Dining room, in progress: bookcase wall

Our dining room is, as you might have surmised from the title of this post, a work in progress.

Here is how it looked when we moved in, with sconces on the long wall and a chandelier that was hung off-center in every respect:

The first furniture we bought when we moved in were new Billy bookcases at Ikea.  We sold our old bookshelves in California, as they were about ten years old and had been damaged in our five previous moves.

In order to maximize the amount of shelves, we added height extenders. I love that the shelves go nearly to the ceiling.  If only I had room and budget for a library ladder, where I could pretend to be Belle flying around the library.

so so true

And currently:

I did not have a grand inspiration for this room at the beginning.  The wall in the dining room is the only wall in the house long enough to put a bank of bookcases.  Every other wall on the first floor could not hold more than one bookshelf consecutively. We have a multitude of windows and five doors to the outside....the only reason this wall is an unbroken stretch without windows is because the other side of it is the garage.  Ergo, this meant that the bookshelves would be going on this wall.

Unfortunately, there are two heating vents inconveniently placed on that wall, but we hacked a hole out of two sections of cardboard backs of the bottom shelves to allow for air circulation.  We also took down the sconces that were there when we moved in and plated them up.

I really do love the concept of having books in the dining room, (see the dining room in our last house here) and pinned pics of this for years.  We considered doing free-floating shelving, rather than bookcases in order to work around the vents, but in the end bookshelves won out as just looking nicer. 

My future plans are to build out the bookcases into a unit with trim and picture lights, like so:

photo via BHG

I love how the bookshelves add so much color to the room.  No, my books are not arranged by color because WHAT SORT OF MONSTER DOES--pause---deep breath---right, my librarian heart says no, no, that is not for us.  In 2002 I applied to library grad school and was accepted on the same day that I was offered my first full time law professor job.  I ended up teaching instead of getting another advanced degree, but you may rest assured that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES can I advocate sorting your books by color, FFS. (Don't even get me started on backwards books.)

Two moves ago I pared down our books quite a bit.  Currently the bookshelves are split nearly evenly between adult and childrens books--the top half is adult, the bottom half is kids, mostly.  I also greatly enjoy YA, so we have a lot of it.  I need more bookshelves because I need to sort our books by subject and author and it helps if they all fit nicely on one or more shelves but sometimes that doesn't happen and the vampire romances spill over into the science section, which hurts my heart. (Heaven help the child that puts the Big Nate book back in the YA science fiction or Spanish section. If you knew where to go to find the book, you can put it back in that same section. Perhaps I am giving a glimpse into what our home life is like.  No more wire hangers.)

Next up in the dining room: Bessie the cow, the buffet wall and the saga of fourteen dressers and an excessive number of lamps.

Downstairs bathroom makeover

Our downstairs bathroom is...fine.  It is beige and screams 1994 with country accents, but as bathrooms go, it could be a lot worse.

It has solid oak cabinetry, beige tiles, a finicky toilet, and a cheery ruffled floral light fixture.

This is one of those bathrooms that brings to mind the "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie" book.  If I replace the beige floor tiles, they extend into the hallway and around the corner throughout the kitchen.  I would not be replacing 20 square feet of tile, but rather about 220 sq ft of tile.  I'd also have to pull out the giant solid oak vanity, and while I don't mind that, that would leave me with the giant solid oak medicine cabinet, so I'd pull that out too, and since the light fixture is mounted in a giant solid oak box that is attached to the medicine cabinet....lets assume a new vanity, a fancy medicine cabinet, and a new light fixture plus installation, and then I have to pay the painter to come repair the wall and repaint where the giant solid oak cabinet/vanity was...cookies start to add up.

While the downstairs bath really just needs a new floor and vanity/mirror, I have an upstairs hall bath that needs to be gutted.  I'd like to do both the upstairs bath and the downstairs bath at the same time.  I am still gathering quotes, but the price to redo two bathrooms seems to be close to the price of a new car, so....lots of paint and shower curtains to the rescue in the meantime. 

When we moved in we had three persnickety toilets that clogged on a weekly basis, so we replaced all of them this spring when we had plumbing work done.  (We also replaced our stack pipe and installed two water sump pump backups, which is many thousands of dollars for essential items that do not make for pretty blog pictures.)  The old toilet was beige with an elongated bowl.  The new toilet is white with a round bowl.

