A Million Little Projects

Long time, no post-- we haven't done much of substance around here lately.  We've arrived-- much sooner than I thought-- at the point where all the things that need to be done are a) infinitesimally tiny and more or less invisible to the naked eye, or b) absolutely massive and impossible to do by ourselves.  Even still, in the couple of weeks since I posted, I've...

1.  acquired a new dining room rug which is totally the wrong color but I might keep it anyway
2.  painted one dining room chair a darker gray to see if I like it (I don't)
3.  finished the RASTs with hardware I painted to match (photos of all this in a minute)
4.  repainted the master bedroom ceiling
5.  lost out on a midcentury Baker console table I really liked via an eBay auction
6.  worked some more on the bathroom ceiling
7.  re-patched the master bedroom walls where the spackle I'd used had shrunk
8.  killed / vacuumed up about 367,721,003 flies
9.  finished half the rat-proofing around the foundation (more on that in a bit), and
10. weeded the front yard.

Obviously most of that stuff is tiny and inconsequential-- like, I know I shouldn't really list "killing flies" as a home-improvement project.  But when your house has dead rats (hey, at least we know the poison's working, and this time we couldn't smell it/them) and there are literally tens of huge furry flesh flies on the lamp in your laundry room, killing them feels like both a job and an accomplishment.  And losing an eBay auction is also not a project, but it did take up quite a bit of my time.  The table was gorgeous, but I plan to console myself by... well, we'll get to that in another post.

First things first: the dining room rug.  I have no distance photos, and between all these projects the dining room is way too messy to bother photographing now (from my current vantage point on the sofa, I can see two bags of grass seed, a tube of wood filler, tin snips, my shop vac, a gallon of ceiling paint, my yardwork shoes, two screwdrivers, etc. etc. in the dining room), so this is the best I can do:

Yeah, we'll talk about the pizza-box-with-primed-hardware-on-it in a minute.  For now, the rug.  It's an indoor/outdoor, which I thought was a really good idea for the Pacific Northwest, but the real reason I bought it was its shape: a 6'7" square was exactly what I needed.  I didn't find too many options in the 7' square arena, and this one promised to be a very inexpensive (like, less than $100) gray and ivory quatrefoil-patterned godsend.  It is, in fact, the right size, and I really like it.  It's one of those Safavieh ones and it looks and feels like a nice flatwoven rug.  However, as you may be able to tell from the photo, it's not really gray.  It's more of a French blue.  And that is pretty much the ONLY color not found in my living-room rug.  Ugh.

I've decided to keep it while casually looking for another 7' square to replace it-- when I find something, this one will go outside to our covered patio, where it will someday be joined by two comfy armchairs and some kind of cocktail table.  

Anyway, the French blue leads us to our next conundrum: what to do with the dining room chairs?  As you can see in the above photo, the light gray I chose when I first bought them looks like primer, but the Home Depot didn't have any other appealing gray options.  So the last time I was in Salem I stopped by Lowe's (yes, the closest Lowe's is forty-five minutes away) to check out their spraypaint selection and I came home with something that promised to be a little darker.  After patiently waiting months for the weather to warm up, I finally took one chair outside and sprayed it on Friday.  Results:

You're right, it is not gray.  It is teal.  This is obviously a no-go. 

At the moment I'm thinking I sand the hell out of them, beef up their joints a bit, and go semi-gloss white.  I'm kind of feeling the Hollywood Regency thing these days, and if the question is WWJAD (What Would Jonathan Adler Do?) then the answer is always glossy white.  Thoughts?

Let's go back to that first photo for a minute:

Yes, you are absolutely looking at a pizza box with a bunch of hardware on it-- I needed something into which to screw the hardware for my RASTs while I painted it.  This pizza box happened to be handy, which is strange because we order pizza about once in NEVER out here.  

Tangent: the pizza in Oregon is absolute shit.  Shit, shit, shit.  Yes, I was a bit spoiled by New Haven (before you even say anything, Modern is the best apizza, and I miss it ALL. THE. DAMN. TIME, like sometimes I have dreams where I'm eating it), but even if I hadn't lived in the land of pizza perfection, I still wouldn't like the super doughy, yeasty, extra-sweet-saucy, limp-dishraggy disaster that passes for pizza in the Pacific Northwest. 

Anyway, we ordered pizza last week because we are stupidly optimistic people and we always think that just this one time the pizza's going to be okay.  Spoiler alert: it never is.  But anyway I had the pizza box so I screwed in my faux-bamboo hardware:

A short handle for the top and bottom drawers of each RAST and a long handle for the less-adorned middle drawers.  These came from coolknobsandpulls.com, which had the least-expensive faux-bamboo pulls, and since I planned to paint them it didn't matter that the 5in. ones were nickel and the 7in. ones were bronze.

