Category Archives: Our House

01.23.12

A Spotty Weekend.

Our living room is virtually empty after Craig’s Listers came and bought our old furniture.

I have spent the last two weekends working on a pair of  DIY Rast dressers for the living room.  After buying a cart full of paint and primer at the Depot, it was time to get started.

See that little Spray Grip in the cart?  Best $2.95 I ever spent.  Last weekend was all about priming.

Every.  Little.  Piece.
This weekend, I froze my a$$ off painting them in the garage.  I hope it wasn’t all in vein.  Due to the cold temperatures, I am afraid the paint job is a little spotty. They still need a few more coats, but I either need to wait until it warms up or get an industrial space heater.  The paint should dry clear and smooth in warmer temperatures.  Keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

In happier news, I received my agate magnets that were on backorder since Christmas.  I can’t wait to show you all what I have in store for them!

01.12.12

The Forgotten Element.

Have you ever noticed a room where there are so many amazing design elements, but it feels like something is missing?  All too often, designers fail to enhance what can be one of the most interesting elements of a room-  the ceiling.  As you can see from our home, the ceiling is one of the most important features in some of our favorite spaces.
Our Bedroom.  (Circa 2009.  Below is a more recent pic without the ceiling, some really exciting changes happening in that room too!)
Here are some other great rooms where the ceiling is the star of the show:

01.10.12

My Living Room Project.

Last week I showed you all my beloved God Bless Our Pad pillow that I had made from a needlepoint that I found on Craigslist.  I had mentioned that we have some exciting things in the works for our living room…Here is what it looked like a few years ago.  Clearly I was in to cottage florals.

 That sofa was the last piece of furniture from Mike’s bachelorhood.

 All of the upholstery was from our old townhouse, I had the chair and window treatments made before we even got married.  The wall color in the living room was chosen by the original owners of our house. I chose the red in the dining room- Drama Red by Behr.  I still love that color.

Here are the plans for our new living room…

While I hesitate to show you all the picture of what it looks like right now, after so many of you mentioned how you loved to follow the design process of Lou’s room, I decided to unveil this train-wreck of a room. 

So many things in this room will be 86’ed.. The skirted table, the sofa, the ugly throw pillows (not the GBOP pillow, of course) will all be going.  
The honeycomb mirror over the piano will be moving upstairs in our hallway, to be replaced by my Louis Vuitton dumpster find from our trip to Charleston last summer.  I have finally unwrapped her and now need to figure out how the hell to hang her.  
Here are the HIDEOUS chairs that I bought off of Craig’s List.  They will be reupholstered in this delicious turquoise linen.
As you can see, the living room and dining room are connected (no wall.)
So I tried to unify the space with some custom curtains that I had hand-painted by Corinne Marlow, who also painted the stripes in Lou’s room.  I love the color.  I searched for months for the perfect yellow and I found it.
  I told Corinne what I wanted and she handmade the stencil herself.

The only regret that I have is that they are linen and wrinkle quite a bit. 

Right now we have 12 dining room chairs (two different sets) all of which are being sold and replaced with something very exciting.
Stay tuned!

01.04.12

God Bless Our Pad.

Those of you who have been following Kiki’s List for a while may remember this post on a Craig’s List Score of a lifetime.  
After seeing this picture in Lonny magazine in the Summer of 2010, I became obsessed with finding a pillow like this and quickly realized that they are not available.   There was a framed needlepoint from 1977 that was available for $10.  It looked a little something like this…
After $7 of fabric from JoAnne’s and a down pillow form, she’s now a gem that we will keep forever.

Her home is in our living room, where there are a lot of exciting changes taking place.  Stay tuned!

12.27.11

Holidaze.

I have off for the next few days, so I will be taking it easy and relaxing with my family.  Here’s a little Christmas recap.

Biggest Christmas tree ever.

Flowers, flowers everywhere.

Mistletoe.
Carnation Poms.

My girls.

And a visit to Grandma.

10.27.11

Basement Design Process.

Last week after tweeting about having to replace the floors in our basement (our sump pump broke) I received an email from a reader asking to show pictures of our basement.  Well, I have never really shown you our basement because the project is essentially on hold until we save up enough money to really do it right.  We are slowly working on it.  With that said, I do have enough snapshots to show you the makings of our bar.  As most of you know, I am a BIG FAN of Ikea, and all of the cabinets in our bar are actually from Ikea.  The entire set cost us $3,400.  Not bad considering our bar is the size of a small kitchen.  The quality is outstanding.  We love them.  Here is a taste of our long journey (apologies on the photo quality, they were all taken with my iPhone.)
 May 2009
July 2009: I had to use the planners at Ikea because they are not compatible with a Mac.  If you have a PC, you can do it at home.
 
November 2009: Searching for countertops.  We decided on a combination of AKRUM Brown/Black and White uppers with glass.
 May 2010:  Ultimately, we decided on Carrara.  As you can see, this piece had to be replaced because it was cut from a different slab.
 September, 2010:  The marble was fixed, but when my tiler hung the tile incorrectly, I almost had a heart attack.  (Can you see the lines?)  They had to come back and dig out individual rocks and reconstruct the wall.
October 2010:  Better.  If I could make one suggestion to Ikea, it would be to sell a stain that matches their cabinets.  As you can see, we added wood paneling to the other side of the bar to match the lower cabinets.  It took me 5 hours and several trips to Benjamin Moore to have a paint mixed that would match it perfectly.  We lightly painted it on the wood paneling, I think it looks great.!
I apologize, these are the only pictures that I have.  Once we get the floors fixed, I will be sure to share more!