Bloggy

It all started after sitting in this dining room, at this hand-me-down table and wishing I could see out the window. The dining room, I think, was once a bedroom. The bookshelf unit behind used to be an ugly closet,  (more on that later!) and the previous owner took out the doors and made curved doorways. It looks awesome, but is a smallish, dark kind of room. After 3 paint colors, I am loving the pumpkin. But we never spend any time in there, since it's dark and uncomfortable. I toyed with the idea of putting in a bigger window. But we're not ready for that yet. I moved the furniture around and around, tried to make it a lounge/bar/library area...anything to get more use out of the room. Finally we decided that we'd buy a bigger table and more comfy chairs. After venturing out onto the shoppers abyss, we considered dropping $1,000 on a counter-height chair/table combo from a decent furniture store. Thing was, even at a grand the table top was cheapy-lo...

This was a bad idea... Bad idea....tea-dyed blanket White is not so good at my house. It doesn't stay clean for very long, and in the case of this nice white blanket, I'm just not into bleaching it weekly. So, since my debit card was recently hacked and I can't get to any money until my new card comes in the mail, I decided  to try this tea-dyed technique I read about on the internet. I started by brewing several pots of black tea I had leftover from a random trip to Chinatown in Chicago 3 years ago. I also poured some coffee grounds into the mix, some hot water, salt, and maybe some vinegar. I kept it in the "bath" overnight, and expected greatness when I pulled it out and hung it on the deck rail the next day. I thought it would be a lovely rust-batik, or something. Brandon saw it hanging there and laughed. He asked if I'd been drinking. I do remember having a couple glasses of wine before I started this project. Wine + home improv...

Chairs, like all furnishings, are freakin' expensive. I needed a smallish chair, and instead of paying $600 at RC Willey, I found this $60 one at a thrift shop in California. I don't really know why I like it, maybe because it's curvy and has a lot of real wood, which is hard to find in new furniture these days. The foam was in good shape, but the wood had this 1960s opaque-looking finish on it. The color was all wrong, and the fabric was hideous. Before, take II I sanded it down which was a huge pain in the butt. All those curves, surfaces. Argh, it took forever. I stained it a darker color, and used satin polyurethane for the finish. I think it updated it at least ten years. Ha. The first incarnation was recovered with what I thought would be a very worldly use of fabric-- a hot pink hammock I've been dragging around with me from Ecuador. It turned out that the fabric was just too thin, and you could see it puckering around the foam. I'm sure I could have ad...

This fabric started as homemade curtains in the living room, but they ended up being too busy for that small space. I reverted back to some basic curtains for that room, and cut this fabric up and turned them into roman shades. So simple! The bedroom was an issue-- it had these long curtains over the short windows and I never could get it looking right. I wanted nice, white cell blinds or roman shades, but a blinds.com quote was for over $250 for simple Roman shades for all 3 windows, and I didn't feel like spending that. So I made these from the old curtains--which were a good deal in the first place, like $6 a yard! I cut them to the window size with a little extra on each side, about 5 inches longer in length. Then I made five small folds and ironed them in-- big enough to place wooden dowels in the back of the shade so they won't sag. The folds were about 5/8". Once those were sewn in place, I sewed by hand these little plastic rings I found at Lowes ...

Welcome! Check out the entrance to our fabulous "new" abode! We lived in the house for nearly a year before attacking this project, even though the old door had cracks in the window, and a huge doggie door big enough for a man to crawl through. The reason we waited? Front doors are friggin' expensive! We finally got the motivation for this project  after the junkie/ former owner showed up at our doorstep, twice, and asked when we changed the locks. After parking in our driveway and trying to open the door, he informed me that he used to be able to pick the lock with his thumbnail. Old yucky door After that episode, we also got a dog. Anyway, I wanted a solid wood door--and they are not so budget friendly. I kept thinking I'd stumble upon a Craigslist beauty, but that just didn't happen. I decided against a steel door because it can dent, and a fiberglass one with a fancy glass insert just doesn't go with the rustic facade of the house. So I scou...