Heart of the Home - Part 2

Go With Your Gut

That is what this blog post really should be called but I started this whole "Part 1" thing so I'll keep it going till this room is parted out. You know the saying "you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince?" I think this applies to how many times we redid this cabinet and we ended up with the prince in the end but we could have had him in the beginning!

The next big thing we needed to tackle in the dining room was the built-in china cabinet. It was dark, stain and trim didn't match what we are slowly replacing throughout the house and the hardware was hideous. Please ignore my poor reflection selfie as I show you how bad this is. 

I struggled with what I wanted to do here. naturally I took to Photoshop and did some quick options I thought may work. My gut was telling me to do a mix of white gloss paint and dark stain but I wasn't sure. (See bottom row). The only thing I was certain on was the new hardware. We splurged big on these at Neu's Hardware. Seeing we only needed 3 small and 3 large pulls, we could stomach the cost but anyone doing an entire kitchen in these must be, as NeNe Leakes says, "I'm very rich."

 

My gut said do it but my heart was thinking I was just going with that because that is always the combo I like. Many things in the house were already wood and white. So second guessing myself, I scrapped all this and thought maybe an overall color was best? And then do I maybe put fabric in back to add interest and brightness in back? Meanwhile, the demo began on the cabinet to see if we could sand down the doors. 

After sanding down the doors we realized the grain of the wood was really deep and we couldn't get them to smooth out and not knowing if I would be painting them or staining them, we needed a flat surface to work with. So we had the (air quotes) "brilliant" idea to add a wood veneer to the fronts.

Once the veneers were finished I started looking at colors and fabrics.

I settled on a grayish blue paint and a geometric wood grain printed fabric designed by a local artist I found at a buy local craft fair. I sanded and painted the frame of the built in first and then stained the upper cabinet shelves and inside upper cabinet walls the new stain color and then contact papered the lower shelves with a dark woodgrain paper. This all went easy. A little too easy.

Next up with determining where the hardware would go and drill all those holes so I could sand down the drawers and doors before I painted them. Cue the painters tape. I knew I didn't want the handles at the end of the cabinet door like the previous ones were. These were too hefty for that plus I wanted these to feel as if they were original to the period and I have seen some credenzas with centered handles. In the middle of the door felt right but I wasn't sure if I wanted the handles dead-center or up higher so I had to map it out. Dead-center it was. Originally, silly us, we measures the holes of the hardware and marked them all centered with each surface. After drilling the holes we did a test fit and because these handles flare out, they cast a deep shadow. This shadow gave the illusion like they were sitting too low on the cabinet face even though they were centered perfectly. Ugh! So we filled the holes and redrilled before I painted. 

Ok, with that out of the way, now for the rest to be painted. First drawer done. Looked great! So great that I don't even think it was dry yet before I tested it in the cabinet and attached the pull.

The paint dried a little rough so I lightly sanded it and did one more coat and was going to let that dry overnight while I started the others. The next day I found the veneer was bubbled and rippled and awful. What I learned from this is that veneer is an art and a skill and my husband and I aren't meant for it.

After this failed attempt, the original wood wasn't really usable anymore. We decided to try MDF. We see it used on home shows all the time, sure, why not right? We have learned that MDF is an art and a skill and my husband and I aren't meant for it. The exposed edges can't be painted directly so I didn't do that and when in the cabinet they looked horrible. So bad I don't think I even took pictures of that. We weren't about to veneer the edges to paint them so we trashed those. Note to self: Buy stock in Lowe's. 

Meanwhile, some time passed. We were both frustrated with it. Maybe this was all a good thing because the more I looked at it the more I went back to my original thought of dark stain and gloss white. But I was concerned it may look too chess board black and white. Then it hit me. What if the inside was the dark stain, the trim was also the dark stain but the doors were more the Brazilian Walnut to match the floors.

So that is what I did. We bought pieces of poplar wood and my husband cut all new faces. We also decided to move up the hardware a bit more in the process too.

