All posts in Decor

A Magic Carpet!!

by readmakedo on December 7, 2012 in Before and After, Decor, Design, Home, Livng Room with No comments

[Note: Sorry for the hiatus! Turns out that a month of every birthday ever + Thanksgiving = Very little free time! Lots of fun projects to share with you though. For starters...]

We are pretty pumped.

Why are we so pumped? I’ll give you another hint.

YUP. After living here for a year, we bit the bullet and bought a new rug. You know how you’re supposed to “Go big or go home”? Well what do you do if you’re trying to go big AT home? I guess you go really big. Like, 9 feet by 12 feet big. That’s pretty dang big.

“Hey weirdo, why are you so excited about a rug?” you might be asking. I have a 2 part answer for you.

1) You’ve obviously never seen Aladdin.

2) You’ve never struggled with carpet shopping.

Our old rug was one that I had came to after a series of poor choices. It was a jute, 5×7 rug from World Market that was mostly intended to be indestructible. I had purchased the jute rug to replace another rug, after I learned that black dog hair + white shag rug = THE WORST DECISION YOU COULD EVER MAKE. I bought the jute rug as a sign of resignation. I had given up the dream that I could ever own anything beautiful, sighing softly to my two black dogs and saying “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

When we moved into our new house, I decided to put the jute rug in the highest traffic area, since I knew it would see a lot of Schipperke wrastlin’ (for adorable footage of my dogs wrestling and being BFF’s, you’d better click here). I also put it there, because I simply had no better place to put it.

The main problem with the rug was that it was too small for the room. I’ve talked about before how the biggest problem with our living room is it’s one big long hallway. In some ways, having your living room right next to your dining room is fun, but in other ways sometimes you feel like you’re just hanging out in your dining room. And that’s weird, right?

“Hey living room, how you living?”
“Oh hey there dining room.”

I googled lots of random phrases in the past like “How to make your living room not so lame” or “How to deal with living in a bowling alley”, and found a lot of great advice about how to deal with making a non-room feel like a room (especially this article from Houzz, super helpful). And that answer 90% of the time had to do with establishing a sense of place with the right size rug. (The other 10% had to do with finding furniture that broke up the flow of the room, which we did by buying our new sofa with a chaise).

In order to get a rug to truly “fit” a room, it should be large enough to extend under all or most of the furniture in the room. Uh, unless we lived in a 5×7 room, our poor little jute rug wasn’t going to do that. Sorry, bro. So we looked and looked, and finally found this 9×12 beauty on Overstock.com for about half of what a normally priced rug would cost. AFFORDABLE!

So after I dragged a 97 lb rug into my house all by myself (LIKE A BOSS), we unrolled that bad boy, lifted up all the furniture (it was a lot a lot a lot of work), and got it in there.

JERRGGGGGGGGG. That was the noise I made while we positioned everything. Seriously, do you realize how hard it is to move a rug this big????

After I caught my breath, I managed to put everything back and then that’s when some angels came down from on high and sang to me as a heavenly choir. They were all:

HALLELUJAH.

HALLELUJAH. HALLELUJAH. HA—LE—-LU—-JAAHHHH.

We had a party last weekend too (that you will hear about in the future), and people totally were all hanging out by the fireplace in the living room, dogs were chilling on the floor, it was a comfortable place to be. Also, does this rug look familiar to you? That’s because we totally have its friend rug in the office!

BOOM. Check out that Moroccan motif throughout our house!!

LET’S RECAP why this rug is so awesome!

1. It makes the room feel more like a real room, and not like a bowling alley.

2. I can go sock-free on it and still have cozy toezies.

3. It’s super beautiful.

4. Potentially magical qualities.

5. It visually creates a flow between the living room, dining room and office, while still separating each space.

So that’s why I’m so excited about a rug. Now go forth, and be excited about rugs too.

Sofa City: Large & In Charge

by readmakedo on September 18, 2012 in Before and After, Decor, Livng Room with No comments

Well, that arrived way faster than I thought it would.

