My Christmas Gift

My SO is the bestest!
He gave me for Christmas the sewing machine i wanted so i can make the window treatments and pillows for the house! I'm SIKED!

So stay tuned.. more to come on that front later!

I'm currently working on the basement now.. it's a project and a half so please be patient.. I haven't forgotten about ya's! I've just been busy.. you know with the holidays and all.

~T

WooHoo!! It's Christmas Early!

MY WINDOW TREATMENTS ARRIVED!!!
I ordered top down bottom up pleated sheer blinds from JC Penney for the kitchen and bathroom, I'm SO excited! Now i can have complete privacy with great light!

I also got the bedroom roman shades from Bed Bath and Beyond too!!! (they were cheaper than Target, which i was shocked about)
Guess what I'll be doing this weekend??? WOOHOO!!!
Yes, i will take pics and share them with you! THAT you DON'T have to worry about lol.

I also received my carpet tile samples from icarpetiles.com! ordered them Monday and they arrived today free of charge.. I'm glad i ordered them too because of all 5 there's only one that i think i like.. well two, but I'm going to let him decide since it's his man cave.

So stay tuned! I hope to have the update either Monday or Tuesday of next week if all goes well!
~T

Inspirations

Over the weekend, Kyle and I decided to organize the basement. Although it was clean, it needed a little tidying up. We put the AC units in the cubby holes in the walls, threw out the broken-down boxes from when he moved in last year. Got rid of some of the previous owner's junk left behind, swept, vacuumed the floors, walls, and spider/cobb webs in the beams, hung a shelf over the sink, and fixed a drafty hole in the far corner of the larger cubby area.

This task took us an entire day, but we got it done and the results are great. A nice clean slate to start a future project! hehe. The basement is quite cozy. It's not damp (thanks to the dehumidifier), it's certainly not cold (Steam heat furnace, the pipes keep the basement decently warm), and it has it's own entrance to the outside and the kitchen! SCORE!

Kyle wants to make a section of the basement a video gaming area or something similar. He wants to bring the large TV to this area after we get the new flat screen for the living room, bring the gaming chairs down and get a futon and an area rug. I think it is a great idea! A MAN CAVE!

Being the creative genius that i am, i threw up the idea of a nautical themed area.. with blues, and reds and whites and sandy colors. One of the cubby doors i would make a SCUBA sign to hide it a bit, the second cubby door i would either put the blue and white diver down flag or a map of the Caribbean or something similar.

We decided to paint the walls as if you were under the Caribbean waters.. dark aqua at the bottom gradually lightening to the ceiling. Paint the floor a sandy color because the current slate grey color won't fit the theme and also it's dingy looking. I think a nice tan color will make it warmer and brighter. As much work as that is to do i can't WAIT to get started on it.

My mind has been going a mile a minute ever since we thought this up. What type of things can i decorate and accessorize with? For inspiration i turned to HGTV's Color Splash episode of the kids' underwater basement that David Bromstad so cleverly designed. Only this isn't for kids, it's for MEN kids. Also, that basement was HUGE, ours is tiny and very low so i have to use lighter colors.

I chose to instead look at the elements in his design.. colors, textures, things of that nature. Pillows will be my big texture element. I found, in my journey tonight, microfiber bath mats that could symbolize coral in a chartreusey looking sagey green.. indicative of underwater coral that i saw while snorkeling in Aruba. Although it is VERY expensive.. so i found on the lower end a similar looking product just not in micro fiber! less than 12 bucks and i can make 2 nice pillows out of it. I picked up glass votive holders and enamel paints to add an element of color as well.. i might just paint coral on them i have not decided yet.

I think also, instead of an area rug we will get carpet tiles. If someone spills something or if the cat vomits (sorry) on it we can clean them easily and if it's beyond cleaning we can replace 1 tile instead of the entire rug. Thanks for the idea HGTV! These tiles can be found on the Internet for nearly 1/2 the price as the big box stores and you get more product! I'm sold!

Here are some pictures of the basement after we cleaned it out.. The only thing we have left to do is move the workbench (the one the American Flag is hanging from, the other cabinet looking bench in the last photo will eventually be my computer desk) to the garage and I'm going to start painting the walls. The kitchen and the dining room are going to have to wait on this.. I'm too excited to think about them at this point! lol. I'll keep you updated with the progress as it happens.



~T

The Bedroom

This room, like all the others, was a disaster.

It was 3 shades of a peachy pink color and it was so loud and busy it hurt to be in the room. If you are uneasy in a room change the color it'll do you wonders!

Here is the atrocity, i can't even talk about it anymore.

Selecting the color for this room proved to be about a 1 year challenge for me. I went from one end of the spectrum to the other and everything in between and i couldn't decide.

The blues were not right with the lighting.. it looked to girly or too Victorian. Yellows were too dull or way to bright. No red, No purples, No oranges. Neutrals were ok but washed out with the neutral carpeting. I found my solace in the greens. I was looking for a sage green.. (NOT like the bathroom) I need a color to pop a bit.. not too much though.

Even the greens proved hard to decide on. They were either to GREEN or to GREY. I attribute it to the lighting in the room. So i went to Benjamin Moore and got a sample to start with at least. I never made it home. I stopped at KMart for some tension rods and when i was leaving i glanced over at the towels and found the green i wanted. Luckily for me i had a paint swatch in the car from the Benjamin Moore store that matched it perfectly!

