Design in My Home: House Tour, Part 2 - The Dining Room

Happy October, everyone! I've been so happy to be able to comfortably have the windows open in the house lately - it has such a wonderful cross breeze! Lots of stuff coming up to do for October - sweet hubs 31st birthday, a trip to South Carolina for the state fair, a trip to the mountains, some pumpkin picking, hopefully lots of baking! I love fall - it's absolutely my favorite time of year.

Anyhow, now that I've professed my love of fall, let's move onto part 2 of the house tour - the dining room! You've already seen a sneak peek of it here in our how-to post on recovering our dining room chairs, but here it is, in full effect.

A few before shots:

And now the after:

Painting by Ashley Love

TCB Cross Stitch by the amazing Kristy Kizzee (aka Bombastitch)

Coney Island poster by Michael Michael Motorcycle

I actually quite liked the color of the dining room before, but unfortunately, it didn't go with the color palette I had in mind, so it had to go. We replaced it with a nicely pigmented, but light shade of green called Desert Cactus by Behr (color number 440D-4), which is a few shades lighter than our kitchen that you'll see in part 3 of the house tour, next week.

Design in My Home: House Tour, Part 1 - The Living Room

Sweet hubs and I have finally gotten to the point with the living room that we feel comfortable sharing photos of it. There's still work to be done, but we're pretty happy with the progress we've made.

Here's a before shot of what we were working with:

To those who love red, I apologize in advance, but I truly hated the color of the living room before. It was not quite brick red, and not quite burnt orange, but this grotesque hybrid of the two. It repulsed me and therefore had to go immediately after moving in.

We chose to go the total opposite of what was there previously and cool that baby down with a nice dark teal, specifically Mirage Lake by Behr (color number 500D-6). It did everything we hoped it would - made the white trim pop and made the floors stand out so much more.

See my favorite lamp by Grenkol? It was a perfect fit for the bookshelf.

Aside from painting, the house overall was in pretty great shape - we did also end up swapping out all of the outlet and light switch covers in the house. The ones originally in there ran the gamut of almond, white, and my favorite - painted over to match the wall and cement the plate in place. I can't really complain though, like I said, it was in good shape.

Now, as for things we still need to do - we definitely need a curtain solution. I hate mini-blinds, especially cheap plastic ones. Our cats apparently hate them too - our sweet little Abigail has a mission to break every one of them. We're doing pretty well so far. (Insert sarcasm here.) We're thinking of either going for roman shades with a textured fabric or a natural wood roll down - we shall see.

Another little project I'd like to tackle is putting in new window hardware. The hardware that is currently in all of the windows in the house as well as the knobs and pulls on the drawers in the kitchen are all very old and very worn down. Aside from that though, we're in good shape for having been here two months now.

One of the challenges we ran across with this room is the awkward layout. We hadn't initially noticed it when we viewed the house (not that it would have deterred us from renting it - the neighborhood and the price were too fabulous to pass up on), but it did cause us to think more than we wanted to with regard to our furniture layout. I must say, I'm really glad we decided to keep our "apartment sized" furniture. Had we purchased a larger couch, we would have had to eliminate some furniture and we just aren't quite ready to do that - we love our mid-century hand me downs!

We're quite pleased with it. I'm sure as time goes on, we'll play around with it and maybe find something that works better, but for now, it definitely feels like home.

The Shady Dell

I think I've found a vacation destination for Jesse and I in Bisbee, Arizona.

Welcome to The Shady Dell.

Image courtesy of Fine Art America.

Courtesy of The Shady Dell website:

Experience the 50's in Full Technicolor!

Nine lovely, fully restored vintage aluminum travel trailers  await you at the Shady Dell in Bisbee, Arizona. Whether it is the 33 foot Royal Mansion built in 1951 and restored with leopard carpet, martini glasses, Diner-style breakfast booth and phonograph with a collection of 78rpm records, or the 1947 Tiki Bus Polynesian Palace, complete with hand-carved outrigger bar and your own Tiki God, the Shady Dell’s individual trailers will surely send you back to a time when freedom was just another word for jumping in your aluminum house on wheels, finding the Rat Pack on the radio and navigating the open road in search of your own slice of the American Dream.

Our sleek collection of vintage travel trailers are all perfectly restored to combine mid-century Americana kitsch with the comforts of home in a way that only the 1950s were capable of.  Each trailer, such as the 1949 Airstream, or the 1950 Spartan Manor, are  available for overnight or weekly rental. For once, experience the 1950s in full Technicolor.

