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 ;)

Let's take this party upstairs, shall we?

Things are progressing a bit slower in my studio/office in the basement so I don't have anything new and exciting to share there tonight, so let's take this party back upstairs where some projects are either now finished or underway.

The Living Room: 

For those new to this blog, you'll want to scroll back all the way to 2012 when I posted a lot of before pictures, but this room is totally different from where it started. The biggest thing being that we added the open staircase to the basement, the unique dividing 1/2 and 3/4 walls, can lighting and the hardwood floors. On to the smaller projects in that room…

Now that I was starting to decorate this room, I felt like everything with very muted in color or neutral and that wasn't my intention at all. A lot of the art going in this room is going to be bold and colorful so I needed to do something dramatic in here to help play off that.

I decided to paint an accent wall. I knew I didn't have it in me to do anything like I did in the basement. I was thinking just a single color. Something I could paint in an afternoon people!

Went to the paint store and probably picked about 25 different colors, ranging from a metallic gold all the way to a midnight blue. I didn't know what I want to do.

I narrowed it down to a pale metallic bronze, 2 shades of a dark teal, a navy/dark gray color and charcoal. I taped them up and looked at them at all times of day.

I was leaning more charcoal but my husband really liked the navy gray color so I went with that. 

See, I can compromise!

So I prepped to paint. I taped off the wall and painted a random something on the wall as I usually do and paint over it quickly after. Couldn't help myself this time.

I used the same painting tip I gave you earlier to get a crisp line. After I taped, I used ceiling paint and painted over the tape and since my baseboards are also white, I painted there too so then no colored paint we will bleed through. 

This painting project took place right before Thanksgiving… I know, took forever to post this!

So here is the room dolled up for the holidays!

Right after I took these picture, I looked down my stairs at the wall directly under my newly painted wall upstairs and it looked so blah white so I painted that too! Impromptu painting.

Do the Hokey Pokey

Now that we are done looking at that side of the room, let's turn around and address the other side… But ignore the ugly vertical blinds as you turn, ok?

We have this great stacked stone fireplace and adjacent, a not so great built-in bookcase that just seemed so tiny in the space and since the day we bought this house I have envisioned this bookcase going floor-to-ceiling and potentially chiseling off the 3 small stone shelves. (I know, some people that are as hardcore into mid-century design as I am may gasp at this… and is partly why I haven't bitten the bullet yet and removed these iconic shelves. I am torn between staying authentic and wanting a practical mantel!) If we remove the shelves, the would mantel run asymmetrically on the fireplace and becoming one of the bookshelves (can you picture it? no, don't worry,its illustrated below!)

So on New Years Eve or Day, can't recall, my husband decided to take a sledge hammer to the bookcase and started to demo right then and there. Wow did that become one big dusty mess. I think I am still swiffering spots where the dust traveled!

So like I said, this all took place around New Years and now its April and you're probably thinking that you'll see some finished pictures next, right? Wrong. 

When we had the flooring installed, I noticed a scratch on one of the boards and asked for it to be fixed.  It was "fixed" by just putting a dark wood filler over it and buffed it out. Well, that may work for regular flooring but ours is strand bamboo with a different kind of dull finish so applying something like that to this floor leaves, well, look below and of course it is directly under the can light like its out there for show. My eye went directly to it everyday and it made me so sad.

The flooring installer said the only other thing they could do would be to try to cut the board out but since most of the boards were under the bookcase, it would be very hard to remove without damaging other boards… if only the bookcase wasn't there… if only the bookca… ding ding ding!

So, I immediately called the flooring guy once the dust settled from the sledge hammering and asked if he could fix the board now. :D 

He said, "sure."

 I said,  "great, when?"

He said, "End of March, its my first opening." 

Peter Gabriel record screeches… March! That was 3 months away. :( 

Yay! Its the end of March and its all fix!

Now the plywood shell is up that we can build the actual bookcase into. I hope that happens soon!

A tale of 2 walls

Now that the basement is well under way, we decided to start paying some attention to my soon-to-be home office/art studio. The biggest decision on my plate was what color to paint it, rrrrrrrr, what col-ors to paint it. I can't have a studio where I need to be creative, painted in just one color... oh no! I needed a game plan.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Not much to look at now but what these walls didn't know was that I had big plans for them.

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Anyone that knows me knows that I like a nice Chevron. A zig zag, a herringbone, a squiggly-do. So I decided I'd do just that. The idea was born and I was going to paint a chevron pattern up wall B. Not just any chevron but a multicolored, multi zagging chevron.

I checked the local big box stores and paint stores for different thicknesses of painters tape. I might be crazy to try to do this wall but I wasn't crazy enough to try to paint straight lines by hand! Well no one seemed to have what I wanted so crazy me I started to research online and found a "tape candy store" and ordered pretty much every thickness from an 1/8" to 3/4" in varying tackinesses, tackinesses? Ok, its a word...

Now I have the tape so now what? I did what I always do, I mocked up an idea on my Mac. 

I came up with the design and started playing with the colors. Once I figured that out, then it was time to actually find the paint colors. 

In between all this chevron planning I decided to paint other walls of my office a soft pale teal aqua color and from there I decided wall A would be a glossy chocolate brown (we'll get back to that wall in a second) so I figured I would start the base of wall B also in the chocolate brown and then just pick colors I liked individually. These were the winners.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You have painted in the past and no matter what you do your paint always bleeds off and goes underneath the painters tape. Well I have a tip for you that may blow your mind and you will never have bleed-thru again!

Ok, after that coat dries, now its time for the fun part... Painting in the lines.

Then I took left over dark teal and painted the angled wall next to the Chevron. This wall will be part of a bigger project down the road. 

Tada! Done with wall B. Now back to wall A!

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Ok, wall A, remember how I told you above I painted it a glossy dark brown? It was all because I found a 1960's electric wall-mounted fireplace at a resale shop and it was a bronzy brown color and I wanted it to kind of blend into the wall. I painted the wall and hung it up but it was missing something and I needed an excuse to use more of my painters tape.

I decided it might be cool to do a retro brick pattern on the wall in the same brown paint only in a matte finish so when the light hits the wall, you can see the contrast. 

Using 1/2" tape this time I started to make 4x9 vertical bricks on the wall.

tada! Wall A is done too!

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Then I painted the ceiling white leaving the beams exposed to add more height to the studio and then my husband and I sanded and painted the rusty I-Beam and pole a clean crisp white.

Next up was the 2ft span of wall behind my office door. It was wasted space until I came across a unique and inexpensive bookcase online that fit right in. From there we mounted some additional floating shelves and I added some retro looking cork board squares. Still need to add some trim and fix the baseboards but then this side will be ready to decorate!

Now back to wall A

Time flies when you aren't blogging

Has it really almost been a year since I last updated this thing?! Yikes! 

I owe you all an apology and about a million reno updates! 

So, without further adieu... here we go!