Kitchen Daydreams--a tentative "before"

Recently I started a Pinterest board devoted entirely to my kitchen daydreams. Painting that kitchen cart has only given me a taste for more. My brain is full of terracotta floors, teal cabinets, open shelving full of teacups, and pretty tiles. Right now my mom is borrowing our wallpaper remover to strip her bathrooms, but when she gets it back I am going to town on this yellow stuff. It's pretty, but not what I want. And then there's that bare spot. 

More than a year ago, I posted a picture of this kitchen from the real estate listing. There was a big (pink) hutch right there, and behind it ... a hole in the wall with the insulation spilling out. They fixed the hole, but I'm sorry to say we've just been sort of ignoring that eyesore for a year and a half. I wouldn't mind putting a hutch there, or some open shelving. Right now it's just our trash bin and the little Ikea cart I painted. 

There is so much to love about this kitchen. Two ovens! So much cabinet space! (There is more of it out of this picture, as you'll see, plus a huge closet with sliding doors.) Enough floor space to waltz in! 

But also: concrete right underneath the tile (no subflooring=a hard surface that dishes shatter upon on contact, and COLD cold cold in the winter). And a huge bare patch in the wall. And the colors ... I think they made the previous owner very happy. Me, not so much. Except for the greyish countertops, there is not a thing in this kitchen that isn't pink or yellow. 

Blurry. Sorry.

Back out into the dining room. My view as I cook dinner most nights.

(If you know me in person you've probably already heard this story, but: Keith brought that pretty blue tea kettle into the marriage. When we were first dating I saw it and loved it and asked where he'd gotten it. But before buying my own I thought--wait. What if we get married someday? So I held off. And we did. And now it's mine too. ;) )

This counter is the site of a perpetual battle. I recently moved the coffee maker and tea basket here so we could have a little beverage corner; the wine rack and bucket have always been there. It looks nice and clean now, but tomorrow? There will be something on it--papers from Keith's backpack, some mail, pages Michael has colored. And by this time next week there will be no free counter space, except perhaps where I've forcefully evacuated things from in front of my coffeemaker. I set up the little basket on the far left for papers that can't be thrown out or immediately filed, and it helps, but only so much. 

(That little door is an ice maker. The previous owner suggested we renew the warranty of $100 a month when we bought the house ... we don't even ever turn it on. It would be nice for a cocktail party, though.) 

 Another angle. Keith's plant life taking over a corner of the counter. ;) I would love to have potted herbs there but I'm not sure the light is enough?

The counter just keeps on going!

Other side--refrigerator, sink, etc. There's a bathroom to the left of the fridge.

I wouldn't have chosen stainless steel appliances, especially with young children; I don't even try to keep the fingerprints off. But all the appliances are new, which is such a blessing.

My view over the sink. :)

 Pretty things that make me happy.

I had to show you the chandelier up close. She painted this herself! She put so much attention into little handcrafted details, but her tastes were so specific. I wouldn't mind painting this another color but Keith says that someday it has to go. He is adamant. 

Sometime in the next week or two I am going to Home Depot and Lowe's--dragging all my kids along if need be--and loading up on primer and paint samples. Keith is reluctant to change anything until we know what we're doing with everything. But I disagree, at least in terms of paint. Paint is so easy to change! (If a bit more time-consuming when you have kids.) And I discovered while painting that cart that painting gives me energy. I enjoy it, and even if I spend all of naptime doing it, when the kids wake up I am refreshed and content. 

Dining Room--Before

Now that I have time to do more than nurse babies and change diapers (our twins just turned nine months old!!), I've been itching to do something about our dining room. Itching. So I hope this "before" will soon be an after--or at least an "in progress."

You may recall that this room is a rather shocking shade of pink. It has a beautiful picture window--the only window that lets you see straight into the house from the road--and in the evening when we're eating dinner the pink literally glows out into the dusk. Neighbors can't help but slow down and gawk at us while they drive by.

We've had paint chips sitting on the desk for a while now, and we've decided to ask Keith's dad to bring us the wallpaper remover next time we see him. So we're hoping to get started on this very soon--if not this weekend, then the next. Ideally, I would like to have everything done by the end of September so we can have friends over for a Michaelmas goose. :)

I imagine that the layout will stay the same for now. It's very bits-and-pieces; furniture that doesn't have a home anywhere else lives in here. Someday I'd like to get a used buffet or china cabinet and refinish it. After we paint, I'm hoping to hang some sort of shelving for my teacups, and put a little more thought into what goes on the walls and where.

Keith really dislikes our chandeliers (we also have one in the living room), so we're going to be taking this one down and replacing it with a drum-shade pendant. Eventually we'll replace the sconces too, or else just get rid of them. And then there's this switch plate. 