A little while back, I wrote about how our Ethan Allen sofa just wasn’t cutting it for us anymore. Sad, but true. While the sofa remains one of the prettiest pieces of furniture I’ve owned, we realized that it wasn’t doing much for our long ~~bowling-alley~~ living room. So we did our research and ultimately decided on the PB Basic sectional from Pottery Barn, in a linen. We were torn between the linen or the brushed canvas, and ultimately went with our gut and picked the linen. It’s so flipping pretty too, it was totally worth it. Our biggest concern with the linen was that it wasn’t going to hold up against Skipper’s bear nails, but the dogs don’t come on the sofa anyway, unless they are invited by a human and there is a blanket for them.

BEAR CLAWS. ON A DOG.

It’s worth mentioning, any time I buy a new piece of furniture, especially if it’s custom furniture (you can’t take it back!), I pretty much always cry. I go through this weird buyer’s remorse thing: What did I do??? Why did I get rid of my old [WHATEVER], it still worked!

This time I ALMOST did that. But I was distracted by something else: I had never measured that we could actually get the furniture into the house.

Ruh roh.

Our Ethan Allen sofa BARELY fit in when we moved in, and even still we had to take it through the garage, then into the kitchen, then into the living room, because it wouldn’t make it through the front door. Now I was thinking “This sofa is longer than the old one….if we couldn’t get the old, smaller sofa in, what are we going to do??”. I would lay awake in bed at night, worrying about it. I tried measuring, but since it’s a 3D object, I had no idea as to what that was going to mean for fitting it through a doorway. Jason suggested we consider researching removing the sliding glass door in the backyard, and fitting it through there. I imagined a worst case scenario, where we couldn’t fit the sofa in through the garage or the back door, so we would be forced to leave the new sofa in the garage until we eventually do a kitchen model in 5+ years.

The delivery guys showed up, and I immediately explained how worried we were the sofa wasn’t going to fit through the front door. The guy kind of scrunched up his nose at me and was like “Seriously? No, it will be fine.” Turns out, the sofa was a true sectional, and came in two pieces. They came in through the front door, and the delivery took less than 5 minutes. So much for all that worrying!

At first my feeling towards the sofa wasn’t tears (like my normal reaction), but just: “Oh. Is that it? Huh.”

The sofa didn’t look much larger in our space than the previous one had. I wondered if the whole thing had been worth it. If all this pointless worrying, the expense, and going through having to consign our original perfectly good sofa was even worth it. I didn’t feel like I wanted to cry, I just felt nothing.

Then I sat down on it.

HEAAAAAAAVEN.

It got better still: We had a party over the weekend, for 6 people total. In the past, no one ever sat in our living room unless they were watching TV. Now, we comfortably sat everyone, and we had an awesome conversation flow while we played a game. That had never happened before with our old sofa!! The old sofa only could fit about 4 people on it, we discovered you could fit 7 (or maybe 8!) on the new one!

We still need to jazz up the new sofa with some throw pillows, and steam the slipcovers so all the wrinkles come out. We want the room to feel a little more relaxed than it previously did, but still classy. It just comes down to finding the right accessories (Case in point: the giant metal coffee table/storage ottoman we got from World Market). So far, so good!

And as for our old sofa? We’re consigning it. Let me know if you’re interested in it, it’s a great piece of furniture that still has a lot of good years in it, we want it to find a great home!

Now if you’ll excuse me, the sofa beckons.

Picture Perfect

by readmakedo on September 11, 2012 in Decor, DIY, Kitchen with 13 Comments

All this for under 100 bones? Yep.

Let me explain: Our kitchen wall has needed some love. It’s been bare-bones empty for a few months, but I’ve been having a hard time thinking of something great to hang on it + wall art is typically not cheap.

Really, the only changes it has seen since we’ve lived here are the addition of a dog door (the dog door seriously deserves a post all its own, it’s so cool), and it was our paint-swatch area for a few weeks while we decided on an interior paint color:

(I still can’t believe how far we’ve come, geez!). After the wall was painted, it just kind of sat there for a few months.

Yes, me and my blank wall were perfectly fine with one another. That is, until I was shopping at Ellington & French in Berkeley and stumbled upon this calendar.

Words. Cannot. Express.

My feelings for this calendar : Everyone’s Feelings for Ryan Gosling :: SRSLY THIS CALENDAR : THE RYAN GOSLING OF CALENDARS. (That’s how analogies work, right? It’s been a long time since I took the SAT…)

I fell in love with this calendar from the moment I saw it. I’d been to FIVE of the twelve featured cities! Four of them I’d been to TWICE.

