Before and After: The Den

I've been kind of in-and-out lately due to some shifting stuff going on with work, and a beastly new class. HOWEVER, I have some fun pics I want to share with you! We've been working on our den since the new year as you know from our big 'no more water' sub floor project.

It's been the home of our books and desktop computers for the past 2 years, but that's about it. We had other projects we wanted to do first, yadda yadda. This is what it looked like before:

This has been really depressing for me, because this is the room with the fireplace, and one of the main reasons I wanted this house. I didn't even like doing homework on that tiny desk, and it was always cold since it didn't have an insulating subfloor. We only got the fireplace fixed last summer (had to rerun the gas line, the idiot who installed it put it in a really bad spot and it was dangerous). So over Christmas we took care of the floor problems which means I got to start decorating!

First we started by building a desk. The drawers are from ikea and the top is wood I stained, edged and sealed myself from Lowe's. I have a print I need to get made to go above the desk, those pics/diplomas will be moving to a different wall.

Then I got new bookcases (I collect books, folk tales, fairy stories and histories mostly) because the others were ugly and the shelves were bowed. I also picked out new chairs from Target. We got them nearly 50% off with all the coupons/sales I used.

Ignore that stack. Those are Brian's from random classes over the years. He's supposed to go through them and pick the keepers.

And lastly, yesterday our sofa arrived! We bought it on super sale at Art Van last weekend. I want to make new throw pillows for it, and also ignore the coffee table. That's our old beat up one that we'll be craigslisting once I can find a new one I like.

So yeah, that's it! You can't see my valance because of the sunlight, it's just a white one that matches the floor-length curtains in our room. And we still need to pick a spot for a little tv and I've got new throw pillow covers I need to plop in place, but it's just about there!

New year, and a new floor!

So remember how we got water in our lower level a few times? Well over the holidays we did something about that.

We moved everything out of the room. Which included cleaning out 2 desks and several drawer units that have been used to shove random things in, and emptying our 3 very full bookcases. I spent a whole day just on this part, but it's nice to know that we don't have random drawers full of old class notes and crap from 2008!

Painted the entire floor with DRIlock.

Added a subfloor with plastic backing so if water does come in, it'll run straight to the drain.

And had the carpet reinstalled with a new pad!

Soooo much work for it to look exactly the same... BUT we have a lot more in the works too. It's furniture time!

Outside Lights

Ok, so here's the worst photo ever taken, but these are our outside lights this year!

Our little pear tree has big bulb lights on it, but we don't have it plugged in because of extension cord issues. We also got icicle lights for the roof eaves, but it keeps raining/sleeting/snowing, and ladders and inclement weather don't really mix. So we'll probably just wait and put those up next year.

Dining Room Lust

I am sooooo in love with this dining room from Better Homes and Gardens:

I have been obsessing over this room all day.

The orange chairs!
The leaded glass!
The built ins!
The french doors!
The floor!

I could go on.

Sigh~*

There's fun on the horizon!

To break the unintentional post hiatus, I just want to say I have a new project brewing! It involves the following things:

1. Going through people's garbage.
2. Hideously gaudy stuff.
3. Paint fumes.

Should be a good time! I'll post about that, and the seasonal decor and other fun stuff I've been up to as soon as I'm done with my beast-of-a-final for this class!

Woo! Progress!

Ok, I lied. This isn't the REAL progress post. This is the pre-progress-post in which I tell you how much of a change these little projects are making! I still have a few things to finish, like putting the drawers back on the nightstands, picking out lamps, a new bedskirt and such. I also found a dresser I really like for Brian, and even better he likes it too! It's this one from Amazon.

I think it will offset the tall brown one I have pretty well, and the price is right too. I probably won't buy it for a little while though, we're paying for some other stuff right now.

I also need to make our headboard. I'm being mildly indecisive, but I think I'm going to go with basic, rectangular padded ivory. Then there's my jewelry storage plan... man, I keep adding projects like I have actual time or something... At any rate, I'll make an actual progress report once the nightstands are reassembled.

On a completely unrelated note, my Google analytics stopped functioning properly at the new year. I have not registered any hits at all for the last month. And I know I have been visiting at least! Anybody ever hear of an issue like this?

Craigslist strikes again!

So the nightstand debacle has been driving me up the wall. I'm tired of losing my glasses 4 times a week. And having to get up and turn off the light when it's two degrees above absolute zero is rather less then pleasant.

