Master Bathroom (part 4) - shaving mirror

My husband had one additional request, a shaving mirror. We had one in the house we used to rent and I admit it was rather useful to have it. Now that he started straight razor shaving he thinks this will be even more useful to have than it was in the rental when he was just using a safety razor. I didn't realize just how expensive these shaving mirrors can get, some of them were several hundred dollars a piece. I knew there was no way we wanted to spend that much on a shaving mirror, at least not right now, so the search went on to find a reasonable shaving mirror for a more budget minded price. I actually managed to find one that extends up to 30 inches from the wall and is only $24.86 at The Home Depot. I figured that getting one that extends that far out might be rather useful, especially when I am cutting my own hair - getting the back is always a challenge. Of course if money were super tight I did actually find one for $4.99 at IKEA that reviewed equally well, but it only extends out 10 inches.

Master Bathroom (part 3) - extra storage

Once I decided that medicine chests were out of the question I moved on to finding some additional storage for the bathroom vanity area. I knew we really could use some additional storage that was easier to access than the storage we currently have under the counter top and would also be more attractive than just leaving the counter full of stuff as it currently is. It is really nice to be able to have some things out where they are in easy reach. I decided that maybe a black wrought iron look would be the best fit with the French antique theme I was hoping to achieve in the bathroom. Unfortunately most stores currently only sell free-standing storage units for the bathroom or single glass shelves that you mount directly to the wall. When I saw this one at IKEA for 19.99 it reminded me a bit of one I used to have at my parents house that was mounted to the wall for a bit of additional storage. I like the slightly less modern feel that this style of shelving option for a bathroom provides and the black wrought iron style of it will help it fit in with the black and white accents in the bathroom.

Master Bathroom (part 2) - vanity mirrors

I knew that I wanted new vanity mirrors because the ones in there right now aren't really our taste and they are just decorative mirrors that aren't even particularly well made and take up the entire wall above the counter top. They just feel too big to me, too overpowering especially for a room that has some really nice small details in it that lend themselves rather nicely to the feeling of an old French bathroom. So the search for new mirrors with a French antique feel to them was on.


I really wanted to find an actual antique, but being that I need two matching mirrors I didn't think that was going to be very likely to happen - especially in my price range. So I went online and searched. I found various mirrors that I thought might work. I even found wall mounted medicine cabinets that had a nice shape and feel to the mirrored front, but at about $250 a piece I just couldn't even bring myself to seriously consider them. Of course I prefer to at least start off a bit cheaper and take it from there if the cheaper option(s) doesn't work out. As far as the more affordable options go, I found these mirrors at IKEA for $29.99 which means $60 for two new vanity mirrors. I just love how they hang from the wall on a chain and ribbon, to me it gives them a bit of that old antique feel that I was hoping to find. I think the lace detailing around the edge of the mirror also lends itself to that antique look and feel that I was hoping to achieve also.

DIY - tiered serving tray

With one dozen cupcakes for our little New Years get together last night I was left wondering how to serve them up in style. I decided on creating my own tiered serving tray to display them, I figured that adding a little height to my cupcake display would make them look more stylish. How did I make a tiered serving tray at the last minute you may wonder. It was actually very simple. I took one full sized dinner plate placed a coffee/tea cup in the center of the plate upside down, then I placed my dessert plate on top of the coffee/tea cup as to balance the plate. Then I just added the cupcakes to the plates. Next time I do this to display my cupcakes I may try adding some museum putty to help hold all the pieces together. Of course you could get some flea market finds or even use some chipped dishes and permanently bond them together to make a tiered serving tray.

A little Halloween cheer

The previous homeowners left behind this wreath when they moved out so I thought I'd spice it up a bit for Halloween. I toyed with various ideas on how exactly I wanted to decorate it, but since I was a little short on time I decided to simply cut out some ghosts from the white cardboard on the bottom of an old gift bag (the gift bag was all torn up and unusable). Then I drew on eyes and mouths with a black sharpie marker. I also used the black sharpie marker to draw the ghosts with so that the outline would be there to help make the ghosts stand out a bit. Once the ghosts were all cut out and had their faces I took a needle and some thread and made a little loop out of thread on the top of each ghost so that I could hang them like ornaments from the wreath.

the storage cabinet in the laundry room

This was a fun situation to remedy. This cabinet has a good few inches on either side of the cabinet that is completely empty, but has a "face plate" to cover the space from the front - thereby making it real easy to lose things in these pockets of space. Yes, I did discover these pockets of space when I went to store something above the cabinet and it fell into the pocket of space. Luckily my husband managed to get it out of there for me, but this left me to figure out an elegant solution to this little problem we had discovered.