Last thing left to do was to decorate it. This probably took as long as it took to redo the cabinet. I have a lot of vintage pieces I collect. I have loads of Candlewick glassware, a lot of cake stands, a bunch of Cathrineholm enamelware, some Russel Wright pottery and some other misc things and not everything could make the cut. I didn't want it cluttered up so only my favs made the trip to the glass door uppers and the rest I either stored down below with platters and everyday things or I parted with them. 

And there she is.

The Heart of the Home - Part 1

They say the heart of the home is the kitchen and maybe one day that will be true for us once we renovate it and open it up a bit more but our dining room is more the heart of the home because it is literally in the center of our house. You see it from pretty much anywhere you stand. It's a big open space, big enough for a down-the-road purchase of a much larger table that can comfortably seat 8+. We had a nice canvas to work with when we moved in. There is a long wall from the foyer that runs the length of the dining room that was covered in very old yellowed peeling grasscloth wallpaper, built in china cabinet that needed some love, french doors that lead you to the family room addition and the potential for an awesome chandelier.

Let There Be Light

We removed the wallpaper a couple years ago when we added in our staircase and hardwood floors but we left that a primed wall up until this point not sure exactly what we'd do there. We have that figured out now but that will be for another blog post. We decided to tackle the lighting and the china cabinet first. The pervious owner had a basic apartment-grade flush mount glass and brass fixture that wasn't cutting it. We weren't sure why this was what they picked for a dining room light at the time but after doing some measuring of the room, it all became clear. The room is a weird space. I mean its a big rectangle but the space isn't centered to anything. The french doors don't line up to the wall parallel to it from across the room. The hallway opening doesn't line up to the start of the kitchen... so basically there was no where to center a fixture above a table. This created a couple challenges for me. I had to find a fixture that fit the feel of our house, looked good from all rooms but also didn't hang too low that it would obstruct the view from a room or at the table itself, and a light that looked somewhat centered in the space even when it wouldn't be.

I wanted something unique and not the typical go-to fixtures everyone seems to get... sputnik, the saucer... Nothing wrong with that just it's expected. I spent years looking and changing my mind constantly, I'd mock up a fixture and realize it was huge or I'd fall in love with ones that just were too expensive like the Bocci spheres - die!

It wasn't until I was on a forum page for MCM fans that someone posted a picture of their dining room and a fixture her husband made. I had seen some similar on etsy but for whatever reason this one spoke to me. They are custom made brass fixtures and you can pick the rod height, the globes and my hubby really wanted Edison bulbs so that was an option too. Done, ordered. There were some hiccups along the way with scratches on the smoked glass globes we first picked and we ended up reordering with clear glass which now I like better and before we installed it I started to question if I picked the right one since it is such a focal point of the house but I like it a lot.

Mockup fails and successes 

       When I thought we could pull off the Modo Chandelier. Even the smallest one is huge - #fail

Once I decided on the fixture... The trusty painters tape makes another appearance. Had to figure out what rod length to get and the wingspan of the overall light itself.

With special guests, the colorful bendy straws.

We cleared out the room, measured where the new box needed to be placed up in the attic and had our electrician wire it all up. Cats were put in the family room during the chaos and were acting like they were being tortured in a room they spend all their time in anyways just now with the doors closed. Room with huge sunny windows, water bowls and food at your finger, eh, pawtips... you poor things! :)

All the Small Things

I call these projects small because in the grand scheme of things, they are. However, these projects still took elbow grease and moola to get accomplished. 

The Door: Lite it up

We installed a custom door a few years ago and I had always wanted a door with multiple window lites and reeded glass. But for whatever reason this company could only do plain old boring glass. At the time we agreed to that, agreed to have my reeded glass dreams shattered, because their pricing blew every other company we got quoted out of the water and I figured I could come up with a privacy solution eventually.

