Monday, October 13, 2008

New barstools!

First of all -- I apologize to my two faithful readers who have complained about the lack of new posts lately. This one's for you guys.

Finally! Our barstools are arriving tomorrow. I tend to want to get everything done and decorated in a hurry, because it's tough for me to relax in a half-done space, but we were very patient with these. We wanted something that was modern and would fit with our black-granite and stainless-steel kitchen, but Chris was adamant that they have backs. Comfort is key for that guy. Of course, price was also a factor. We were both taken with the Eurway flower barstool:



It really tested the limits of my patience, though. They were backordered-- one of my least favorite words, after "nucular (sic)" and "incentivize." Tomorrow, the wait will be over. Here's a re-posted pic of the kitchen.



I've been eyeing stainless steel tiles on Ebay lately as part of a half-baked idea to install our own backsplash. The Do It Yourself sites online make it sound so easy (except for the lines that begin: "take your electric tile cutter..."), but I've said it before: We're not the handiest of couples. Stay tuned.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Next up: Manolo's

Posting a picture of my closet feels a little like exposing my dirty laundry. Literally. That's my laundry basket over there in the right corner. But I'm so darn proud of this project that I'm doing it anyway. After pitched battles with every closet in my ownership over the past decade, I finally took two hours -- really, that's all it took! -- and bought some sets of cheap stackable shelves and an over-the-door towel rack for my scarves. I am officially the undisputed victor in the Closet Wars.



Also, I highly recommend those little wooden hangers. They were $4 for an 8-pack at Home Depot and I now feel like I live at the Four Seasons.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Blue

At last, our blue wall. We taped, primed, mixed and painted, so we'd better like it now. Also because it's the very first thing we see in the morning (besides eachother with bedhead). It came out a tiny bit brighter than I was imagining, but since we didn't even test it, I'm going to consider it a qualified success.



I'm now eyeing the capiz mirror for this wall and a similar pendant lamp from West Elm for over the bed.





We're going for that urban-beach feel. What, you've never heard of it? Okay, we might be making it up. But I totally think it's going to work.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Today's Obsession: Indoor Fountain with Lamp

I don't know if I would really put this in my home, but the idea of it makes me feel peaceful inside. I'm reminded of the lovely lobby of a hotel spa I went to once in Bangkok. I wish the massage rooms had been as nice -- they were just regular hotel rooms, and, no joke, instead of using an old stereo to play the sounds of the rainforest or bad new age music, the therapist turned on the t.v. and flipped the channel to CNN, which was covering bombing in Iraq. She seemed genuinely confused and a little offended when I asked her to turn it off mid-massage, after 20 minutes of stifling inappropriate giggles.

Back to the fountain. This nice little slice of watery spa bliss is from Eurway, my new favorite budget modern home site. My brother introduced me to it last week, and it has already supplied me with a new office chair and two bar stools. Almost everything on this site is exquisite, and the prices are unbelievable, so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.



What do you think? Soothing and spa-like, or cheesy bacteria trap?

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Our First Houseguests

Like the real adults we now are (I swear), we hosted our first houseguests last weekend. They agreed to honestly review our new Lubi Daybed, as well as our newly installed shades, which are unsettlingly see-through from inside. Thanks for sleeping in the closet/office, Robin and Derek!

Some pictures of the almost-there second bedroom, and our friends' verdict after the pics:







We had to remove the desk when we folded out the daybed, but that was pretty painless. According to Derek, the bed was very comfortable. Robin tactfully suggested we use a pad on top to soften it. I discovered that this isn't because they have different sleep numbers, but because Robin slept on the side that is normally the bottom, sturdier half of the daybed, and Derek slept on what is the softer top half. Poor Robin's portion was pretty brick-like, but I think an egg mattress could resolve this.

As for the shades -- apparently, despite being see-through, they do mostly keep out the sun, which rises on that side of the condo. We knew Adam from Window Wears wouldn't lead us astray. Next up -- I'll show you the bedroom. We found our blue!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Progress

We painted the living room! After all our angst about choosing the right grays, we ended up pretty happy with them. The colors aren't coming through in pictures as well as I hoped they would, but here is a before and after:

Hopeless indecision:



Two-toned success!:





The bedroom blues are a different story. We are so tired of bringing home horrible samples that we're just going in blind. Tonight we're buying a big tub of Benjamin Moore "Seafoam Blue," which we've never seen on our walls. You can judge our brilliance/idiocy when I post the bedroom before-and-afters.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

We Have Terrible Taste

I was very excited about our paint samples, but it appears we have terrible taste.