I primed 'em with some metal-bonding spray primer:

Painted 'em with an artist's brush:

Drilled holes in my drawerfronts, and screwed 'em in:

  

Oof, horrible photo quality.  Let's try that again:

 

Even worse.  Well, I tried.  

Anyhow, I think the RASTS look pretty boss now.  No guarantees that I won't decide to do a little something with the awkward space under the bottom drawer, but that'll have to wait til I get a jigsaw.  And my birthday is coming up in just four short months (Dad)!

[Feint]

Check it:

Yeah, I couldn't live with the chartreuse.  So I decided to find a different color in the rug.  Here's a different shot for color-comparison purposes:  

 

See it there in the fourth band in from the outside?  

And yes, I did attach the fretwork this weekend!  Thanks for noticing.  I really like it.  Here's what it looked like sans fretwork:

So much better with the fretwork, no?  Here's a little breakdown of the my RASTS went from here:

Through here:

 

To here:

My fretwork came from myoverlays.com (highly recommend, by the way) in the mail on Monday, so I painted it chartreuse.  I was still planning on going ahead with the whole chartreuse thing, but over the course of the week it became clear to me that it was the wrong direction.   I mean, I want to be a chartreuse kind of person, but I guess I'm just not.  So I picked out the new color (this one's Black Pepper by Benjamin Moore).  I filled the pre-drilled hardware holes on the drawer fronts with wood filler, sanded them down, and painted everything.  I waited for all the components to dry thoroughly, and this afternoon I attached the fretwork with some gel superglue (SO MUCH BETTER than the regular runny kind, seriously).

On Friday I popped by T.J. Maxx because you just never know, right?  And I picked up two down-filled zippered ikat pillows for $16 each-- I figured I couldn't make 'em too much cheaper than that, so it seemed like a good deal.  Then today while I was in my office on campus this morning (yes, I was totally working in my office on a Sunday morning) I grabbed a pair of lamps I've been keeping in there-- I think matching nightstands necessitate matching lamps, and I only have one useable outlet in my office so I had no need of a matching pair there.  I bought these at Target last year, and I really like them.  I used some of our excess hardcover books (we have a lot of those floating around) to make the lamps a bit taller.

As for the RASTS, I'm done save for the hardware.  In keeping with the Hollywood Regency theme I was going for, I've ordered some faux-bamboo drawer handles which I'll paint to match the dresser.  Lots of texture for the win!

Let's go back to August 2012 for a minute:

Oof.  Now May 2013:

Much better, non?

Half-RAST

I think my RAST makeover is about 40% done, and I need some advice.  

This is when I really, really hate living so far away from my friends and family-- especially my mom and sister.  They'd be able to tell me if I'm on the right track.  My husband, while being a truly wonderful person, is profoundly design-challenged (ask me about the time, perhaps a month into our relationship, that he picked out a black plastic TV stand from Wal-Mart and tried to convince me that it was "kind of Bauhaus.") and I think my friends here might be too kind to tell me when my taste level is what Zac Posen might politely call "questionable."

I started keeping this blog (and continue to maintain it) so our East Coast and Midwest loved ones could occasionally drop in on our West Coast life, but more and more I'm aware of the blog's limitations.  My photography skills are almost as terrible as my photography equipment, and I know the pictures I take and post aren't at all representative of what I see when I look around our little house.  And while I love having my own home to renovate and decorate as I please, sometimes it really makes me miss my family.

I texted my mom the following iPhone photo of an in-progress RAST to get her opinion, only later realizing that the color in the photo is CRAZY off:

I mean, it is SO CHARTREUSE in these photos.  It looks positively neon.  And the truth is, it's really nowhere near as bright as it looks in the above photo, or in this one (taken at the same time): 

It is, like, glowing in these pictures.  It looks like it just stepped off a spaceship.  And after I texted my mom and asked for her opinion, she said, "I like the color, but I'm not sure I could live with it."  I thought, "It's not THAT bright, is it?"  And then I looked at the photos and realized that the color she saw is totally radioactive.    

I wish I could explain this, but I know less than nothing about photography.  The horrible photo that follows is somehow a much more accurate depiction of the RAST color, but everything else looks much darker than it really is, and I really need to remember to turn off my lamps before taking pictures in my bedroom:

And you don't have to tell me how awful the orange flame-stitched pillows look.  I know.  I'm on it.

Even crazier are the photos I took with our actual (ancient, crappy) camera.  Here's one:

In the iPhone photos it appears neon yellow; in the camera photos it's grasshopper green.  I took both sets at the same time, by the way.  Here's a side-by-side of the birds' eye views:

In reality it is neither this yellow nor this green.  

So this is just a long way of telling you that I need someone's opinion on the color (is it too bright?  Too light?  Not brown enough?), but I can't get it.  Because the only way to show anyone the color is via photograph.  And I can't photograph the color.

