Progress on the Third Floor has ground to a halt for the moment. I am still busy sorting stuff for the craft room, including getting ready of 90% of my magazine stash. In the meantime, we had been procrastinating on installing a new light fixture for the Dining Room since the beginning of the year. But we finally got around to installing it over the weekend so it would be up for a certain little one’s 5th Birthday Party. And I am quite smitten! 
Previously we had a more historically accurate reproduction hanging here. Unfortunately the scale and height was wrong (too small and too high). I’ve been looking for a replacement for quite a while, but hadn’t found anything that I really liked in the right price range until this fall. I found this beauty at West Elm, while looking at their catalog. I ripped out the page and looked at it for a month or so. Then as luck would have it West Elm was having a lighting sale. So I took the plunge. Of course it was backordered for a couple of months. And when it arrived it went on the back-burner while we concentrated on the third floor. I really like the contrast of the modern/retro fixture with the more traditional aspects of the Dining Room. And I wasn’t the only who had the same thought. While I was waiting for our chandelier to arrive, two of the blogs I follow installed the same fixture in Victorian houses. Nicole used this light fixture in her daughter’s room and Anna used it in her Dining Room. Unfortunately it looks like they have discontinued the Mobile Chandelier. It is very large, but it actually makes the space feel more cozy. It will be getting streamers attached to in the next couple of days and I will take some more pictures. I’m off to brave the snow!
Archives For INTERIOR PRODUCTS, FURNITURE & FABRICS
I know I am a little late in the season but I thought everyone could use a little eye candy, in between the last minute hustle and bustle! I stopped by Terrain last week to take a quick look after a meeting. The weather was absolutely terrible but it was still beautiful. My favorite thing had to be these succulent topiary trees. I’m not sure exactly how they are constructed (may be with florist foam?) but they are certainly beautiful and I love the muted color range.
Their terrariums are always great. I liked that they had added bits of holiday decorations to them including pine cones, holly sprigs and in this case a small faux bird.
The outside was full of Christmas trees and amazing winter containers. When I see these containers I always think that I need to plant some holly. Of course by spring I always forget. Maybe this is the year I will remember.
I love the texture of this planter. The birch branches paired with eucalyptus, red twig dogwood, and some evergreens.
In case you would like to see the previous years at Terrain, here is 2012 and 2011.
I hope everyone has a lovely weekend! I will be back Monday with this year’s holiday card.
The Craftroom/Studio is moving along slowly. It is hard to get motivated to sand and reapply spackle yet again! So in my procrastination I have started to think about wallpaper for the back wall. Yes, after spending lots of time getting the walls nice and smooth I am going to cover one of them up! But I do like the idea of a pop, that will help accentuate the shape of the room. Am I completely crazy? Maybe I have breathed in too much dust.
Here are a few of my current contenders (samples are on their way):
This is Indira Damson (W0019/03) by Clarke & Clarke Wallpapers. I actually remember seeing this wallpaper on pinterest a few months ago and thought it was really pretty. It is certainly dramatic!
The second choice is a beautiful Bumble Bee (BP 555) Wallpaper by Farrow & Ball Wallpapers. The gold metallic is quite stunning but I’m not sure if the blue might be a little overpowering.
The third choice is my current favorite. The Globetrotter Natural (W0015/02) by Clarke & Clarke Wallpapers has famous building drawn on it. The description says that the pattern is “gold”. I will have to wait to see the sample in person to see if it actually metallic or not. I think it could be nice without being overpowering. The only question is whether it is too boring and not graphic enough. I could also get it with the pattern in pink. hmmm….
Finally here is a crazy water scene that I thought might be fun. Nympheus (BW45033/1)Â by G P & J Baker Wallpapers.
For more of the wallpapers I have been considering you can check out my Pinterest page.
So have I completely lost my mind?
There has finally been some progress over here on our third floor! Our contractors worked part of last week to get our Craftroom closed up (i.e. no open walls where cats and small children could get stuck). I had them build in some storage in the eaves while they were at it and for good measure add a bench on the window wall. We are still spackling and cleaning up the old plaster walls. Then comes priming and painting. I think we are still a couple of weeks away from actually being able to use the room, but that is a LOT closer than where we have been for the last several months.
The picture above is where we started. Basically a storage room with 1980s wallpaper and no insulation, heat or storage. I still need to order the storm windows (and eventually restore these windows) but it is at least now comfortable to spend time in (if you don’t mind spackle dust). Now that we are in the home stretch, I’ve been refining my Victorian Industrial Glam aesthetic. I think I am headed slightly more industrial than glam these days, but I think it is going to be a really great space. Finally a spot where we can work on projects and not have to clear them off the table to eat dinner.