As I was cleaning up the front bedroom, currently known as our storage room while we are unpacking, I was looking for somewhere to put these two sets of little drawers so I brought them out to the laundry room actually thinking I might mount them below the storage cabinet. Then I realized that they may work for our needs just as well if I put them above the cabinet. Lo and behold not only did they fit well up there, but due to their size it also solved the problem of that empty space on each side of the cabinet. There was just enough space in between the two sets of drawers to fit our new phone book. I love it when things just work out, and I love it even more when it is such a simple yet elegant solution.

the empty space above the stove

Being that our house was built in the 40s the fan for the stove was actually built right into the ceiling and none of the previous owners had "updated" the fan and installed a range hood or a microwave hood over the stove. I had originally thought about adding an actual hood or microwave hood as I was told the fan doesn't work that well, but it turns out that the fan works just fine other than being a little noisy when you first turn it on so I decided not to install a hood in place of the fully functional already existing fan. Once the hood dilemma was solved I was left with this big open space on the wall above the stove - what to do with all of that space that would make it look less awkward. Well I decided to add 2 shelves that were of a similar style to the existing shelves in the breakfast nook. Once that was decided I thought that adding a bar that I could put some hooks on to hang things out of the way while cooking might be nice, unfortunately all of the bars I found were too long for the space. Then I stumbled upon a magnetic strip that would fit the space nicely, the magnetic strip is really meant to hang your knives up on the wall. To make matters better the hooks were able to be attached to the magnetic strip, with just a bit of force required. I think the look I achieved really works well in our 1940s kitchen.

today is picture hanging day

Today I decided that I should get a few more pictures hung around the new place. I guess now that I got the light fixture up in the breakfast nook it seemed like a good time to hang the picture in there and once I got that one hung I figured I'd get a few more hung. I only managed to get three pictures hung so far today because the little man got into one of his destructive phases and needed to be timed out which thankfully has resulted in nap time, but that still means I need to wait a little while till I go hanging more pictures so that I don't wake him up.


Here is the picture hanging in the breakfast nook


Here is the picture hanging over Ethan's old crib, it is now a little sofa for him (still need to get some pillows to put on the bed to make it a little cozier)


Here is the picture hanging over his toy area

Let there be light in the breakfast nook

I wrote previously about the light fixture in our breakfast nook, originally I wrote about how it was not really our taste and so I was planning to update it rather than replace it. Then I wrote about how when I got a better look at the light fixture that I discovered that it was not in good enough shape to continue to be used, that the plastic outer casing around each of the light bulbs was somewhat burned. This of course was especially concerning since the bulbs that had been in the light fixture exceeded the maximum allowable wattage for the fixture so we weren't sure if the fixture might even have some actual damage due to being overloaded.


Well when I pulled down the old fixture I discovered that the wires were mildly damaged so I had to cut the wires back and strip them in order to hang the new fixture we had purchased, of course if you try this at home please remember to turn off the circuit that corresponds to the outlet where you will be working. Once the wires were cut and stripped it was time to hang our new light fixture. This is much easier than many people think it is, all you really have to do is connect the live or hot wires to each other and fasten them with a wire nut and then connect the neutral wires to each other and fasten them with a wire nut (the black wire should be the live wire and the white wire should be the neutral wire). Honestly the most difficult part of the whole thing was cutting and stripping the wires, well unless you want to count drilling the hole for the hook to swag the chain off of so the light hangs in the center of our table. Of course that was only so difficult because I didn't have the right drill bit for the job so I had to make it wide enough with the bit I had. And of course once we got the light fixture up we put a nice little CFL bulb in the fixture. I love CFLs because they don't get nearly as hot as the incandescent bulbs do, just remember what the old fixture looked like after it had too strong of incandescent bulbs in it.

Light bulbs

As I was switching out the incandescent chandelier bulbs in the living room sconces with CFL's last night I discovered that the bulbs that were in the fixture were 50 or 60 watts each (I couldn't quite make out the tiny writing on the tiny metal base of each bulb). I'm not positive if the light fixture itself can handle that kind of wattage or not, but one thing was painfully clear, the chandelier shades that covered the light bulbs could not handle those bulbs. The plastic underneath the decorative fabric on the shades, which appeared to be there to give the shades their shape, was cracked and then proceeded to crack even more when I touched the shades in order to remove them to swap out the bulbs and then put them back on with the new bulbs in place.

