Bloggy

I thought I was done with interior design for a while. I like how everything looks and feels in the house. Eclectic, collected, sentimental, and MINE. But, recently two people poo-pooed my lion wall. This makes me think they don't know a thing. Or, is my lion wall not as great as I think? The wall in question. This wall is in the living room; a tiny, open, 15x20 room squished next to the kitchen that functions as family room, den, living room, and office. The left (in photo) side is flanked by the bar, with two stools. It has the world's frumpiest couch (but very, very comfy), and two chairs. On the right is a picture window. The couch faces the TV. I have struggled with this wall several times. Should it be an accent wall? House a large piece of art? If so, what? I've tried to make several montages of family photos, found things, and it always comes out mish-mashed. Until I found the lion. She came from an antique store in Reno, and was living on the tallest part of

I realized that I have had a Bloggy Renaissance lately, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I miss writing. Maybe I have stuff to write about these days with this house, rather than just bitching about the daily grind. I like to have a place to put all my pictures and stories too, like a proud mama. Maybe it's because the "transition" is finally coming to a close, and I have a real life back after traveling, living in four different states, school, marriage, house, career, etc. This morning before it warmed up enough to paint, I spent a couple hours going back to 2006 and reading my bloggy. Woah. This blog was very different then, and I kind of liked it. In '06, I was struggling, and searching for something. Mostly money. I did a lot of philosophizing, and ranting. Man, those next couple years were stressful. It's funny though... all the things I wished for have come true, and I have emerged a different person. My blog has changed too. I think is has become kind o

When we first moved into this house, it was unbelievable the amount of shit that came out of nowhere; donated from friends, parents, family members etc. Somehow everyone thinks that new homeowners are in dire need of their old crap. At first I was welcoming of this stuff, our house was pretty empty. But after a year-and-a-half, most of these "donations" are on their way out. However, once in a while I come upon a use for something. Like these dry-rotted 20-year old redwood deck boards from my parents' house in California. Dad loaded up his car one day and dragged a couple dozen of these beauties almost 200 miles. They have been sleeping under the deck, until now.  Gratuitous Dewalt sander placement...so pretty. They actually came in pretty handy, and with my newly found chop-sawing talents, these benches were put together in under an hour! Sure, there are spots in the seat that can be poked through with a finger, but hey-- they're rustic. The spiders have been sw

Man, I LOVE having 4 days off every week. It may just be the best schedule on earth. Sure, some sort of rich or famous person who gets every day off may think they have it better, but honestly, I get bored out of my mind after a few days and need to get back to work. Then, sure enough, the long weekend rolls around and I feel like I deserve it, every time. I am so lucky! This month I am trying to save money to pay down credit cards with Burning Man stuff still on it, and ski season, etc. So, instead of going shopping on my long days off alone, I decided to stick around the house and make stuff. We have been needing a firewood rack for out front. Last year we just stacked firewood in front of the house, but I learned that that can introduce termites. Also, the front (and just the front) has a new paint job, so logs can't go near it! Wheelbarrow firewood rack, with Mo the neighbor dog. We need some wood to be dry, so under the patio roof thing in the front of the house is the

Last week a raging wind storm ripped through town, starting a huge blaze that destroyed 20+ homes. The coolest thing that came from that storm was this photo, with the downtown casino lights. I would love to buy this photo, or print it out and blow it up--it's a once in a lifetime shot!! Amazing! But it's so puny...I think it was originally nabbed from Facebook. Oh well, now I can enjoy it here.

Since the painting project has come to a halt thanks to snow, I'm posting about something else today! Meanwhile our house is literally half old paint, half new paint, and I don't really care. Actually, I am happier about it looking this way than I was before we tore into the project. So what if it stays this way until June. We dragged this bed across the country with us from Louisville. It's a pretty basic queen, just standing in until we get an awesome king. I always kind of wanted a headboard so the pillows wouldn't get sucked off the head of the bed down to the dusty abyss. But, headboards are a stupid thing to spend money on, I decided, and it would be easy enough to make my own! I tried several methods. One was making a large wooden frame and screwing it on to the metal bed. That worked for about a night. Then I found some old shutters under the deck, cleaned them up and painted them green (sorry, no photo) and attached them to the wall. Very cottag-ey. For my l

I have to say, living in the country has its benefits. Over the last month while I was out scraping paint off the house, two different neighbors stopped by to offer their paint sprayers and tools, and another offered a paint sprayer when he saw Brandon at 7-11. That's 3 paint sprayers. How awesome is that? We borrowed one this weekend, and exactly half the house done as of tonight. Tomorrow we'll get out there early and bust ass, and hopefully get most of it done before the next storm rolls in. It's such hard work, but such a great payoff! Our super sweet fort is totally coming along!

