I can't wait to make them this summer with fresh herbs and vegetables from out back!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Happy Weekend!
Chris and I have been obsessed with Panera's egg souffle's for several years, so I decided to try to figure out how to make them at home this winter. This weekend was the third attempt, and I think we finally got it right.
I can't wait to make them this summer with fresh herbs and vegetables from out back!
I can't wait to make them this summer with fresh herbs and vegetables from out back!
Friday, January 28, 2011
Trim It In
During our almost 2 years here (can you believe it?) we've very sorely neglected our upstairs trim. While trim on our main floor is stained, upstairs is painted, and painted very badly. Before moving in we repainted just about every part of this house, but the work the trim needed to look nice was totally overwhelming so we just chose to ignore it.
Underneath a window in our bedroom that was apparently left open during a storm. Don't eat the paint chips!
Obviously it's pretty hard to ignore how bad that is. Plus, there was some general rearranging we wanted to do in our bedroom, so we finally found our courage and attacked!
What a mess!
We spent two weekends sanding, filling holes and cracks, more sanding, more filling . . . you get the idea. Here's the finished product:
While we were at it, we painted a former accent wall green to match the rest of the room and finally hemmed all our curtains.
Old accent wall - you can still see the brown along the ceiling.
And the we swapped out some of our furniture with the guest room next door and rearranged everything.
The bed fit perfectly between these two big windows.
We moved this cool antique serpentine dresser that Chris' parents gave us as a gift this year to a very visible corner so you can see it when you walk in the room.
We moved this old dresser that I bought at a garage sale in college and refinished from the guest room to our bedroom. And a sock monkey because . . . why not?
I got this desk at an estate auction in college and we refinished it, and this chair was from a flea market a few years ago. We moved these from the guest room into our room for a getting ready station.
Still to do:
- Get some art/decor for the walls
- Replace the rug for a larger one (I'm debating between dark brown and ivory - any votes?)
- Wooden blinds on all the windows
- Find some cool antique nightstands to swap out the last of the furniture
Underneath a window in our bedroom that was apparently left open during a storm. Don't eat the paint chips!
Obviously it's pretty hard to ignore how bad that is. Plus, there was some general rearranging we wanted to do in our bedroom, so we finally found our courage and attacked!
What a mess!
We spent two weekends sanding, filling holes and cracks, more sanding, more filling . . . you get the idea. Here's the finished product:
While we were at it, we painted a former accent wall green to match the rest of the room and finally hemmed all our curtains.
Old accent wall - you can still see the brown along the ceiling.
And the we swapped out some of our furniture with the guest room next door and rearranged everything.
The bed fit perfectly between these two big windows.
We moved this cool antique serpentine dresser that Chris' parents gave us as a gift this year to a very visible corner so you can see it when you walk in the room.
We moved this old dresser that I bought at a garage sale in college and refinished from the guest room to our bedroom. And a sock monkey because . . . why not?
I got this desk at an estate auction in college and we refinished it, and this chair was from a flea market a few years ago. We moved these from the guest room into our room for a getting ready station.
Still to do:
- Get some art/decor for the walls
- Replace the rug for a larger one (I'm debating between dark brown and ivory - any votes?)
- Wooden blinds on all the windows
- Find some cool antique nightstands to swap out the last of the furniture
Sunday, January 16, 2011
True Colors
While 2010 was the year of the backyard and 2011 is undoubtedly year of the kitchen, we hope for 2012 to be year of outside, beginning with repainting the house. Shortly after we moved in we started talking about color schemes for the house. The current exterior paint was applied pretty recently, but is very dreary colors and was applied without sanding the peeling paint below - big fail on their parts!
So shortly after we moved in, we started choosing our future paint colors. We started with these colors - a nice dark blue with clean white trim.
Then, when it was time to refinish our front door we painted it orange, adding it to the mix. So then, our colors looked like this.
Often on old houses, painters will choose one level of trim to add an accent color, so that the trim isn't all white. We really like this added color, so we added tan for highlights around trim areas, bringing our color scheme to this.
