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!

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.