But now you’re thinking uhh Kate, you can’t just hang that one calendar in the middle of your wall and expect it to fill up the whole space, right?

Of course not. Also, since the world is ending in 2012, I figure I need to use this calendar before 2013, doi.

That is why I went to IKEA and bought some white frames + pre-cut mats for $10 each.

See where I’m going with this?

Luckily, these cutie prints fit pretty much perfectly in the pre-cut IKEA mats. Dope.

All I had to do was take a straightedge ruler, x-acto knife, and trim the prints down, then (using acid-free tape) tape them into place. Easy peasy.

I took measurements of the wall, frames, roughly how much space I wanted them to take up, and then sketched out where I wanted everything to go.

Then, I made my measurements on the wall and taped the paper from inside the frames to the wall.

I used the pieces of paper as guides, and would hammer in nails over them, as guides. Cakewalk.

So here’s how the price broke down:

$26 for the calendar
$10 per frame ($60 for 6 frames)

For a grand total of $86. Not bad at all, considering most framed wall art can easily go for that much PER picture. And the result?

Now I guess Jason and I will have to go to Rio, since that’s the only city on the wall I’ve never been to!

I’m super happy with the way this turned out, it’s just enough to visually hold up against the big wall, but not too busy. Plus it’s nice that the artwork has some personal meaning to me, and to Jason too (since we went to Paris and London on our honeymoon). Hooray!!

Work with What You Got

by readmakedo on August 28, 2012 in Before and After, Decor, Home, Landscaping with No comments

Or: Love the One Your With?

As you all know, our patio was brought to it’s glorious fruition last week. I am still really pumped about it, you have no idea how awesome it feels to be able to walk outside and walk around in my backyard without tripping over re-bar, or getting a weird pebble in my shoe.

So now that the patio is done, it’s time to (Step one) figure out furnishings, and (Step two) start getting stuff planted!

We already had a few furnishings from my old patio. We had our boneyard of old wrought iron furnishings in the side yard (a.k.a world’s largest spider habitat)….

freaking. terrifying.

…and this bench from Cost Plus, pictured here in my old backyard.

Yeah I was outside painting one day. My old backyard was awesome like that.

I previously had re-painted and spruced up some select pieces from our backyard, and mixed those in with some unpainted, mismatched chairs we had (you can also see them all in the photo above).

[Side note: See those unplanted Oleander trees in the waay back of the yard? We've got a big plan for those! But that will have to wait for another post.]

Next, I found a home for my lovely bench along a previously very blank wall.

“I ain’t going over there.” – Skipper

Lookin’ good, bench!

Now we just have to take care of that creepy tree branch that continues to encroach upon our walking space in our yard. At first, we felt like it was a welcome, quirky addition to our space, but it is no longer welcome. Apparently, spiders are not limited to living in our side yard only, and I’ve had too many spider + my mouth close calls (I thought the only way you could swallow a spider on accident was in your sleep? Isn’t that the agreement we have with spiders? No? Ok then).

So we’ve still got a ways to go on our backyard, but it’s nice to see it coming together even more. Now I’m just crossing my fingers for an Indian Summer in October so I can have a pool party for my friend Carrie‘s visit.

PATIO PARTYTIME

by readmakedo on August 21, 2012 in Decor, Home, Uncategorized with 4 Comments

Perhaps my ALL CAPS title for this post conveys that I AM REALLY EXCITED.

At long last, after 9+ months of waiting, our patio is DONE.

OMG, TEARS. Give me a moment.

We went from this….

To this….

CAN I GET AN AMEN???

Yeah. To recap, we tore out the original patio within a few months of living here. We were able to throw one party with the old patio (Jason’s 28th birthday party, to be exact), and then it was removed. Now we are ready to party again in time for Jason’s 29th birthday next month! So yeah, it’s been a long project.

The original patio needed to be torn out because of drainage issues, and french drains needed to be dug all around the house. Then winter hit, and we decided to take a break from the patio until the Spring.