It really surprises me how bright of bulbs were being used in this house previously, especially since the house is fairly bright in the daytime without any lights on. Now I am left to find new shades to replace the existing shades on the wall sconces in the living room. That is unless I can figure out some way to repair the existing shades. I am also left knowing that I really need to swap out all of the incandescent bulbs in the house as quickly as I can for fear that the bulbs might damage more of the fixtures or cause an even bigger problem.

Upon closer inspection of the chandelier style shades that are on the wall sconces I found that there is no metal boning to help give the shades their structure, sadly that means that there is no easy salvaging of these 4 shades. It looks like that is one more thing to add to the ever growing shopping list for the new house. So far the closest I can find online are 6" Ekas shades at Ikea and are $7.00 each, that means $28 to replace something that probably shouldn't have needed replacing if it were used properly. Oh well, at least for now we haven't stumbled upon any big and expensive problems that we were unaware of.

Light for the breakfast nook

Now that we are in the house and I am able to really get to know the house and what our specific needs are for this house and the various areas of the house I can start considering what to purchase for the house. One of the big surprises that I stumbled upon was a problem in my hopes to reuse the chandelier in the breakfast nook. The plastic part of the light fixture near the light bulbs is somewhat melted, it could be from using light bulbs with too high of a wattage for the fixture or since the inside of the shades are reflective it is possible that even using the maximum wattage allowable in the fixture was too much for the plastic parts close to the light bulb to handle. Either way I am left looking for a new light fixture for the area now. Not a big deal since the chandelier in there was not really our taste so I was going to have to do something to change the look of the chandelier anyhow so that it would be more inline with our tastes.






















I found one that I really like at the Pottery Barn, the Porter Pendant. The only issue I have with the fixture is that I can't really drape the cord to make it hang off center in the space. I want to do this because I plan to put the table up against the window and if I don't put the fixture off center towards the window then we will continue to bump our heads on it as we have been doing with the current light fixture. For now I had to move the table so that it is under the current light fixture so that we won't continue to bump our heads on the light fixture. It will be nice to finally get a light fixture in there that suits our tastes and that we won't continually bump our heads on.

This morning I stumbled upon a similar light fixture with a chain at Ikea, the Kroby Pendant Lamp. Of course this lamp doesn't have the same cool factor as the one at the Pottery Barn which raises and lowers on a pulley system and is modeled after the antique lamps that once lit workshops in Paris and it also doesn't allow for as bright of a light bulb (60 watt max vs. 100 watt max with the larger Pottery Barn light), but since I will save over $100 on this light and it will be able to be hung off center easily so that it hangs in the center of the table preventing people from bumping their heads on it and of course our house is pretty bright even without lights on so I am pretty confident that this light will prove to be a good choice for us.

Breakfast nook

We have this rather large breakfast nook area attached to the kitchen with lots of light coming in from the large windows that line the wall of the space looking out onto our back yard. I think that the best way for us to go with this space would be to put a rectangular table and a few chairs there so that we can have a very versatile space; somewhere that can serve as an informal eating space, somewhere suitable for getting some work done, doing some arts and crafts projects, etc.


In the sort term I plan to make use of our old dining room table which has seen better times many years ago, but it is still in a very functional state despite all the nicks and dings it has acquired over the years. I guess you could simply say that our table has a lot of character these days.




Here are two very different thoughts that I think may work well for this space. I am just not sure which one would be more functional for us, the one with the painted folding wooden cafe chairs or the one with the country style chairs. Of course part of the challenge is that the table we have now only has room for two chairs on each side of the table and somewhere down the line I would like to get a longer table that would fit at least three chairs on each side so whatever I choose needs to be easy enough to find another similar chair or two later on so that they can be added to the set when a new table is purchased. Of course one option would be to simply buy the extra chair or two now and put them along the side of the table now that way they are already there when a new table is purchased.

Dining Room

Well the big day is just around the corner. We have our final walk through Monday night and get the keys to our first house at that time. Of course this means that we are thinking a lot about what we want to do with the house, both in the near and distant future. The near future of course includes furnishing the house.


Our beautiful little formal dining room is square and has a small built in china hutch and chair railing. As we have never had a formal dining room and a separate breakfast nook we only have one dining room table with chairs. Our current dining room table is not at all formal and is also a rectangular shaped table which would work better in the breakfast nook so we need to get a new table to go with our current chairs, of course we will also have to figure out chairs to go with our current table too.