Since I'm pretty much stuck floating out here in this cold design wasteland all by myself, I guess I'll go ahead and order the fretwork.  After doing some research, I realized that it'll be much cheaper for me to order two kits from myoverlays.com than to buy all the tools I'd need to cut my own fretwork, so I'm going to admit DIY defeat and go with the premade option.  I'm debating between these two designs:

 

I'm leaning towards the second one, which means it's probably hideous because every time I offer anyone an option like this she always picks the one I wasn't favoring.  Sigh.

New. And Improved?

I pulled the trigger on the RASTs I've been wanting.  Yesterday I made the endless one-and-a-half-hour trip to the IKEA in Portland all by myself (sigh-- when you live 3000 miles from most of your friends and all of your family, you have to go to IKEA by yourself sometimes), and I almost came home with three things: two RASTs and the perfect ceiling fixture for my guest room.  Flush-mounted so tall people can walk under it without whacking their heads, not boob-shaped, no weird glass, nice textured shade, etc.  And also, it costs $30.  I didn't leave with it, though, because they wouldn't sell it to me.  Apparently it's been recalled?  Which isn't mentioned on the website.  And it was on the shelf, available for sale, in the store.  Anyway.

RASTs!  Behold them in their pre-makeover state:

They look pretty sad, no?  But they will be beautiful when I finish with them.  And I think they make the room look bigger since they're so shallow-- there's much more floor space than there was with my previous mismatched nightstands.  Here's the view from the doorway:

 

So what will I do with them?  Here's my inspiration photo (from here):

 Mine are already the proper height for the bed, so they won't be getting legs like the one in the inspiration photo, and I'm probably not going to bother adding the false drawer front to the bottom-- though I may decide to put a faux-legs-looking panel across the front at the bottom.  I haven't yet decided how to apply the fretwork; that'll take a trip to the Home Depot to see what they've got and how much it will cost me to do the work myself versus ordering pre-cut fretwork from myoverlays.com.  As for the color, check out this detail shot of my rug:

 

Hey box fan!  Anyway, if you count the bands of color on the rug from the outside in, when you get to the fifth band, you'll see the bright chartreuse-y green I'm thinking I'll use.  I'm also attracted to the slightly-less-chartruese version in the second band.  Here's another view that might help you see both options more clearly:

Of course, this will mean finding a new home for my orange flame-stitched pillows.  Right now I'm totally feeling this fabric for their replacements:

Or similar.  Or not similar at all.  I love fabric-hunting and I can't wait to see what I can find.

After I left the IKEA yesterday I couldn't help wandering into the Home Goods that's conveniently located right next door to it.  I left with two things.  First, a dining room rug:

Please pardon the fact that it's currently sitting on top of the old dining room rug.  Right now we're in a trial-run type of situation.  I like the navy, and I think it makes the dining room feel a lot younger and brighter, but it's the same size as the old rug and I really think it's just too small.  I really need a 7' square.  What do you think?  Too small?

And then I couldn't resist a navy-and-white ikat flatweave for $14.99.  It's chilling in my bathroom, where it covers a significant chunk of the pink Marmoleum floor:

Yeah, just noticed that blue painter's tape stuck to the wall above the window.  I'm a mess.  

While we're in the bathroom, see that light-blue stripe painted under the window?  I was going to paint the bathroom this weekend.  Here's another shot that shows a few more patches of what will be the color:

But this morning I decided I'm going to do something just a little more drastic than paint.  I've been fighting with the orange-peel texture ever since we moved in.  I just don't like it.  And every time I have to do anything in there, it means buying a can of orange-peel spray and trying to blend the patch.  Which never works.  So why am I going out of my way to maintain it when I could just do this instead?

Yes, that's right.  I'm going to skim-coat the walls and ceiling using the squeegee method.  And then I'm going to paint them blue.  And then I'm going to order some flooring samples.  And then and then andthenandthenandthen!  [Name that movie?  Anyone?]

I Want, I Need, I Have To Have

I'm aware it's not good to covet, but I'm a covet-er.  The following is a list of five things I'm dying for right now:

1.  New Sofa:

I've shown you this sofa before, I know.  And really, I'm about to pull the trigger.  Thing is, it costs about $2000, and I'm cheap.  I'm a cheap covet-er.  I mean, I don't know why $2K seems like such a big deal-- I've had my current sofa for 11 years and I spend as much time as possible sitting on the couch, so it's not like I won't get my money's worth out of the thing.  I'd pay that for a laptop that would only last two years.  Can you tell I'm trying really hard to talk myself into this?