Well, we probably had zero-privacy boring clear glass for a year or so before I was able to do anything about it. I spent a long time on the hunt for a window film that had the reeded look. Every site I found I ordered samples and each one was a disappointment. Some looked kinda cool but either looked too frosted, didn't stay on, or gave very little privacy. I realized that unless we paid to have new custom lites put in (which was not an option purely for how long it took us to stain and paint this fricken door), I had to come up with a plan B. Thankfully one of the companies I had found that had a subpar reeded glass film had many other options of other designs and textures. I came across one called rainfall. It had the vertical veining I liked about reeded but gave way more privacy, was a self-stick vs a cling and everytime I look through it I have flashbacks of Joey on Friends sitting by what we think is a window during a storm but when the camera zooms out he is just sitting near a water feature between glass while "All by Myself" plays out the scene. Classic Joey. 

The Blinds: I was blinded by the blinds

We didn't buy this house because of the previous owner's impeccable taste in vertical blinds. But I can see where some people may have thought that because they were everywhere in this house. Everywhere. The worst part was that most of our windows, much like other MCM homes, are huge. Huge. So after getting some quotes on custom window treatments and also hearing that our windows are so large that most window treatment options aren't even an option for us, I was starting to see why the past owner went the vertical route. Well they needed to go, all of them, regardless of cost. Well, kind of regardless of cost. Our family room has three massive windows and we knew eventually we'd remodel that room (fingers crossed soon!) and get new windows so there I just bought panels from IKEA and sewed them together and hemmed them to the floor and called it a day. But the Living room I needed something more long-term and timeless. 

Hunter Douglas makes this silhouette shades that are like a fabric blind and they are gorge, https://www.hunterdouglas.com/sheers/silhoutte

but they are pricy, thankfully there is a similar shade that is about half the cost but half the cost is still not cheap!

So that is what we went with because we did the front bedrooms in the same shade and I kinda like having the same window treatments in the front of the house visually. We did a taupe color in the bedrooms but we did bright white in the living room. During the day the light filters in and the room is bright but no one can see directly in unless they get really close and when the blinds are closed at night you also can't see in either even with all the lights on. I just love them.

When we took down the vertical blinds to prep for the install of the new blinds I decided I should probably sand and stain the window molding to match the new darker stain throughout the house. Sigh.

Stairwell Art: It's higher up than you think

Before we installed the open stairwell to the basement, I had some metal C.Jere-esque sea urchin wall art on the wall that now has my painting on it in the dining area. I wanted them to go on the wall directly above the new stairs. Seemed easy enough. We even bought one of those ladders where the sides can be at different heights for uneven surfaces. Perfect. 

I knew it wouldn't be that easy so I wanted to do all the prep work to make it go as smoothly as possible and to convince my hubby to help me. :) First I went to Photoshop with a picture of the stairwell and all the sea urchins to scale and I started to make different patterns on the wall with them. I am glad I did this because my husband may have killed me or killed himself dangling himself over the railing and on the ladder hanging these things if I didn't have a good idea of how it should look.

Once I figured out the shape I wanted them to form, we projected my design onto the wall. That didn't work out so great because we couldn't get it lined up well enough with all the walls due to the screen distortion but it gave a rough starting point. From there my husband bravely leaned over the half wall and marked where each one went and was able to hang some of them from above but the rest were done on the ladder below. 

Once they were all up, I would have loved to have tightened the space between some of them to be closer to what I mocked up on screen but when the light shines down on them, they give off a really cool shadow effect that does help fill a lot of the open space. I have grown to love how it looks now. 

Blogging is hard

Blogging is hard

Yikes, so I haven't blogged anything in, well, 2 years... almost to the day! Thank God I don't blog for a living or I surely would have been fired by now. I have been really busy, mainly working on home projects that I should be posting but just never have time to post them because I am working on projects. The circle of life.

If you are new to my blog, HI! and Please check out the archive to see what has been going on at our old 55'er. 

If you are one of my followers, I am dusting off the site with lots to post so hopefully I will get back to documenting them in a more timely manor. 

So here goes...

If he builds it, she will knickknack

This may need a drum roll...

ditditditditditditdit

rat-tat-tat

ting!

That was my drum roll.

The bookcase is FINISHED!