So I was checking craigslist again last night hoping against hope to find something that would be both cheap and uber-stylish. When finally, score! You won't be able to recognize them by the time I'm done, but here they are. Goji was very insistent on being part of the picture:

These are solid pine, stained red and coated with a light acrylic lacquer. I got the pair for $50. Not the steal of the century, but a pretty good deal all the same. One of the reasons I like them is that they are smaller and not solid boxes. I will be sanding them down and painting them. What color? Well if I told you it would ruin the surprise!

Oops! And canvaspeople.com review

Oops! I never mentioned what the rest of our bedroom looks like! That might help with our paint debacle... I really need to post a picture, but it appears that I have never taken a picture of the room with our stuff in it. In the interest of selecting the right paint color, I'm going to rectify that, but in the meantime, here is the only picture of our room that I have:

The bed is too the left, facing the closet doors, and I'm standing in the bathroom door. Here's our stuff:

And I swear I'll take a real picture asap!
~~~~~~~~~~
Another thing I wanted to discuss today, is that through a fabulous special sale brought to our attention via my fabulous friends on the knot, we were able to get a 16x20 canvas print of one of our wedding photos from canvaspeople.com!

We got 50% off on any canvas, so we figured it was worth a shot. The order came when it said it would, and it's perfect! I have had one heckuva time taking a picture of it though:

We want to put it in the living room next to the stairs, but it's a little small for the space so I'm shopping for the right frame for it.

I think I might start using exclusively this place for printing canvases, for different reasons I've had to order them multiple times in the past. What I like about this place, is that their upload system is easy, and their prices are competitive. Also, while you should still always treat these with care, so far the print hasn't chipped at the corners just by looking at it funny. Other printers I've had the ink just flake right off!

So canvaspeople, are apparently my kind of people! Well done!

Colorful Ideas

Ok, so the trip into the depot was pretty much a success. I've got the stuff to finally get our curtain hung in the lower level window. And I've got our paint choices for the bedroom wall narrowed down to 2.

Brian's mom sent me a super helpful email in response to the bedroom post. She thought blue would be better then green for the accent wall, and I think she's right. I brought home the usual 4,235,753,941 paint chips and held them up on the wall all over the place. These are the two finalists:

Behr Dark Storm Cloud

And Behr Prelude

Ok, so they look similar, but in the room they are really different. I'm kind of leaning towards the first one, but it's a pretty similar weight to a lot of the colors I've already used, and I don't want things to get flat. But my concern with the other one is that it might get too 'easter egg' next to the yellow of the bathroom.

Thoughts? Opinions? Help??!?

Also if there are other colors people like better that I haven't heard of pipe up!

Bedroom Debates

Ok, I promise the first post of 2011 will be entirely 'above the sheets!' ;-)

I am not satisfied with how we've decorated our bedroom. I like our furniture placement, and I looooove our new duvet cover, but it hasn't actually been decorated yet. I have not decorated it, or painted, we have no nightstands, no headboard, etc. I need help! First, this is essentially the room right now. The yellow, and the ginko wall art you may recognize from the bathroom. I've included them here because both elements are very visible from the entire bedroom.

Ok, Brian also has a dresser, of similar color and shape to mine there. Eventually I'd like to get him a long low one, and move the second tall one to the guest room. First lets look at the thoughts I've had for paint. I've had the thought that a very grey blue or green might work:

 

The problem is, I don't want it to look like an easter eg with the bathroom. Thoughts?

As far as other elements go, this is my ideal bed:

But for cost and space reasons it's probably not feasible in our current home... which means I don't know what to do about a headboard/over the bed focal point.

A much more pressing issue that we have no nightstands. I am extremely blind, and a nighttime reader and I have no nightstand. It drives me NUTS. I have absolutely no idea what I want for nightstands either, black, white, wood, boxy, round...I need help! Here are some I've looked at:

 I really like the last one, it's 99 dollars at target. Basically with the dressers I'm afraid of filling the room with boxes.

So please, dear reader... help! I need to get the basics figured out so we can have a cozy haven in our bedroom. This one is a big mental block for me, and I need some good sleep!

Post-Christmas Christmas Post

Yeah yeah, I'm a terrible blogger. Don't I know it. Well my lovely hubby and I have been running around all crazy with the post wedding madness, school prep, family stuff, etc but we did actually decorate for the holidays!

I am aware that you wouldn't know that... because i haven't shown you. So I'll fix it now! I know it's a few days post-yule but hey, it's still before the new year so I technically still win right? Rather like it's ok to send Christmas cards late as long as they get there before Jan 1, so I shall shower you in terribly awful pictures of our decor. My camera is failing. I need a new one... just ad that to the pile of stuff on our 'spend money list'!

