have one, but we had a 1/4" bit.  We were much too lazy to go all the way back to the Home Depot after a drill bit just 1/16" bigger than the one we already had, so we decided to make it work.  We eventually succeeded.  Let's just leave it at that.  Time lost due to our stubbornness: 30min

THIRD SNAFU:  During the drill-bit-too-small-for-the-job disaster, I somehow managed to drop the teeny-tiny spring mechanism that fits inside the door handle.  The spring bounced, and we could. not. find. it. anywhere.  This culminated in me sweeping the entire driveway and then sifting through the dirt with my fingers.  I finally found it.  Time lost due to my clumsiness: 1hr.

But now we have a functional, attractive screen door that lets the fresh air in!  And it doesn't have to be tied to our house!  Hurray!


Pardon the disgusting iPhone photo as always.  Anyway, as you can see, we have lots of work do to on the landscaping front.  We've done a ton to the front of the house (installed house numbers, chopped the 10ft hedge that obscured the house from the street, painted the mullions in the big bay window, painted the front door, weeded, etc etc) but we know we have miles to go before we sleep.  More on that in a soon-to-come post.

In the meantime, meet my new friends on the back deck:


Juniper spiral topiaries!  On the hunt for the right pots.  Onward and [outdoors]ward!