We have decided that a round table (preferably with a leaf) would be the best choice for our formal dining room, something in a darker wood color to provide a nice contrast to our chairs and make the space feel more formal would be great. Of course we really love the look of the pedestal tables, however the reviews for the lower end pedestal tables say that they tend to be rather wobbly and the finishes often scratch easily and some of them even come off of the tables - not good. This is leading me to leaning towards a low end round table that is neither a pedestal or real wood. Of course when the little man is a little older we will most likely buy a quality solid wood pedestal table for the dining room though, but we just don't see the point in spending the money when our little guy will most likely just damage the table in the next few years anyhow. I found a round table that is a dark brown-black color with a leaf for $150 which I think may very well be the right table for us right now.


This is the table without the leaf extension - seats 4













This is the table with the leaf extension - seats 6

Breakfast Nook Chandelier

Here is a picture of the breakfast nook as it is currently (with the current owners belongings). The chandelier is not really our thing so I had been looking at ideas for what to replace it with or how to make it a little less country when I stumbled across this idea when I was going through the old Daily Danny blog archives.


Here, a metal drum shade is placed over the chandelier. It's punched with holes to let the light shine through. If you have a boring chandelier, you could buy a very sheer drum shade and place it on top to dress it up. Or you can find a vintage shade (with lots of metal ribs around it) and remove the fabric...just exposing the lines to give the illusion of a shade.

I am thinking a fairly sheer white shade of some sort might do the trick, of course I can't go too sheer or my CFL chandelier bulbs will look out of place in the fixture. I am also wondering if I will need to paint the chandelier some other color to make it all work well together. Hopefully finding a drum shade big enough to encase the current fixture won't prove too difficult. I guess only time will tell. We don't move in for nearly 2 months so it will be a while before I can get to all these little projects.

Lighting idea for the staircase in the backyard

I have always thought that sun jars were really quite attractive to look at in their simple understated elegance, but honestly couldn't figure out what to do with just one since they are too expensive for me to justify buying more than one sun jar. Then the other day my husband found a Do-It-Yourself tutorial on making your own sun jars for a fraction of the cost of store bought sun jars. http://lifehacker.com/5315357/create-your-own-sun-jar-lifehacker-edition/gallery/


This tutorial got me thinking about where or how I might want to use multiple sun jars at the new house. Then it dawned on me that the new house has a staircase in the back yard leading up to the back door. The door is attached to the laundry room and the staircase itself is just outside the kitchen and breakfast nook areas. I was thinking that putting a sun jar on each of the steps might be a nice way to light the path to the door. One great thing about sun jars is that they turn themselves on when it gets dark out and they turn off either when it gets light out or they run out off juice (they are solar powered - they store energy from the sun). The only issue I still have to determine the solution to is that I will need to secure them to the stairs since we have a little one running around. I am thinking that some museum wax, gel or putty might do the trick to secure the sun jars to the steps but I will have to try to figure out what will hold the glass to the cement steps most securely. Otherwise maybe some heavy duty outdoor strength double-sided tape might work.

We are buying our first home

I thought it might be fun to blog about our first home. This way all of our friends and family scattered all over the place can watch and see what is happening with our new home, besides I thought it might be fun to chronicle the adventures involved in purchasing our first home as well as getting settled in and decorating the house.

We found our house the other week and went into escrow a few days after we put in our offer (we were 1 of 3 offers). Last Wednesday afternoon we had our house inspection and it went fairly well, there were only minor things found which were mostly due to the age of the house. The house was built in 1948. The master suite was added on to the house in 2003 and the whole roof was re-shingled in 2003.

The house is considerably larger than the one we are currently renting so I know that I will have some purchases as well as just decorating cut out for me in the future. Of course I will do a little at a time, starting with furniture that we are missing. We will have a dining room as well as a breakfast nook, while we have only had 1 dining area in the past so another dining table and some more chairs will be needed. Eventually I will most likely replace some of the current lighting as well, it's all very nice but simply does not go with our furniture or our personal style. We will also need to add a daybed or bed(s) to the 3rd bedroom to make room for company to sleep when they visit (other than the sleeper sofa we currently have). I'm sure over time I will realize that there are many other little things we are deficient in, like another bookcase. What can a say 2 geeks and a little geeklet in one house, there never seem to be enough bookshelves in the house.

Anyhow, here is a picture of the backyard of our beautiful new home, well provided that the appraisal goes well and nothing weird happens at closing. I will post other pictures as I discuss the various rooms and how I am considering decorating them.