Blog – Page 10 – No. 29 Design

Post summer clean up…

In honor of my oldest two starting school today I’ll be sharing some pictures of the current state of my house. You know, the ones showing you what three kids can do to a house in over two months. We do pick up, we do try to keep things neat, but then life hits. During the summer the flip flops pile up, and so do the Lego’s. Today is my day to get some of that under control, or at least begin to. The sand will be gone, the flip flops will be tamed and random excruciatingly painful pieces of Lego’s will put in their bins. The garage, or bicycle parking lot, I will save for another day, or weekend!

if I owned a store it would look like this…

I discovered my new favorite shop, Scout while staying on Cape Cod last week. If I ever owned a store this is what it would look like. It is a beautiful collection of vintage items and accessories. Lots of wood, whites, paper and metals, my favorite combination. Not to mention all the striped bags that I had a hard time walking away from. The basic feel is very “beach meets France” seamlessly put together. Come inside… All of this was shot with my iPhone so I apologize. I happily walked away with some small items which I’ll share once I put them in their new homes. If you are ever in the area it is definitely worth a stop!

a really old house…

We took our last break of the summer last week and stayed with extended family at a home on Cape Cod. Seventeen people, nine of those people being children. We found a house that could fit all of us. It was a big space with a lot of history, built in 1766 for Rev. Nathan Stone and his family. It was a fun house to explore with lots of doors and nook and crannies! The favorite for the kids was definitely the hidden door in the entryway… which led to a storage space and then on to the dining room. Please excuse the random balloon on the floor. We had a birthday… The house had two kitchens, one being the breakfast kitchen and the other the main kitchen. Besides the dining room, two front rooms and three bedrooms downstairs there were five bedrooms upstairs. Most of the rooms led right…

eye candy {fabric wrapped furniture}

My latest design crush is fabric wrapped furniture. My favorites are the ones wrapped in linen or burlap and finished off with nailhead trim. The texture of the fabric can fit in with any room no matter what furniture you already have there. There are plenty of high end versions to look at. There are also countless DIY versions that I might have to try out myself. Here are some of my favorites… via Ballard Designs via Studio A via Bernhardt Furniture via Bernhardt Furniture via Bliss at Home via Drexel Heritage via Drexel Heritage via decor pad via driven by decor via jamie herzlinger This look might be coming to a living room near you one day. And by that I mean my own. Good winter project I say.

drying out a flooded basement

I’ve done many before and after images on my blog. Never before have I showed one where the after looks worse than the before. Until today. Here are some before shots of my basement before the valve leak… and here it is now, mold and all… We hired ServPro to come in and clean up the water and mold. They were at our home the next morning getting rid of the water and ripping up our vinyl plank flooring. Since it was a floating floor the water was underneath it causing our tiles to pop up. The tiles are being tested to see if they are asbestos before any removal can begin. Mold needs water to grow so drying up the space was the top priority. Once the standing water was removed the drying began. Drying equipment was used to prevent any further damage. It was pretty bad already since…

my office storage solution…

While work begins on the flooded basement life goes on upstairs. Since I removed a kitchen cabinet or two you might be wondering where everything that was stored there finally went. In my dining room is a large buffet with storage on top as well as below. I was in a purging mood a while back and cleaned and organized the entire thing. I was left with two empty shelves on the lower right side of the buffet. They now house cookbooks, workbooks, paper and three magazine boxes which I use for my childrens’ incoming schoolwork during the year. The drawers were organized a bit as well and what was there was consolidated into three drawers instead of five. One contains all our chargers, battery chargers, usb cords, etc. The other one contains the junk drawer items. Everything from my hammer and measuring tape to paperclips. All that is now left from the kitchen…

that time when my basement flooded…

So I came home from a family vacation full of sand and fun times at the water to find my basement full of water. The same basement I finished just two years ago. Not good. We were away for two weeks and unpacking the car when I went down stairs to throw some laundry in the washing machine. This is what I found… Two weeks worth of water and mold. Everything that was touching the floor has to be thrown away. We are in the process of drying the basement out right now and figuring out what the damages were exactly. The mold grew up about a foot on the unpainted sheetrock. We were able to figure out pretty quickly where the water was coming from. It was not from the torrential downpours that had hit New England while we were away. It is all this guys fault… One of…

how to remove kitchen cabinets…

Yes, you read that right. Since completing my banquette I’ve been looking at my kitchen in a whole new light. The banquette calls for a larger table which I’d been planning on all along. I’m still in the beginning stages for that project and I thought it would be the one to follow my banquette. It was not. It all started when I was cleaning out the cabinets which are situated near my table. After the school year they are a chaotic mess. On a typical day this is what that area of my kitchen looks like… The real mess is behind those closed doors… These cabinets hold cookbooks, art supplies, coloring books, charger cables, folders for each child and myself, drawing paper, a small box of tools… You get the point. Everything is all together and if I don’t feel like putting something in its’ correct place I just…

Finding the perfect white…

There is plenty of information available to help you find the perfect paint color for your space. Whether you are painting anything from a front door to a bedroom you can find that color which evokes a feeling or a style, replicates a color in a fabric or even recreates a memory. A certain shade of purple and I’m a little girl all over again at Chadwicks getting my ice cream sundae. While every color in the rainbow can usually be accounted for, what about white? How do you find the perfect white? I just went through the process since after building by banquette bench I decided the whole kitchen now has to change. It started with some paint. To tell you a bit more about selecting the perfect white you can find me on the Hooker Furniture blog.