Friday Ramblings

Update: You must also check out this blog: male pattern boldness. It makes me extremely happy.

1. Are back massages worth the money? I loved mine this morning, but I'm not sure I'm ready to fork over $40 for 30 minutes of muscle rubbing more than once every few months, even if it was heavenly.

2. Someone sent me the link to this video this morning, and I thought it was hilarious. Watch it. I signed up for Twitter back in the fall of 2008, but used it like 5 times. I don't think I could log back into my account if my life depended on it.

3. We're hosting Easter dinner at Casa K this year. Both of our families are coming, and I am very excited! On the menu? Radish crostini for after church, maple-glazed roasted ham, warm herbed potato salad, asparagus with garlicky butter and a tortellini salad (as the optional protein for those not eating ham, ahem) for lunch, and a strawberry custard pastry for dessert. Wanna come over? My mom dropped off a 12 pound ham, so we'll probably have some to share.

4. I'm so paranoid about leaving the roaster on during church that I'm going on Saturday night and sending all of my family to the Sunday morning service so I can make sure the house doesn't burn down.

5. Our radon test was been submitted yesterday, so I have no excuses for not starting to paint the basement. I'm excited!

6. Last night my husband used "your legs" and "cottage cheesey" in the same sentence. This was not an April Fools joke. The only thing that saved him from a slap on the butt was the look on his face immediately after he spoke the words. Priceless. To his credit, he did describe my legs in the past tense, which hopefully means they're not so cottage cheesey anymore.

7. We made good progress on the landscaping last night. I tackled the big garden in the backyard:

Looks a little better than this, right? Please say yes, because it took me forever. There are still a few things that could probably be pruned, but I want my dad to look at them before I attack them with my clippers.

G and I took on the landscaping in the front yard as a team. In the amount of time it took me to carefully finish pruning two bushes (you can see them in the distance), he did this:


Yesterday morning that area was COVERED with dead growth. It look infinitely better, but I'm afraid it might never look the same as it did when we moved in. I hope I acquire a green thumb quickly. We have the landscaping along the backside of the house to take care of, the removal of the massive pile of leaves on the vegetable garden, and some touch-ups on the circular garden...and then I think we should be set. I hope. I really, really hope.

8. Costly car repairs are one of the most unpleasant surprises ever. This is closely followed by riding in a tow truck at night with a racist mechanic.

9. I was offered an extended sub job that starts next Monday, but the school wanted to review my resume and they never got back to the placement company. They just called to let me know they'll let me know early Monday morning. If they call me at 6:00 AM on Monday to tell me the school ended up hiring someone else, I'll be mighty unhappy!

10. I made so much progress on the second chapter of my dissertation yesterday that I surprised even myself. Unfortunately, I really need access to a copy of Adobe Acrobat so I can convert a survey I developed earlier in the week into a writable pdf document. This one of the major challenges of living 280 miles away from my university. Speaking of writing, I should get back to my chapter...

Happy Friday, and Happy Easter!

Spring has Sprung!

Do you spy what I spy (besides a shed in need of a coat of fresh paint)?


While surveying the gardening challenges that await us this spring, I noticed there were some green shoots popping up in one of our gardens. I am hoping some of them are my favorite flower, tulips, but I am thrilled to have any spring blooms in our gardens, including these miniature daffodils:


I'm looking forward to seeing what other surprises that will pop up this this spring! This is definitely one of the big perks of moving into a home whose previous owners were gardeners.

My task last night? Removing the brown stuff. Err, starting to remove the brown stuff. There's a lot of dead material that needs to be removed. The giant pile of leaves located behind the circular garden in the above picture? Yeah, they're covering our vegetable garden. In addition to clearing out the veggie patch and the circular garden, I have to take care of the other landscaping that surrounds the entirety of our house. It's going to be a lot of work.

Any green thumbs want to join me for an evening of fun? Pretty please?

Home Projects: Dining Room I

I'm at my parents' home for the night. My mom is performing in the pit orchestra for the local high school's production of Once Upon a Mattress, and being the good daughter that I am, I decided to attend the opening night performance. I'm sure that for every 1 concert of hers that I've attended she's probably been to 100 of mine, so I owe her. Big time.

