Inspiration circa 1744

The latest issue of Lonny Magazine is live and I'm swooning over the showcase of an updated 1744 home in Connecticut. The blend of old and new is perfection. The rustic details including exposed wood ceilings and beams, fireplace stonework, wood paneling, brick walls, wide-plank flooring and distressed finishes feel like a peek into the home's 266 year history. And who wouldn't want to curl up in front of that fireplace?

The strangest thing I have EVER purchased

We hit the ground running with our next wave of renovations by doing some serious window shopping today. I previously posted about the guest bathroom spacial dilemma. Ideally there would be a bathtub AND shower, but the open space available wasn't boding well for the tub option. While browsing around The Rebuilding Center today (which was jam-packed with great used building and remodeling materials), we stumbled up the perfect second-hand solution to our problem.

And here it is--officially the strangest thing I have ever purchased:
There she is, spouting whales and all. At 42" x 35 1/2" it fits perfectly in our beyond small space and, being a used tub that was 25% off, it fit perfectly in our budget. The tub is big enough for a child to bath in and for an adult shower in. It's a small tub-sized miracle! What will you do with the 10 extra inches between the tub and the wall you ask? Why, we'll tile in a nifty seat/shelf for our sitting/storage pleasure.

After installation we'll have the tub refinished to like-spankin'-new condition (and I'll secretly miss those cute little whales).

Guest Bathroom: The Renovation Begins

Here's the current state of bathroom:

The guest bath is especially challenging because of its small size. Our general plan is:

- tile floors
- pedestal sink
- remove current shower enclosure and replace with something that gives the option for a bath or a shower
- replace toilet
- repaint walls
- strip and repaint original medicine cabinet, replace glass

The biggest challenge is the tub/shower issue. Right now there is only a shower in the room but we want to add a bathtub option for when we have kids. That is going to be a challenge given the tub/shower area is only 52" wide and about 36" deep.

Let the renovation begin!

Meet my two new best friends

The old washer and dryer that came with the house have been destroying our clothes since April and will be gone come Wednesday! The new, efficient, Consumer Reports recommended Kenmore models were the winners after a serious hunt all over town and online. We got them for 30% off (25% off sale + AAA gives an additional 5% off at sears.com)!

Garage Update: No more garage updates

I'll make this short and sweet. We are, once again, not building the garage. Despite a possible deal with a contractor, it would have required too many compromises in the end. On that note I will leave the garage subject alone for a while.

Garage Update: It may be built afterall

We were pretty garage-obsessed until the last post when we decided not to spend the $44,000-$73,000 we were quoted to build a garage. It was simply too much cash on one project when we have so many others we want to do at the same time. And just as we settled into the idea of no garage--the garage may be back within reach!

Apparently it's hard times out there for contractors (although you wouldn't know it from the $73K bids we received) and there is now one willing to work with us and do the job within our budget. More details on this will be coming. We're kind of excited! And I am once again, dreaming of my garage with rooftop deck...

Garage Update: We don't need no stinking garage (right away)

The garage saga continues:
Turns out $35K will buy most people a garage, but not us. Our garage requires a lot of site prep work and that is causing the cost to skyrocket. A serious amount of dirt excavation and moving is needed. The cost for the cement footings, retaining walls, driveway and garage slab isn't helping either. This prep work alone is half the budget. Granted, this high cost DOES make sense when you look at what we're working with:New Plan = We'll get all the site work mentioned above done now. That way we'll be able to landscape, build gardens, get our cars off the street and have some outdoor space to hang out in. We'll still punch a new door on the South side of the house allowing easy access from the back of the house/parking slab into the basement. Then, we wait. We'll live with that set-up for a few years (maybe less if we get lucky) and then come back in to build the garage and deck on the pre-prepped site.

The upside to the new plan is it will free up enough funds to redo the kitchen, redo the three bathrooms, finish the (VERY) unfinished basement including a 4th bath and 4th bedroom, refinish the floors on the main level and repaint the main level. This is all pretty exciting stuff and we can't wait start the proverbial balls rolling!