Do you have strong thoughts on an elongated bowl vs a round bowl?  Let me give you a pro tip: pick out the toilet you want, online, while you are at home. Discuss whether you want a round or elongated bowl, and whether or not you are a family of tall people in need of a extra high toilet, or you are a family of mostly short people who prefer to be able to have their feet reach the ground when performing private ablutions.  When you go to Home Depot, read the box very carefully to ensure that you are picking out the toilet that you decided on at home. 

Otherwise, you might hump three toilets up to the front of the store, at great effort and difficulty, only to discover at the cash register that you have picked up three wrong toilets, and then someone might say that despite the aisle of a hundred toilets there are no other toilets available in the entire store, or even in the ENTIRE TRI-STATE AREA and thus you simply HAVE to buy these very wrong toilets at great $$$$$ expense to sit on for the next twenty years, even though your short family would not enjoy extra tall toilets with elongated bowls when they really wanted short people toilets with round bowls.  Seriously. Avoid this situation, as it might get loud and people will stare and someone will apologize later, even though in your marriage you generally fight once every decade.  I promise you,  that decade's fight will be about toilets.

When siting down to think about the temporary design for this bathroom, I  didn't have much thoughts on how to make it over, other than it is sort of pointless to fight this much beige (beige toilet, beige sink, beige floor tiles, beige shower tiles), so it would probably have to be black and white accents, or perhaps just white accents.  And then I saw this picture of a banana leaf shower curtain in a bathroom with a dark vanity, and thought, aha!

I cannot find the original source for that photo--I could swear I saw it in a portfolio, not selling a shower curtain.  I hunted around for banana leaf shower curtain, because that banana leaf fabric is to the trade, and there is a thriving business on etsy of making stuff from to the trade fabrics for One Million Dollars.  And for a hot minute I very nearly bought a $178 + shipping extra tall to the trade shower curtain.  And then my brain said of all the things in this house to spend $200 on, this ain't it, considering a Target shower curtain is $19.99. 

My sister sent me a link to a Tommy Bahama extra long shower curtain on Amazon for $74.99, which seemed like an acceptable compromise of more than $19.99 but less than $200, and I greatly appreciate the dramatic impact that it makes.   One caveat on the Tommy Bahama curtain, or one you get from etsy--this fabric is not made in a 72 inches wide bolt like a standard shower curtain, so it has a seam that is mostly matched up, but not exactly, if you are picky about that sort of thing.

We painted the room the same Westhighland White as the rest of the downstairs, the vanity and medicine cabinet black, added some art we already owned, some green towels, a shower curtain to hide the exceptionally beige shower with peeling grout, and voila, good enough for a while.

That light isn't working; I'll get right on that.  I have an entire first floor like this--90% finished except for a few details that make the whole thing look unfinished.  But if I wait for this light to get fixed to put up some pictures on the blog, it will be a few years.  The perfect is the enemy of the good or whatever. 

While we're on the topic of the lighting, I've never seen these weird boxes built onto the medicine cabinet to hold the lighting fixture.  I dislike them and the non-recessed cabinets.  I've tried to replace the ruffled shades but so far haven't been able to find a shade that fits. 

sources:  shower curtain / lady vader art / Home art (etsy, shop no longer exists but similar available in other shops) / green towel / shelf / basket (Target, discontinued)

One Room Challenge, Week Six: Parlor Reveal

Its the final week of the One Room Challenge, and my front parlor is (mostly) done.

You can read the process of the last few weeks: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and 4, and Week 5.

Lets remember where we started from: dingy khaki walls, miles of pine trim, chair railing, boob light, paper shades, no furniture.

After lots of paint and some new furniture, we have this:

The blue sofa is delightfully soft and cushy to sit on.  Although I originally planned the room around the alabaster chiang mai dragon colorway, I am kind of digging the aquamarine at the moment.

The front door was painted blue.

Actually, I have slapped a coat of cobalt blue paint on about half the doors on the first floor.  (The front door, the closet doors, the two mudroom doors, the media center, a small dresser, two nightstands....nothing has escaped this blue.)

 I would really like to put different hardware on this little gray table, or a nice tassel on the pulls, but I remain paralyzed with indecision on what to get.

I have had these red handles since....hmm, 2010? They seem like a nice pop of color against the blue.

I have had these two bamboo frames from a thrift shop for years.  Two houses ago they were in the downstairs bathroom with two scraps of chiang mai dragon fabric in them.  I am looking for some art, but nothing has struck my fancy, so I shall persevere and find something eventually.

We also installed ceiling fans in nearly every room in the house.   For the parlor we used a Minke Aire Wave fan.