Going home also meant that I could check out some furniture that my dad offered to us when we moved into our house last August. I initially told him "no," but in February I started rethinking my plans for the kitchen and decided his old dining room table might be a good fit. You see, I was originally very committed to placing a Parsons table in our dining room...

[source]

...and while I still love the look of the table (and the room above), after shifting course with the style of our living room, I decided we needed something with a little more character. With that said, I would like to introduce you to our newest piece of furniture, our dining room table:


It's been sitting in the basement of my parents' house for as long as I can remember, which makes sense since my dad bought it before I was born. It never really served its intended purpose, but it definitely worked well for art projects, folding laundry, and keeping things away from our dogs. No one is really sure how old the table is, but we do know it's solid oak. When it's fully collapsed it's a square that can probably seat around 6, but you can add two table leaves that will increase seating to 10 (at least it looks like it will).

Here's a close up of one of its five legs. I'm in love. So simple, yet so much character.


Unfortunately, the top of the table is going to require a little TLC. One of the slats is warped and needs to be repositioned and secured. The good news is that my dad thinks we can tackle that project this summer. It also (obviously) needs a bath, some linseed oil, and a few coats of fresh varnish. I am really excited to see what it looks like in our home!

Home Projects: Minimzing Kitchen Clutter

When we moved into our house last August, we knew the kitchen would pose the most difficult challenge for us because it was significantly smaller than our apartment's kitchen. We managed to find spots for all of our essential items, but had to store many of our small appliances and tools elsewhere. It's a bit of a pain when I want to bake and have to scrounge around for certain pieces of equipment, but it's not a huge problem. Even though our kitchen is ugly and cramped it's fully functional and we're not ready to invest in a big renovation project at this point. If it's not broken, why fix it, right?

The fact that I spend a lot of time in our tiny kitchen means that the counters and the tops of the refrigerator and microwave collect clutter. Lots and lots of clutter. It drives both of us crazy, but we just don't have a lot of free space so keeping the kitchen tidy is challenging. It just collects. Rapidly. One day it's spotless and the next it's a disaster zone. My mission this week is to tame the kitchen's clutter causing trouble spots.

Last Saturday, while surveying the stock at TJMaxx HomeGoods, I found a large, shallow seagrass basket. I immediately knew that it would be perfect for holding the boxes of saran wrap, tin foil, wax paper, plastic baggies and hot pads that have lived on top of our microwave since last August.

Take note of that other clutter to the left of the microwave. Included in that pile are four candle holders, a spool of thread, my grocery list, a thermostat, two boxes of pewter serving pieces, a set of cheese knives, and my copy of Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook. Oh, the irony.

On Sunday, I cleared off the top of the microwave and put everything in the basket. I also tidied up the pile of stuff to the left of the microwave. The basket really makes a difference, I think.


But now I want to tackle all of the messy areas of our kitchen, including this disaster zone (the clean dishes aren't usually there, but everything else is)...


...and this mess of stuff (I'm betting at least half of the boxes contain 1/4 cup or less of whatever is in them - my husband very kindly saves me the last bits just in case I might want them - so they should be easy to clean up)...


Tidying up these spaces will make a big difference, I think. I hope. Any tips for managing kitchen clutter?

Home Projects: Living Room Window Coverings

I hate our office. Our office chair doesn't fit under my super cool desk, I don't care for the color on the walls, and the lighting is horrible. I realize these are all fixable things, but I can't tackle renovating the office until I've painted the basement. That's just how I work. Anyway, my dislike of our office means that I often spend my days working in the dining room, which feels less dungeon-like.

A week ago, I was typing away and something moving past the living room window caught my eye. I looked up and saw "Pete," the self-proclaimed neighborhood watch dog, walking down the middle of the street holding his can of beer. I watched him stop in front of our house and stare at it for what felt like a long time. When I realized he was staring at the house, I slowly backed my chair up so I was hidden behind the wall that divides the living from the kitchen and prayed he hadn't seen me watching him. Pete can talk forever and I didn't want him to see me and feel the need to explain why he was staring at our house. Hiding was necessary. After a few moments had passed, I poked my head around the corner and saw that he had turned around and was staring at the house across the street. It was at that moment that I decided I needed to expedite our search for some curtain rods so we could increase our level of privacy. Neighbor or not, I don't really like people staring into our house. It's a little creepy.

