Deals, Window Shopping & Inspiration
Relocated
Our entry table from the old house naturally landed right next to the front door of the new house too. It has lived there since day one without much second thought. Until recently.
Just for fun we moved it to a new spot and ended up liking it there more. It wasn’t a major relocation. It just sorta “drifted” down the hallway a bit.
The new spot seems to suit it better for some reason. It’s probably a combination of these 3 things:
- It moved from an unpainted rough looking space to a painted area that feels more polished.
- Visions of the previous owners’ furniture linger in our minds (they had a console there too).
- It was waaay too small to balance out the built-ins on the other side of the future dining room.
The only dilemma we had about the shift was how to center the table. You can actually see in the pic above that it hugs one door frame pretty closely while leaving lots of extra space on the other side (see below).
After looking at it in a bunch of different places on that wall (centered, cheated a little, totally flush on the left, etc) we opted for this “off-center” wall placement because of how it looked from the kitchen – the view we’d be seeing it from most often. See? Looks perfectly centered through the kitchen doorway. Warning: ugly paneling alert.
Of course now we can’t just recreate the same symmetrical frame arrangement above it like we had in our first house because it’ll look crazy crooked. But who wants a house clone anyway? Not this guy (points to self with thumbs). So we’ve hatched a new frame plan to finish off this little vestibule area. Yes, I just said vestibule. 500 points to me.
We’re actually thinking we might go crazy and fill the walls with white frames of all different sizes & shapes for a mixed-and-matched-collected-over-time vibe. We figured taking the collection nearly floor to ceiling will help address the negative space next to the console, while also creating an awesome gallery for personal photos, kid art, old maps, favorite fortune cookie fortunes, and everything else we love to slap in a frame. It’ll almost be like wallpaper since the arrangement will be so dense.
You know, kinda like this (from here):
And this (from House & Home via Emily A. Clark):
But different because those pics are probably full of real (read: expensive) art and most of ours will be DIY & Etsy & images from old calendars. You know, the whole champagne taste on a root beer budget debacle (I’m a soda guy, just go with it, ok?). And speaking of saving loot, fortunately we already have tons of white frames sitting around just waiting to be hung. See them all leaning against the wall in the guest room?
Oh and as for what will go where it once lived near the front door in the future dining room, we’re keeping an eye on cragislist for a bigger more proportionate cabinet or buffet for that zone. Details to come when we find “the one.”
Psst- Ack- we just learned that Facebook changed everyone’s options. Grrr. So if you’re not getting our posts in your feed anymore, simply scroll down to the bottom of your Facebook Home Page and click “Edit Options” and then choose “Show Posts From All Friends And Family” instead of just those people you interact with most often. Leave it to Facebook to keep us on our toes…
Better Late Than Never?
Oops, I tackled this project about two months ago before we moved (hence all the pics of our old kitchen counters). But I figured I might as well share it in case someone else comes across their own cheap-o cheese plate and wants to update it with some fun patterned paper. Let’s step into the DeLorean for a nice trip back in time…
This little makeover idea was hatched when I laid eyes on this crazy old cheese plate at Goodwill for 40 cents in early December. Yes. Forty cents for the glass dome and the wood base with the ceramic cheese inscription (it was marked as 80 cents and they were having a half-price glassware day). I couldn’t not buy it. But it was definitely crying out for a little love, so I dragged John to the paper aisle in Michael’s (my home away from home) so I could pick up a 79 cent sheet of decorative paper. Which brings the grand total for this entire project to $1.19.
The cheese inscription was cute and retro, but the scary black rat with red eyes was freaking. me. out.
Time for a do-over. First I used a flat head screwdriver to pry up the ceramic cheese inscribed plate that was glued to the wooden base.
Had it not popped off semi-easily I would have made a paper template to the exact size of the ceramic plate and used that to cut a perfectly sized circle out of the sheet of decorative paper. But since it popped right off, I just placed the round ceramic plate on the middle of the decorative paper (so the pattern was centered) and traced the circle shape of the plate onto the paper with a pen. Then I carefully cut it out and was left with a pretty exact looking circle to cover up that funny little cheese inscription once and for all. I glued in place with Aleene’s Tacky Glue. Then I glued the ceramic plate back onto the wooden base using Gorilla Wood Glue.