We original thought (and perhaps jinxed ourselves) “Oh it will be done in the end of May…” but then we realized there was an opportunity to fix some aging pool pipes. Then a month later, we realized we should take the opportunity to lay new electrical for the pool. Then we realized we should address how we were going to re-attach the patio cover that already was installed on the house (uhh, we’re still working on that). By the end of July, the patio cement was poured, but then the brick needed to be laid, fitted and mortared.

Well now almost a year later, we have the most awesome backyard I could have ever hoped for. We are so pumped about it. So let me show you around!

Our cement patio/pool deck now flows beautifully with our all-brick patio.

It is was definitely worth the wait. And we still have a little bit of Summer left to enjoy it!

I’M MORE PUMPED THAN THESE POOL TOYS! Well, see ya poolside!

(P.S. Shamu was a wedding gift from my beloved friend Heather. I’d say that earns her an invite to a pool party, ASAP.)

A Dog Doormat…for People

by readmakedo on August 16, 2012 in Decor, Design, DIY with 2 Comments

Added to my short list of obsessions, after Cake, Smores and Tom Hanks, are our beloved dogs. They are often times a little evil, and have toots that smell like god knows what, but they are a part of our family and really make our house feel like a home. Which is precisely why I wanted to spruce up our ~~almost done please don’t jinx it~~ back patio with their likeliness!

We’ve got this awesome brick back step now off our back door (such an improvement from the super shady piece of plywood that we have been using for the past 6-8 months), and I was pumped to show it off.

First step was easy, I bought this plain, blank doormat.

Next, I drew a picture of one of my dogs. I chose Skipper, because he’s got a really cute silhouette. I like how he stands with his feet pointed out and his tail in the air.

I had him model for me, of course. Nice work, Skip!

Next, I transferred the drawing using tracing paper onto some tag-board, and then cut out a stencil from it. In order to make the transfer, I traced the original image on one side, then flipped it over and traced the reverse to add a layer of graphite, then flipped the image over a third time, placed the drawing over the desired area on my tag-board, and re-traced the original side. That creates a positive image of the transfer. A simple trick, but I remember when I found that out in high school (I was maybe a little late to the game) I was pretty amazed.

After cutting out my stencil with an X-Acto Knife, I placed my stencil on the area I wanted to spray paint. I picked a kind of off-left look, because I like asymmetry. Plus I didn’t want people standing on poor Skipper’s face all the time, he deserves better.

I blocked off the areas I didn’t want to get any overspray on (classy technique, using garbage bags!)…

…gave it a good spray…..

How come you didn’t use my picture, mommy? – Leo
Oh Leo, it’s because you’re too beautiful, it’s like staring into the sun.

And voila! Doormat!

I might still make one in the future that has both doggies, but I liked keeping it simple for now and not overwhelming the patio decor too much. Plus, I didn’t want to seem like the dog-equivalent of a crazy cat lady.

What would you put on your dream doormat? Dogs? Or am I the only one?

Chair Faire

by readmakedo on July 19, 2012 in Decor, Design, Home, Livng Room with 3 Comments

There is probably nothing better than a statement chair. If there were a chair expo, or as I would call it, a “Chair Faire” I would be first in line, laminated pass, ready for all 3 days. We recently took the plunge and committed to buying a new sofa for our living room (we are consigning/selling our current Ethan Allen one, comment below if you are interested!), which has me thinking a LOT about what kind of chair would be the perfect compliment to it. While these chairs are out of my budget, it gives me great ideas for potential to look for in the future.

So, admission free, here’s your ticket to the Chair Faire.

1. Louis XIV would be jealous. (From The Bella Cottage) The gold leafing and antique woodwork on this chair are insane. What I love about it though is that the details and opulence are balanced out with a soft, understated white upholstery. Classy.

2 & 3. Pretty & Prettier in Pink. (No. 2 from pbteen and No. 3 From Furbish Studio) The pink stripes are a fresh take on grandma’s dining room set, but the ultra-modern string print on chair #3 takes this look to a whole new level.

4. Cross My Heart… (Painted Bias Armchair From Anthropologie) …and hope to die over this chair. The gold leafing is like nothing I have ever seen, I am mesmerized by it.