I've been searching for curtain rods since January 28, when we finally finished mounting the hardware for the rods my aunt gave us last fall. Having never mounted curtain hardware, we approached the project with great caution – or what we thought was great caution. We measured the length of the panels, we positioned the brackets so the curtains would hang just right, we brought out the tape measure and level to make sure the spacing between the brackets was perfect and that each individual bracket was positioned straight up and down. Unfortunately, despite our attempt to be perfect, we screwed up. Big Time. How we managed to measure the length and width of the curtain panels but not the length of the actual curtain rod is beyond me. My dad came up to help with the last bit of the installation process and we decided we’d surprise G and have the curtains hung by the time he got home from work. We slipped the sheer curtain onto the rod and I climbed up to slide it into mount. My dad held the middle piece and slid the other end through the openings…only to discover that the parts didn’t meet. There was a foot gap between one of the rod and the middle joining section.

Because the hardware was an absolute pain in the butt to firmly secure on the wall (G insists they are a permanent fixture and will be sold with the house), and because I had just finished painting the room and didn't want to spackle and paint again, we opted to leave them up and search for new rods that had a matching finish. Unfortunately, the PB rods that extend to 120" are pretty pricey, so I offered to look for a less expensive alternative. It took forever. On Monday of this week, I found some on sale at Jo-Ann’s (of all places). They're not great quality, but I couldn’t pass up the price. I only installed one because I wanted to see what other people think of them. The color of the rod matches the scrolled hardware pretty well, but I need help with the finials. I'm going to wait to install the second rod until I know what finials I'm going to use.

Here's the scrolled finial that came with the rod:

And here's the ball from the original PB rods (just to give you an idea as to the difference in quality, this little ball finial weighs about as much as half of the curtain rod from JoAnn's):

Here are my options:

1) All ball finials

2) All scrolled finials

3) Scrolled finials in front and ball finials in the back

I'm so excited to have some privacy back!

Home Projects: Closet Organization

I didn't finish organizing our front closet this weekend, which is a little embarrassing to admit because it's really not that big of a project. I did, however, pick up these baskets to put our hats, tennis balls, and other summer things in:


The green in the leaves matches the paint I'm going to use on the walls in the hallway and spare bedrooms, and they were half off. A perfect purchase.

Mondays are always busy for us, so this post is short. Maybe I'll find some time to finish the closet organization tonight. Maybe...

Home Projects: Basement Bathroom Inspriration

Remember earlier this week when I professed my love for TJ Maxx HomeGoods? While I was hunting for throw pillows, I also found some accessories for the basement bathroom. Two events over the past month made me realize that for as much as we dislike the bathroom, we needed to invest in some essential items to make it a more welcoming space. It can no longer be ignored.

#1: We had out of town guests take over our basement for a weekend, and I realized that we had nothing for them to use in that bathroom. We made do, but I had to spend a lot of time scrounging around for a makeshift bathmat, extra hand soap, and toiletries for the shower.

#2: Shortly after our friends left, I overheard my BIL yell at G: "G-d, G, you don't even have a hand towel in this bathroom" (this was also the moment I learned that you can hear just about everything taking place in the basement bathroom while you are in the upstairs bathroom).

Needless to say, I felt a little guilty. We might hate the basement bathroom and we might be two of the cheapest people you'll ever meet, but we also like to be hospitable. Something had to be done.

The bathroom accessories section at TJ Maxx was impressive, and included some high end brands like Ralph Lauren. I found two small bathmats in a really pretty shade of green-blue that were only $10, so I added them to my cart. We'll use on in front of the shower and one in front of the sink.


