hallway - plastering

Night #2 of work on the hallway

I have been thinking a lot about the home spreads in Anthropologie catalogs which show all of these beat up, halfway wallpapered, cracks everywhere walls. That is pretty much what my house looks like. And for some reason i feel like i need to paint it and make it look all fresh and clean and normal. Whatever. I am a long way off. Here is what i did tonight.

Also - attempted to find the perfect grey for my bedroom. I checked some swatches last night and this morning, then went to the paint store. The 2 16x16 sheets i came back with were nothing like the color i was hoping for. I loved this picture that i saw a few days ago

but everything that i came home with looked like a submarine.

beginning again

Today we started in on the hallway. It is the smallest room in the house so we thought it would be "easy". Now i have watched enough renovation projects to know that none of this is "easy" but still - i was/am naive.


It appears to me that at some point in time every square inch of this house was covered in wallpaper. Most rooms seem to have multiple layers. There are also tell-tale seams on most of the ceilings that make me think are are a few layers of joyous paper up there too. We scraped and scraped. My mom says that we are doing this so that the walls will have a nice finish once we paint them. I am kind of thinking that i want to continue painting over the layers of wallpaper.


Really, i am just glad to be doing something. Hopefully the project will keep me from the brink of seasonal depression. Or it could drive me over the edge. Guess it could go either way. We'll see. But at least my hallway will be "Kona brown."

kitchen countertops

Our existing red formica countertops were cute, but there just wasn't enough room for what we needed in the kitchen and we really had our hearts set on warm wood counters. First was the big trip up to Ikea (twice) to purchase the Numerar counters in Oak. Then cut the notch that would sit around the existing 2x4 that we were leaving in place as a threshold into the new space and then many coats of tung oil....4 I believe.Once the long piece was in and secure, we had to tackle the removal of the orignal formica on the other side. We really held off on this because it meant no sink while we made the cuts, applied the coats of tung oil and moved it into place. While we had the countertop out we could finally take off the fake plastic tile backsplash and install the tin pieces we had salvaged out of the basement. A previous owner had put tin ceiling up in the basement and when we rebuilt the basement stairs we had to tear down the tin....so we flattened it out, sanded it, primed it and painted it white for our backsplash.

new york fashion week

some things i did in new york

danced, jumped on the tiny beds at the W, walked over 100 blocks, ate tasty d-lite, went to a fashion show in a limo, took some pictures, took lots of taxis, used my NFT book (if you dont know what this is look it up), went to a sky bar, had the best pizza of my life ... that was all one day.

shelf project

After finding some inspiration for our kitchen project in these images.....

I knew a few things that I definitely wanted in the design......

• lots of white (but different textures)
• stainless steel
• warm wood
• open shelving so that I could display my favorite kitchen finds.

Not all open shelving, I'm not neat enough to not have a few closed doors in the kitchen, but enough for some key items that have been given to me, or I have collected and are a good representation of the different colors and styles that I like.

So here is the beginning pictures of our open shelf project. We took the three longest cabinet doors off and moved the existing shelves to create the proportions and grid we wanted and, built face frames in front of the shelves and painted it all white!

kitchen run through.....

Back in the spring Kris and I slowly but surely began renovating our kitchen. It started with the floors and the new stairs to the basement, which is all I have posted about so far. So I thought it was time to play catch up....this is how it began......Our biggest issue was the size, no matter what appliances we bought, floor we remodeled or counters we installed, there wasn't even a drawer in this kitchen! The silverware lived on a shelf next to the refrigerator....its was bad! So we needed more room........

The new space for the kitchen came from the half of the former pantry that wasn't being used for the basement stairs, it worked out pretty well. And with a week long visit from the father in law, we got a lot done. We tore off the plaster, discovered there used to be a door opening there, braced the wall above, took out the original 2x4's (which we saved to make out outdoor table out of) and sized the new wood for the lintel. There was an original 2x4 at a 45 degree angle that we framed around to expose a bit of the old structure. And we added 5 more feet of kitchen space....and more importantly.....counterspace and room for a drawer!

relaxing back porch

Since we've been in the middle of kitchen construction almost all spring and summer, our screened pack porch has become a storage area....until now! I am reclaiming my relaxing space. Soon it will be cooling off (at least at night), the bugs will be going away and girls wine night can be had again on the porch!

We got these two wicker chairs for 15 dollars this weekend at a yard sale and the table at an antique store a few weeks ago (I've been preparing for this!)

In my efforts to learn how to sew, porch pillows became very important to me! So I whipped these up in the car ride home to Jersey.

I think I want to spray paint the chairs, just not sure what color yet?

And the view of the other city yards is beautiful and enhanced with the old lanterns I scored from my dad's garage and a lovely windchime my mom gave us!