5. Paisley Please! (Suzani Print Button Back Armchair from Graham and Green – UK) YOU GUYS. I AM SWEATING. I AM SWEATING OVER THIS CHAIR. AND THE OTTOMAN? WHAAAAAAAAAAT?!! Yes. Yes please, I will take them all, thank you <3

6. Double Trouble. (Unknown origin, via decorpad) Maybe it’s because my second favorite movie is the Shining, but there is something really special about two of a kind! Wait, that wasn’t the point of those twins in the Shining? Wait they were DEAD? Whoa totally missed the point of that movie. ANYWAYS, I love a good pairing and these two are just too cute. I’d want to keep them forever, and ever, and ever.

Got a favorite dream chair? Share it in the comments! Let’s get this chair faire going.

Wrought Iron REVAMP

by readmakedo on July 12, 2012 in Decor, Design, DIY, Home, Uncategorized with No comments

So our patio is almost done, and that has me itching to figure out what we’re going to do in terms of furnishings. Lucky for me, World Market is having an insane sale (everything shown here is under $50 bones!!). Unlucky for me, I don’t have endless funds. You’ve seen our pool, it isn’t filled with money all Scrooge McDuck style, it’s filled with nasty questionably chlorinated water!

Nevertheless, check out this spread I’ve come up with for furnishing our backyard on the cheapie:

See those two wrought iron pieces that are owned? Well they don’t look so cute right now.

I give you, “The Boneyard”.

This is where apparently vintage wrought iron goes to die. I’ve somehow amassed waaay more wrought iron furniture than is necessary for any one human to own, and I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I’m going to need to let some of it go. It’s not very comfortable (who would have thought that bent metal isn’t comfortable!), and due to it’s lack of comfort it gets ignored and becomes basically the craziest spider habitat you’ve ever seen.

So, time to pick out the good pieces and see what we’ve got to work with:

We’ve got several great table options (I pulled this side-table out, the bigger one might be more appropriate for our final space, but it was definitely home to some freaky spiders. Only one kind of freaky spider is worth it to me, and those ones ain’t it.)

So that whole “tattered rusty” thing is not a good look. So first things first, I’m going to need to sand these bad boys down, prime them, then spray paint the bejeezus out of them. But what color to pick?

I love the idea of a real teal-y blue, like think maybe Tiffany Blue, or maybe carry my lime green theme through to the outdoors. Also, who doesn’t love a nice sunny yellow?

Dang, check out how funkarella that side table would look with a new coat of paint. Double dang, I think I just invented a new word.

All in all, I’m excited about the possibilities. I love working with things that we already have and sprucing them up. Got any other awesome backyard finds for me? Other great paint color ideas? Holla at me in the comments! <3

Ready, Set, SOFA!

by readmakedo on June 19, 2012 in Decor, Design, Home with 3 Comments

BIG NEWS.

Wait for it.

WAIT FOR IT:

We’re almost ready to buy ourselves a new sofa.

BOOYAH!

To recap, we (okay, realistically just me…but I talked Jason into it) have been considering getting a new sofa for ~~omg it seems like forever~~ a while now. Since we have an oddly shaped living room, finding the perfect sofa for the space has been a Very astute readers will notice the sofa pictured above is different from the original sofa we considered. Well, that’s because we got real and realized the sofa that we were considering was…well….ginormous. This isn’t Cribs, we don’t have that kind of space. So we stepped it down a notch, and found a suitable alternative.

Thanks to some awesome discounts from Pottery Barn (Woohoo, 10% off for wedding registry “completion”!), we crunched some numbers (I busted out some High School Algebra skills that would make any Mathlete jealous) and decided the time has come.

But before we take the plunge, we’ve got some key issues to address.

Ideal Upholstery Needs

I’ve owned a sofa or two in my life (actually, I owned my Ethan Allen sofa twice….), and so I know a thing or two about what I need from upholstery. For starters…

1. Comfort

Nobody likes a scratchy sofa.

2. Durability

I’ve got 2 little Hurricanes that live with me, plus I seem to inevitably spill whatever I’m holding. I’d like to hide the evidence of my inability to eat a Vietnamese sandwich without making a colossal mess by buying a sofa with a washable slip-cover.

3. Girl Gotta Look Good

How is this so far down the list? You ask yourself incredulously! Not that it isn’t important. In fact, it’s super important! But let this serve as a yardstick for you about HOW MUCH I spill things, and how much I need to have some sort of fail-safe in place in the future (Slip covers, slip covers, slip covers!). But seriously, I’m not getting a fabric that’s ugly.