I think I have a good mix of storage and am looking forward to having a spot for a lot of homeless items that sits in corners all over the house. I will put together a separate post on all of the furniture and accessories I have been hoarding carefully choosing.
Once I decided to work on the kids’ room this summer, I of course checked out all of the regular stores (Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, HomeGoods, Macys, Land of Nod, Pottery Barn Kids…), both online and in person, to see what they had in the way of bedding and accessories. Target is always one of my first stops since it is super close by, has good stuff and it is where I pick up our grocery staples every week. Fortunately it is Back to College season and the pickings are plentiful, fun and inexpensive. Of course the caveat is that you have to go now, because in a couple of weeks it will all be gone. They also don’t have any of these items on their website.
On my first pass I looked through all of the sheets, comforters and bedding, trying to find the perfect set for Maisie. No luck! But our Target has an aisle dedicated to ReStyle (one of their in-house brands) accessories. This season there is a lot of thin wire metal items in bright colors. I was smitten and at these prices you can afford to pick them up and tweak them and not feel bad.
So what did I pick up you might ask? I bought the lamp above for the bedside table. It comes in several bright colors, but I went with the gray base and shade with the neon green/yellow cord. I think it was about $17 but I bought it on sale for about $14. As you can see it makes an excellent home for lizards and dinosaurs.
Next up are these super awesome stools! I paid $19 for them but they were on sale last week for $17 a piece. As soon as I brought these into the house and still by the back door, the kids started sitting on them. They are the perfect height for my 4 & 6 year olds. They are super sturdy (the kids have already put them to the test). Target is offering them in several colors but I went with the bright green and blue. I may eventually paint them, but for now they are in full use as a stool and table for lots of lego and princess adventures. I bought 2 and am still considering picking up an extra pair (even though I’m not sure what I would do with them).
Finally I picked up this table on sale for $17 (regularly $19). Eventually I think this will make its way to the third floor but for now it is in the kids room. It is a bit small and low for a kids table, but until I get the space a little bit more finished it is getting good use. I think the neon pink will be painted another color and I might switch out the top for a wood one. Dana over at House*Tweaking has already painted the same table a fun red color and is using it in her living room.
In the meantime, while I am distracting you with cute accessories, I have been busy working on the kids’ closet (which is why there are giant piles in the background of the pictures). It was still covered in wallpaper, with the added bonus of a duct running through it! The lovely 1970s flower wallpaper was on top with an interesting 1940s(?) grid and waterlily pattern below. I also found tiny bits of an older brown gothic looking paper behind that.
Fortunately it is all gone now. I’ve finished my first round of spackle. It definitely needs another coat before primer. I also picked up supplies to frame out the duct in the corner (which should also hopefully shore up the plaster ceiling). I do at least have a plan for the space. I have picked up most of the things I need to make it a functional closet for 2 kids and their ever growing wardrobes!
Has anyone else scored anything good in the Back to College area?
*I was not compensated by Target for this post. I just thought you might like to see what is available in the store right now.
Life is still pretty crazy here. The air conditioning guys are going into their 4th week (and are ALMOST done) and the roofer finally showed up today. Nothing like being in your pjs at 6:40 am and realizing that they are ready to get up on their ladder right by your bedroom window!
We also decided on doors for our bedroom closet. We were all set to order custom doors from Barker Doors, but found that Ikea is now selling an all wood door (Hemnes door in gray-brown, $80). Of course it is in pine in the wrong color, but that hasn’t stopped us before. The style wasn’t bad and the price was a LOT less than we were going to pay for custom doors. Granted the custom doors would have been nicer quality, but in this case we decided these doors were a good savings measure. We may even try and use more of these doors on the third floor. In between birthday parties, swimming and generally trying to avoid being in our unbearably hot house, we managed to buy 7 doors and get them primed and mostly painted. Mr. S. took the opportunity to buy a paint spray gun from Harbor Freight. The fronts now have 3 nice coats and the back have 2 coats of white paint. They will need a little bit of touchup (we had to move them before the rain).