It's pretty, but very ... feminine, for a house full of boys. ;) And it really doesn't go with the wallpaper at all ... bronze with pink?

Eventually I think we also need to do something more substantial about the windows, but I'm not sure what. We like the natural light and truthfully, I'm not that concerned about privacy since we live on a very quiet street. But they just look kind of under-dressed, don't they? Or am I overanalyzing? The curtains are from Ikea--inexpensive and very pretty.

Michael has his own little corner. :) Both chairs are cracked from adult men sitting on them, but he doesn't seem to mind!

Bedroom Tour (with a little before/after)

In the past few days I've really buckled down and tried to get the twins on a semi-consistent routine. The main goal that being their (sometimes quite short) naps overlap, at least a little. And so far it hasn't been too bad! Some successes, some failures ... but right now I have a kettle on for some chai, a slice of pear-cardamom upside-down cake awaiting the tea, and this blog post open on my computer screen. And all three boys are SLEEPING.

(I'm sure one of them will wake up before the tea is finished brewing. But that's okay! Just ten minutes is enough to make me feel a little more grounded.)

Right now Gregory sleeps in a pack'n'play in our closet. Because I am scared of what will happen if I try to put them down in the same room together. One step at a time.

It's a step above having him in a pack'n'play in our bedroom ... and two steps above him sleeping on our bed, although that's where both babies end up eventually. (They've also started falling off the edge in the wee hours of the morning. :( Time to back off on the bedsharing. Luckily our bed is less than a foot off the ground.)

Anyway. Our closet is pretty awesome. It's a walk-in with plenty of space (and a window, artfully covered by a thick blanket so that Gregory will actually sleep in there). In fact, we have a another (regular sized) closet just across from this one ... I think our bedroom has more storage space than any other room in the house.

Our bedroom was the first and biggest project we tackled in this house. It was a partially finished attic that was used as a bedroom by the previous owner, but ... it was in pretty bad shape. We finished it a week before the twins were born. (And then I couldn't sleep there for four weeks because of the c-section ... and since then the babies have shared it with us to varying degrees!)

Before

The flooring was this weird white vinyl stuff, and the wallpaper was not exactly our style. I don't know how well you can see it, but the previous owner cut individual plates out of the wallpaper and pasted them to the (also wallpapered) ceiling.

Long story short, we had a LOT of wallpaper to take down. We even bought a wall-paper remover ... we figured it was a good investment since there's wall-paper to take down in every room but the living room and the basement! (And even in the living room it looks like some previous wallpaper was painted over, so hopefully that won't become an issue.)

Removing wallpaper from the ceiling is a PAIN.

We also had to replace one of the walls (you can see the plaster in the first "before" picture), and of course paint. (So imagine me hugely pregnant wearing clothes that don't fit painting the ceiling. Or maybe don't. It's not too flattering a picture.) We also got new carpeting and were paranoid of dripping paint on it ... probably should've saved that step for last!

But the results were very worth it. I love this room; it's one of my favorite places in the house. 

Ta-da!

Doesn't the quilt complement the colors of our bedroom perfectly? It makes me happy. :) The Moroccan wedding rug that Keith's friend gave us for our wedding is at the foot of the bed, and a print given to us by friends of Mary and Joseph's wedding (left of the window). I'd like to get a side table of some sort for Keith's side of the bed, perhaps two matching ones ... we'll see! The doors on the right open to a little cupboard where I keep our sheets and a few other things. 

 The Sacred and Immaculate Heart statues on our windowsill belonged to my grandma. And the curtains in the room were made by my great-grandma Ivy, who passed away when I was 8 or 10. She traced the pattern onto the linen, embroidered the flowers, and sewed the curtains. I think she copied the flowers from an illustration in one of the Little House books. They are a bit worn in some places; I need to have them repaired soon.

Our little alcove. The windowseat opens to more storage, and the door to the left leads to a crawlspace under the eaves. I admit I am kind of terrified of the idea of the boys falling out of this window, so I never ever open it. 

Cat doorstops my husband gave me when we were dating. :) I told him a story about sleeping in a bed and breakfast when I was a very little girl. The lady who owned it had these stuffed cats that served as doorstops, and I took one to bed with me. (I also remember waking up that night to a terrifying noise; when I shook my mom awake she told me it was just Dad snoring.) These cats migrate a lot because Michael likes to come upstairs in the morning and play with them.

View from the bed. (Except normally Keith has clothes piled on top of his dresser ... sometimes up to the ceiling. I staged an intervention before taking these photos. ;) ) The alcove is to the left. Our walk-in closet is just left of the doorway, with the other closet opposite. If you look, you can see we still have that wallpaper above the stairs. 