Having found the bathmats, I decided I should probably look for some towels to match the color. I found these:



I love the print and the colors. And by love, I mean I'm totally inspired to rip out every last tile and shred of wallpaper in an effort to make the bathroom functional and pretty. As a reminder, here are a few pictures of what our bathroom currently looks like:

You actually have to pass through this short hallway to get to the bathroom. In order to to turn on the bathroom light, you have to walk all the way into the bathroom and reach around in the dark until you find the switches. Very convenient, especially for guests who don't know the layout of the bathroom.

I'll be the first to admit this room is ugly, so don't pretend it has good qualities. There's only one...


...and that's the extra storage space we have due to the awkward placement of the water heater. A real door would be nice in that corner, don't you agree?


The duck shelf and organizer thing above the toilet were both "gifts" from the previous owners. We're selling them a our garage sale this June, so if you want them let me know and I'll put a hold sticker on them for you. Just kidding. I'm not even going to show you what's behind that skinny sliding door or what the shower looks like.

Here's a close up of our lovely new towels right next to the super awesome wallpaper border that features deer prancing through the wilderness:


I'm sure you're jealous and wishing you had a country woodlands hunting themed bathroom with a dingy dropped ceiling in your house. I bet you're even more jealous that you don't have towels and bathmats that look quite as awesome as part of the decor. Aren't the towels inspiring, though? The colors and prints are just lovely. They give me hope for this room - I can't wait until we renovate it!

Update on my embroidery project later today!

House Projects: Painting the Basement, Part 1

Disclaimer: These pictures are horrendous. We have one window in our basement and it is really challenging to get adequate light that creates pictures that are decent. Keep this in mind as you scroll down - they range from okay to horrible.

These are the paint swatches my MIL and I picked up over the weekend:


Bluish-grays are impossible to work with. Impossible. I know I constantly complain about paint, but I just cannot find a color that looks good in our basement.

The paint chip in the lower right hand corner of the picture - "Yarmouth Blue" - had so much potential. When I put it on the walls of our basement, however, it looked horrible. On the white walls it was way too dark (clockwise from upper right: sunset wheat - what was I thinking?!, Yarmouth, Mt. Rainier gray, and oatmeal):


We need a much lighter paint color. The room is rather big and while we want to make the room feel a little warmer, this particular bluish-gray was just way too dark to cover all of the basement walls. We did, however, think it might work on one section that is covered with wood paneling. The paneling is painted a really, really light mauve (at least I think it's mauve). It's ugly. When I added the Yarmouth blue, it turned into a horrendous shade of light blue. I added primer to the wall with the hope that it might change the color of the paint. THANK GOD FOR PRIMER.

Unfortunately, this is one of the horrible pictures, but it should give you an idea of the contrast:


This picture shows five things:

1. The wall on the north side of the basement was anything but white. Check out the difference between the primer and the original paint color. Anyone who doubted this wall wasn't white should now be convinced of that fact.
2. Our wall has obvious scuff marks that demand some TLC in the form of some wood caulk, a little sanding, and a fresh coat of paint. Those brown splotches at the top of the picture? Yeah, they're all over that wall.
3. Wet paint definitely reflects light.
4. Primer = Good.
5. I need to work on my photography skills.

Here's a closeup of the paint with primer - the Yarmouth in this picture is actually fairly accurate. The paint looked pretty much the same when it was fully dry.


G came home and agreed it will work for the paneled wall. Now we just have a find a lighter hue that we can use on the other three walls. I'm going to Hirshfield's before I go to the gym tonight and I'm hoping my favorite color consultant is working. It would make things much easier for me if she could just recommend a few options so I don't end up coming home with umpteen paint chips again.

Home Projects: Picking the the Perfect Gray-Blue

It's official: blue-gray paint is a pain in the butt to work with. Once again, I have multiple paint swatches decorating the walls of our basement. And once again, I'm not totally committed to any of the options we've chosen.

We started with this:

[Glidden: Polished Limestone]

The polished limestone doesn't look very bluish-gray on my screen, but it does on the wall. There's too much gray in it, though, and while it looks okay covering small sections of the wall, I'm afraid it wouldn't look good covering all of the walls - it's a big room.

