File Power

It might seem crazy to spend time making over a file cabinet that no one outside of your family will see, but I think there’s definitely a lot of happiness to be gained by beautifying a space that you use and …

Window Dressing

Here’s another long overdue post!  We now have curtains on our windows upstairs! Okay, so technically we’ve had some curtains up there ever since we had our first guests stay with us a few weeks after we moved in: And …

Hanging with Billy

I’ve mentioned before that one of our struggles with settling into the new house was that all our bookcases were left behind at our condo as part of the sale and thus we’ve had no place to unpack our books.  We were reluctant to buy new bookcases too soon because we didn’t want to rush into any decisions and we didn’t want to overspend.  So although we thought finding bookcases would be a project we’d put off for awhile, we couldn’t stand all the boxes all around so we decided we had better figure out a solution sooner rather than later!

After lots of measuring and brainstorming, we decided to add bookcases around this window in the family room upstairs:

After we made that choice in placement it seemed obvious that that would be the best place to put bookcases, but interestingly neither of us thought of this arrangement until we were in the space.  We wanted to maximize our bookshelf space but minimize cost, so naturally we turned to IKEA.  After extensive measuring and some soul-searching we decided to go with four Billy bookcases – two regular and two narrower ones.  I was hesitant at first to go the Billy route since they are some of the least expensive bookcases available and they can tend to look cheap, but they really were the best fit for the space.  Plus, I’ve also seen some other bloggers do some fabulous things with making Billy look more built-in that I could attempt at some point in the future, like this one from Centsational Girl:

From: Censational Girl http://www.centsationalgirl.com/2011/11/from-billys-to-built-ins/

So it was back to IKEA for us (okay, actually this time DH went with my sister, so the ‘us’ here is really ‘them’).  DH was really excited about the project and set to work putting all of the bookshelves together himself and within a few days we had our Billys up and ready for books!

After the first bookshelf was put together I suggested we leave the backs off of the shelves to allow the paint color from the room to show through (you can see the bookcase on the far left in the picture actually still has the white back on it…).  I love the look so much!  It keeps things feeling a bit airier which I think is probably good if I’m adding four new pieces of furniture to the space!  

We still have a ways to go with the room, but we’re at least excited to be able to unpack those boxes onto the shelves and make way for a sofa!  Progress!

Cheers,

G

Magic carpet

Things are really happening at the new house these days.  In addition to the renovations in the kitchen/dining room, we’re having the roof replaced, and we finally had the carpet installed in our “everything” room!  Recall that the original space had old unevenly faded yellow carpet and beige walls:

Once we finally got our hands on the space we got to painting it a nice light blue and ripped out the icky old carpet:

We selected a light neutral beige carpet to keep with the light and airy feel of this light-filled second floor room.  We had to wait a little while to actually have it installed though because of all the other work going on downstairs.  But the wait is over, and now we are thrilled with our newly carpeted family room/guest room/office/playroom space!

Of course there’s still plenty to to (especially noticeable is that we still need baseboards, but those will go in soon!).  I’m also excited to get my hands on that yellow light fixture and give it a good coat of spray paint.  But it is just nice to have room where Sydney can run around without too many things she’s not supposed to touch as is the case on the main floor where most of the reno is happening.  Plus the carpet feels super nice on our feet and we’ve all taken to just plopping down on the floor for some impromptu play time.  The nice thing too is that now that the carpet is in, there aren’t any really major things that remain to do in the room so we can start to move stuff into the space now.  Even though we don’t plan to move for another month or so, it will be really nice to have a room that is more finished that we can hang out it while we finish moving in downstairs.  

Cheers,

G

Pleasant surprise in the everything room!

I recently posted about how our plans for our upstairs “everything” room (office, playroom, family room, guest room) are taking shape and shared our inspiration mood boards for both the office/family/guest space:

and the playroom:

Like all major projects these things always seem to take longer than we expect; so far we’ve been able to schedule the carpet installation and that’s pretty much it.  DH and I went to the house over the weekend with Sydney in tow determined to at least do something to move the project along since we had a non-busy weekend for once and didn’t want to waste it!  So we set to work on washing all the walls so we could get them ready for paint job.  Unfortunately the toddler among us lost interest pretty quickly.  So, after naptime, we decided to divide and conquer: I took Sydney to a play group and DH headed back to the house to do the spackling and sanding.  So imagine my surprise when I returned to find this!

And this!

