I’m a fan

Ceiling fans are great, especially in a kitchen, when you are doing a lot of cookin’ and it gets really hot and you just need AIR!  And sometimes you char your broiler chars a steak and there is smoke everywhere.  They are handy then, too.

When we bought this house there was a cheap-o little white fan that served our purposes well… it could move air:

However, it was just not pretty enough.  So, of course, I had to remedy that. 

My former boss generously gave us a Hunter ceiling fan for our new house… yay!  Thanks, Lisa!  So, after we decided that it matched the kitchen cabinets quite nicely, we just had to purchase a light kit to coordinate.

I selected the Hunter Energy Efficient Scavo Bowl Light (whatever that means).  :)  Guess why… it was pretty!  I also liked that it included a fancy circular fluorescent light bulb.

Anyway, so we had my father install that sucker.  And since we don’t always measure things… or read the directions, after he put it up with the little extender pivot thing, we had to take it down and re-hang it flush so as not to decapitate poor Michael and other tall guests. :) 

Ah, much better:

It really classes up the joint.   I’m a fan.

Postscript: No ceiling fans were harmed in this process.  The little white fan was adopted and found a new home in my father’s workshop, where it will not be judged for its homeliness. 

The Kitchen: In the Limelight

Lately, I have been wasting a lot of time photoshopping my kitchen photos.

We’ve had the same lemon/lime/blue thing going on in our kitchen since our first kitchen back at the old apartment:

Even before that, we had a little yellow going on in our college apartment:

I didn’t even like yellow, really, but my Mama bought me a yellow spice rack for Christmas and a pasta jar, so to make them match, I tied a yellow ribbon on the jar and a theme was born. And since then I have been collecting lemon yellow and lime green kitchen crap accessories. (With a short hiatus due to my obsession with pink which has resulted in an accumulation of bowls, pans, spatulas, measuring cups, and a KitchenAid mixer in that lovely and oh-s0-gender-neutral shade. Michael just loves it.)

Anyway, once I decided what color the kitchen in our apartment would be, I went fabric shopping (yeah!) and found a peppy yellow and green stripe fabric. I bought it all :) hehe and made cafe curtains and a tablecloth.

The cafe curtains were great to infuse our dreary apartment with some life and also to give us some privacy from our neighbors across the way:

When we moved to our new house, I just stuck the curtains in the window as they were (they matched all the amassed accessories, after all!):

But, after I cleared out the decor from our kitchen for a base photo on which to inflict my digital pasting of accessories and paint colors (I now know what my mother was talking about when as a child she would cut out pictures from the Sears catalog and arrange them to decorate her future house. hehe) I realized that those cafe curtains were sucking up the light!

And since our kitchen faces the backyard and woods, we didn’t need curtains to block prying eyes.

So, after trolling the internet for ideas, here is my photo-shopped inspiration. A nice little scalloped valance with festive black trim! (in addition to quite an array of other accessories I pasted on our blah kitchen… don’t you love the “eat dessert first sign”? I had to put that up there because someone is very adamant against having junk on top of the cabinets… hehe):

Of course, I didn’t have any green print or ball fringe, so I had to compromise. Here is our newly redesigned kitchen window:

And since I still had a lot of yellow stripe fabric left over, I made myself some placemats to match! hehe

Now, if I can just convince someone to let me paint the kitchen table black. And the oven… and the fridge……

Dining Room Design

I have been tweaking the design of our formal dining room this past weekend after the addition of a new mirror that my father built for us. Our dining room features french doors leading out to the upper deck, as well as a doorway to the living room and one to the kitchen. So that doesn't leave a lot of walls for furniture like a china cabinet. We have a big dining table (handmade by Michael's grandfather and uncle and passed down to us as a wedding gift), and a set of eight dining chairs in a cherry finish that we purchased last Christmas.

Here is our first dining room back in the fall when we moved in (with chairs snagged from kitchen and curtains half finished):


Then we got our new chairs and the dining room design began to take shape:


And since then I have changed the mirror, art, and accessories twice more. Here's a look at the cherry blossom art that I painted but never fell in love with:


So, I swiped a couple canvases from the den, and added a set of vintage peacock plates:



These plates were a gift from a family friend. I think they go well in here:


When the new mirror was completed (Papa built it and Mama stained it beautifully), we placed it on the opposite wall:




Mama also refinished the candle sconces next to the french doors and I added hurricanes to glam it up a little, plus a little shelf with a few "dining" themed accessories:


The next project in this room is a wall mounted corner cabinet that will hang in the only free corner left (haha!) Papa is in the process of building it now. When completed, it will dress up the corner across from the plates on the wall next to the living room. I plan to display my crystal glasses there, which will free up some kitchen cabinet space! :) Can't wait!

So, the dining room is finished (for now). In the future, we would like to get a chandelier to replace the ceiling fan and I would love to have wainscoting and a chair rail around the room! Some new paint would be good, too; this room gets a lot of light and I love it bright, so I'm not sure what shade to use. I also think the mirror wall needs something else... but I can't decide what... what do you think?