Interiors are the rich blonde woods or highly polished aluminum of the original and authentic décor. Outside each trailer is a grassy yard with lounge chairs so you can enjoy the beautiful evening weather of southern Arizona. In the various trailers, vintage radios play era-appropriate radio programs, televisions only broadcast in two colors, period books and magazines allow for even more mental time travel and big band, early rhythm and blues and original rock and roll are available for your listening entertainment. The trailers are also equipped with original working kitchens, refrigerators and vintage electric percolators. Dishes and linens are also furnished.

Image courtesy of  Arizona Highways.

Nestled perfectly among the aluminum trailers and within walking distance from each front door, is Dot’s Diner. Built in the 1950s by the pride of Wichita Kansas, The Valentine Manufacturing Company, this authentic diner was originally purchased by John Hart in 1957 and delivered to the corner of Ventura and Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles. It was run by Dot Bozeman, chief cook and bottle washer until 1999.

Image courtesy of whflood on Flickr.

The Shady Dell’s long and epic journey began in 1927 as a place to provide trailer and camping spaces to weary travelers along the famous Highway 80, which stretched from Savannah, Georgia to San Diego, California.  Like its more famous brother Route 66, Highway 80 was a center of travel, exploration and family getaways in the early portions of the 20th century.  Today, the park is a nice mix of practicality and vintage fun-seeking.  Part of the park is equipped with full RV hookups while the other part is a unique step back to the heyday of travel trailering in America.
Step off the premises and experience the beauty and charm of Bisbee, Arizona, a mile-high historic copper mining town nestled in the Mule Mountains and a stone’s throw from the Mexican border. Founded in 1880, Bisbee was a true hot spot around the turn of the century, known as one of the West’s most roaring towns on the route between St. Louis and San Francisco.

Today, Bisbee is captivating and full of historic buildings, museums, art galleries, antique shops, hidden walkways and plenty of ghosts. Its close proximity to the Chiricahua National Forest, Cochise Stronghold, and the Ramsey Canyon Nature Conservancy provides numerous opportunities for bird watching, rock hunting, biking, hiking or just leisurely explorations of the wonders of southern Arizona’s  high desert area.

Which is your favorite? Mine is the Tiki Bus.

Image courtesy of whflood on Flickr.

Hello 1950, I think I'll stay a while.

Design in My Home Project: Budget Friendly Landscaping

When sweet hubs and I found our darling little bungalo, we fell in love immediately. It was the perfect size for us (it's a small house and coming from NYC, we didn't need a cavernous space to fill with excess "stuff".) It's not a newly renovated place, but its got a lot of charm. That also meant it needed a little elbow grease, specifically on the outside, which Jesse was itching to get his hands on. It had been so long since we'd had our own outdoor space, that doing little bits of landscaping was one of the major appeals of the house. Keep in mind, this is also landscaping from a couple of novices... the most either of us has ever really done with regard to landscaping was raking or cutting the grass. 

Over the last month, we've become best friends with our local Lowe's store. We've done little bits here and there, and finally, the front is now starting to take some shape. We didn't have a huge budget, and to be honest, didn't really want to spend a lot of money on a rental property, so I wanted to share the little things we did, that made a big impact.

First off, this was what we started with:

Full frontal of the house. Note the overgrown landscape beds and unruly, unpruned trees and plants.

Close up of the overgrown and dead leaf filled landscape beds.

Close up of the walkway landscape bed and vine impressions left on the brick.

It wasn't terrible, by any means, but it could have looked better. A lot better. So here's what we've done...

- Raked out and mulched the landscape beds. (Cost: $2.50 x 10 bags of 2.2 cu ft brown mulch = $25.00

- Sprayed down all of the sidewalks and stairs with water (Cost: Free)

- Cut the grass (Cost: Free)

- Pruned the trees and pulled weeds from the landscape beds (Cost: Free)

- Planted five ornamental grass plants (Miscanthus sinensis 'Variegatus') in the small landscape bed by the front walk (Cost: $3.00 x 5 plants = $15.00)

- Placed three solar powered lights in the small landscape bed by the front walk (Cost: $2.50 x 3 lights - $7.50)

- Planted a geranium plant and a salvia plant in two planters that we found (Cost: $9.00 for the geranium, $1.50 for the salvia = $10.50)

- Planted a small container herb garden with mint, dill, rosemary and chives (Cost: $3.50 x 3 plants, $1.25 for packet of dill seeds, $4.77 for a small bag of potting soil, $6.96 for a black heavy duty plastic urn = $23.48)

- Threw down some grass seed in bare areas on the lawn (Cost: $10.14 x 2 bags of shady grass seed = $20.28)

GRAND TOTAL: $101.76

We still have a few things we want to do to the front - the main thing being that we need to put two pieces of landscape timber to finish the front bed (you can see this on the walkway shots). Once we buy the timber, we'll be right around $105. Not too shabby!

