shaking things up

I feel like I am good at sharing a fragment of a room here and there, but need to try and improve on sharing full rooms. I realized this all too well when I was looking through our Reno links and realized almost all the rooms look different. REALLY different. So I am on a mission to slowly but sure update them, and continue to do so as they change (all too frequently sometimes, so forgive me if it is a challenge to stay on top of). The living room /dining room actually change the most frequently as far as furniture goes, but layout and general furniture positioning usually stays the same. And I have to offer a caveat that while I took these photos on Saturday the dresser is already long gone and a new table is about to come inside (and I think you may be shocked when I show you. Like REALLY shocked!). But in the event you were curious what it looked like for approximately 5 days here are the photos.

I am still swooning over the new trunk. It is the first thing I see when I come down the stairs in the morning and I smile every day!

See those baskets filled with pillows? what you can't see is that under the pillows are dozens and dozens of Wren's books. I like to think of our living room as the bat-cave of toys. Every cupboard, corner and basket hides books, gadgets and toys. If you were to open any door it would cause a small landslide of My Little Ponies. I have continued to struggle with the large open layout of these rooms, and have found that large scale items are the best, but I still debate on painting the walls (it looks particularly bland thanks to the cloudy day I shot on).

Our former TV stand hangs out under the logs for now.

I took our last dining room rug upstairs to the office, so I was short a dining room rug until this one came home with me a few weeks ago. It was laying all rolled up on the floor at HomeSense without a tag, I knew I wanted it and a lovely sales associate marked it at $99. SOLD!

We haven't hung the mirror yet, as logic tells me it is probably best to delay hanging a 3 hundred pound mirror until after a lot of banging and smashing 6 feet away is finished.

Now if only I could figure out how to host an online dinner party I would happily have you all over!

DIY weathered basket

I LOOOOVE grey baskets. They are all around the house, holding toys, books, pillows, even bottles. And not so long ago I was asked if I painted them to look like that. I hadn't, but it got me thinking "why shouldn't I?". The baskets weren't expensive but old baskets are one of the cheapest and easiest things to find in thrift stores so I decided to try my hand at one. Starting small, of course.

I picked out this cute little basket for $1.50 because I thought the wire was a nice touch. Like something I would go collect my fresh eggs in, from my imaginary chicken coupe should I ever feel inclined to actually house farm animals.

5 minutes of spraying some light grey paint made a big transformation.

Like most woods, wicker doesn't naturally look so even and uniform after being stained. So I took a small paint brush and dipped it in really really watered down cream paint then wiped the basket down. Which gives a little variation in tone as you can see on the top portion here that had been done.

A few more strokes and it was good to go! The size of the basket is perfect for holding mail and keys at the front door, but small baskets have tons of uses so I am sure you will see it cycling through the house.

It looks a little white-er here thanks to our sky-light, but it is the perfect old-grey now, and all for $1.50!

And no, our stairs are not done yet, don't judge! I've been too busy painting baskets to get to that...

Card Catalogue Dresser

I have no idea where my love of labeling things comes from. But gosh I love me some clearly labeled drawers, instructions, illustrations. Anything with a label makes my heart skip a beat. I think it is the perfectionist, OCD side of me fighting to break free.

But I guess there are worse things to be in love with than a well labeled dresser?

This guy was ripe for the picking with his clean lines and plain drawers. Keeping it from looking too visually cluttered is the real key to using card catalogue plates.

A little white paint, followed by some grey paint, followed by some distressing and we were ready to attach our filing cabinet inspired chrome handles and frames.

Taking the crazy 1 step further I printed up some fantasical labels on the 'puter.

On a totally different wave length, I have to make a confession. I have ventured over to the dark side and bought this set of faux-piaries (aka fake topiaries in the event the joke fell flat...). I rarely ever see fake greenery that I like, and when I spied these two at Home Sense I was thoroughly fooled so in the cart they went. The price tag was unbelievable as well, totalling the cost of just 1 real topiary from HomeDepot.

And a big thanks to my Dad for loaning me the artwork in these shots! He opened a new restaurant a few years ago and I sourced all the black and white artwork from the local Archives with my mom. These two are waiting to go into another location he is renovating, but in the meantime I am gonna put them to good use (and maybe they will get lost before the reno is done?).

Anyways, thanks a lot Dad!