Category Archives: house

A Jungle in the Bathroom.

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I have been trying to work with the vintage pink tiles in the bathroom and I just got tiered of the mint green walls with the pink tiles.  Since dark paint seems to make any room feel more fabulous I decided to go dark.  We painted the walls and ceiling in Benjamin Moore Evening Dove in a matte finish. This color is a very rich grey with some purple in it.   It definitely looks a lot better with the pink tiles.  We have a HUGE window in front of the toilet and bathtub which we covered in window film by Emma Jeffs in the Otto design.  This gives us much needed privacy in the bathroom without having to deal with other fussy window coverings.  Also, the window film allows the south facing bathroom to continue to be flooded with light.

These photographs make the bathroom look a lot darker than it is because it is not easy to take pictures into a light source.

The window film made a big difference in the room.  I had a hard time capturing the the way the light illuminates the design in the window.

These plants love the humidity and light in the bathroom.  I’ve lately become obsessed with hanging macrame planters and other hanging planters.  They take up no space and really highlight the plants.

I am hoping to have a verdant jungle in here very soon.

I just realized that you can barely see the tiles against the wall in any of these pictures.  I was so excited to take pictures of the plants against the wall that I totally forgot about the rest of the bathroom!

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The Master Bedroom is Black!

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I’ve been having an unusually discontented few months.  It all started when I came down with an awful cough, fever, and cold.  It seemed like I couldn’t shake feeling tiered and sick.  Then Jai got sick, then Kiran got sick, then Scott got sick, and then I was sick again.  It was just awful because I just couldn’t take the time off to recuperate and the time I took off I spent caring for Jai and Kiran.  Then things got complicated at work. Then I started feeling a little blue and I couldn’t move on like I normally do.

So to make myself feel better we decided to get someone to paint a few rooms in the house.  The Master Bedroom is now black….to be precise Deep Space by Benjamin Moore.

Scott and I rarely get someone else to do the work in our house but this time having this room painted felt like a luxury.  We also got the old wallpaper holding together the plaster ceiling removed and we had the plaster fixed and painted.

The triangle pillow cover is from etsy, the pink pillow is from SkinnyLaMinx (via etsy), the kilim cushion cover is from eBay and the other black and white pillow in their Gran design from Fine Little day.  The dark linen sheets are from Crate and Barell, light pink garment dyed linen sheet is from Restoration Hardware and the purple bedspread is a vintage Kantha quilt. Both mirrors are vintage, the lamps are vintage teak lamps found at a flea market with new shades from Restoration Hardware.  We just hung these inexpensive cotton curtains from Ikea.  They filter the light beautifully when they are opened a little. At night when closed they completely block out all the street lights.

The picture above shows my favorite feature in this room….the curved plaster wall.  I love how it looks painted in this rich color.  It almost feels like this room was meant to be painted in dark.  To blur the boundaries we had the shelves, molding, and doors painted in the same color but in high gloss.

This room faces North-West and is generally flooded with light.  My hope is to fill the window sill with plants and also to hang as many plants as possible on the window to create our little jungle in this room.  Greenery looks fabulous against dark walls.

Is this room done? No! I would like to get the radiator sandblasted and powder-coated in a deep purple color.  Then I would like to build a wall of closets on the wall opposite the bed.  I think I will use Ikea Pax wardrobes but paint them the same color as the walls.

This is what the room looked like when we bought the house (please excuse the bad picture:

This is what it looked like when after we renovated it:

P.S. Dear readers I see that there is a lot of traffic to this website.  I would love to hear your opinions.

Dining Room Corner.

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I love that it feels almost like Spring (even though Spring has officially started). While it isn’t warm yet the light in the house has been amazing.  Here’s a quick photograph of the dining room corner.

We are very lucky to have two very large windows facing West in our dining room. The windows open up to a breeze-way which abuts an alley instead of another house.   This small difference between our house and our neighbors houses makes a huge impact in the amount of light we get.

Gone are the days when I would site quietly at the table in the early morning hours, enjoying my latte, and staring out the windows.  These days there is a flurry of activity in our house starting at 6 AM which may include early morning paper shredding…

Kiran eating his breakfast.

Jai eating his oatmeal with a fork.
I recall once sitting at the table and lazily thinking that I should install a wind chime outside the windows.  A good way for me to jump start my spring house projects will be to finally hang the wind chime…maybe next weekend….

The Living Room is White!

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When we first renovated our house I decided to paint the living room a pale yellow.  I loved it in the beginning but I ended up not liking yellow.  I decided I wanted to re-paint the whole house in white.  Scott and I finally painted the living room and dining room white.  Since we were painting over yellow in the living room and pale blue in the dining room we primed all the walls first.  It took us a whole week to prime all the walls and then we painted all the walls and ceiling in Benjamin Moore Aura paint in Moonlight White.  I absolutely LOVE the white walls! It is a great backdrop for all the paintings and furniture.   Here’s a corner of the living room:

These pictures aren’t very good.  It was a rainy cloudy day and the light wasn’t very good.  Hopefully I’ll get around to posting more pictures of the living room and dining room soon.  With two kids are house seems to have tons of stuff strewn around.  While Scott and I both clean often we also believe in letting the kids have full reign of the house.  We don’t have a designated “play area” and Kiran and Jai generally like to spread out in the living room, dining room, kitchen, their room, the guestroom, our bedroom and the backroom to play.  Every evening Scott and I put away all the toys, costumes and cardboard houses and every morning and every evening the kids stuff seems take over the house again.