You have no idea how long I have wanted to say this. Well, maybe you do. I first posted about this in March, the old bookcase was demolished on New Year’s Eve… errrr day. I don’t remember, maybe too much champagne but it was then that the dinky original built-in bookcase came down and yes folks, it is now the end of August and literally it just got finished and frantically decorated today.

When we first moved into this house, the bookcase annoyed me. It just never looked tall enough next to the floor-to-ceiling fireplace. It had over a foot of plaster above it and a couple inches of plaster on each side and it just bugged me. I envisioned a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that butted up to the fireplace to the left and went to the edge of the wall on the right.

It took me awhile to come up with a design of shelving that worked with a lot of our knickknacks and books. I first designed the options on the computer and then took to my handy-dandy painters tape to make it to scale in the space... more than once. 

Weather delays not being able to work on this in the garage and having an uneven ceiling made this project go on way too long but now its done!!

I have been hemming and hawing about what to do about the 3 little stone shelf mantels that jet out of the fireplace. The MCM purist in me says to keep them but the interior decorator in me kinda hates them. They are impossible to decorate without looking cluttered and being next to a bookcase that already has a lot going on, well, I feel like my initial idea to chisel them off (rat-tat-tat) and building an A-symetrical wood mantel that starts at the left edge of the fireplace opening and beomes one of the bookshelves is back on the table. My huband will love reading this, I am sure. Get out the tools.

Right now I have some candleholders up there and its ok, I can live with it for right now but I can picture a cool piece of art up there on one lovely long wood mantel. 

Anyways, I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, finished bookcase… yes. So now my fun part, the decorating!

This weekend I pulled out everything from a back room that hadn't seen the light of day for more than a year and a half when we packed everything up to start the renovations. I had forgotten what I had!

It wasn't easy but I think I came up with a curation I can live with. 

Around the corner of the bookcase is a 4ft wall that used to have some art and a wine cabinet but when we remodeled and added the staircase a few feet from this wall, it was awkward to have furniture there so I had the grand idea to just have a large painting there eventually and I had the even better idea to paint it myself. It is so hard to paint something for yourself when you have a specific place you need it to fill. 

That canvas stayed blank for a few months. I couldn’t commit to what I wanted to do. But then 2 weeks ago I replenished my paint supplies and last weekend I was determined to get ‘er done. Normally I would be down in my studio painting but due to the size and not having a clue what I was going to come up with, I decided to paint on site so I could keep walking to other parts of the house and stare at it from all angles... obsess... paint over it... obsess some more... oh and I got to use my entire dining room table as paint-central so that made it overly convenient to mix up tons of different shades. 

and here is the final piece, 3ftx5ft

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A Square to Spare?

I'm not talking toilet paper, I'm talking carpet squares. 

But let me dial it back. 

When we bought the house, it had wall-to-wall awful tan brown carpet that had seen better days. We tore it out and replaced it with strand bamboo wood flooring. 

Obviously when you rip out carpet to replace it with pricy hardwood flooring, the only logical thing to do is to then go out and spend a ton of money on area rugs to cover the new expensive flooring, right? Right. I won't bore you with photos of all the area rugs we bought, I will save that for when rooms are in the finishing stages of decorating but what I will share with you is a tale of my hallway runner. 

Our hallway is over 20ft long. I was limited with what I could do and I didn't want to spend a fortune. I have always loved flor carpet tiles, so much so that we have used carpet tiles in our past house and I have pushed the magic of flor on to my friends to buy for their homes. I have a best friend that might have an addiction. (Ya, I called you out.) 

Anyways, I was secretly thrilled I finally had a spot to use flor tiles in this house. I didn't want to stick to just one pattern, one color or one texture so I went to their site and just started picking everything I liked to play with. They have a program online that you can create your own patterns but the anal designer in me, I had to do it my way and my way was to take screen captures of every square I liked and I placed them all in Indesign and started making patterns… and patterns… and patterns… aaaaannnd patterns. During all this excitement we purchased a shag area rug for the dining room so that helped me narrow down my colors and patterns. Trust me, I was all over the place before that!

