Archive for September 2009

to follow up my "vintage modern" decor style, i thought i would write a little about my favorite place to look for and buy furniture: craigslist. you may remember that i bought our dining room chairs off of craigslist back in january. i think they may be my favorite furniture purchase ever. i've also had some luck with ebay, i bought the light fixture for our entry on ebay.

but back to craigslist. i would say that about once every week or so i come across something on craiglist that i'm interested in. i will usually email the seller to get more information and more often than not, after the first email exchange i will usually move on. sometimes the sellers won't even respond. or after getting more pictures/information i will end up passing on it. yesterday we went to look at a dresser that i had found on craigslist but found it to be pretty bad shape so we didn't end up buying it, this has happened a few times too. i have a list of about 5 or 6 items/terms that i usually search for - "vintage", "mid century", "dresser"... this helps because it would take you forever to actually look through all of the furniture that is posted. and i always make sure to take mike with me if i end up going to look at something - you never know.

we are lucky to live in someplace like st louis because i think that enough people buy/sell things on craiglist that you can usually find a good selection of furniture. a lot of it is junk, but looking through it all is part of the fun.

anyway, this morning i was finding some good things so i thought i'd share them, just for fun.i actually really like these chairs and they are a great price at only $10 each (wow!!) - the actually remind me of some chairs that i saw on another blog a little while ago. these would look so great if they were reupholstered and/or painted.

i really like the way that these legs look on mid-century furniture - i would so buy these if i had any idea of what i'd do with them, they are a little expensive for me to justify spending the $$ just because...
this chair is one that i've looked at before at crate and barrel, it's very comfortable and i love the way it looks. the seller also has the matching couch. this chair looks just like the chair frame i bought almost a year ago, i think it was my first craigslist purchase... and it is still sitting in our basement. the chair has some um, structural issues that need to be fixed before i can even think about refinishing and getting new cushions. someday i'll get to that project. this wall unit is fun. and giant! it's almost 100" in length.

i'm sure there are a lot of other great things out there but i'd better get back to work :-) and yes, i have a thing for chairs...

i kept seeing this quiz pop up on various blogs and finally decided to go take it: http://www.sproost.com/ i would have to say that my results seem pretty accurate :-)

my style is... Vintage Modern!! here is the description from the website:

"Flea Market anyone? You know you are drawn to modern furniture and interiors, and yet you really don't like a space that feels cold and sterile. And who could blame you? And that's why Vintage Modern is so appealing to you. Though the backdrop of the room, the walls and windows, are many times white or monochromatic, the furniture and accessories have the color, shape and texture to bring the warmth into the space. The great thing about Vintage Modern is ease of mixing different styles in the one space. You can have a new modular sofa mixed with a great pair of chairs that your grandmother purchased in the late 1950's and the new and old work appear as though they were destined for each other. What's great is that even if you don't have time for swap meets and garage sales, so many of the pieces from the mid-century were so great that they have been remade and mimicked year after year.

Materials:

The other great thing about Vintage Modern is how low maintenance it can be — fabrics such as cotton, microfiber or ultra-suede and leather all look great and function even better. So whether you are having a cocktail party with friends, or kids are in the picture, the room and the furnishings can handle it. Because the style harkens back to the early twentieth century, the innovative developed during that time are very popular: acrylic, plastic and fiberglass, chrome and steel, and molded plywood. Concrete floors, countertops and furniture are also very popular and lacquered finishes are very common.

Colors:

When it comes to color, walls are seen as backdrops for the room. Neutral tones of gray, white, beige and brown are very common and black is a common accent color. Pops of color on the art, furniture and accessories can vary dramatically based on the person, however very common colors are teal blues, army greens and yellow as well as deep oranges and bright reds."

so, do you think that describes me?? actually, awhile ago mike asked me what my style was (while we were browsing through a vintage furniture store) and i responded with "a mix of vintage and modern"... here are some of the images that the quiz said went with this style:

yep, that looks about right to me. that last image especially! photowall, eames chair, gray rug, neutral walls... i've also been looking for a while on craigslist for a similar piece to turn into a tv cabinet.

if anyone else takes the quiz, let me know what your results are... how fun.

all images from http://www.sproost.com/

so, the hallway wallpaper removal has been slow. for such a small amount of paper, it is taking forever. it is just not coming off easily. mike thinks it's worse than the kitchen wallpaper, i think it's about a tie. although i'm pretty sure that at some point someone glued all of the edges down with super glue. wallpaper remover is doing nothing to the glue in those areas. i'm ready to be done with the wallpaper and move on to painting...

i also wanted to give a quick update on the floor situation. as you know, we were planning on installing new floors downstairs sometime this summer. well, after reese's unexpected surgery and some other expenses, (plus a super busy summer with no free weekends!) we decided to push the floor project to the fall. since we decided that we aren't going to be removing the radiators to install the floor, this works out ok. we're still leaning towards the prefinished gunstock floor. we're hoping that we'll be able to order the floors in about a month, and hopefully have them in before thanksgiving! i think the floors are going to make a huge difference in making our downstairs finally seem more complete!