Okay so back to one of my new favorite purchases for the bedroom. We have been in need of new laundry baskets for a long time. Did I mention that I think some of our old plastic ones are from college? Anyway, most of the plastic baskets in addition to being ugly, are too big for our not so big house. Plus I have to carry them down 2 flights of stairs. It has always been an issue. I was determined to come up with a better solution with the new closets. Previously we had a 3 bag hamper system that didn’t work very well. So I went on the search for something that would fit in the PAX system, with minimal wasted space, but could be picked up and brought down to the laundry without having to change containers.
Since we went with the deeper PAX for the laundry section we had about 23″ of depth to work with and 37″ of width. Unfortunately Ikea didn’t have anything that seemed workable, which is strange since they have a lot of other boxes and bins that fit perfectly. I ideally wanted 3 baskets: one for whites, one for bright colors and one for darks.
Needless to say when I found these awesome laundry baskets I was excited. These are by Umbra and are called the Horizon Rectangular Crunch Can ($19.99) and are available in 4 striped colors and plain. They appear to only be available at the Container Store. I bought the red, green and blue. They are perfect for going up and down our narrow stairs and they look pretty cute in the closet too. I’m not sure why I waited so long to buy these. Did I mention that you can collapse them when not in use? They will probably never happen in our house, but it is a cool feature. The sides stay up quite nicely and I have been able to fit a whole load of laundry in one. Anything to help make laundry more appealing! You can see we haven’t started the bottom shoe drawers or trim yet, but we are getting closer.
I hope all the Moms out there had a great Mother’s Day! When I envision my ideal Mother’s Day, I picture sitting around in the backyard sipping mimosas with Mr. S., while my kids happily play nearby. Of course reality is quite different, but I feel very fortunate to have such a wonderful family who I adore, temper tantrums and all.
We are making slow but steady progress in the bedroom. Mr. S. has left the critical path, but now we have an actual functioning ceiling fan complete with a ceiling medallion! I know that fans are often frowned upon in the design and blogger world, but for comfort and energy savings they are hard to beat.
Hampton Bay Vercelli Ceiling Fan in Brushed Steel, Home Depot $209
I also think this one is pretty good looking. It is definitely on the modern side, but I like it. Our cats are VERY suspicious and Spike won’t even come in the room, which is very unlike him. We also incorporated a ceiling medallion. Previously we added plaster ones in the Living Room and Kitchen but decided to give a lightweight urethane one a try this time. This is the Reece Ceiling Medallion from Architectural Depot, $24.45. I’ve never ordered from them before but the price was right and it shipped the same day I ordered it. It was easy to cut and Mr. S. was able to use longer screws on the ceiling fan bracket to make everything work with the added depth. I think the quality is pretty good and after some primer and ceiling paint I think you would be hard pressed to know the difference.
The ceiling fan installation had a few small hiccups, but overall wasn’t too bad. I was going to have our contractor install it, but with the hot weather coming later this week, Mr. S. was growing very impatient. The wall control that comes with the unit is pretty fancy and so far works well. The light can even be dimmed. I give it the thumbs up! We may order the same one for the kids’ room.
Now onto the closet wall (i.e. the unfinished side of the room)…
The Ikea PAX unit is looming at the moment, but I think once we get doors and install the floor to ceiling curtains on the other side of the room, I think everything will balance out. As you can see we have installed one of the four units. The base on the right one is ready to go, but our AC guys are going to be running a duct to the right and I was afraid if I put it in, they wouldn’t be able to get it in, so I am holding off temporarily. Almost all of my clothes are now piled up in the closet, not quite a girl’s dream closet yet, but at least it has potential! I am going to start the bases for the middle tonight now that the old cabinet is empty and can be brought out to the garage. Then we should be able to empty out the playroom enough to allow the AC guy to get into the closet in there. As you can see it is all a giant puzzle, that gets harder and harder to solve as we move along.
I have to say that the PAX was pretty easy to put together. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it didn’t take very long and Ikea has a new plastic “tool” that helps you properly space the nails for the back piece. It is interesting that the pins for the closet shelves screw into place. Clearly the shelves and the rails help stabilize the unit. I wasn’t expecting that, but putting those in really tightened it up.
How was your weekend? Did you cross off anything from your to do list?
P.S. I will be back with an update from the Scott Arboretum Plant Exchange later this week. It was a lot of fun and my garden is a little bit fuller.