Apparently without a toddler in tow things move much more quickly!  DH was able to do all the spackling, sanding, and actually start on the painting!  How nice to finally see some real changes to this space that we just know has potential!  Can you see the potential in this photo from the original listing?

It was hard to look past the crazy assortment of furniture for sure, but we’re confident that when we’re done with the space it will feel like home.  Already just getting some color on the walls helps it feel more “us” and definitely makes it way more home-y!   We still plan to paint the trim around the windows and doors but probably won’t tackle that quite yet.  I need to read a few more tutorials first!

I’ll be sure to post more pics soon once we get more painting done!

Cheers,

G

50 shades of beige

Is it too soon to make another 50 Shades of Gray joke?  I haven’t even read the book but, from what I’ve heard, this post is about as opposite the content of that volume as possible.  The topic of this post?  Carpet for our huge upstairs room that we’re planning to turn into a family room/playroom/loft/guest room.   Perhaps a room that will serve all those functions is a bit ambitious?  We’ll see!  The room is still coming together in my head since we of course haven’t even moved in yet.  But we do know that we want some new carpet to replace the unevenly faded and universally icky yellow carpet that is all over the space now:

Here’s a picture of the carpet in the area we’re planning to turn into a playroom:

A few people have asked why we’re not installing hardwood.  Although we love hardwood and are going to have hardwoods on the entire main floor, this room is going to be a play space and having carpet will help be an extra sound barrier–I’m not that interested in hearing the sound of a box of duplos being dumped on a hardwood floor (I have that now and trust me, it is cacophonous!).  So we’re going the carpet route and really, I think it will be a nice change.  Sydney loves to climb on us and jump around so we’ll be happy for some extra padding to help ward off “owies.”

DH and I have done a bit of research and have decided to use Home Depot for the install since we’ve read good things online and we’re going for something pretty basic.  We’re looking for a medium pile carpet with a bit of shagginess to it in a greige (gray-beige) color.   We brought home a bunch of samples and spent last night pouring over them:

And really, picking out neutral carpet has got to be one of the most boring design activities ever.  But it had to be done.  Several were too dark, a few too light, and a few too expensive.  Finally, we landed on this one:

Today we had Home Depot come out and measure and we’re hoping to get the carpet installed in the next couple of weeks so that we can get started on putting this room together.  We anticipate we’ll spend a fair amount of time in this room, especially there will still be work to do on our living space downstairs once the kitchen is complete!

Cheers,

G

Finding space: hallway bookcases

Like many people not on the e-reader bandwagon yet, DH and I have a lot of books.  In addition to being a graduate student, DH is also just a avid reader in general.  So we have lots of books–or at least it feels like a lot in our tiny 2-bedroom.  I wanted to share one of my favorite past projects, which we completed several years ago, that helped us turn unused space into storage for our large-ish library: hallway bookcases!

I’ve always loved built-ins for their beauty and ability to fit exactly into a space, so when the idea came to me to turn our regular boring hallway into a wall of bookshelves, I was very excited.  Here’s the hall we were dealing with when we first moved in:

At first I thought we would do floor to ceiling shelves because I thought that would maximize the space best.  However, once we measured everything out, we realized that the hall was not especially wide, and we were worried about being able to eventually move furniture out.  Plus, we thought it might feel a bit imposing to have gigantically tall bookcases in a short hallway.

We had to keep a few things in mind when figuring out this project.  We wanted to make sure that the built-ins didn’t feel out of place or too imposing, and we needed to make sure we could still easily open the closet door still.  I was a little worried that my dream wouldn’t be able to become reality, but after measuring and re-measuring, we figured out that we could do a very narrow set of bookcases (just a bit deeper than paperback size) and still open the door–and as long as we kept it just above waist height, we decided it wouldn’t feel too closed-in.

We had a local bookshelf builder custom-build and install the bookcases.  It actually cost less than we thought it would–and we saved money by doing all the painting ourselves (just like with the nursery built-ins).  Here’s what they looked after they were installed, but before we got to priming and painting them:

We painted them white to match the trim in the rest of the house, and painted the backs of the bookcases the same color as the wall to help them recede even more.  Once they were painted, we were able to load them up with all kinds of books and other things (things that aren’t too deep, that is!).  We’ve been really pleased ever since they went in.  I took this pic just the other day:

Not only do they store tons of books, but the lovely top gives us a bit of horizontal space to set things on.  We try to keep it clear, but from time to time it is helpful to have the space as a place to sort mail or hold things temporarily until they get put back in their proper place.