2.  Jens Quistgaard Lovig Desk:

I've been lusting after one of these babies for ages.  It would look SO pretty behind my new sofa, and it's so big that Ray and I could both work there; it's even big enough to serve as a secondary dining table.  It was designed by Jens Quistgaard (as you may have guessed from its name) in the 70's.  I love its skinny inset legs, narrow drawers, and broad work surface.  Even better, that top hutch flips down to give you 10" more desk.  Unfortunately, they generally sell for somewhere between $2000 and $5000.  I happened across one (slightly damaged) on Craigslist for $650 last week, but (for obvious reasons, ie, it is gorgeous, that's a great price for it, and it's an iconic piece) it had already sold when I emailed the seller  [swears under breath].  Oh well.  I'll just keep coveting.

3.  A New Dining-Room Rug

No photo-- I have no idea what I want in there.  I'm hoping I'll know it when I see it.

4.  Two Rast Dressers That Will Be Remade Into Gorgeous Nightstands Inspired By This One:

Found here.

Yes, that is a Rast.  I'm obsessed with it.  When I close my eyes at night, I dream of Rasts.  Since they're only $35 a pop, this one's just a matter of driving to Portland and picking up a pair.  Even a cheap covet-er can afford that.  I'll paint mine chartreuse (it's a dominant color in the maybe-priceless-maybe-came-from-a-yard-sale Persian in my bedroom).  I'll follow the tutorial provided at the link above or maybe I'll order some molding from O'verlays to make the process a little simpler.  In any case, these'll provide more storage in the bedroom and give us more nightstand surface to work with.  Perhaps for a new pair of awesome lamps?

5.  A Big White Ceramic Dog For The Hearth:

 

Because isn't that awesome?  I've wanted them ever since I was like eight and I read that Anne of Green Gables had two china dogs named Gog and Magog (one facing east, one facing west) on either side of her hearth.  Or maybe I'd take a set of really cool peacock-blue antique Foo dogs:

Full disclosure: there are a million other things I want too (hello, everything for the guest room), but I think it's best not to appear too greedy on one's blog, right?

Moving Right Along

I'm in the middle of, like, a million projects at the moment, but I thought I'd take a break from doing my final pre-paint finishing on the bathroom ceiling and show you what's happening in the guest bedroom.

After transferring all of my clothes out of the old dresser and into the new, I enlisted Ray's help to move the old one into the third bedroom, where it will hold our out-of-season stuff and Ray's soccer gear.  Then I moved the new dresser from the south wall to the west one, and here's what we're working with now:

Pardon my Nikes and that storage bin under the futon. I still don't really know what to do with all this crap, and just as soon as I think of something I'll move it all.  See that pillow on the futon?  I made it out of the sample yard I ordered of the fabric I'm thinking I'll use for the curtains in here.  What do you think? 

And the southwest corner.  I don't know what to do about the art in here-- the white piece with the round navy design is a blueprint for the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, where Ray and I met in grad school.  I bought it for $20 from Etsy, but I can't decide how I want to frame it, so for now it's dry-mounted and sitting on the floor.  The map (a One Kings Lane impulse purchase) was going to go in the dining room, but I can't make it happen in there.  Maybe it'll wind up in here, maybe it won't.

That chair actually goes with my tiny desk/vanity, but I'm hoping to get an awesome upholstered slipper chair or something to go in that corner and I thought I'd see how it felt over there.  I'm thinking something along these lines:

World Market Fern Floral Erin Chair

Not the right colors, but I'm crazy about the shape, and I think its traditional turned legs and caster-feet would play nicely with the new midcentury dresser.

Or this:

World Market vintage Floral Gray Reading Chair

I kind of love the palette here, but again, probably wrong for the space.  Super-cute shape though.  

This would work-- it also comes in about a million colors, including a nice navy:

 Urban Outfitters Madeline Chair

And this has a really cool shape and comes in a really nice soft orange:

Urban Outfitters Modern Chair

Anyway, here's a wider view from the doorway to help you envision what I'm talking about / smell what I'm cooking / pick up what I'm putting down:

Progress is slow but we're getting somewhere now.  Oh, and this thing:

  

My vanity table / messy beauty basket.  I think it's going to get a coat of white or pale gray paint (I'll be looking through the thirty-six million paint samples I've brought home from the Home Depot) and maybe painting some kind of geometric Hollywood-Regency-esque  design on it.  I've been feeling kind of inspired by some awesome makeovers of the IKEA Rast dresser, like this one:

From Apartment Therapy

I love absolutely everything about this photo, and you should really click through to see all the other awesome things people have done with their Rasts.  I'm kind of contemplating getting a pair of them to use as nightstands in our bedroom-- we really need more storage in this house-- and a quick Googling of "IKEA Rast makeovers" yields about a million and a half reasons to buy them (they're only $30 a pop, and if that AT post wasn't enough to convince you, check Pinterest).  

Here's a slightly more literal inspiration photo of a Regency-style console table like mine:

 from customnurseryart.com

Isn't that darling?