Another project for a little later on is that we want to scrub off the vine remains on the house, but we need to figure out a strategy for that (to power wash or to scrub brush).

Here's the final product (until we decide to do more):

I love the dark brown mulch - t adds some much needed contrast to the front of the house.

Close up of one of the landscape beds.

Close up of the brown mulch.

You can see where we need to lay the landscape timber on the left side. Also, I just love the ornamental grass!

Close up of the geranium and the salvia plants.

Ornamental Grass

My sweet little herb garden. (I'm very excited about this.)

Labor Day Weekend Recap

What did you, my dear readers, do this past weekend?

Saturday morning, sweet hubs and I set out to spend the Labor Day weekend in Turtletown, Tennessee. I'm sure most of you have never heard of it - I hadn't till I met Jesse. It's a small town outside of Murphy, North Carolina. Turtletown happens to be where all of Jesse's family is from. In fact, not only was his great grandfather the local doctor, which was a very important role among small towns in that time, but his family has been there for generations upon generations.

Our purpose for heading up there this weekend was for a memorial service. Sweet hubs' great uncle had passed away early this summer and this past weekend would have been his 100th birthday, so it was only appropriate to say goodbye to him on the family homestead on the land that he loved, as well as celebrate what would have been a very important landmark birthday.

It was a very relaxing and sentimental weekend and I was thrilled to get the chance to meet a lot of the family I had not had the opportunity to meet before. The weekend was filled with music, laughter, some tears, lots of amazing food and dancing. We visited both of the family homes that his grandmother and grandfather grew up in - talk about postcard beautiful. Jesse and I also spent an extra day exploring the area since we intend to spend a lot of time up there now that we are in close driving distance.

I snapped a few photos, most of them are of his grandfather's property, since the weather was pretty awful, but I hope to take some good ones once we make a trip up there when the leaves start turning.

I love that I am now part of a large family - something I really never have experienced because my family is so small and spread out. I can't express the joy I have that I was able to meet so many cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. I think that my husband may have the sweetest family I've ever had the chance to meet. They're so filled with love, laughter and warmth. The only way to describe it is beautiful. I know, I know, look at me getting all sentimental and emotional - it really was amazing though.

Here are some photos. They don't do the places justice, but figured I'd share them anyhow.

Cherokee Lake

Jesse's grandfather's family property.

Jesse's grandfather's family property.

The view from Jesse's grandfather's family property.

Jesse's grandfather's family property.

Jesse's grandfather's family property.

Jesse's grandmother's family property.

Jesse's grandmother's family property - "In Memory of Dr. G.M. Young" (Jesse's great grandfather).

I got a John Deere tractor chocolate lollipop!

We also visited "Fields of the Woods", also known as the world's largest 10 commandments.
(We're trying to see as many sights from Roadside America as possible and this one
is about 10 minutes from Jesse's family property.)

Sweet hubs relaxing at the Nifty 50's Cafe in McCaysville, GA.

Unknown to us, we drove home through a tornado.

Design in My Home Project: Recovering Our Dining Room Chairs

Recently, sweet hubs and I acquired a fantastic mid-century modern dining set from his mother for our new home. In addition to a dining table with a removable leaf and six chairs, the set also includes a beautiful credenza, which unfortunately won't fit in our small home's dining space, so that will be saved for the day we buy our first house.

The dining set is in pretty great shape, considering it's age and the fact that between it being used and it coming into our possession, it was living under a bed for a few years.  It needed a little love and was be back in fine condition in no time.

Hey look! It's the first interior reveal of the house:
the dining room, which we painted in Behr's "Desert Cactus"!

Our first step to bringing the set back to its former glory was to recover the chairs. We recently went on the hunt for fabric that would fit stylistically with it but also give it a little bit of a modern flair. Our search unveiled lots of gorgeous fabric in many styles, colors and textures - but we couldn't find something just right - it all seemed to be missing the most important thing on our search - our budget!  For those of you unfamiliar with purchasing fabric - yes, it can absolutely be an incredible solution to freshen up a piece of furniture or a room on a budget, but it can also get very expensive, very fast, especially when you have champagne taste (in fabric) as I do.