Our lovely tree. It's new, 7.5 feet, only 550 lights but it's LED and one of the best fakes I've seen. Also it was very easy to put up! It's in the corner of the living room near the dining/kitchen.

The downstairs which i still don't like. But since we have no furniture down here yet, it was kind of an afterthought.

My little village on the sideboard/dresser. And I hung some ornaments from the light ala newlywoodwards. Gotta get some better ornaments for next years though.

Some of our cards, and you can see the banister in the background. The one going down to the entryway has a garland as well.

And last but not least, our outdoor lights. We're going to add to it little by little as we go :). Our decorations that FILLED our 650 sq foot apartment definitely aren't doing it anymore!

A belated Merry Christmas from DSIFQ!

Bathroom fun!

Ambiguous title maybe? Yeah, but I swear this is just about decor. A couple weeks ago, Brian's family's contractor came to help us with some house stuff. A lot of this work was in the bathroom, mostly a new fan and light, and GFI outlets. Yay meeting building codes!

It's very quiet, and ads a lot of extra light (when it's on) as well. All in all one of those nice additions that you end up noticing/liking more then is probably necessary.

Another big change came in decor. We got a beautiful dark copper piece of wall art from my cousin Chelsea for our wedding. The little alcove the toilet resides in was just screaming for some focal-art. Especially since it's visible from the master bedroom. Buuuut, it was much classier then our polka-dot ikea shower curtain and mis-matched bathmat. Off to Target I went!

 

We went with a combination of Asian textures and a little 'fussy-french' thrown in in the shower curtain. I think it works.

 

The curtain is blue and white woven flowers (with a separate liner). I like it because it covers the whole shower which still desperately needs to be retiled... The mat is actually a bunch of wooden hexagons. You'd think that would be a weird bathmat, but I really like it against the fabric curtain:

 

I also got new curtain hooks that match the ginko wall art:

We've definitely made some big changes in this little room! More than any other room in the house...

Also, a HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all! I know a bathroom update isn't really thematically correct, but I'm thankful to have this nice bathroom!

Witness Our Spooktacular Return to Blogging!

Whew! Well guess who's baaaack? No, not the McRib Sandwich. It's us!

Our wedding was absolutely the most perfect event we could ever have asked for. So perfect in fact, that I can't decide if I would want to relive it. I think if I were to do that, there's no way it could be that wonderful twice... even though I'd love to have that day again and again and again and.....

I'm collecting pictures from everyone, and I'll do a recap for ya'll next up don't worry.

It's been about a week and a half, (the wedding was on the 23rd of October) and we didn't go on a honeymoon or anything, so what took so long to get back to the blog? Well ya know, LIFE. I've been getting settled in at a new (and totally awesome) job. And we had HALLOWEEN to prepare for!

Halloween is a super big holiday for Brian and I. For several years now we've hosted an annual party. This year was very low key. And the entire week between the wedding and Halloween was spent cleaning up wedding and putting out Halloween! We cheated a little and just shoved some of the wedding mess... what does one do with a bunch of wooden table numbers?

We decorated the crap out of our house, unfortunately there are only a few pictures, and even fewer good ones. I feel like that's what happens when you have to rush things. We made quite a spread though, we only had 8 this year but we had cupcakes, cider, pigs in a blanket (mummy weenies), cookies, chips/salsa, candy, etc etc. And we all ate way too much and imbibed a little too.

Here are a couple of pictures of the food:

 

And our banisters got 'webbed'

And there's a bunch more, but none of the other pictures I took really turned out. Oh well, maybe next year.

Now what's Halloween without some costumes? We had some good ones from guests this year, and Brian and I recycled last year's. Both because of lack of time, and because I really enjoy working with liquid latex...

Yup. Those are some zombie newlyweds. I don't think my faces were quite as believable as last year however. Ah well! Happy Halloween!

I love thrift stores.

Last weekend before the football game (yay football! Oh how I've missed you.) I went to this awesome place in Ann Arbor called Treasure Mart. It's part thrift store, part antique shop. They have a ton of stuff and the level of quality tends to be much higher then your average thrift store, they're hours are pretty short though so it can be hard to get a trip in.

I went to poke around, there are a few things I'm looking for like nightstands, chairs for the lower level, etc. but also it's a really fun place to browse. Actually I found my favorite geisha doll there doing just that. This time I struck gold! Literally!

As you probably guessed from the last post that included that lovely renaissance faire photo I am hugely into historic fashion. ( man I am so many different types of geek I shock myself sometimes...) One thing within that that I think is cool are fashion prints. Old ones. I found this pair of prints in vintage frames on top of a pile of crap:

