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Holiday Barware Essentials

October 18, 2018 by jessica Leave a Comment

If you’re rolling your eyes at me for a holiday post before Halloween, trust me, I get it. But the happiest time of year always seems to sneak up on me, especially when it comes to entertaining essentials. I came across this darling Christmas tablecloth over the weekend, which got me thinking about holiday hosting and some of the items I’d like to add to my collection before the craziness of the season really sets in — starting with the bar.

I tend to avoid barware or serving pieces that are holiday-specific; we don’t have that much room to store extra glasses and plates emblazoned with holiday designs. (But I’ll cave when it comes to especially darling items like the appetizer plates I bought last year.) In this roundup, you’ll find a selection of items to refresh your bar well in advance of the holiday hosting season. For the most part, these are timeless classics that can be used throughout the year. I own both of the decanters; they look more expensive than their affordable price point of under $40 each. (They sold out closer to the holiday season last year, so get ’em now if you’re into them.) I also have the smokey glass cordial glasses. They’re a lot smaller than you might expect, but they’re perfect for a small sip and look so chic. While I don’t own that drink dispenser, I love the idea of making a batch cocktail and letting guests serve themselves so I don’t have to play bartender all night.

Dining Room Inspiration & Planning

August 22, 2018 by jessica Leave a Comment

Ginny Macdonald’s dining room makeover has me seriously considering a coat of dark paint.

I spend most days from 5 to 7 a.m. perched in front of the computer with my coffee (always iced). On days you don’t see a blog post, it’s because I’m spending my time scouring the internet to find pieces for our house. Since the house is such a big part of my life and occupies a lot of my free time, I thought I’d share more updates into how things are progressing, starting with a room that has been untouched since we moved in: the dining room. After we painted and had the floors refinished, we put a decades-old table and chairs in the room (a hand-me-down from Dave’s parents) and turned our attention to the rooms we’d use more often, namely the master bedroom and the living room.

The room hadn’t been a priority for three reasons: furniture is expensive, it takes awhile for us to find pieces we both love and agree on, and we were fine using this coffee table as a makeshift dining space. We’re classy people, folks. Not having a proper dining space had been wearing on me, though. I mean, how else do you throw dinner parties like a proper adult if there isn’t a table and chairs for guests? How do I surprise Dave with a romantic meal without a table to set it on? Where do game nights happen? So many things happen in a dining room!

Where We Started

Our dining room shortly after closing on the house in June 2017.

First of all, you can totally give me flak for these grainy, low-light photos. Shoddy “before” pics are one of my least favorite parts of home blogs, but I think it’s mostly because no one wants to spend time photographing a room that sucks much less editing those photos. These were quickly snapped on my phone before we laid down paper and started painting.

To give you some idea of the layout, these were taken while standing in our living room. I love the large archway, which gives the first floor a spacious feeling. To the right, there are three windows that look at our neighbor’s house, so we’ve left the shades there for now to offer privacy while we figure out what we want to do. The doors at the back lead to our deck. And the doorway to the left goes into the [less-than-photogenic, but a project-for-another-time] kitchen. That ceiling fan is just so hideously awful that I can’t believe someone kept it up for so long. (I say that, yet we’ve removed the blades and the shades and have been rocking that look for a year.) The walls were this depressing creamy yellow. I wondered if a chain smoker lived here at some point, but there are areas of paint in various rooms that were true white, so I think it was a design choice. (We painted the room white, for the record.) The red oak floors had their original finish from the 1920s, which is great for future owners because floors can be refinished roughly ten times before too much wood has been sanded away.

And, yes, it will forever drive me nuts that the patio door isn’t centered between those two windows. I’m hope there was a structural reason for it.

Our Inspiration

Photos via 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

I honestly don’t know how to categorize our style. Mid-century modern, certainly. A bit of traditional. (I have such a penchant for schoolhouse lights.) Scandinavian. I prefer a more masculine palette that’s heavy on blue, green, grey, and brown — but with brass thrown in for good measure. And, ultimately, we both want our home to feel collected and not like it was plucked out of a showroom at any given time.