Last weekend I picked up a pint of this:

[Benjamin Moore: Mt. Rainier]

It looked awesome in the store. So, so awesome. I was really excited about it until the clerk handed me the sample can of paint she had just mixed and the color swatch taped to its lid looked totally different than the paint chip. It turns out that Mt. Rainier is actually a baby blue. I'm going to put some on the wall tomorrow and see how it turns out. Maybe I'll be surprised and it will look like the paint chip. Maybe, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

P.S. I'll post about my embroidery project tomorrow morning.

Basement Remodel Part 3

A final few details for the basement project:

[Check out how dusty those doors are! Ick!]

In addition to switching out the baseboard (which I really hope happens!), I want to paint the closet doors white. I'm not going to worry about the other doors in the basement, because they'll eventually be replaced.

I'm also going to paint the inside of the closet, which I'm not sure has ever been painted. It's a gigantic storage space and I'm not looking forward to removing all of our neatly packed belongings, but it will look so much better with a coat of paint. Everything looks better with a new coat of paint!

Speaking of paint, I recently discovered that the Glidden website has an online tool to help you visualize color. Check it out, and let me know if you see colors you'd recommend for our basement. I'm still leaning towards "whispering wheat," but I think most neutral colors would work well in our basement.

Basement Remodel Part 1

We're saving our pennies for our bigger remodeling projects [in this order, we think: spare bedroom in basement, upstairs bathroom, kitchen, downstairs bathroom], but that's not going to stop us from making progress on the less involved, less expensive projects that can breathe new life into our little home.

We're going to start with the basement. As a whole, the basement needs a lot of work. There's an entire unfinished room that we want to convert into a guestroom/office and the bathroom needs a makeover. A big one. The family room is a manageable project that shouldn't involve considerable time or investment, so we'll get that project taken care first. I'm going to breakdown our renovation projects into multiple posts so I have something to write about later in the week...

Here's what we have in mind the stairwell:


Looks kind of blah, eh?

The upper part of the stairwell leading to our basement is currently a very scuffed up grayish white. I think we're going to paint it something similar to "toasted oatmeal" (click on the upper right box and then choose the fourth one down in the second column; if you click on the paint chip it will expand to cover your entire screen). It looks a bit darker on the screen than it does on the walls, but it works nicely with the color I think we'll use in the rest of the basement.

G really likes white woodwork, and I think we're going to replace the painted baseboards in the basement (at least we've talked about it) with something like this. Doing so will probably mean that we'll need to replace or paint the handrail leading to the basement. Either way, it needs updated hardware.

I'm not sure what to do about the moulding that separates the wood paneling from the upper part of the wall. We can either paint over it, or remove it and use new primed moulding. Opinions?

How do you paint stairwells? I'm looking at the edge between the ceiling and the wall and wondering if it's paint a clean line (if you look closely at the picture it should be apparent this was an issue for the previous homeowners). Tips? Pretty please?

*G has agreed to most of these changes, but some of them (the handrail) didn't occur to me until I was writing this post. I'm sure he'll agree as long as it's within budget. :)

Living Room Updates

My life right now.

Last October I tested three paint colors on the walls of our living room. You might remember this, because I wrote about it here. After three months (!) of contemplating goldish-tinted hues, I marched through the doors at our local Hirshfield's armed with fabric swatches from our furniture and demanded that one of their color consultants pick the color for us. I'm not sure why I didn't try that approach earlier. I left the store with giant paint cards in "abbey stone" and some shade of blue that looked okay in the store, but horrendous in our living room. "Abbey stone," however, appeared to be a good match.

I purchased paint and supplies, prepped the room and walls, and got to work. Wanna know what really sucks about painting? The touch-up work on the walls that takes place before you even open the paint can. I spent a couple of hours spackling, trying to remove hardware and nails from the walls, sanding paint drips and taping. Trust me when I say there are few things more frustrating than rolling your paint brush down the wall and noticing paint drips that you missed.

I found lots of them.

C'est la vie.

