Archive for 2009

Holler Blogger

Friday, April 10th, 2009


Many thanks to Desire to Inspire and Door Sixteen for mentioning my little bloggity!

Desire to Inspire has a great round up of blogs to check out over the Easter weekend and Anna over at Door Sixteen did a great project customizing those fantastic Enje roller shades at Ikea to fit her not so standard windows. I had the same issue awhile ago and found it very easy to cut the Enje shades to your desired width. I used a metal blade and a chop saw to cut the whole thing at once – which is not as elegant a solution as Anna’s total deconstruction and precise use of fabric shears and rulers…

Thanks guys for the shout out!

*** One a side note***

I know I have arrived in blog land. I just got my first anonymous negative comment combined with the grammar police! HOORAY!

Check it out:

“Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “Repeat that?“:

I have many accent walls in my house and I have no commitment issues thank you. White walls are boring and bland. There is also a spelling error in the post after this. It’s ‘too’ not ‘to’.”

I love that people take this renovation blog that seriously and worry about what harm my grammar may have on other decor lovers. Thank you anonymous! Keep up your good work.

Built-in

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Since we moved in a year ago I’ve been dreaming of building in some bookshelves next to the fireplace. The wall area always looked a little blank and it was hard to position furniture without a ton of wasted space under the windows.

Thank you Craig.

Craig is my stepfather and a lover of carpentry – so the labor was cheap. I drew up some plans for what I wanted and through the magic of plywood and tools he constructed a pair of very simple bookshelves.

This is the base that matches the molding and is set back to create a two inch kick gap under the shelf.

This is one of the finished shelves getting ready to get installed.

Ta-Da!

There were a few weird hitches, like trying to fit the electrical outlets through the shelves and dealing with the uneven plaster walls. Craig was a champion DIY guy and we couldn’t have done this without him. Every new homeowner needs a Craig.

I primed each case with two coats of Kilz. THIS I know how to do. Awesome fun.

I caulked all the gaps around the edges. I love caulk.
Then I painted them with three coats of Behr Ultra Pure White in a satin finish.

Wasted space finally made useful.

I FINALLY finished them last night. They look surprisingly nice and very seamless. I love the off-set vertical supports mirrored on each side. Saving the outlets and installing them through the bottom shelf really adds to the illusion that they may be original built-ins.

Now its all about filling them up with crap.

Coming soon…the built-in breakfast area in the kitchen

Inconvenient

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

The city is installing sidewalks all over town. We always thought it was weird that we didn’t have sidewalks or street lights in our neighborhood – I guess the city finally agreed.

These hardworking guys moved the water main and spray painted all over our driveway – which I guess is technically the city’s driveway up to five feet off the street.

Good thing we didn’t start landscaping.

The best part was the letter they sent out alerting us to the fact that “we WILL be inconvenienced.”
HOORAY.