I didn't even go home to test the sample or check the lighting i went right to Home Depot to color match Benjamin Moore's Fernwood, and it looked beautiful.

The project started off like a nightmare though. Because the doors were pink/peachy when i put the green on the walls i felt like i was in a bad candy nightmare. I was almost in tears because i was at a loss with color, but i kept up my optimism and kept on painting until about 3am that morning. I got one coat of wall and trim done and collapsed on the couch until the sun came up a few hours later.

I went back upstairs, espresso in hand, and slowly opened the door. To my chagrin the room looked great! I was so happy! With my rejuvenated energy i got right to painting the second coats.

Here is the finished product. (Again, window treatments and artwork are in the next phase)

Up Next... The Kitchen

Not all Living Rooms Live

This holds true for the living room in this home.

I almost have some empathy for this house as it just had no life to it! So much history yet so poorly decorated to the point that the house was cold and uneasy feeling.

Tara to the rescue!

We'll start with paint because that I can quickly do. Window treatments and furniture and artwork will be a W.I.P. for budgetary reasons.

Selecting a color isn't always as simple as liking a color and buying the paint. I sit on colors for weeks before making a decision. I had, oh about, 20 color swatches and i decided to attach them all over the room. In my travels i would glance over and see if anything jumped out at me, but nothing did for a long time. Then one day some colors started catching my eye, i liked that because now i can visualize, with the color, the feeling of the room.

I decided to sit on the room (literally) with the color all day and watch as the sun moved around the room and changed the colors of the swatches. That helped me narrow down the ones that fared well with the lighting changes. My biggest challenge was night time with lamp lights and the sunrise.

I camped out on the couch that night, of course falling asleep to HGTV, and when the sun awoke i did too and the color POPPED right out at me. I took the swatch and compared it to the wood features of the room and it went with everything. The color is Desert Camel by Behr. This is it's beautfil transformation of the living room

This color warmed up the room exactly as i had hoped. It also makes it feel larger than it is.

I truly can't wait to buy the properly scaled furniture and get the flat screen for the wall and the window treatments up. This room is going to ROCK!

Up next... The Bedroom.

The Bathroom

They say that the kitchen and the bathroom are usually the selling points for a home. In this case that bathroom and the deck took center stage for the decision and I'd have to agree. The bathroom is very big for an old home like this. The previous owners did a great job of wainscoting and installing a Jacuzzi tub and slate tile in the shower and on the floors.

Somewhere though they got tripped up because the paint they chose didn’t make those beautiful assets take center stage. They used a very light almost sagey color that washed out with all of the natural light that the room has and it actually tamed the beautiful natural earthy tones of the slate tile. See for yourself!


I just HAD to remedy this situation. I did so with Deer Park by Sherwin Williams, Home Depot was kind enough to color match it with Behr for me for budgetary reasons.
This was the end result and we absolutely LOVE it!
(Please keep in mind that the little blue painting on the wall is no longer there. I have different artwork on that wall now.)


This was one of the easier tasks I have embarked on and completed.


Next stop is the living room.

Interior Design Might be My Calling

Since most of my dreams have gone unfulfilled i have managed to rekindle the passion i felt for interior design. I have Kyle to thank for that because he bought a new home. One that has seen many decades of families and changes and is/was in need of life.

Since Kyle purchased his new home about a year ago, it is transforming nicely, from a bland, cold, old style sloppy Victorian era home to a cozy, warm, updated, cohesive home that you love to come home to in the mornings or evenings and almost never want to leave!

It lacked a lot of character when he purchased it, the outside for the most part still does. I have to wonder why or how people select colors for the exterior of a home. The colors are a taupe (almost grey) color, with green and a light burgundy trim here and there. It's nice, but kind of bland and doll-house-ish (you can tell the woman had the influence in that decision) the deck is stained a light green/blue to match the trim and it's just horrible! Other than the color though the deck rules!

Here is a picture of the deck when he first moved in

(The kiddie set in the back is gone and now there is a fire pit in it's place)

The task this summer, i think, will be to re stain it a dark brown to match the fence on the property. That will also make it look less "whimsical" .

This is how we decorated it for summer 2008

His purchase of this home has allowed my creative mind to turn from rusty old gears to a well oiled machine running almost 24/7 no matter where i am or what I'm doing or what I'm watching.. I'm constantly looking for the next color, the next idea. I ask myself constantly, how would this color make the room feel? Better yet, how will it make US feel when we are in it?

Our first obstacle, and rightfully so, was what was the previous owners' kid's room. Omg it was an atrocity. What do people think when they look at paint swatches?! Just because it's a kid doesn't mean you have to burn their retinas with bright obnoxious colors and busy stickers and what-not. Just make the room look nice! This is the before picture

Kyle gets the credit for hanging the plaques and pictures and picking out the color on this one. It's Benjamin Moore (can't remember the name of the color though) and the wainscoting is by the same in Spanish White-eggshell.

This room took me a very long time to finish. The wainscoting was detaching at it's seems in some areas so i had to repair those spots, sand, prime, and paint everything. Not to mention removing the stickers and glue from the walls. This project (on weekends only) took about 3-4 months total. It was a lot of work, but the end result thus far is very nice. I am still in the process of trying to find the perfect window treatments for this room, and shelving.

(To keep the post shorter I'm sending in sections)

Up Next the bathroom.