Blagging

September 11th, 2008

I’m blagging (which I guess means lagging on my blog) recently. Home repairs are few and far between, no thrift store shopping has been happening, and overall I’m at a stalemate with the exterior colors of the house – or better yet – anything that involves an actual decision about the house. My inspiration is waning…as well as my bank account.

I’m not sure why, but I feel a little bored by the Brick House (and its only been 6 months) and I want a new (old) house with loads of charm and fantastic details – like a beautiful Victorian, Craftsman, or an old Brownstone. Sadly, here in California my little mid century house is pretty much what I can afford – and even this boring little place needs a lot more elbow grease.

So I’ve been cheating on the Brick House and stalking Door Sixteen and ooohhhing and aaahhhing over all the charm and details in her house. I love love love the neutrals and black and white palette shes got going, and feel the need to class up my abode a bit with a more edited and streamlined color scheme.


via desire to inspire

All I know is that I NEED one of these hanging rattan chair things on my front porch. Like RIGHT now.


via Domino

Oh, and shelves. Lots of shelves…

Bedroom Curtains…

September 8th, 2008

and I don’t mean the meaty kind.

I hated the curtain rods in the bedroom – above is an old shot. I started thinking about doing a turnbuckle curtain wire system…like these featured on Apartment Therapy – and I used these instructions.

Here are some of my supplies. I used the Apartment Therapy step by step to install the wire on the back wall and wrapped it around the corner using the eyelet thing below to cover the side wall.

Heres my corner eyelet thing.

Here is the turnbuckle with the wire clamped on…exciting!



Here (finally) is a small preview of the whole thing put together. I used those
DIGNITET clips from Ikea and I’m still working out the kinks…more soon…

Curtains

September 5th, 2008

Ugh.

I have to admit that I am a miserable failure with curtains. I wanted to test out the Ikea KVARTAL track system to use in the living room wall of curtains.

Here is the installed track – mounted to the ceiling – and here is the curtains attached 2 ways (since I like to try things both ways if you know what I mean…). I tried those funny little plastic gliders and curtain clips…both look like crap.

Heres a bit of a cropped view with the two hanging styles – gliders on the left, clips on the right. The whole thing looks rather LAME-O.

Plus the window is in a weird spot, shoved right into the corner, so I’m a little stumped on how to actually hang a curtain there. I’ve been looking for fun fabrics since I think white curtains are ever so boring in the den…but now I can’t decide on a fabric or color. Theres a lot of yellow and orange and warm wood tones in the den, so maybe something cooler or more neutral might be in order. I love the fabric over at Sew, Mama, Sew! and Reprodepot Fabrics and feel like I might want to get some fabric to make my own curtains.

Where do fancy designers go for textiles? I bet its pricey…and I bet its not Joann’s.

So I’m a failure – a FAILURE I say – at curtains and such. Poo.