Then this summer we requested from the city a photo of our house in 1940, and saw how amazing it used to look with shutters. We decided that when we paint we want to build board and batten style shutters and paint them black. So then our colors looked like this.
Finally, in one of the blogs I follow I read a history of houses in the South, particular around New Orleans, that paint their porch ceilings light blue. There were many reasons attributed to this - one was that it kept ghosts away, another that it repels spiders. Regardless of the potential merit of these tales, I love the history and the quirk. So, we added light blue bringing us to these colors.
It may seem like a lot of colors, but most will be in small quantities to compliment the dominant dark blue. Plus, we figure it's an old house so we can get away with it, right?
Here's a perk of having a graphic designer for a spouse - a mock-up of our plan!
We can't wait to make this huge improvement to the house. In the meantime, I keep my paperclipped color scheme in the kitchen window so that I can look at it and smile when I need to be reminded - it's coming!
So shortly after we moved in, we started choosing our future paint colors. We started with these colors - a nice dark blue with clean white trim.
Then, when it was time to refinish our front door we painted it orange, adding it to the mix. So then, our colors looked like this.
Often on old houses, painters will choose one level of trim to add an accent color, so that the trim isn't all white. We really like this added color, so we added tan for highlights around trim areas, bringing our color scheme to this.
Then this summer we requested from the city a photo of our house in 1940, and saw how amazing it used to look with shutters. We decided that when we paint we want to build board and batten style shutters and paint them black. So then our colors looked like this.
Finally, in one of the blogs I follow I read a history of houses in the South, particular around New Orleans, that paint their porch ceilings light blue. There were many reasons attributed to this - one was that it kept ghosts away, another that it repels spiders. Regardless of the potential merit of these tales, I love the history and the quirk. So, we added light blue bringing us to these colors.
It may seem like a lot of colors, but most will be in small quantities to compliment the dominant dark blue. Plus, we figure it's an old house so we can get away with it, right?
Here's a perk of having a graphic designer for a spouse - a mock-up of our plan!
We can't wait to make this huge improvement to the house. In the meantime, I keep my paperclipped color scheme in the kitchen window so that I can look at it and smile when I need to be reminded - it's coming!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
A Proper Step
Steps to our secret garden
A few months ago, we posted about some rock steps. That next day we decided to cover our retaining wall with veneer rock. I know, kinda out of order. Naturally, the rock steps didn't really look good anymore. And honestly, I don't remember why we did them anymore. Back to drawing board.
A few months ago, we posted about some rock steps. That next day we decided to cover our retaining wall with veneer rock. I know, kinda out of order. Naturally, the rock steps didn't really look good anymore. And honestly, I don't remember why we did them anymore. Back to drawing board.
A new solution.
I didn't want your traditional deck steps you see everywhere, but I didn't want to make anymore hardscaping either. Also, we preferred changing materials from element to element for visual contrast and variety. After some research, railroad ties became our favorite material choice for the steps. Cheap, durable and characteristic.
B and I considered several sketches on the computer before we decided on the final design. We were worried that the steps would cover up too much of our pretty new wall, so we tapered each course, starting 8' wide on the bottom to 4'. Each step is 8.5" in rise, and 12" in run.
Stacked box style steps
Ties are really, really heavy. Like 100 lbs each. So once you nail a couple together to make a box, they are nearly impossible to move. This makes them very stable, but also super hard to manipulate. Once the bottom step was all pinned together with 12" stakes, I filled the middle of the box with gravel, and covered to top of the hole in brick pavers. You can see (through the snow) a course of bricks peeking out.
Paver bricks fill the back 3" of the first two treads
Overall, I am happy with the results. The project took much more time and effort than I planned. Cutting and drilling the ties was nearly impossible and very messy. The hope with projects like this is that we only have do them once. Fingers crossed.
We literally finished this project yesterday evening. Our first snow came overnight. Good timing?
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