Things are still a little crazy and stuff is piled up high in almost every room, but 3 walls in our bedroom are painted! Fortunately I really like the custom gray color (which is a modified Classic Silver from Behr Ultra). And the white trim is looking good! Part way through the priming I was regretting our decision to paint the stained window trim, because well primer looks like crap. But now that they have had a good coat of paint, they are looking nice. We definitely still need to do another layer of caulk (since there are weird little gaps all over the place thanks to 125 years of use and settling) but the room (at least on one side is starting to take shape). The ceiling trim and ceiling paint still need to go on (which will be by our contractor after the air conditioning goes in).
The wall color was originally inspired by a picture from a Martha Stewart magazine that I literally had taped to the wall for years. She calls it “graceful gray” and has it listed with sophisticated neutrals, so I will pretend for a minute that I exude sophistication. I do actually think it is a pretty good match to the inspiration, although I plan on having a lot more color mixed in.
So while one side of our room looks somewhat organized the other side is a giant mess! I did manage to finally start the bases for the Ikea PAX closet systems. We are going to add a shoe drawer below that will be built into the floor molding. This has been a careful balancing act, trying to fit a drawer while not making the closets too high and still leaving enough space for a duct above. Hopefully my AC contractor will agree when he gets here at the end of the week. These pieces took hours to get leveled and set. Nothing in my house is remotely level, but anywhere near the fireplace is even worse. This location is not only next to the main chimney but also sits partially on the fireplace box in the kitchen below.
I started by installing a level piece to the back wall. Since it is screwed to the wall I didn’t need to level it at the bottom (phew!). But the two pieces coming out (which will support the majority of the closet) had to be cut at an angle to work with the sloping floor and then carefully tweaked around uneven floor boards. It took a bunch of tries with the jigsaw (because for some reason our circular saw has gone missing), but they are finally in. I also installed the blocking at the back and one piece on the front. I don’t know if you can see in this photo or not but the front 1×2 is level left to right. It is tight on the right and has over a 1/4″ gap on the left. Yikes! I am hoping that this is square and level enough that I will be able to make the drawer work. This is my first try at making a drawer from scratch, so we will see! I am leaning towards making the drawer with the Kreg pocket screw system and routing out for the drawer base. I figure if it is a complete bust I can order some pre-manufactured dovetail drawers.
My goal this week is to keep ahead of the AC guys, so we get the ducts in place, without compromising too much of our closet and ceiling spaces. Fingers crossed!
Our Master Bedroom may still look like a giant mess (fingers crossed we will get some paint on the walls this weekend), but I am making progress on selecting products for the space. I have the carpet, ceiling fan, fabric for the curtains and new bedside lamps, not to mention a bunch of Ikea closets in the garage. I decided it was time to update my mood board so I could show where it stands. I feel like we are finally getting close to the aesthetic that I was going for, even if it has been a couple of years in coming together.
Besides the new ceiling fan the other new items that arrived this week were a pair of lamps. I am quite smitten with them. I ordered them from Joss and Main and they are made by Krush a division of Luminance and called the Elle Table Lamp in satin gray. They are nice and tall but flat. They have a very Venturi feel to them, which is fitting sitting in front of the Best Panels. We were planning on using a more industrial looking lamp, but I actually think these will work out really well.
Another unexpected change is that the large metal panels for the behind the bed (from the Best Showroom) won’t fit like I thought they would. They have been sitting in the garage for about the last 8 years and I thought I had checked my measurements, but well I didn’t! Instead of 4 panels we are going to have 2 panels going vertical instead. I still like the abstract pattern (part of a flower) but now I have 2 more panels to find a home for (maybe outside?).
I still need to decide on a chair (the current one is a place holder). I also need to make the curtains, which I am not particularly looking forward to, but will hopefully go okay. I am going to order pleat tape, which should hopefully make the pleating part fairly straightforward.
I hope everyone has a lovely weekend! We are suppose to have lovely weather here, too bad I will be spending most of it inside.
While we were at Ikea ordering up our PAX closet system, we did a quick trip through the store (after all why not take advantage of the ballpit for a bit). I wasn’t on the search for anything in particular, but I saw some really cute summer accessories that I couldn’t resist. How cute are these summer items? So colorful! My favorite are the flamingo cups ($1 a piece).
Here is a breakdown of some inexpensive summer accessories that I picked up and a few more that I considered:
Rotera Lantern for Tealights, Ikea $3.99
I didn’t pick up this large glass lantern, but it was really nice in person. I need to think of how I could use it before I can justify picking it up.
Has anyone picked out any cute accessories from Ikea lately?
P.S. Our closets are in the garage waiting to be assembled. Pretty exciting! Now please try and excuse my dusty wrinkled clothes for a couple more weeks while we get our room together.