over the labor day weekend i joined in, last minute, on a trip with my mom and grandma to go visit my uncle who lives in palo alto, ca. it was the perfect mini-vacation/long weekend - just the right amount of relaxing and site seeing, combined with lots of great food! i thought you might want to see a few photos from the trip.







we had a great time and will have to go back again soon. maybe next time i'll take mike with me :-)

so the upstairs hallway... i think that after living with it so long i stopped really noticing the pink wallpaper. that is, until i started posting pictures of the new bathroom door. and all of a sudden, wow, that pink wallpaper! it has to go. starting now.

i worked on this for 3+ hours this afternoon and this is as far as i got. some of it came off easily. some, not so much. mike helped for the last hour but we quickly gave up for the day. it was bringing flashbacks of the kitchen wallpaper removal and i think that was just too much for an otherwise lazy sunday.

i think that we'll just work on it slowly throughout the week, maybe by next weekend we'll be ready to paint.

and just so you don't think we're totally unproductive - we also went to the driving range on saturday (first time for me, but it was fun!) and mike played 2 games of kickball on sunday. we also watched a lot of football... i heart fall/football season!

our bathroom finally has a door again, and i love how this project turned out.

the frosted glass works just like we were hoping - it lets light into the bathroom and into the hallway, but it completely blocks all views into the bathroom. you can barely see the shadow of a person when they are in there, it works perfectly.

did you notice the mouse in the bottom right corner of the above picture? don't worry, that's a cat toy. funny story actually, i bought that cat toy at ikea and forgot to mention it to mike. i gave it to trevi on tuesday night, and wednesday morning, mike went to take a shower and found the mouse in the shower - i think he screamed and jumped out! it does look like a real mouse more than some of our other cat toys, plus it was early in the morning... i wish i would have been awake to witness this, it sounded very funny to me when he told me about it later.

anyway, back to the door - we were able to match the stain almost perfectly. we also put the frosted film on both sides of the glass before we put the glass back in the door - this way you can't see the edges of the film (you're supposed to cut the film slightly smaller than the glass).


i also love love love the doorknob we found at the same architectural artifacts store where we bought the door.

and, once we touch up some on the door jamb, the door will actually lock! we need to get an extra key though, right now the bathroom and the door to our balcony are sharing one key :-)

**wow... these photos really show the 2 areas of the house where we haven't done any work - the upstairs hallway and the 4th bedroom! at least the floors look pretty...

we decided to make the tiki torches from this post - we were able to find all of the parts except for the wicks - we ended up ordering them online. so last weekend, we grabbed two empty wine bottles and got to work.we used blue bottles like they did in the instructions, i really like to blue color with the copper! and they were very easy to make.
we made 2, one for each of our deck posts. i also like that we can remove everything and just leave the plate, i could see that i wouldn't want these hanging on the deck all the time.
on saturday night we grilled our entire dinner (steaks, potatoes, and grilled fruit) and sat outside and enjoyed our new torches.
we have also been watching our friends' dog for the past few days, she's super cute and full of energy!
she left last night, i think that reese and cooper will probably sleep the rest of the week after 5 days of non-stop playing! we had fun though!

we are making progress on the bathroom door... slowly. we finally got the door to fit into the door frame, got the hinges on, and installed part of the door hardware. we "borrowed" most of the hardware from one of the doors that we removed (there were 2 doors in our downstairs hall that we removed - one between the living room and hall, and one between the entryway and hall - both were always open and in the way - we removed them right after moving in). we were also able to find 2 plates that are approx. the same size as the plate that used to be on this door, so it will cover up that square and the hole nicely.
we did some patching of the larger holes, but for the most part, left the door as is with all of the great old door imperfections.
the door has been sanded and 2 coats of stain have been applied. now we just need to check and make sure the stain is dark enough compared to the other doors (i hope!) and on to poly! it's looking really good though. i'll try to take more pictures later.

we also replaced our dog chewed doorknob. the one the dog chewed in on the counter. the woman at lowes thought it was really funny that my dog ate the doorknob (she's never heard that excuse before!) so she keyed the new doorknob to match for free.

photoshop mock-up of ikea light

photoshop mock-up of west elm light

so, what do you think? both are about 1' in diameter and i think that would be a decent size. i've seen other larger lights that are ok but are much more expensive. i like how the west elm light looks with the ebay fixture, and how open it is, but i'm worried that i'm getting to have too many "statement" light fixtures, so maybe the more simple ikea light would be better? i'd love to hear what you think!

i also don't know how long of a cord you get with the west elm light, i'll have to look into that... it would hang down pretty far from the ceiling.