Dishwasher Discovery

Last night our friend, Abby, was visiting and pointed out a startling discovery! She mentioned that our dishwasher cover panels are reversible!! So, this morning after a few minutes of internet research to find which trim pieces to pop off, I quickly flipped the biscuit colored cover panels to shiny black! How fabulous!

Here's a look at our dishwasher BEFORE the flip:



(not exactly--I had already flipped the bottom panel before I remembered to take a before picture--that's how fast it was)

And AFTER-- the stunning transformation.


Something about having the existing black trim and the new black panels all the same color makes the whole thing look new and sophisticated (sophisticated, you say? a dishwasher?) Well, I think so. :)

Just had to share this amazingly simple (and FREE!) transformation with you. Now, if only our oven front was reversible, too! :) hehe

Living Room Before & After

The day is finally here! Our new TV stand is finished! Yay! So, on Sunday I told you about the living room makeover, which is centered around our new maple TV cabinet that my father built. Today, I am going to share the big reveal!

You remember the BEFORE pictures:



And here is the awesome AFTER:


The new cabinet is proudly gracing our living room feature wall (we will call it). The custom built cabinet houses our VCR, XBOX and accoutrement. The design includes two removable shelves to accommodate any additional media devices we may aquire in the future (can you say DVR?) ;) As luck would have it, the bottom shelf on the left exactly fits a DVD box! We didn't even plan for that-- hooray serendipity! Eventually that happy accident won't be so important because I intend to get a woven basket for the DVDs so we don't have all those colorful boxes cluttering up the view. :) The cabinet was constructed with solid maple and stained ebony, then coated with multiple coats of bombay mahogany poly-shade to achieve the dark mahogany finish. My mother sanded, rubbed, sprayed and brushed this thing for a solid week to achieve this satiny-smooth finish. Isn't it gorgeous? Now, we just need to get her to do all the other pieces of furniture in this room to match! Haha!



Our TV BEFORE... Don't jump, TV, we'll get you a new home!



And now:

And in the corner where the ugly TV stand used to live, we now have a nice corner for reading or talking on the phone (or putting on those running shoes!) A special thanks to Mama for the cushy chair--a ratty goodwill find that she reupholstered with cream colored cut velvet... so soft. The new lower TV position opened up the wall above the cabinet for a photo gallery featuring black and white family photos. I bought most of the frames on the cheap, painted them black to unify the different styles, and then hung them symmetrically above the television. I tried it assymetrically for a while, but I just couldn't handle it! :-P Me and my laser level are all about precision--in addition to hanging the frames on a nail, I also taped them to the wall so they won't be bouncing around and un-leveling themselves as time goes by. Who has time to go around straightening frames all the time? And the other set of frames displays some botanical prints that coordinate nicely with the colors in the room:



The final addition to the living room is a set of bronze lamps with cream shades from Wally World on the clearance aisle (they weren't really that cheap, however, I think those Walmart people just put a clearance sticker on something and stick it on that aisle so some sucker like me will buy it!) :) Finally, a little light for our main living space.


So, there you have it, our lovely living room makeover. But don't worry, we aren't done yet (could I ever be done with a room?) Future upgrades to the living room include new paint color (in a darker shade of beige for more contrast--can't get too wild here because the walls connect to the foyer and hallway), bamboo roman shades, recovering the couches in a nice tan color, a big square ottoman to replace the coffee table, new neutral drapes, coordinating throw pillows (of course), and at the top of the list--a console table to replace this little plywood stand:


I like this one from JCPenney, but I wonder how it would look with all the other furnishings in this room. What do you think?

Sneak Peek: New Media Furniture

So, (fingers crossed) we are supposed to be getting our new TV stand tomorrow! Here's a sneak peek of the piece during the construction phase in my father's workshop. Papa built it and Mama did all the staining and finishing.



And here is where we are going to put that solid maple beauty--yonder, on the far wall...


And here is where our TV currently lives-- in the corner, perched precariously on a cabinet. Even after four years of sitting up so high on that flimsy stereo cabinet, (which has survived two moves) miraculously it has never fallen! The new lower and sturdier cabinet will solve all those problems and look good doing it. :)


Check back soon for the big reveal which will include new lamps, new artwork, and new furniture! :) Yay! Stay tuned!

Closet Confessions

Last weekend my father finished building my sweater cubby (one of the many projects I've had him working on this month) for my wee walk-in closet. Since it has double rods on both sides, and I only use three of them, there was a great space available storage. It was previously occupied by mountains of sweaters, all threatening to topple over, desperate for some shelving to keep them organized.
Here is the cubby system in the new workshop:


It's a versatile design and at 35" tall I could use it as storage on the floor (with baskets in the cubbies) if we have different closets someday. After a couple coats of semi-gloss white it was ready to install in the closet. Here it is, happily organizing all my sweaters (see they are not ALL pink, just most of them, hehe):


My next project in here is going to be a new flip flop storage system (basket, perhaps?) to get that shoe organizer off the back wall, and I want to paint the closet walls pale pink! Then all the trim will go a fresh coat of white. Maybe I'll get a new light fixture, too, the one in here looks like an old jar with a brass lid... ick! What do you think?