Next came the highly scientific method of placing a stack of books on the whole thing to keep the paper flat so it would bond nice and tightly to the ceramic tray without wrinkling while the ceramic tray bonded securely to the wooden base at the same time. And why not use a few of our favorite cookbooks since they were nearby?
After a few hours of glue drying time, I removed the books and Mod Podged the top of the paper, so it’s protected with a laminated-esque “seal” that’s 100% non-toxic and water-based (which means it’s ok to display holiday cookies or something). I wouldn’t recommend slicing cheese on it (it’s not that strong), but it would be great for storing pound cake, cupcakes, a bowl full of holiday nuts, etc). And the reason I’ve said holiday twice (even though it feels like Christmas was eons ago) is because the festive red paper just feels so jolly to me. But it should work for the other 11 months of the year for other stuff too.
Like pinecone storage if you’re weird like me.
What? I just thought it looked cute in there.
So that’s the latest oldest little DIY undertaking hiding in our drafts folder that I thought I’d share since it could make a cute gift or project for your own casa. It’s kind of bittersweet because these are probably the very last photos that we’ll publish on YHL with our first house in the background. Sob. Just kidding, we’re way too busy with the new house to cry over the old one. But it’s fun to take this last walk down memory lane and appreciate those purty granite counters one more time. And getting back to my updated cheese platter, I’ve decided it would be the perfect spot to display a stack of pretty bar soap in our hall bathroom when we tackle that room. Someday. For now we’re trying to stay focused on the guest room (and adjoined guest bath). But you know I get easily distracted…
Delorian image found here.
Yes Please
This bathroom from Lonny…
… is now officially the inspiration for our hall bathroom.
You might not see it now, but the white tile on the walls of our bathroom is actually pretty visually similar to the beadboard in the Lonny bathroom above (although ours has a black border, so we’ll have to see how that goes). The crazy thing is that we posted this description about The Napkin (aka Sue Sylvester) and mentioned how the swatch on the bottom (Benjamin Moore’s Teal Ocean) might be something that we use in our hall bath. Then we saw the Lonny bathroom above and were totally.frickin.convinced. Bring it on.
The walls in the inspiration image are Calypso Blue by Benjamin Moore, but we’re still leaning towards our original choice of Benjamin Moore’s Teal Ocean (seen here in the bottom swatch on Sue The Napkin), which seems to read better in our room. When we tape it up on the wall in there it looks rich and dimensional, just like the wall in the bathroom above. For some reason Calypso Blue was almost reading navy in our space, which is why we definitely still subscribe to the “hold it up and see how it looks in your lighting situation” method (as opposed to the “see a room you like and blindly paint your room that color” approach).
Pics to come just as soon as we can tackle it. Until then we’ll be staring at this photo and drooling. Napkin please.
Epic Fail
Well, it’s not really epic. More like Not So Bad Fail. Or No Biggie Fail. But we like to share our trials along with our triumphs, so here ya go.
We were in HomeGoods scouting night tables, rugs, pillows and whatever else wanted to come home with us when we spotted this baby for a mere 12 beans.
It’s a shower curtain.
Fun modern pattern? Check. In line with the gray & yellow color scheme for our guest bathroom? Check. On sale? Checkity-check-check. So we brought it home (our only purchase of the day, actually, but that’s another story) and threw it right into place.
At first it felt like the perfect step it waking up the vintage yellow tile of yesteryear and making it feel more current. But then we looked down…
Something about the busy Scrabble-esque pattern on the floor combined with the gridded wall, combined with the semi-small-scale busy modern floral pattern just felt like too much going on. Oh well. At least we gave it the ol’ college try.
So we took it down, packed it back up, relieved our bathroom of its pattern-y overload, and returned it to HomeGoods (on the bright side, we grabbed some pillows for the master bedroom while we were there – more on those later). We’re thinking we need to find something plain (like a white or soft gray waffle knit curtain) or something with a very simple or subtle large-scale pattern (tone on tone wide gray stripes maybe?) so it doesn’t compete with all that tile. But since we don’t have any overnight guests in our near future (knock on wood) we’re in no rush to hunt anything down tomorrow. Maybe we’ll even take our time and DIY something with a stencil or some fabric dye. We promise to share every detail when and if we do…
Psst- Wanna see something we don’t regret buying? Check out our BabyCenter post this week (with another Clara video, because we’re those people).