Alright, Kate, enough of your yimma-yammerin’! You shout impatiently in your head, Show me some options to keep up with your impossibly high standards!

And SURPRISE, they’re Greige!

We grabbed a bunch of samples from Pottery Barn, but after having a Final Four bracket, we decided our two favorites were the Brushed Canvas Stone (left), and the Linen Stone (right). Crazily enough, they are supposed to be the same color, but as you can see just by looking at the photos, they are extremely different.

You also might notice that the samples look a little worn. That’s because Jason tested them using our patented Dog-Wear-n-Tear-Simulating-Technology (he scratched the swatches with a wire hanger for a few minutes). Tragically, the Linen didn’t hold up as well. The Brushed Canvas, however, held up like a CHAMP.

Our dilemma is that we love the Linen (it is so soft!! And beautiful!!!), but we don’t know how well it’s going to hold up. Since we only have one true living space in the house, is it better to err on the side of of beauty / comfort, or practicality? Ideas?

Sofa Size

As I mentioned earlier, we measured how big the new sofa would be in the space. Check it out!

The measuring tape on the ground denotes where the new sofa would end. It’s actually a good deal longer than our current sofa, which was a surprise to us!

The ottoman that’s there now is placed exactly how long the chaise lounge portion of the sofa would stick out. Not too bad.

(For those of you wondering how big the OTHER sofa was, it extended to past the white table. Uh, too much!)

We have a lot of space on that wall to play around with, so we can scootch our furniture to the right a bit. Currently, since I moved my patterned linen chair back to it’s original spot by the hallway, the space feels really empty, so it will be nice to have it more filled in.

What are your thoughts? Do we go for comfort & beauty? Practicality? Wrap our sofas in plastic like it’s 1955?

Pre-Fab to Post-FAB! or: Trapped in the Closet Part II

by readmakedo on June 7, 2012 in Before and After, Decor, Design, Home, Organization with 4 Comments

Hello! Well, I’m back from Europe. The second half of our trip was great, though in unexpected ways. I got some sort of insane French Flu that lasted for 4 days straight–how is that great you ask? Well, I suppose for most people it wouldn’t be. But the company I kept during that time was the best I could have asked for, and it was nice to know I’m married to someone who will always take excellent care of me, even in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language, and apparently they don’t believe in Pepto-Bismol. Seriously, it’s apparently illegal.

I’ll share some more about our wedding and a few other stories from our trip next week, but in the meantime, here’s a little something we’ve been working on.

Remember this?

An extra bedroom in our house had been converted into a den off the dining room, and I decided it would be great to use as an office / studio. More importantly, that meant we had to find an elegant solution for how to utilize what once was closet space when this room functioned as a bedroom.

We figured the best way to go is to find a low-cost way to create a built-in look. Why low-cost? Because we’d like to keep it so if whoever buys this house in the future feels the need to convert this den back into a bedroom, it will be worth it. Also, because who wants to spend thousands on cabinets? Nobody.

There was an AWESOME reader-submitted makeover on Young House Love that featured a similar project, with some beautiful results.

So we added some pre-fab cabinets. Well now these pre-fab cabinets are POST-FAB, because we fancied them up quite a bit.

F-F-FANCY! How did it get so fancy?? Let me tell you!

For starters, the pre-fab shelves don’t hold much weight when they are this long. So we doubled them up, and glued them together with wood glue.

Next, we added some trim along the outside/front of the shelves, they hang down a bit from the top so there’s a little bit of a lip.

The best part of all, is the shelves are still completely adjustable, so even though these look like custom-built cabinets we can still move the shelves around as necessary.

Check out this detail shot, where you can see how smooth the trim looks.

SO SMOOTH! Like a James Ingram song.

Also, we added this cute little toe-kick on the bottom, to make things really looked finished. So classy!

We still need to match the floor-board color, since in the past it had been re-sanded but not sealed for some reason.

I can’t believe what a difference trimming out this cabinet made! Also, the room looks 10,000 times cleaner now that it’s painted. It’s exciting to have some built-in shelves again to display all my favorite things (like my gigantor Charley Harper illustration book!). I’m still considering painting the back of the built-in a fun bright color, like maybe a sunny yellow or lime green. What do you think?