I feel like a lot of the rooms in this collage reflect that in some way. When we looked at some of the images that really spoke to us, it was clear that going mid-century modern for the dining room table and chairs would be the perfect way to ground the room, and serve as a jumping off point for both modern and traditional accents. Plus, a statement light fixture is obviously crucial to my future happiness. And that dark paint? Let’s just say I’m very tempted.

The Best Part: Shopping

So, where does that leave us? Well, we purchased our table this week! I also ordered one chair to try with the table to make sure we like it in person before purchasing the others. It’s available at a few different retailers for slightly less, but paying $10 more per chair for easy returns at Home Depot was too tempting to pass up. I originally considered going with these chairs, but I just wasn’t feeling it. (Don’t get me wrong, though, that chair is gorgeous. I have one in our living room.) Below, you’ll find a look at where things are headed — at least in Photoshop. I’m loving how these pieces look together, and I’m crazy about the light fixture (an “inspired-by” version of this). My only hesitation is that it ships from Greece with a $75 shipping charge. It’s an affordable price point for a statement light fixture, but I’m not sure I feel comfortable spending that much sight unseen. If that’s the case or if the dimensions don’t work in our space, we’ll go with something else. We’re also keeping an eye out for a vintage storage cabinet similar to the one below just so that everything isn’t brand new.

Not pictured: white linen curtains and the curtain rod we’ll probably go with to add privacy to that set of three windows.

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What I’ve Learned Our First Year of Homeownership

June 22, 2018 by jessica Leave a Comment

On June 20, 2017, we closed on our first home. As we popped the bubbly in celebration of our one-year house-iversary, I found myself reflecting on the past twelve months and was struck by how much of a learning experience home ownership proved to be. Here are some of the things that surprised me most after accepting the keys a year ago.

Improvements take time.

There’s so much pressure to have a Pinterest-perfect house shortly after moving in, but doing so takes a lot of time and [primarily] a lot of money. Honestly, I was naive in thinking how quickly we’d have rooms furnished. We didn’t want to have our home look like the West Elm and CB2 catalogs circa 2017, so we spent a lot of time browsing other retailers to find pieces to complement the big box items that we owned. When you pair that with someone who is picky (ahem, me), it’s not exactly a quick process. (I selected our new living room sconces after looking at no less than a thousand options.) And then there’s money. When you’re balancing one pricey purchase with dozens of other pricey purchases, you have to prioritize which items will make the biggest impact in terms of design and comfort as you save money for the other things. Plus, you still need to consider the finances needed for travel and other hobbies. It’s definitely a balancing act, and this doesn’t even take into account major changes like renovations and remodels. I’ve learned to be comfortable taking our time with the house. Purchases are more satisfying after you’ve had time to truly consider them, and it’s better to wait until you know how you’re going to live with your space. Even when it comes to simple improvements like painting, it’s unrealistic to think you’ll have everything done right away. We accomplished a lot last summer, but there’s still a laundry list of things to work on. It’s getting done — just a bit more slowly than I had anticipated.

You can DIY a lot.

Before we moved in, I knew I wanted to paint as much as we could on our own and only hire someone to do the stairwell where I couldn’t reach. (I feel clumsy enough on ladders, let alone adding this contraption to use one on stairs.) I figured that’s where my DIY know-how would start and end. Instead, we’ve learned how to do a lot on our own thanks to help from our parents and plenty of YouTube videos. My dad taught me how to change the electrical outlets from outdated almond-colored and black ones to white. That experience and an online tutorial gave me confidence to swap out light fixtures. Dave and his dad installed our garage door opener. Dave fixed our washing machine when it broke a couple of months ago. I’ve been painstakingly removing paint from our 90-year-old door hardware to reveal the brass hidden beneath. It takes time to DIY, but each project is intensely satisfying and we’re saving a lot of money by making these changes on our own.

