Out on a Ledge

We're snowed in at home for the second time in a week, so consider these extra projects and posts a result of Mother Nature's recent wrath on the midwest.

We have talked for years about needing to add some interest around the seating area in our living room. While we have some great architectural elements in the windows and stairwell, we've always felt a little additional color and personality would do a lot.

 
So we've focused on this half wall to the right. It's a challenging spot because of the open cutout to the stairwell on the top third of the wall, where we traditionally think to add decor. We love that detail of the room though, and wanted to add some interest below that compliments it.

C has tons of leftover oak from trim taken out of our various remodel jobs, and we love putting that 90-year-old oak back into the house. So he went through his scraps and built a narrow ledge for the wall.

We filled it up some some of our favorite small hardcover books, as well as a few photos and small pieces of artwork - we even included the post card we recently made into a poster! It instantly added a lot of color and interest to our little corner. 

We look forward to rotating the contents on the shelves for different seasons and occasions, as well as how it will provide us an excuse to keep collecting small cards and pieces of artwork. I imagine it full of holiday cards in December, and changing out photos as we take trips and as our nieces grow up.

This gives a nice new focal point in our living room - I think the only real wall space left to think about is the two spots beneath the sconces. I'd love to have something there, but the challenge is finding objects the right size (the spaces are fairly narrow) and something interesting, but neutral so it won't compete with the items on our ledge and our brightly colored pillows.

These small changes in our living room are a lot of fun though - and we're not finished yet! Watch for a few more over the next week or two!

Post Card Art

 For several years now, C has collected old post cards from flea markets and antique stores. Many of them are historic Kansas City tourism cards, created of historic buildings, parks and boulevards in the early 1900's.

One of his favorites has always been the Power & Light building. It's one of downtown's most beautiful buildings, in our opinion, and the post card is beautiful and full of color. Plus, on the right end of it you can see the edge of the President Hotel, which is where we stayed after our wedding - see the red PRE toward the bottom right corner?

And this particular card, like many of our favorites we have collected, was actually mailed. I love the child's handwriting to his or her mother, and the fact that the sender had so much to say that it's written over every corner of the card. And notice there's no address - apparently there was only one Mrs. John W. Smith who lived in Bethany Missouri when this was sent!

 
So C decided to try something out. He scanned the post card at high resolution, and then doctored it up in Photoshop and had it printed at Costco. We weren't sure how it would turn out, but the print only cost $8, so we decided to give it a try and see what we ended up with. The result was a beautiful 20"x30" poster - one with great color and fun sentimental meaning to us. I did a quick Hobby Lobby trip for the frame ($50) and custom mat ($16), and voila! We had a great piece of art for our walls, for a total of $74 - not bad at all!

We hung the poster in our stairwell, where there is a great focal point and a wall that needed some dressing up. It brightens up the dark corner very well, and gives us this great little piece of beautiful Kansas City history to admire every day.  

A New Walk-In Cedar Closet

A walk-in closet is a rare gem in an old house. After our bathroom remodel in 2011, we were left with an extra 10 square feet of unused space. Luckily, this extra space was adjacent to our 3rd bedroom closet.

This closet was gross, awkward and old. So, I decided to knock down the back wall to see what was behind it.

After we cleared out the demo work, I insulated, drywalled, and then covered the walls with tongue and groove aromatic cedar.

Having an air nailer made the project fun and fairly painless - without that tool, I would not recommend installing tongue and groove paneling.

 

Here is the halfway point - paneling up - looking from outside the closet.

The next steps were refinishing the old oak floors and adding the finish cedar trim work around the baseboards and windows. We even added crown moulding, which is probably not necessary, but I'd never done it and wanted to try.

The final step - adding custom shelving to help me get organized. Priorities were hanging clothes on two rods, and shoe storage.

 The doorway to the closet is super narrow, so it was hard to get a full shot of the new space. B made a nice white curtain to give some overdue privacy (the neighbors are thankful).

 We like the look of galvanized piping and flanges, so we indulged a bit and got the heavy, metal hardware.

 

View from window looking towards door/shoe storage. We gave about 7" of clearance for each row of shoe shelf.

I was very excited to get all my junk back into a closet. Size 13 shoes don't really fit well anywhere, so this solution gives us some much needed storage. Also, it kinda feels like you're shopping when you pick out your shoes for the day, which is fun.

Cedar is a fun wood for a closet. It smells great, is super soft, and easy to handle. I'd say with a budget of $200-500, you can pimp out a boring closet with great success.

For more closet pics, the full gallery can be found here.

Thanks for reading!

C

A Picture Perfect Launch

 
Chris and I are officially in post-launch bliss. We spent yesterday watching the internet wallpapered in fun, pretty, beautiful, quirky and (insert any number of adjectives here) Shapely images all over social media. Intrigue spread quickly, and soon we noticed not just friends, but friends of friends and eventually complete strangers using Shapely.

Here are a few of the images we enjoyed from the last week.

Shapely images courtesy of @eleshop, @bjemas, @chrisjonesdesign, @jead, @katiegisborne, @kcchorale, @kenychang, @leokempf, @mattk2, @motleynif, @natehofer, @orionkinkaid, @pshehan, @rcwphoto, @rslr, @rusty_wright, @sheasylvia, @shoutoutloud, @ssfantastic, @thedaviddunn, @thelaurajane, @tylerhenderson, @whitetablestyle and @zackkc via Instagram.

Thank you to all who played a part in our Shapely Launch Day - there are too many of you to name, but we know who you are and we can't begin to fully express our gratitude. It was a wonderful launch, and it is only the beginning.

So keep going! Shape your world!

Shapely - Our Fun New Design App

Chris and I are very excited to announce that we're launching an app! Shapely allows you to design custom images using photos, graphics, patterns, text and more. The images are great for making cards, enhancing photos or just making a simple text message a lot more fun. And with Chris' great design eye, it's nearly impossible to make anything ugly (trust me, I've tried) - which is a very great thing for enthusiastic designer wannabe's like myself.

As of approximately 2:00 this morning, Shapely has been submitted to Apple for their approval - a major step a year in the making!

I'll get into the history of the app in a minute, but first I want to give you all a chance to participate with us in the launch process! We have a limited number of spots for people to beta test Shapely - meaning we give you a pre-launch version to play around with while we wait on final approval from Apple to send it live. If you are interested in being a beta tester, email beta(at)shapelyapp(dot)com and we will send you instructions.

Here's a general idea of the sorts of images Shapely can make, but this is only the beginning. Chris and I and a few close friends have been designing with Shapely for the past month or so, but we can't wait for more of you to try it out and show us how else you will use it.

Ok, now more about the origin of Shapely. The big idea came to Chris when we were in Austin for a few days last winter. We both found ourselves overwhelmed by the character that the entire town seemed to ooze. Everything was unique, personalized, stylish and eclectic.

    
I think what most impressed us about Austin was that while our surroundings were very well designed, nothing was pretentious. These were people who appreciated the creative and individual side of making things look cool. No two buildings, stores or streets looked alike. Every place we went seemed a reflection of the people behind it, and we found that immensely charming.

And from there Shapely was born - the app to democratize design. Totally reasonable goal, right? But seriously, our hope is that regular people (like me) can have fun making cool images that demonstrate their interests and personality, and that in the end, these images will look great because the pieces and layouts were hand-picked by my oh-so-talented designer husband.

We have some big, fun launch plans coming up and we will keep you in the know, but for now let us know if you want to test Shapely out, and cross your fingers for us as we walk through the Apple approval process.