A project we've been dreading since we moved in is now underway... painting! The south wall of the house was peeling so bad we were afraid it wouldn't make it another winter without dry rotting all the way through. So at the beginning of October we started scraping. And it's November now, and we're still scraping in between snow storms! But, I have most of the front of the house painted, first coat anyway. See all the area on that wall that is white? That was all bare wood, scraped off by me, the hubby and my parents! It will eventually be red again. The trim is all going to be brown instead of white... I love it! We really thought hard about changing the color. The red was ok, but was very barn-y, and since the former owner showed up a couple times, I've been all about changing the look of it as a reminder that this is MY house! Not yours! But after a few walks and drives around the neighborhood, we realized that 95% of the homes are some sort of brown, grey, beig

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

We picked up this Coachmen beauty from Craigslist in June for $850. Straight outta 1973, that 70's smell included. Had it rehabbed just in time for Burning Man. It was quite a project, but a fun one. I felt much more creative with the trailer than I could with the house; you can't just fix a hole in your bedroom with staples and duct tape, but it works magic in a trailer! It went from a dank, wood-paneled dirt-covered fiasco to a light, tranquil, fresh-smelling oasis! I started with new upholstery-- which could have been cheap. I found some awesome retro fabric from Home Fabric and Upholstery for $5/yard, but busted my sewing machine in the process. So, $200 later, got a used commercial strength Kenmore beauty to finish the job nicely. I learned how to make box cushions which will come in handy later. They are pretty simple, but some are really really odd-looking. Good thing this is "just" the B-Man trailer, and good experience for the sofa I hope to do in the next mo

This was the 4th Burning Man for me, and I have to say it made the top three! Something about how it all came together this year made every moment fly by and made me wish I was back out there again the very next week. We went with new people, were in charge of staking out a camp, and we came prepared with a trailer; I washed my hands for the first time at Burning Man this year!! I was warned that as you attend more and more B-man's, the sparkle kind of wears away and it becomes something different each time. The first couple times you are SO overwhelmed by the art, the people and the things to do that your head just spins for the entire year after, and your memory is shinier than the actual event. I'm kind of glad I'm over that phase... my mind has been blown, I've picked up the pieces, and can enjoy it for what it is. This year I camped with virgins-- and was somehow the expert on all things Burning Man! We made time to explore things during the day and through the ni

I got married to my hunney! Stopped blogging for a couple years it seems... missed some important details. Brandon ended up coming with me to Kentucky for nursing school. Of course he waited until the last possible minute to decide, but he came! He asked me to marry him during the second semester, right before the second huge Med/Surg test. I was a little distracted, and only got a B. When we got to Nevada, we got hitched at the Justice of the Peace with both sets of parents there by our sides. We'd imagined eloping, but the parents wouldn't have it and drove in from out of state! Looking back I am so glad they did. If the situation were a little different, I'd have loved to throw a big party. But times were tough then. We were so broke, and lived in this ucky little apartment. We just wanted to be hitched, none of the fluffy stuff mattered. We had a cake from Trader Joes and BBQed burgers on a grill outside the apartment after the wedding. I had (stupidly) worked the night

I like brown! Hmm. Too basic?

This is another recent project. The house came with 2 bedrooms... used to be 3, but the dining room was obviously once a bedroom. When we moved in, there was a closet in the dining room, with the same ugly doors as in the guest bedroom. I took those out day 1, and started imagining what I wanted in its spot. We decided on an office/bookcase, since maybe one day the guest room would house a kidlet...? The challenge was designing a space around the heating vent that went through the back left corner of the closet, and also doing it for next to nothing since I'm cheap. So, I learned how to use the circular saw and got some pine boards and just started in. The final color of the room (it's 4th color in under a year) is called Butter Rum, and it's perfect-- not too dark, not too bright. The shelves match our accent wall which is brown. I think there are 4 different shades of brown on my walls throughout the house. Love it. The bookcase is a success, and I owe it all to fancy tr

One of my favorite recent projects is the resurrection of this Lane Cedar Chest from the 1940s. The chest was found in grandma's house when she moved out after grandpa died. It had been living in an upstairs closet for who knows how long. There were glue spots on the veneer, the polyurethane was wrinkled and spotted like an alligator... it was gross. I had it hiding at my house for months, and one day I decided to just dig in and fix it! Dirty, lumpy, cedar chest. I bought a sander finally after hand sanding for hours to the demise of my fingerprints, and sanded the whole thing down. I was so lucky that the veneer was thick enough that I only sanded through in a few parts. Man I was lucky!! Lesson learned, don't sand veneer with power tools!! finished! Looking back I probably should have stripped it first to see where that got me. Then I stained it with natural stain from Minwax, then used polyurethane over the top, several coats. I wasn't sure if that was the th

Look! It's 2011. I haven't blogged in a while, was busy, felt like I didn't have anything going on or something. BUT--I guess stuff was going on. Now, I am older, more mature, have a career, a husband, a house, a dog, and new hobbies to blog about!! I am addicted to decorating and furnishing my house. It's a great house, lemme post some pics. We bought it with the idea that we're staying here forever. It's not a starter home. It's in the mountains of Nevada, elevation about 5000 ft. It snowed New Year's Eve, and we woke up to a beautiful 3-4" of fresh snow and blue skies. Instead of wanting to go snowboarding, however, all I wanted to do was finish the dining room! This is actually nothing like what it looks like now... it has been 3 colors since then and is full or furniture. I will post what it looks like eventually.