These colors verge on hideous. I'm quasi- satisfied with the light gray for the living/dining room, but the dark grays for the accent wall are a bit cave-like for my taste. We're going to experiment with a lighter shade of gray with some brown in it instead.

And how did we go so piteously astray with these blues?





Why did they look so pretty in the mini paint jars? The guys at Strosniders Hardware Store are getting another visit from us tonight, if we can muster the enthusiasm.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Todays Obsession: Vintage Bar Cart

Okay, you caught me. Today's obsession is something I already own. But I was obsessed with it (and it's various $3,000 sisters on ebay) for months before I found one that I liked and could afford at Hunted House on 14th Street. Walking into Hunted House is like stumbling onto the set of Mad Men. The store is set up in staged rooms on the top floor of an old row house, and each of them is an ode to Mid Century Modern furniture, but at prices I've never seen before. I checked the price tag on the bar cart (gasp: $150), looked away, blinked, and checked again. It's oh-so Mrs. Robinson. And now it's mine.



I have visions of a daily 5 o'clock cocktail hour, which will only happen if Chris tugs the bar cart behind him on a 15 block walk downtown and mixes me a drink while I yell "leave me alone I'm on deadline!"

I still have to set it up with some vintage wine glasses, linens and gourmet-sounding bottles like "cognac."

Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Living Room

I'm trying to finish up the house tour, so here's the living room (at Jen's request), which I've been avoiding posting. We've got some work to do on this room, including painting the walls, getting a real coffee table, replacing the old K-Mart cabinet that we're using as our "media center" and deciding if we want to keep the armchair.





I got some paint samples last night (six actually -- those things are expensive!), so the walls are about to get a light-gray makeover.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Today's Obsession: Modern Wallpaper

We seem to be in the midst of a wallpaper revolution. Vive la Reforme! From designyourwall.com:



Fit for an elegant Parisian apartment (but at a bargain price):



This one might make a cameo in our entry hall next month:

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Balcony

Note: If the lady at the garden center says you need three bags of soil, you need six. She may be a nursery expert with a thumb so green it's gold, and I may be a dilettante with a ficus plant that has been dying for two years, but trust me on this.





Also, if you decide to try going somewhere closer to home to get the three bags of missing soil after work one night and call ahead and press "1" to hear the store hours, don't assume the urban hipster garden store will be open during above mentioned hours. It may decide to close at any hour, really, citing "heat." In July.

But don't you just love my whiskey-barrel planters? They were free!

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The "Second Bedroom"

It's ludicrous to call this 6'11" x 8' closet a bedroom, but that's just what Castle Development did. We opted in, and now we're stuck with it.



It's clearly much better suited for an office, but I'm stubbornly insisting on making it a guest bedroom/office, because I just won't feel like a grown-up if we continue to make our visitors sleep on the L-shaped sectional in the living room (no matter how many times they proclaim it's "so comfortable" and that even if we had a bed they "would choose the couch anyway." I'm looking at you, Maggie).

How will I cram a queen-sized bed into the closet, you ask? And how could I possibly keep the desk in there if I did? Luckily, Nicole from Making it Lovely turned me on to this ingenious flip-out daybed from CB2, which she ordered for her slightly-less-closet-like guest room. I'm expecting it August 5th, in the Rust color.



If you were thinking the black monstrosity of an office chair doesn't really fit with our compact little West Elm desk, you're right. We originally brought home the white T-back leather chair in this West Elm catalogue picture, but it was marked up and the wheels did that thing that old shopping carts do when they try to pull you in several different directions at once.



So we asked for our $200 back and we're on the hunt for something equally sleek, comfortable and space-conscious. Suggestions welcome.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Today's Obsession: Vintage-Mod Chaise



Imagining this yummy, old-Hollywood style chaise in my living room perched cheekily next to my new vintage bar cart (subject of a future love-letter post) is making me a happy woman today. That, and my dinner plans. Happy Birthday, My Man.