Garage Update: Where is Drew Carey when you need him?

We have most of the bids in now. And I keep coming back to how they do it on The Price Is Right. The players bid on an item and the closest without going over wins. If all the players overbid a loud buzzer sounds, all the bid are removed and they have to give new, lower bids...

You get the idea. It's not going well.

The closest bid we have is still $9,000 off from fitting within our price range. My favorite bid is the one for $73,000. Really? $73,000? Incredible. We are currently trying to wrap our brains around the whole situation and decide what the next step will be.

If our hopes and dreams of a garage were summarized by a photo, this would it:CRUSHED.

DIY: Curtains

Whilst out shopping for roman shade items, I fell in love with the fabric I posted about here and decided I HAD to have curtains out of it. I found this article which broke down every step and measurement to perfect simplicity. I had no idea making curtains was so easy! After a few short hours of time...
I ended up with the most gorgeous curtains EVER! Even David (who doesn't usually have much to say about things of this nature) keeps commenting on how much he loves them. These curtains flank the windows in the stairwell landing, an area which has not yet been rehabed and painted. As the space isn't finished, I'm not doing a full reveal quite yet. Up against black trim and dull mauve walls--my lovely curtains don't look their full fabulous yet. After painting, they'll POP and I'll share more.

In the daytime:
During the night:
If curtains were babies, I just had twins! I seriously love them.

Garage Update: Getting Bids

There is a steady stream of contractors rotating through our door these days. Have I mentioned I'm beyond ready to break ground on this project already? We have some bids back and are waiting for more to come in. Having said that, we've now entered the phase where we freak out because (so far) the contractors think our garage will cost a lot more than we anticipated. Seems a few think it will cost TWICE as much as we expected. The garage plot has, indeed, thickened. We try to laugh it off but mostly our blood pressure rises higher and higher. Hopefully there is more good news on the way when the remaining bids come in.

Until then, I dream of a beautiful outdoor patio space of my very own...
photos from decorpad.com

Factory Sale at Rejuvenation

Today marks the start of Rejuvenation's Factory Sale! I love their products but can rarely bring myself to pay their prices. When I arrived at the store this morning (with the rest of the mob) there were great deals to be had. They had an abundance of lighting hardware in all finishes and a whole rack of a personal fav of mine, their signature painted schoolhouse light shades. They also had some killer pedestal sinks and claw-foot tubs. If only we had a bathroom that could fit a beautiful claw-foot tub *sigh*. To boot, lots of rugs and furniture where also on sale.
Alas, we are in between major remodel projects right now and I didn't need anything from the sale. I did pick up a few keys (a recently developed obsession) from the salvage section to start off my vintage key collection. I might even have to get one of these just for good measure.

Loving: Jessica Helgerson Design

By far my favorite interior designer right now is Jessica Helgerson (she is a local for you Stumptown dwellers out there). I am blown away by everything that she does and would absolutely die to have her do just one room in my house! Her lines are clean, her use of color is perfection and her sense of style is an understated chic that just screams my name. And the kicker? She specializes in environmentally sustainable design. Do you think she would work for an IOU?

Here's a few of of her rooms that are inspiring me right now:

Image credits: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 & 8 - Jessica Helgerson; 4 & 6 - Lincoln Barber Photography

Is she fantastic or what? If you have a favorite designer I'd love to know about them. You can never have too many design ideas

Pantry Update: The Light

The poor, sad pantry hasn't been touched since we moved in and most notably the light in the space was lacking. See for yourself (cob web and all):
During my recent vintage outing I picked up an old pendant light with the pantry in mind. I touched up the paint, swapped out the chain (painted to match), fixed the frame so the beveled glass inserts stayed in place and painted a basic ceiling plate to match.
David used his handy electrician skills and voila—a pretty new light! I like that an outdoorish lamp-post style light is brought indoors and that the clear glass allows light to reach all the nooks and crannies of the pantry.
Now all the pantry needs is new paint, a window and a major organization overhaul (using my new jars). Baby steps...