Thanks checking out one of my favorite space-finding projects to date!  What do you think?  Have you ever tried something similar? Do you also crave built-ins everywhere in your home?

Back to the old chair…

I could barely contain my excitement when, several months back, I found the perfect new desk chair for our then-new office space in our living room.  Here she is:

And while she still is lovely (that beautiful nail-head trim!) we have found that sometimes a beautiful chair can be…not so comfy.  I didn’t realize how not comfy this chair was until I started work again.  I’m working from home one day a week, and I quickly discovered that this beauty is not meant to support a full day of computer work.  I was very disappointed when I finally admitted this to DH.  He agreed completely that this chair was great for short jaunts at the computer but was definitely not for longer stints–he had just been afraid to say anything to me because he knew how much I loved this chair!

We finally decided that it just wasn’t worth it to keep trying to work from an uncomfortable chair, so we trekked down to our storage unit and somehow magically managed to extract one of the IKEA chairs that we had in our old office.  Before the fancy new nail-head trim chair, we had this one:

And as you can see, we’re back to the same old trusty, comfy, chair–although this chair now matches our new armchair (which replaced the chair lounge) much better:

So now I’m determined to find a new home for the desk chair cast-off.  DH and I still think she is a lovely chair, so we’re hopeful to find her a good home somewhere else in this tiny 2bedroom–a home that doesn’t require any long-term sitting!  Although this does feel like a step backwards, this is how homes evolve, right?

Have you done and desk chair swapping recently?  What style do you prefer?  Fancy office-y looking one?  Something uber-modern?  Or does it not matter as long as it is comfortable?

I have CDs coming out my ears

One of the biggest challenges I’ve face in living in such a small space is my DH’s collection of CDs.  Now I know many an unclutterer fan who would suggest that we simply do away with any physical music storage (how outdated of us to still have CDs!) and convert completely to digital music, but my DH insists that this is unacceptable, as the packaging of a CD is integral to the complete understanding and appreciation of the album as a whole.  (Interestingly, I believe his entire collection is also digitalized on his exernal hard drive–he mainly actually listens to music via computer or ipod (or ipod connected to a stereo–but insists that maintaining the precious jewel case and jacket is very important.)

So you may wonder why I’d even call this an issue and think “how hard can it be to store some old CDs somewhere?”  Sure, most people still have some CDs hanging around that they can’t seem to part with.  But this is different, once you understand the volume I’m dealing with.  I have never actually counted the collection myself, but my DH estimated, when I last asked, that his collection had grown to around 2,500 CDs.  Seriously.  Try to imagine that.  I think in his perfect world he’d have a room entirely devoted to music listening and storage–walls lined with CD-sized shelving where he could have his beloved collection perfectly inventoried by genre and arranged alphabetically by artist.  For me, however, this brings up horrible images of mid-90s bachelor pad in my head–definitely not a serene space where the two of us could co-exist!  Yet, I understand his need to have his collection at least somewhat accessible, especially those related to his blogging.

So, one of my realities is that I have CDs stuffed into every corner of my home–the vast majority of which are fairly cleverly hidden.  Many are in CD boxes on bookshelves amongst the books.  Some are under our sofa (no one has any idea when they are visiting!).  Most of the ones that we both enjoy listening to (i.e. primarily the non-metal portion of the collection) are near our other media storage in our living room, again in boxes.   Many, however, were in CD towers in a closet, the door to which was behind a sofa.  My DH asked several times why we couldn’t have them displayed more prominently so that they could be more accessible to him (to his credit, they are all painstakingly organized) when he wanted to find a specific item.  Thus, we came up with the following compromise/solution.  We purchased a nice-looking, non-bachelor-pad-esque CD storage shelf from HomeDecorators.com that fit 1,000 CDs.  No, this doesn’t fit all of them, but it DOES fit a substantial chunk.  And rather than have them all displayed for all to see, I cleverly hid them by extending the curtain rod in the office and adding another set of curtains.

Here’s what it looks like (look familiar??  maybe from the top of this blog??) to our guests:

And here’s how this looks to DH, when he’s searching for one of his treasures:

Pretty great, right?  I don’t have to look at them, but DH totally can.  I think he’s been pretty pleased with the system, although agian, it doesn’t cover the whole collection unfortunately.  Perhaps if we had found a unit that went to the ceiling it would have been an even better solution, but even with this height it was hard to actually hide it without sticking out behind the curtain in an obvious way.

What solutions do have you come up with for storing CDs?