I finished my painting job late Thursday afternoon. The husband and I then decided we should update all of the electrical switches and outlets since the original, almond-colored switches and plates were decorated with several colors of paint from many, many years ago. We spent Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday disconnecting and reconnecting wires and screwing in new plate covers. As part of that process, we learned that three-way switches function much differently than regular switches. I'm glad G had the smarts to navigate our way through that process, because I don't think I could have ever figured it out. In addition to requiring a completely different switch, our wires weren't marked correctly so it took some serious thinking combined with a bit of trial and error problem solving to get the switches to work. It's amazing what that update did for that room.

We also removed the paint covered, dated heat registers and installed new ones. One of the covers was an irregular size and replacing it turned out to be a bit of a headache, but as of last night our new one was in place and looked okay. We'll see what our parents think about that particular piece of handy work...

Next up, we need to install the hardware for our curtains. I tried last night, but I don't have the muscle to get the screw into the wall. G is going to try tonight. I'm anxious to attach the hardware so we can clean up the mess/drop cloths, wash the floor, and move our furniture back into the room.

In related news, I just submitted an application for a kitchen renovation television show. Who knows what will come out of it, but I think our kitchen is a good candidate for a full renovation. We'll see what happens!

Front Entry

Here's the console table we added to our front entry over the weekend. It has a dark "tobacco" stain that looks great with the striped wallpaper (gold/cream). It looks rather lonely in this picture, doesn't it?


...and here's the table with our cheery front door. We were foolish and didn't measure the distance from the door's edge to the corner of the wall before we bought the table (or even assembled it, for that matter). Fortunately for us, we had about 18 inches to spare between the table and the hallway entrance.

Mags, you'll be happy to see that the wreath hanger is in its permanent home.


Here's the mirror I mentioned that I want to put above the console table. The stain is listed as espresso and I think it looks quite different from the table, but several of the online reviewers said they bought them together and they look great. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

The Paint is on the Wall!

I managed to prime and paint yesterday. Here's one of my Rothko-esque (but not really) looking sample spots [I apologize for the lighting. There's not much I can do about it.]:


In order from top to bottom: Pearl Harbor, Barley, Malton. We've pretty much eliminated the barley. It's even more yellow than it looks in this picture. Pearl Harbor is much richer than Malton. We're going to paint bigger pieces of the walls with those colors and see what we think.
Preferences?

Paint

Choosing paint colors has to be one of the most difficult tasks known to mankind. With the help of G's mom and a friend of ours, we've narrowed down our possible selections to a few colors:

Pearl Harbor
[Can anyone explain this name to me? I'm just not getting it.]

Oklahoma Wheat

Mom K recommended Pearl Harbor, and a friend of ours also suggested a very similar color.
While we think it's our best option, we want to compare it to at least one other paint swatch. We want a color that brings some warmth into the room, but isn't so dark that it makes the space feel smaller. Beigeish colors with a touch of gold might be our best bet.

Both of the paints are available in Benjamin Moore's Natura line (actually, it looks like you can get almost any of their colors added to a Natura base), which is perfect for us. We had been looking at another line of low-VOC paints, but the color palette was very limited and both G and I weren't thrilled with our options. Later today I'll make a trip back to ACE to pick up sample cans of both the colors we think might work.

After our trip to ACE we went to Home Depot. I have spent way too much time at Home Depot lately. We bought the ladder that our home inspector recommended (we have some leaves to remove from our gutters...), a low-VOC primer, several rolls of blue painter's tape, and a paint kit (trays, a small brush, and a couple of rollers). We're hoping to get some primer on the walls today (just a few spots on different walls) and then tomorrow we'll test out the colors. I'm excited to see how they look!

Home Project: Decorating our Living Room

Two days in a row! What's different? I'm not subbing and researching for the first time in six weeks. Hallelujah! I made more progress on my research in four hours yesterday morning than I did during those six weeks. Crazy.

This is the "new" chair (new to us, old to my aunt) I mentioned in the previous post. And to our families: yes, those are the boxes we moved into the house several weeks ago. They were all relocated to the basement during the Vikings/Packers game last night (would you believe I watched the first half of the game?). Our basement is now a true disaster zone.


I really, really love this chair. It's incredibly comfortable. It looks great. I'm sitting in it right now, in fact, and I have no plans to move to a different location anytime soon.