DIY Resolution #1: Roman Shade

I'm no Martha, but sometimes I pretend I to be.

A variety of greenery provides privacy in our master bathroom throughout most of the year but come Winter, a few neighbors can probably see more than they bargained for. Enter the need for a Roman Shade. I wanted the shade to have a sheer quality without compromising privacy, an organic quality to the pattern sans anything that felt cookie-cutter, white on white, a little sheen and of course, sized appropriately to fit the window of interest. As you may have guessed, I didn't find it. So, I decided to make my own.

I'll spare a detailed write up of the process and just post a photo montage. If you're interested in making a shade, just let me know via comment and I'd be happy to forward links of the sources I used.

In a nutshell:The finished product:
And here is the shade in all its glory—filtering a beautiful glow of morning light. You can see the Winter chill in the air...Total Cost = $24.95
Breakdown: pulley hardware $3.95, cord 79¢, cord rings 30¢, dowels $1.26, Velcro $1.99, backing fabric (muslin) $2.25, shade fabric $11.42, ceiling fan pull (adapted as the cord pull) $2.99

Not too shabby for a custom shade that I absolutely love. This DIY resolution of mine might turn into an obsession. I like getting exactly what I want!

Vintage Allure

It started with a mishap that landed David's SUV (and us) in Sellwood with a broken drivers side windshield wiper transmission during a (seemingly endless) rain storm. After an amazing meal, a cab ride, a lift from a friend and a good nights sleep, I found myself back in Sellwood (sans rain) to drop David off at the car. He was eager to get it home and try out the DIY repair he'd researched. I, on the other hand, was enjoying being out and about so I decided to pay a visit to the Stars Antique Mall (a popular Sellwood destination). I was prepared to find a store full of old things that smelled bad and cost a lot, but I ventured in anyway.

Needless to say, It was love at first sight. I found so many inspiring objects and ideas I could hardly contain myself. I got to a point more than once where my arms were so full of items I had to do a front counter drop-off and go back for more. I was practically skipping through the aisles by the end of the first building knowing there was an entire second building yet to go!

All of a sudden everything old was new again and seemed a perfect fit for my circa 1911 house. Most surprising of all, the price tags were incredibly reasonable. I got items with vintage character for much less than I could have bought them new. With a little doctoring up, vintage is so vogue!! My finds were all items for the butler's pantry which is currently a much-neglected spot in our home. And they are...

An old-school lamp style pendant light (that needs some TLC) for only $20!
A collection of large canning jars, small canning jars and a token milk jug. All of which will be used to organize the pantry shelves. (More on that when I actually do the re-org.) And, of course, a few token jars to put pretty flowers in this summer.

I like to think that some of these jars may have graced the shelves of my home 80 years ago and are now finding their way back home. *smiling sigh*

Happy New Year Blog Buddies!

2010 marks the year our home turns 99. And boy do we have have plans for the year! Our house to-do list includes a new 2.5 car garage with rooftop deck, a kitchen remodel, new paint and floor resurfacing on the main level, a master bath remodel and possibly finishing the basement. It's shaping up to be a year full of drastic home improvement projects and I can't wait to share the adventure with you all.

We have a few projects nearing completion that will be popping up on this blog very soon including our HVAC system replacement (horror) story and the master bedroom patch-up after the wall tear-down. I have a plethora of decorating ideas and mucho renovation inspiration from some serious time spent browsing blogs over the holidays. I can't wait to get started!

That said, my New Years Resolution is to take the DIY decor bull by the horns and I'm excited to report the follow through already began at the precise moment this fabulous damask fabric materialized (no pun intended) in front of me. I knew I could not leave the store without it and 6 yards later, I will soon have the perfect DIY curtains in my stairway landing (after months of searching online for a killer curtain at a reasonable price to avail)! Wish me luck. :)