There will be unexpected expenses.

Everyone says that houses are expensive and there’s good reason for it. It seems like no matter what you do, you’ll have a surprise pop up that’ll cost you. In the year that we’ve owned the house, we’ve needed to have four trees removed because they were dying, we had a roof leak that needed to be repaired, and we had our furnace go out in the middle of winter. Each expense wasn’t exactly awful or budget-breaking, but when you have money earmarked for, say, a dining room table, it feels pretty shitty to fork over hundreds of dollars for a necessary repair. We’ve been saving roughly 12% of our mortgage each month and putting that money into a CapitalOne 360 savings account specifically for home-related expenses like repairs or furnishings. Having a joint account labeled “Home” has made some of those expenses more bearable because it’s money we already expected to spend on the house.

Everyone will have an opinion.

This was such an eyeopener to me! It seems that no matter what your plans are and how well you’ve researched your options, everyone will have an opinion and their own war story about why you should do something else. They’re well-meaning, of course, but it can be annoying to hear unsolicited advice from everyone from family to friends to colleagues. It’s one thing if everyone is telling you to shy away from one particular decision, but that’s not typically the case. It’s more like you tell one person your plans for X and they had a bad experience. You tell another person about Y and they had a different result. The worst is when someone suggests we skimp on an improvement that doesn’t matter much to them. (Sure, we could purchase run-of-the-mill, builder-grade light fixtures, but I’ll be annoyed with them every day.) I’ve learned to take it with a grain of salt. I’ll re-research some things just in case, but I’ll usually do what I wanted to do initially and it turns out fine. (Don’t let this deter you from reaching out for recommendations and how-tos. That advice is invaluable.)

Focus on what you love when things go wrong.

When something doesn’t pan out quite the way you expected it to, it’s easy to hone in on all of the problems with the house. In our case, there’s a lot of stupid choices made by 90 years worth of owners — one of whom was a landlord and we all know how well renters treat a home. There’s a lot about our house that isn’t easy and there are a lot of things we need to repair or replace that come with hefty price tags. Sometimes I’ll find myself frustrated by the process and wondering why I wanted an old home. Those are the moments that I need to stop myself and appreciate the unique features of the house (the glass door knobs, the perfect patina on the brass, the substantial baseboards, the original hardwood floors that we couldn’t afford otherwise) and the progress we’ve made. I know it’s corny, but oftentimes I feel like a steward of the house and that it’s our opportunity to correct the things that went wrong over the years and modernize it while paying respect to the quirks that make it what it is.

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Spring Refresh with Cottage & Bungalow + 15% Off

April 6, 2018 by jessica Leave a Comment

I swear that spring is on the horizon, despite this week’s snowfall, making it the perfect time to freshen up your living space. We’ve been cleaning everything, cracking open the windows whenever the mercury creeps above 50 degrees, and adding a few new home decor items to make our space feel new again. It’s so easy to get in a decor rut once you find a piece you love, but swapping out items (or moving them around your house) is one of the easiest ways to give your home a facelift, and items from Cottage & Bungalow are perfect for a warm-weather makeover. Established in 2004, Cottage and Bungalow offers coastal furniture and beach decor and accessories that are chosen for their design and quality. Their products have been featured in a variety of national design and lifestyle magazines, including InStyle, Country Living, Coastal Living, and more.

As I’m sure you’ve gleaned, we have a mid-century-modern-meets-traditional vibe in our 1920s house. Cottage & Bungalow specializes in coastal design, but don’t let that dissuade you if your aesthetic is similar to mine. There are plenty of pieces that can fit within any decor. One of the pieces I was most excited about was this gorgeous alabaster lamp. The shape is spot on for mid-century modern decor and the stone adds a welcome natural element to the space. In another area of the house, a Dash and Albert rug from Cottage & Bungalow adds a bit of global glam to the entryway. (I had a buffalo plaid rug down for fall and winter and I couldn’t stand the heaviness of the pattern this season.) Plus, the rug is made from polypropylene, so you can just hose it down and let it air dry when it gets dirty. Other pieces I love include this quilt, a macrame throw pillow, a bar tool set, and this gorgeous rattan chair.