Anyhow, after lots of searching, both online and in-stores, in New York City as well as Atlanta, I came across a fabulous little website called Newtoto. It was perfect on several levels: reasonably priced, had lots of options for modern prints and most of them were heavy duty (ie. resists spills and tears - perfect for cats and messy eaters). They even allowed you to order free swatches. I picked out my top three favorites and three days later I had my swatches in hand.

(Fabrics Left to Right: "Network - Frost" Terratex Panel Fabric $7.50/yard, "Maxim - Sesame" Crypton® Jacquard $10.64/yard, "See Saw - Granite" Crypton® $6.50/yard)

And the winner was: See Saw in Graphite! It was absolutely perfect. The moment my grubby little fingertips touched its thick, beautiful texture I was in love. Yes, I fall in love easily, especially when wonderful textures are involved.

But I digress... I got online and ordered my fabric immediately.

Fast forward to 5 business days later...

The day that our delivery was scheduled to arrive, sweet hubs and I ventured to Hancock Fabrics and our luck was with us - they were having a 40% off sale on foam! We walked out of there with four pieces of foam to start recovering our chairs as soon as our shipment arrived that evening.

And once we got home, our fabric was at our door. We then began recovering.

This was what we started with:

The chair before, which was covered in a red vinyl
that just didn't match our color scheme at all.

Sweet hubs and I then disassembled the first chair (unscrewed the seat from the frame) and took off not one, but two layers of different fabric and multiple layers of batting and foam - some of which I'm sure was from 1970 - and removed all of the staples left from the previous recovers.

Sweet hubs removing staples.

After removing the staples, we cut the foam to the size of the board. Once that was done, we cut the fabric. I don't know about anyone else, but I always get so nervous making "the first cut". Be it wrapping paper, fabric or cake, I'm always nervous that I'll mess it up.

Sitting on my knees, taking a deep breath before cutting the fabric.
Very dramatic, I know.

Once the fabric was cut, next was stretching the fabric over the foam and board and stapling it to the back. It's not nearly as difficult as it sounds - you just have to be careful to make sure you eliminate ripples and whatnot on the corners when you're stapling. And stretch the fabric tight. You want it to be nice and smooth. (I failed to capture any photos of the starting point since we were both doing this at the same time, but when you're doing this, your fabric is on bottom with the correct side (the side you want showing) down on flat on a surface. You stack the foam and then the board on top. When stretching and stapling, you want to start with one side, then do the side opposite of that, and so on. It keeps the fabric taught.

This is what it should look like mid-way through (keep in mind we had a little too much fabric left over, hence sweet hubs trimming it):

After you finish, you simply place the cushion back on the frame and screw it back on.  Voila!

I'm not going to lie - this was my first time recovering a chair. It was surprisingly easy, once we figured out the logistics. And when I say we, I mean that after the first chair, sweet hubs decided that he enjoyed recovering that first chair so much that he actually took over the project and finished the rest of them solo.

I'm a lucky lady. I'm even luckier because now I have a rad dining set.

That's all for now folks!

Design in My Home: Colors in the New House

Well, the move to Atlanta from Brooklyn is complete. We've been here almost two weeks now and things are going swimmingly. We're settling in, getting familiar with our new neighborhood and catching up with old friends.

All of that aside, I've been asked numerous times now what my color palette is for the new house and I'm finally ready to share.

I must admit, in my home, I resist a lot of variety when it comes to my color palettes - I gravitate toward cooler colors, as does sweet hubs, which means we typically stay in the neutrals (mainly shades of grey or cooler browns), blues and greens. Guess what? We didn't stray from that here either.

In our last apartment, we went with more conservative, dusky colored blues and greens. You can see what I'm talking about here. This time, we felt since we were actually going to be in a house rather than an apartment, that we'd go a little more bold - instead of dusky, we went jewel toned.

Now, without further adieu, our color palette:

As you can see, I chose Behr colors - I also used Behr paint. I really do find them to have excellent quality paint with great coverage (No, I'm not paid to say that, I truly do just love their products.)

I'm not telling you where which colors are going or what they're doing - just soak up the color palette for a bit and relax. After I saw the colors we picked all together, I realized its almost a Palm Springs color palette. Good thing most of our furniture is modern and mid-century - they go hand in hand in the Palm Springs style.

Well, that's all you get for now. I'll have another "Design in My Home" update soon!