Here is where I landed. I split the grid so I could use whole,

half and 1/4 strips of carpet tiles. 

Once I decided that was it, I ordered all my tiles, including extras as

replacements for the future due to stain or wear.

The shipment arrived in 3 not so light, almost pizza box like boxes.

My cat needed to inspect them.

Best part is, if I get bored… I can always switch out a color! I just ordered more to do a smaller matching runner for the foyer. Stay tuned!

Comparing Chartreuses to Oranges

We didn't like our front door. 

The previous owner had a fiberglass and faux stained glass door and I am sure to some people it is a prefectly fine door and I am sure some people will hate the door we replaced it with but for us we wanted to put back a door that was probably on this mid-century house when it was first built... Or we’d like to think it was the type of door that was on this house when it was built. 

All I can say is thank God I am a graphic designer with access to design software or making decisions like say, a front door style and color, would be impossible. 

The one thing I did like about the old door was the light it brought into the house so I definately didn’t want to replace the door with less natural light. 

We went to numberous door companies and did a lot of searching online and we found a local company that could customize a solid wood door for us and it wasn’t very expensive either. Custom is a dangerous word for me because I have a lot of ideas in this noggin of mine and custom has no limits!

I was able to pick the size of window lites I wanted, how many I wanted, where they sat on the door. Pretty sweet. We decided to go with 5 rectangular window lites lined up on the hinge side of the door and a brushed nickle modern mortise handle set with a lever interior handle. We also ordered a new brushed nickel handle for the storm door. That old brass handle has seen better days!

Installation Day

The door company came to install the door. I’m glad they did because just watching them work and lift and cut and shim... it was exhausting!

We had them install the door unfinished because we didn’t know at the time what color we wanted to paint it. All I knew was I wanted the inside to be stained like our new woodwork. 

Cue Photoshop

Me and my trusty paint chips were at it again but this time it was quicker to narrow down the colors. I decided it was either going to be Chartreuse or it was going to be Orange. I wanted a door that would POP! I thought for sure it would be orange... the house seems to work well with it but we plan to clad the front stone planter in wood so after I added that into photoshop too, I don’t know, the green was really working for me. So Chartreuse it was! And honestly, if we start to not like it later, I can always paint over it. <devilish grin>

Oh My Back!

So we didn’t think this through lol. To paint and stain the door, the door needng to come down and put in the garage and old door back on til we were done. This new solid wood door is heav-E!

I almost died! My thighs had huge bruises from where I had to rest the door for a second on them. The worst part is that we have to do it all over again when we rehang it!

So we brought it into the garage and put it on horses. I taped the window lites and I taped the edges where it will be stained so no paint bleeds through. We coated it first with primer and then the green paint which in the light of the garage was looking very yellow and I was getting very nervous. Don't tell my husband that.

After a couple coats of paint and ample drying time we flipped it over and I taped that side up the same way and then conditioned the wood to take the stain more evenly and my husband stained it. Even though we used a conditioner, some spots still weren’t taking so it took many coats of stain but now it looks great. 

My husband removed the old door trim and replaced it with new squared edge poplar to match the rest of the new woodwork in the reno of the living room and now the last thing left to do is to apply privacy film. The one drawback to this door company was that the window lites come premade in just plan old glass. We were hoping for a reeded glass but figured I could just find a film version. Ok, I have scoured the globe looking for reeded glass film that looks like the real thing and it just doesn’t exist. But I did find a company online that sells stick-on crystal clear films and I settled on one that has a rain on a window-esque effect. Its kind of reeded so it will do. Now once it gets warmer outside I can actually apply them to the windows without the adhesive failing in the cold. 

During this project we also replaced the ugly nautical themed outdoor sconces that were by the front door and garage door with these brushed nickle rectangular puppies. I originally wanted either the metal hour glass shaped lights or the modern cylinders but when I saw these lit up in the store... I knew these were the ones. There is always the back of the house for other fun lighting ;)