The prints feature one woman from about 1580 (left) and the other is from about 1865, these are estimates of course, but I'm judging by what they are wearing. They are matted with velvet ribbon, and in the gaudiest frames I've ever seen... they're perfect! I'm not sure when they were printed, but I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm going to hang them in my studio by my sewing machine. With the orange walls and ultra modern equipment I think they will contrast nicely! I am not ruling out painting the frames, but for now I like them as-is.

This also reminds me, I have a fashion catalog from the 1940's. I think it's Macy's but I'll have to check. I've got to figure out something cool to do with that as well.

Privacy Problems

Ok, the weather in Ann Arbor has been pristine! Low sixties in the mornings/evenings, about eighty during the day... knock ten degrees off both ends and we're in my favorite time of year! So let's shut out all that beauty with curtains shall we?

On our lower level we have a big window, it matches the window upstairs in width but because the lower level is halfway underground it's shorter. This presents an interesting decor problem: what do we do for curtains?

We definitely want curtains down here, it's street level, and it's essentially our office, so ya know, privacy is a good thing. I couldn't figure out what to hang for curtains until Brian's mom perfectly solved that problem for us! She gave us these cute white valances with white leaves on them. They'll work well in this green room, which for how much time I spend in it, is sadly neglected in the decor department.

So what's the problem? We have curtains, why aren't they up? Well, this window is 92 inches wide. And it's less then 1.5 inches from the ceiling. This presents a bit of a problem in the curtain rod department. I don't want to hang a curtain rod right at the top edge, it looks awkward, and I don't want to put it below the opening because that's EXTRA awkward. I have decided that a tension rod would definitely be the prettiest and cleanest solution for the space. But where do I find a tension rod that long? The search is on, and hopefully, we'll have curtains up in the lower level very soon. And pictures once I find my camera cord...

Also, it's time to call a chimney sweep! We want to make sure our fireplace is in proper working order so we can use it this fall/winter.

Yay Thrift Store Find!!!

So even though we've only lived in our house a little under 2 months (holy crap!) I have already felt the need for a sideboard/buffet in the dining room. Our kitchen is seriously lacking on upper cabinet space, and I don't like putting food or table settings down low. The first for sanitary reasons, the second, because that would be annoying. So I'd been shopping around and I'd found a few I liked but they were pricey (we're talking 300 bucks, insane!) and I was also keeping an eye on craigslist and the thrift stores.

Last night I went to Ann Arbor PTO thrift store, and I found something SWEET! Please excuse the lovely cell phone picture, it's the only one I've got right now:

I heart this dresser! I bought it for 75 bucks and we're picking it up early next week. From my inspection appears to be solid wood. The drawers don't have tracks (but they work quite well), and it's actually a pretty heinous yellowish color, but wow, the detailing rocks! And it would definitely have enough room for all our dishes and serverware and placemats, etc. Since it's a dresser it has an attached mirror (you can see the bottom of it there in the top left). It has the same detailing as the drawers. I'm going to detach that, strip it, and probably paint it black and hang it in the entry.

The dresser definitely needs to be sanded and refinished (some sizable scratches), but I'm not sure what to refinish it with. We could try to match/coordinate with the multitude of oak that we have in the kitchen:

Or I could paint it black to go with a lot of our other storage furniture:

 

 Or I could do contrasting stain to emphasize the decoration:

 Or I could paint it black and do white (or another contrasting color, or stain) on the drawer fronts:

Excuse the crappy photoshops, I didn't have a lot of time. Also I'm definitely going to put new brushed nickel hardware on there. Any thoughts? Other ideas I haven't thought of?

The Curtain Saga

So originally we had these curtains up in our apartment:

And trust me, when there they didn't look nearly this craptastic. They really fit our ikea meets secondhand vibe we were going for...

But I don't like them in the house. They just don't fit. Soooo I went on a curtain hunt. I found the perfect curtains at Target! Wait, let me rephrase. I found the perfect curtain at Target. They only had one. I asked the guy working there if there were any more in the back or at another store. He scanned it, and proceeded to tell me it wasn't coming up on his scanner which meant it didn't actually exist in our current plane of consciousness at all. All while giving me the 'I hate you for making me work' look... jerk.

So I tried to put them out of my mind. I ended up back at Target again for a wedding present for a friend. I wandered through the window treatment section thinking wistfully of the panel that got away... when suddenly there was a herd stack of them! I snatched 2, cackled maniacally, and ran home to put them up:

ahh... much better! Sorry for the bad picture though.

ps - see what I meant below about the rain?