I'm so happy with how this room turned out.

arch mirror / gray table / blue basket (no longer available, similar basket in white) / ottoman / ikea red + white pillow / white side tables / red lamp / pelmet / fan / peacock mirror (Pier One, discontinued) / rug (vintage from ebay) / red chair (Crate and Barrel Odeon chair, discontinued)

One Room Challenge, Week 5: Rug and Pelmets

For week 5 of the One Room Challenge, I bought a new rug.  I already had a gray geometric 8x10 rug that fit the space nicely, but as much as I liked the light airiness that the gray and white gave the room, this rug did not stand up to dirt.  The parlor is to the right of the front door, and the kitchen is off the parlor, so the line from the front door to the kitchen was a nice line of dirt across this lovely light-colored carpet.

I found a 7x10 persian rug on ebay.  I was deliberately looking for a cheap, busily-patterned dark blue and red rug that would hide dirt, and I did not want to pay very much for it, because my guess it will need replacing in a few years. 

I also made some pelmets for the windows.  For months I went around and around on what kind of window treatments to do.  Curtains weren't ideal, seeing as the room is only 10x11 and all the furniture needs to be pushed up against the walls, thus trapping the curtains behind the sofa and chair. 

I would love to do roman shades, but yeesh, they are expensive.  These windows are 35 and 3/8s, not a standard size, and I could not find a plain white inexpensive shade that I could gussy up myself with trim.  Custom shades--even plain white ones!--are $350+ per window.  I did splurge on roman shades for our back living room, since it has four abutted corner windows that won't allow a pelmet treatment and six windows are at different heights, making curtains look crazy from a symmetry perspective, but I just couldn't justify the cost in the front of the house.

I ended up using white pull down cellular shades from Home Depot, for about $40 per window.  I could have made a foam core board pelmet, like I have in other rooms, but since these windows are in the front of the house, visible from the front door, and I have another set of windows on the other side of the door I wanted to match, I ordered a more substantial pelmet kit from Amazon.  I have about fifteen plain white Ikea curtains from our last house, so I used those for the fabric, and hot ironed some greek key trim on them.  I'm happy with how they turned out.  They give some fanciness and look finished without overwhelming the rest of the room or making a giant statement.

Next week is the big reveal, ack.  I need to finish painting the closet and find some art.  I can't wait to see all the other rooms.  

One Room Challenge, Week 3 and 4: a new sofa

For week three of the One Room Challenge my kids were on spring break and I thought I'd be able to link up to the ORC a few days late, but alas, apparently not.  For week four I have some sofa updates.

I have wanted a blue velvet sofa for a long time.  I looked around for various ready-made blue velvet sofas, which there are legion, but I had some specific requirements.  It is a small room, so the sofa could not be more than 80 inches long in order to fit between the two end tables.  I wanted a three cushion sofa, which is difficult to find in a smaller apartment size sofa.  I also did not want a lumpy, bad quality sofa.  I am old and need soft cushy sofas for taking naps.

None of the sofas from big box stores fit my requirements.  I could have gone up to 82 inches, but all of the blue velvet sofas I found either did not have three cushions, or were like sitting on cement. 

Instead I decided to recover our Room and Board sofa, which fit all our requirements...but was looking a wee bit worse for wear.

Then one Saturday afternoon I was strolling downtown past a design firm when I happened upon this amazing blue velvet sofa being unloaded into the store.  It was beautiful! It was amazing! It fit all of my requirements! It was $4400!

Sad!

I kept on strolling down the street to my favorite consignment store.  They did not have any blue velvet sofas.  They did, however, have a service where you can order custom sofas, and one of them was a 78 inch english roll arm sofa, and as long as I got a navy blue cotton instead of a blue velvet, it was substantially cheaper than $4400.

That sofa allowed me to pick out fabric for coordinating throw pillows, so I played around with that for quite a while. I ended up picking a navy blue cotton with a greek key design for the sofa, and emerald green throw pillows with welting that matched the sofa.

In the above picture I brought two of my pillows from home...the chiang mai dragon in alabaster (left), and the chiang mai dragon in aquamarine (right).  Although I originally planned the room around the alabaster, I am actually thinking that perhaps the aquamarine might be the direction I'd like to go.  I should probably decide soon considering its Week 4 already.

One Room Challenge, week 2: Painting

For week two of the One Room Challenge I have some painting progress for you. 

Since this is no longer a dining room, as it was when the house was originally built, we ripped down the chair molding and painted the room white.  For months we had a bracket in the wall that we couldn't remove (see it above the window in the upper left?), but luckily the painter was able to get it out and patch the hole it left behind.