I found you Mama!

And Gregory just now woke up! How providential. :)

Ours

Oh look, I'm posting again! I feel a little bit like a blabber-mouth--ten posts in ten days!!

I was reading Bits & Pieces at Like Mother, Like Daughter and this bit really spoke to me:

We home-makers have to train our eye. Our home needs to be more than decorated. We can't really just aspire to decoration and leave it at that. Even the lowliest abode calls out to be made beautiful according to the tastes of the denizens. (Remember Ma's china shepherdess?) But that's not as easy as it sounds! I've found that I've had to study hard to know what our taste really is, and then work hard to try to make it come true within our means. Often my choices have been off the mark, but mistakes are part of the journey. I just keep reading books, magazines, and sites, trying to look past what is merely fashionable (or marketable) to what truly expresses my desire to bring humble beauty into our lives. 

This week I discovered Spoonflower and have been drooling over fabric for the twins' nursery. Serious nesting mode happening over here. I know myself well enough to know that, between moving and Michael and, well, my habits of procrastination, I will never quite create the picture-perfect nursery in my head.

But in general, what with house-hunting and new babies on the way, I've been thinking a lot lately about feathering my nest and making things pretty. One house in particular that we've looked at keeps popping up in my head, and I find myself redecorating it in my mind. (And believe me, it really needs redecoration!) This morning, while Michael and Keith both napped, I was making my coffee and looking at the plants on my kitchen counter.

I kill plants with good intentions; Keith loves them, and they love him back. But there are only so many windows in this apartment where they can survive and thrive. One of these is in the kitchen. I have made Keith promise that there will be no plants on surfaces for food preparation in our new home. I don't like having to clean up dirt before cooking food.

Anyway, I was looking at those plants and suddenly my whole vision of our (potential) new living room shifted. There would be plants. In every window. I hadn't even thought of it, because left to my own devices, they wouldn't be there. (I had a rose plant in my apartment when I lived on my own; that's it.) Lovely floral curtains, cushions on the couches, an upright piano--yes, these would all be in my home.

But in our home, there are plants. Always. Without them, a place would not be ours, would not be home.

And that thought makes me happy.

Holy Shamoly ...

I got 59 hits over here today! Which is ... not a lot in the scheme of things, but you know, it's the most my little blog's ever gotten in one day. My readership is small but dependable, and then there's Twitter and the magic of tags. So--wootness. :)

As for this even littler blog, it is still going through a process of self-discovery. I have been reading too many design blogs lately, and so sometimes it asks to be that. That's when I remind it that I know nothing about design, am not remotely artistic or crafty--at least not in a successful way--and can't live up to its dreams.

...

That being said, I have measured Keith's couch for a slipcover. It currently lives in my apartment, and it is a very masculine shade of charcoal grey. Needless to say it will be getting in touch with its feminine side in the not-too-distant future.

I have also started my toilet paper wall art venture--so there will be a post on that soon.

I get so carried away with plans of redecorating that I forget I have a new roommate moving in less than two weeks from now, and she may, in fact, have something to say about how the apartment looks.

TPing the Apartment

My roommate is getting married in a few weeks (!!), which means that the furniture situation here will be changing. All I own is a kitchen table and four rickety chairs painted a pretty shade of indigo. The rest--couch, chair, television, etc--is hers.

I did buy an armchair at an estate auction (a story unto itself), and I may even be able to keep the couch for the next year. She and her husband-to-be aren't moving very far away, and they don't have room for it. Or, I can take one of my boyfriend's couches for the time being, neither of which fit into his new place.

Either way, I will have the place to myself for a month before the new roomie moves in, and I find that I'm in re-decorating mode. I've been wasting inordinate amounts of time on sites like Apartment Therapy and Design*Sponge, keeping my eyes peeled for local estate sales, looking for bookshelves on Craig's list, and saving toilet paper rolls.

Well, one toilet paper roll. My roommate threw the last one out, so I have to keep an eye on the tp and make sure that I'm the one to use the last square; I am not in favor of digging things out of the bathroom trash. But ever since stumbling across the Design*Sponge tutorial for making toilet paper roll wall art, I've been excited about this project.

I can sense your skepticism. Keith was doubtful too, until I showed him Cool Pictures From The Internet.

The fact that you can paint it all sorts of lovely colors as opposed to leaving it a weird shade of cardboard made him admit it wasn't a completely ridiculous idea, although I think he still has his doubts. Perhaps calling it wall art is a bit overblown.

But I did find some real art while googling for inspiration pictures. Check out these trees from artist Yuken Teruya. Or the scenes crafted by Anastassia Elias.



I'll need to use more toilet paper before I can attempt this, but when the time comes I'll share my own success (or failure) here.