Friday, July 25, 2008

It's Small, But It Sure Is Shiny

Our little kitchen might be the site of my very first DIY home decorating project. But not until we're able to walk in the front door without getting that sinking feeling that we are never, ever going to find storage space for the junk in the boxes that are languishing all over the Condo (notice how all of my posted pictures artfully conceal any hint of the surrounding rooms. Move junk out, take picture, replace).





But once we catch our breath, I'm playing with the idea of installing a modernish backsplash in some shade of red, or maybe dark gray. This one is just glass tiles placed over a painted wall -- love it.





I've been trying to find a picture of a backsplash that uses the small, red subway tiles that I noticed in one of the final episodes of Top Chef Season 4, when the chefs had to prepare their own recipes for diners at Taramonto's Steak and Seafood (does anyone else think the producers left Lisa in the running as part of some perverse viewer endurance experiment?). I loved that red and stainless steel kitchen. Here's a picture of the restaurant's seating area, which has the same dramatic-but-warm feeling as the kitchen.




This is the type of tile I'm talking about, but in a color that wouldn't work with our black granite countertops.




Of course, the whole thing could just be a pipe dream. My Man and I aren't really do-it-yourselfers. He even suggested hiring people to paint our walls (I'm tempted). But I can dream...

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Today's Obsession: Decals

I adore this chandelier decal from Dali Decals on Etsy.com. It's just so clever. I'm also about to keel over from unbearable cuteness re: Cute Owl.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Master Bathroom. Okay, the Only Bathroom.




I'm pretty satisfied with the bathroom the way it is, except for the drab off-white paint color. The room is really based around the shower curtain, which is made by Nicole Miller. I had a limited array of curtains to choose from, because you can't tell from the picture, but our shower rod is set really high -- probably because our ceilings are really high (one of the reasons we liked the place). Standard 72" shower curtains barely reached the top of the tub, so I went with this 74" one.

Miraculously, I found bath and hand towels that almost matched the shower curtain but were from a different brand. I ended up replacing the patterned hand towels with plain black terry-cloth ones when all the black-and-white matchi-matchiness started giving me a headache.

I think the only major thing left for this room is a paint job...I'm thinking a light lime green.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The Dining Nook



This is our small but functional eating area. It sits in the middle of the balcony door to the east, a massive window to the south, the living room to the west and double doors that lead to the tiniest and most impossible closet that a builder ever tried to call a second bedroom to the west.

The dining set is from...I don't know where. We got it off of craigslist two years ago when we were living in Chicago. The very nice, harried-looking couple with two small children who sold it to us said it hadn't been used much and that they needed something bigger for their growing brood. The lady was pretty far along with number three, and as if that wasn't bad enough, the entire front of their house was ripped open and covered with a tarp for an ill-timed renovation project. I think we paid $250 for the set, and at the moment, we're not looking to replace it.

But I do want to put it on top of the West Elm rug in this photo from their web site:



I've been dreaming of it since we bought the Condo in February and have managed over the past year and a half to accumulate enough in West Elm gift cards (thanks bro!) to buy the 5' x 8' one without delving into my pathetic reporter's bank account (the rug costs $228). The only problem is, a 5' x 8' rug would cover almost the entire dining nook and come perilously close to touching either the balcony door or our ginormous living room rug. It might look a little funny. There's also part of me that thinks: What's the point of having pretty hardwood floors if you plaster over them with glorified carpet?

I'm considering buying the 3 x 5 rug, but that is almost the exact length and width of the dining room table, which I think would also look odd. What I really need is a 4 x 6 rug, but I have my heart set on zebra print (even though My Man thinks we'll ruin the white stripes), and I haven't been able to find one that captures my fancy. Or that I have a gift card for. If there's life out there, tell me what you think.

What You're Reading

Welcome friends, family and bored employees looking for another form of procrastination. This is a blog about turning my (and my fiance's) bare, new-construction mortgage -- er, condo -- in Adams Morgan into something beautiful, on a budget. A sad, sad, post-down-payment budget. I'm not a blogger and I'm definitely not an interior designer, but I have developed a recent fascination with Domino magazine and a smattering of home-decorating blogs that are inspiring me to plunk down chunks of change on things I think are cool. Here's a brief tour of what our place looks like now, and an idea of what I'm envisioning.