When we moved in last summer, the entire house was painted Navajo White with miles upon miles of pine trim and honey oak cabinets and badly stained mahogany closet doors, and every room in the house had a country plaid or country floral or country something.   Some people like that look.  I....don't.  

For new readers, last summer we moved from California to New Jersey two weeks after I had a spine fusion surgery.  I was not/am still not allowed to paint anything.  I can't get my arms over my head much, so I don't know how I would paint anything anyhow.  This has been incredibly frustrating, because Old Uninjured Me would have had this entire house painted from top to bottom in a few weeks.  New Weak Me has been spent a lot of time on the sofa.  

Thus, we decided to hire out having the house painted.  Since paying someone else to do stuff you can do yourself for free costs $$$$$$, we decided to start with only painting the first floor walls, baseboards, and door casings.  To save money, we decided not to have the windows or doors painted yet.  

I wanted to paint the whole interior of the house the same color, and I wanted to have very very very light gray walls with bright white trim.  

Did you know that Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams paint samples costs $8?  My plan was to go to Home Depot, have them color match the BM and SW paint samples in their $4 samples, then narrow it down to the ones I really liked and get those in the actual BM and SW paint samples to be sure it was the right color, so that I wasn't spending gazillions of dollars on paint samples. 

I went through 52 gray paint samples.  Every single one of them was WRONG WRONG WRONG.  

Apparently I don't like gray.  

I gave up on gray and went with a very light creamy white for the walls (Sherwin Williams Westhighland White) and Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace for the trim.  

But you already had a yellowy white in the original paint, you are thinking.  

NO THIS ONE IS BETTER.  See?

Or as my children said "....it looks exactly the same."  

The Mister noted that the new bright white looked SO FABULOUS on the door casings, that clearly, we should go ahead and paint the windows.

 Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I booked that immediately.  Luckily no one from Apartment Therapy will be reading about this wood desecration. 

I feel perhaps my pictures would be more majestic had I actually taken some with the intent to publish them on the blog....except I took zero before pictures, the ORC wasn't even on my radar last month when all this painting was going on, and all the before/during pictures I have were progress pictures that I took on my phone to text to my husband.  Hence the boxes of girl scout cookies front and center.  I suppose I could move all the new furniture out and take some posed progress pictures, but that requires a level of commitment I do not currently possess.  Let me know if you want to buy some girl scout cookies.  

One Room Challenge: Front parlor

I originally published this post in January, with a plan for redoing our front parlor, but since I made very little progress on it, I'm finally getting started, and I want to participate in the One Room Challenge--I'm republishing it, slightly edited.  As with every other ORC I have participated in, I'm skating into this one slightly late and somewhat disheveled.

We've been in our new house a few months now, and as expected, how we use our house is slightly different than our original set up when we moved in.

Our house has an addition that was put on in 1994.  The original house was about 1800 sq feet, and the addition added about 600 sq ft with a new living room and master bedroom. The front door opens onto the stairwell, with what would have been the original dining room on the right (the current parlor), the original living room on the left (now the dining room), and kitchen in the back, as per this very-very-not-to-scale floor plan (take the wall lines with a grain of salt):

Since there is now a living room in the back of the house, we have our 10 seat dining table in the original living room.  The parlor became a "what do we do with  this space right off the front door?"  When we first moved in, we plopped a round dining table and a dresser in the space and called it the homework room.  It was really more of a "here's a flat surface where everyone drops their junk when they walk in the door" space. Sadly, I have no pictures of the original set up, but it looked like this the day we moved in:

During the day, when I am at home by myself, I spend time in the dining room and front parlor.  At first, I brought a club chair in to the homework room.  After a few weeks I decided that the homework room would be better served as a sitting room or parlor.

For a long time, the room looked like this:

I pulled together a mood board of how I'd like to decorate it.

The chiang mai dragon fabric in alabaster is the jumping off point for the design, although I'm not sure if I will simply get pillows in that fabric, or try and finagle a window treatment out of it.  There will be lots of white paint and I'll be removing the chair railing and light fixture.

 I've wanted a blue velvet sofa forever. The one in the mood board is a Crate and Barrel Lounge II Petite sofa, but that sofa is a bit large for the space, and the "velvet" option at Crate and Barrel really looks more like a microfiber.  I planned to reupholster our Room and Board Murray sofa, as it has held up great even after a child poured a can of anchovy oil all over it, but that plan may change. 

rug / sofa / lamp / coffee table / basket / end table

Red chair we already own, it is the discontinued Odeon chair from Crate and Barrel.  Peacock mirror from Pier 1, discontinued.