You can save 15% at Cottage & Bungalow through July 6, 2018 with code BEDKNOBS. Some exclusions apply due to manufacturer restrictions.

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Living Room Progress: Inspection vs. Today

March 7, 2018 by jessica 2 Comments

We still have work to do in our living room in terms of accessorizing and styling, but I thought I’d give you a peek into where things are at right now compared to when we did our inspection in May. Obviously the before photos are on the dim side and that’s not an intentional editing choice to make you think it’s worse than it was. It was really that bad. Most of the light bulbs were partially unscrewed so they wouldn’t turn on and just about every window in the house was covered by fabric (men’s shirts and old sheets rather than window treatments). The paint was this awful creamy color that wasn’t quite as yellow in the images below, but it was as dingy and soul sucking as it appears here.

The first thing we tackled (after removing kitchen cabinetry from the guest room and a random square of teal carpet in the coat closet) was repairing cracks in the plaster walls and painting as much as we possibly could before we had our floors refinished. We got through the living room, dining room, the wood-paneled master bedroom and office, the guest bedroom, and the tiny room that eventually became my closet. The far wall in the staircase was left unpainted at the time because I’d like to wallpaper it. I didn’t want to spend the time painting something I was just going to cover up eventually. At this point, though, we’re leaning toward painting it white and doing wallpaper next year. It’s such an expensive project and we have other priorities to take care of. However, painting everything else white and removing the window coverings opened up the space and made it feel brighter and more welcoming, so the cream wall doesn’t bother me too much at the moment. My plan is to paint the upstairs hallway, ceiling, and trim this month and get to the top of the stairs. We’ll hire someone to finish up the stairwell since I’m not graceful enough to stand on a ladder while I paint. We have pretty high ceilings there and I have no doubt that I’d fall or get paint all over the stairs.

After about a month of painting every night after work and on weekends, we finally got a week-long break when our floors were refinished. The red oak floors were in awful shape (check out this pic of the floor in my closet) with patches in the floor that were different colors, and scuffs and scratches throughout. Upstairs, the stain was on the yellow side. I’m not sure if it was the polyurethane was showing age or if it was just a bad stain choice to begin with. Our floor refinisher said that the downstairs floors had likely never been refinished, which is great for future owners because you can only refinish floors approximately 10 times since you’re sanding off approximately .75 to 1mm with each round. We went with Minwax’s “Early American” stain. It’s lighter than the original color, but still felt traditional in the 1920s home. The biggest selling point was that it didn’t have red or yellow undertones. We paid $2.75 per square foot and ultimately came in just shy of $2,600. Worth every penny. (Pro tip: hardwood floors will eventually get scratched no matter what you do. Use a stain pen to camouflage the imperfections.)

Replacing the sconces is next on the to-do list for the living room. We’d also like to find a better throw pillow, a larger rug, and redesigning the corner that we have that wood chair in the photo above. The side chair is great for putting on shoes and using for additional seating. However, a mid-century modern bench might fill the space better. I’d also like to find artwork to hang in that area. All that stuff is easy, though, and will fall into place as we find the right pieces. I don’t want to push anything and accidentally have our house look like the 2017/2018 West Elm catalog because I was too impatient to wait for the right item. Now that the living room is in a good spot, we’re talking about what room to embark on next. It’s a toss up between the dining room or kitchen. The dining room is definitely easier and really just requires furniture, a woodworker to fill in spots were the trim and crown molding is missing, and window treatments. The kitchen is a more adventurous project. It’ll all be cosmetic updates and not a true renovation, but there’s a lot to do in that room from skim coating the textured walls to replacing the linoleum flooring that has a gross river rock design.

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