Walkway Garden - Go!

Ever since installing our walkway arch last fall, I've been waiting for the ground to thaw (and the feet of snow we got in Kansas City to melt) so I could begin the front walkway garden I'd been dreaming of. I just so happened to be off work on Friday, and it just so happened to be sunny and beautiful, so I got to work.

Like many projects, the first step was the least fun, involving digging out all the sod that C has worked so hard on (don't worry, I had his blessing) and filling in the trench with mulch. It was total grunt work, so I was grateful to have a beautiful spring day (and a serious case of spring fever) to motivate me to get it over with.

  

We planned the shape of the beds to duplicate the shape of our walkway - which we have named "The Wine Bottle." The beds also maintain the strong symmetry of our home. The new lines add some nice drama to our sloping front yard, with the dark mulch accentuating the nice green grass.

C even said it looked like a baseball field. Whether he was just being sweet because I was so tired, or really meant it, it's pretty much the ultimate compliment from a former baseball pitcher.

I managed to wait two whole days, admiring my mulch, before I couldn't stand it anymore and picked up a few plants to get the garden started. It was Easter Sunday and my favorite local nursery was closed, so we did a quick Home Depot run and got a few staples to start adding shape to the walkway.

Enter four small sedge varieties, two blue fescue balls and two ranunculus, and things were starting to take shape. I laid them out carefully, alternating the sedge so that they won't crowd the walkway from both sides.

Everything is perennial except for the ranunculus, which is an annual in our area. I don't often put annuals in the ground, but these tiny plants with huge round blooms were just too cute to resist, and it's a bit too early for some of the other perennials I'm planning on adding.

I think as I add more plants I'll keep adding more sedge and fescue - I love the texture they provide, and they are nice tough plants to stand up to the intense sun of our west-facing front yard. 

So, here's the yard before the arch and flowerbeds:

And here it is now.

It's just a start, but a very satisfying one to me. As the weather continues to warm, I'll keep filling in the walkway at the top of the steps, get some climbers planted by the arch, and - most dramatically - plant the wide triangle portions of the beds that go down the hill.

Over the next few weeks, as the weather continues to warm, I'll add some topiary shrubs near the bottom of the hill:



Surrounded by more grasses, as well as some low-growing, tough flowers and ornamental cabbage.

 

And perhaps most importantly, some climbing english roses and clematis to grow up over the arch - adding beautiful blooms and fragrance to welcome visitors into the yard.  

I can't wait to get the rest of the space filled in and growing, but for now my few little grasses and flowers will have to hold me over. As well as some viola I packed into the window boxes on our front porch - I just couldn't resist!

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!