While not the focal point (its size limits where it can be positioned, especially when we get a couch), it is our inspiration piece for the color palette we'll use for our living room. The lighting isn't the best in this picture, but the fabric is striped. It alternates between a gold and a light green, but from a distance of even just a few feet looks mostly gold. Aunt S. had it positioned next to a chocolate brown leather couch and they looked fabulous together. I think we'll try to stick with a similarly colored upholstery or leather for our couch. Accent pieces will probably be a light blue. Maybe.

Here's my question for you:

Knowing that we're working with a palette that is primarily defined by chocolate brown, a soft gold (and green when you're up close), and blue, what color would you paint the walls of the living room? Would you go lighter or darker? Is there a particular color you think would work well in this space?

To do, or not to do?

We're putting together a to-do list of things we want to take care of the weekend we close on our home.

Clean carpets.
Thoroughly clean every room.
Change locks.
Determine which walls need to be repainted.
Seal cement in garage.

That's doable, right? Are we being overly ambitious? What would you add to the list?

Also, would you add a radon test? The EPA offers discounted radon test kits, and I'm thinking it couldn't hurt to purchase one.

Wall Art

[source]

Some pimpernel (or antique prints of other flowers, for that matter) would also be lovely juxtaposed with the map prints, yes? Maybe I can convince the husband to hunt down some antique stores with me this weekend. I'd rather see the prints in person than buy them online. I'm also convinced any other prints to be hung on the wall must be selected prior to the framing process so I only hang things once. Pottery Barn might make it look easy to put together a wall collage of asymmetrical frames, but I'm certain it won't be a simple task for me. The more prepared I am from the beginning, the better.

Any ideas as to where one might acquire small antique prints of birds, flowers, butterflies - all things nature - in the TC area?

Decorating Casa K

[source]

We may not have furniture for our new living room, but we do have art for the walls. Thanks to our parents, I have a collection of five antique maps. Two of the maps are of our hometowns/ counties, one is of the town we went to college in, one is of the state of Wisconsin, and the remaining map is of Saint Paul (close enough to our current place of residence). They've been carefully stored in our spare room for two years.

It is finally time to get them framed! I'm hoping to get some estimates for the project over the next few weeks. They'll require archival glass so the colors don't continue to fade, which means the price will be higher than I'd probably like to pay. Better to be safe than sorry. These maps weren't exactly cheap.

I'm imagining all of the maps on this wall:


I'd like to include some other framed pieces to mix it up a bit. Any ideas as to what might work? I was thinking that antique postcards of places we've visited might be cool. I'm also attracted to small antique prints of birds. Other ideas? Let me know. Please. I've never decorated a space and I have a feeling it will be slightly challenging for me. Any input is appreciated.

Home Projects: Basement Bathroom

The husband and I have spent a lot of time thinking about the changes we want to make to our new home. We're fortunate in that our home is in very good shape and we won't have any big projects that require our immediate attention. Eventually, we want to completely renovate the kitchen and dining room area, but we're not going to do much more than think about that project for the next few years.

Instead, we're going to tackle more manageable, cost-friendly projects like the bathroom in the basement and converting the storage room into a guest bedroom/office space. We'll start with the bathroom.

First up, the homemade vanity, complete with a lovely glass mirror, overhead lights that don't coordinate with any other fixtures in the room, and a cloth "door." What's that on the wallpaper border, you ask? Deer prancing through a forest.

Just to the right of the sink area is a closet that houses the water softener and some shelving. I'm all for extra storage space, but this particular closet is a little annoying. We'll have to work with it, though, because we don't have any other options. We're hoping to replace the shower curtain with a real door.

The depths of the closet.

The shower and toilet area. I'd love to replace that door with a wall, but I've been informed that's not possible. Apparently the only access to the shower is through that space, which means it needs to be accessible. Maybe a coat of white paint would make it look better?

I appreciate the fact that this was probably the man's bathroom (based on toiletries in the room and the amount of camo hanging in the storage room), but the wallpaper is just horrendous. I've spent some time reading about wallpaper removal and I'm determined to make it one of the first big projects I tackle.

Any advice on prepping walls that were once covered in wallpaper for paint? Any changes you'd make?