We picked our contractor, we signed our contract, permits are being pulled and things are moving forward. I am so excited I had to stop myself from buying bins at Target this morning. Yes, the project has not even begun and I’m already organizing and decorating it. Welcome to my life! The whole project should take about five weeks, which means in a little over a month we will have a family room downstairs. We can have people over and not have the kids playing on top of us. We will have a separate laundry room which means there won’t be piles of laundry on the floor of the mudroom to greet me when I walk in the door. There will be closets! Three in total. One for toys (that’s where the plastic bins come in), one for the pantry, and one for me. Right now the pantry is a…
Read MoreMy boys closet got stripped of it doors a while back to make room for the Ikea Expedit I put inside. I haven’t regretted this move one bit. It has freed up the rest of the room to fit in two twin beds as well as plenty of play space. It stays organized and all those bins hold clothes and some toys. The books aren’t organized by size or color, although I did try it once. It stayed that way for about 20 minutes. All in all it works great, except for the top. I can’t take the bar down which holds the clothes on either side. Seeing everything stored on the top shelf of the closet does not make me happy. I’d put more “stuff” but then I’d see that too, so I’m limiting…
Read MoreI have a strange way of shopping for accent pieces for my home. Any normal person would head to the kitchen department when looking for something to hold their kitchen sponges. Where do I end up? The garden section, of course, with a porcelain flower pot. A search for some sort of container for my laundry room led me to the children’s section of Home Gods. I was looking for something to hold the random sock that was waiting to find its partner and I ended up with a child’s pail for the beach. Mind you this was not any pail. It is enamelled metal in a beautiful shade of blue complete with a wooden handle. My fireplace needed some filler. We had not used it yet and it only had the grate in it with no fireplace screen. I took the grate out and added a wooden piece I…
Read MoreAs I sat on my sons floor taking the crib apart the other day I had an idea. They needed some more toy storage and sitting in front of me was this huge drawer from the bottom of the crib. The boys have identical beds except that one already has built in drawers underneath. The other one would be empty underneath. Some simple casters and a coat of paint would make it a functional toy bin that would roll out of sight. I had 4 small pieces of wood cut 4 inches square. I held these underneath the drawer in each corner and screwed them on from the inside, 4 screws each. The bottom of the drawer is very thin so I need these to be able to screw the casters into. At this point the plans changed. After doing some research on painting press board, I decided against it.…
Read MoreMy living room has one large window. It is a beautiful window with multiple panes of glass. It floods the light into my living room the entire day. There are some problems though. 1. It is huge. 2. It is a bay window. 3. The bay incorporates the floor but not the ceiling. 4. There were no quick fixes or ideas anywhere that I was happy with!!! I wanted a couple things from whatever treatment I was going to put there. 1. I wanted privacy treatment at night that wasn’t visible during the day 2. I wanted semi-privacy during the day with light coming through 3. I wanted it to be pretty I tried to figure out all the different ways I could outfit this window. The only options I could think of was to use a curtain on the wall but then I wouldn’t be able to put furniture…
Read MoreAbout three years ago I came across an image on Design Sponge of a boys bedroom. It became my inspiration for my boys room which I showed you yesterday. Design Sponge I fell in love with the combination of the gray-blue walls and the red accents. I loved the clean uncluttered look of it. It was simple and functional. Obviously meant to be a child’s bedroom, it could easily be updated to fit any age. It wasn’t even very gender specific. It you took out the wooden bike and some of the truck toys, replacing them with a doll, this could be a girls room. This image sat in my mental file for a while since there was no Pinterest then. So how did I apply this to my boys room now? I took the basic elements, the wall color, the red accent color and incorporated them throughout the room.…
Read MoreMy two boys, ages five and two, share a bedroom. It is a wild and crazy room activity-wise. The decor is a little calmer to balance all that out! I love the blue of the walls. It is Benjamin Moore Beacon Gray. Not gray at all. It is a very soothing blue. Not childish which was what I was looking for. I wanted something long-term that they could grow up with. I made Pelmet Boxes on their two windows with this Waverly Fabric, Parterre Lacquer. The accents of deep red go so well with the tone of the walls. The furniture is all oak, except for the Expedit. If you are wondering where I got the furniture, you are out of luck. My father had a furniture company years ago and most of the furniture in my house was made by him. When we got married 15 years ago we only…
Read MoreOur home has a good sized living room. It has a huge bay window in the front and great flow from both the foyer and dining room. It is a long room with a fireplace at one end of it. My sofa is situated in front of the window, and the unit with our television is directly across from it. When we first moved in there was only one problem. Above our fireplace, which has traditional woodwork and molding, was a huge mirror. The game plan was to remove the mirror. It was held up by four huge clips, the definition of eye sore, and had been sitting there for at least 50 years. I’m not kidding. I knew it was going to take some work to get down. It was not only held in place by the clips, it was stuck into the plaster of our walls. Big messy…
Read MoreTwo years ago I was reading my latest issue of Renovation Style and came across this picture. I loved those curtains. It’s hard to see from this picture I took, but the curtain runs from side wall to side wall instead of mounted above the window. I knew I was going to do this somewhere, at some point, somehow. Once we moved into our house I knew this would be perfect in my dining room. Here is what the dining room looked like before we moved in. Builders’ beige, not my choice of lighting, but great bones! I started searching online figuring it would be easy to find something. The closest I got was a shower flange for shower curtains. Nothing decorative for windows. I visited Home Depot and bought a couple different ones. They were all either plastic with a stainless steel looking foil finish, or actual stainless steel.…
Read MoreThe other day I got an email from Better Homes and Gardens asking me to take a quiz to help me figure out what my design style is. I figured it couldn’t hurt. So I answered the questions and was told my style was polished casual. Better Homes and Gardens They described it as follows. You love to mix and match your favorites from several styles, so Polished Casual is the best way to describe your look. Crisp, fresh, and always comfortable, this approach anchors itself in neutral, subtle hues and furniture that isn’t fussy but isn’t slouchy either. Pair your clean-lined sofa with a dark leather wing chair or a weathered metal tableā€”anything goes, but simplicity is key. Not bad. That sounds like me. I like neutrals, subtle colors as accents, comfy furniture that looks nice. The weathered metal table even sound like my love for Industrial Chic looks.…
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