 Here are some close up pictures of our amazing new lamp:

The lamp is called the Otis and it is designed by Logan at OneFortyThree.  It has a 180 degree swivel and it is the perfect reading lamp for the couch.  All Logan’s lamps are fabulous.  I am planning on getting another one for the living room and possibly a few more when we get around to renovating the kitchen. 


The Back Room is Black!

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I have been lusting after a black room for ages.  I have been threatening to paint out the back room (my room) all black for a while.  I started small by painting out one wall.  Then I started to timidly brush on some black on the other walls. Things stayed that way for a couple of months and it probably would have stayed that way for a lot longer.  However, our house was to be featured in the Passyunk Square Civic Association House Tour and the weekend before the tour Scott and I decided that we just had to paint the room. Scott wasn’t sure about the black but decided that anything was better than black streaks on all the pale pink walls!

This room is off the kitchen and tiny.  I was sure that if I painted out the walls, ceiling, moldings and the radiator in  black it would make the boundaries disappear and make the room look larger.  Well…mission accomplished.

 

I love the way the room looks (Scott does too).  It is super cozy and all the bright colors pop against the black.  I used Benjamin Moore Studio Finishes Chalkboard paint because nothing else looks as matte as this paint.  This tiny room has bookshelves, a day bed, a desk a filing cabinet, a chair and two side tables! It definitely does not look tiny anymore. 

Kiran and I painted the old lamp found in Scott’s grandmother’s attic a few years ago.  I designed the lampshades at Fenchel Shades to fit the lamp.  The rug is a cheap kilim found on eBay and the curtains are from Urban outfitters.  I am considering painting one wall in our bedroom black as well…

Here’s what the room looked like when we bought the house:

And this is what it looked like after we renovated it:

Office Room Update.

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The office room is finally a great organized space for us to work in.  I generally use this room when I work from home.  I love the sunlight streaming in from the south facing window.  I need to find another location for the printer which is currently taking up a lot of space on the desk. 

I moved some of the non cold hardy plants from outside into this room.  These tropical plants love the heat and the sun.  Most of my flowering tropical plants continue to flower through the winter in this room.

I spend a lot of time in this chair reading/writing and working: 

My view from the chair:

The nude drawing are by Scott’s mother and we found a bunch of them in the attic at his Dad’s house.  The lamp base is vintage that we bought at a thrift store in Dallas.  I designed and ordered the lamp shade at Fenchel Shades. 

The only thing left to do in this room is to install some shelves in the nook over the radiator.  I am hoping that when  Scott is off from work during Christmas he’ll have the time to install the shelves. 

It’s a Jungle Outside!

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I overheard Kiran telling one of his friends at his school that we have a jungle outside our house!  Every year we sprinkle several sun flower seeds in the tiny cement-less area where we planted our tree.  Every year when the sunflowers bloom and we get visits from the most amazing array of birds I have ever seen in Philly.  There are these small birds with bright yellow feathers who come several times a day and they are so beautiful to watch.  They hop from flower to flower eating something (seeds?).  At the end of summer we pick a few flowers and remove the seeds and dry them inside.  Once they are completely dry I wrap them in paper towels and store them to be planted next summer.

Kiran and Jai outside our house

A half eaten sunflower

Our little garden patch also has a cold hardy saucer hibiscus and Rose of Shannon which faithfully bloom every year. I also planted an ornamental grass which is HUGE now.  I had no idea it would get so big. 

The hardy Saucer Hibiscus and Rose of Shannon

In the front of our house we have several potted plants.  Most of the plants stay outside year round.  I move the pot of Canna Lillies and the purple pot with “Wandering Jew” to the basement during winter.  Most of the plants are perennials and I also have some ever greens.  This is really not a very good picture because most of the plants are not in bloom.  But generally the orange rose plant (Joseph’s Coat), the hydrangeas, the butterfly bush, the red rose bush and the Canna Lillies are in bloom from Spring through late Fall. 

The Front of the House

Tiles in the Fireplace.

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I finally got around to buying tiles and getting them installed in the fireplace.  I LOVE the way this looks. 

//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.jsWhen we first purchased the house there was a giant faux brick mantle with an even more giant mirror glued to the wall over the mantle.  There had clearly been a fireplace here but somewhere down the line it had been removed and used as a vent for the hot water heater pipes.  Since our house is trapezoid in shape this large space looked very awkward.  We decided to embrace and highlight the awkwardness of the angle by installing an old mantle.  We meticulously measured the space and carried around the measurements everywhere we went.  One day we stumbled upon a large mahogany mantle at a thrift store in Philly.  We immediately bought it!

Since Scott installed it something didn’t seem right about it.  It just seemed really big and the space inside (which would have consisted of the fireplace) just seemed bare.  As a temporary fix I filled it up with books  which looked great.  However, piling the books on top of each other was damaging the books and it was a huge magnet for dust.  Finally, we got around to buying some Moroccan cement tiles and getting them installed.  I couldn’t be happier at how the mantle turned out.  

Side Note: The drawing in front of the mantle is by Kiran and me and it is waiting to be hung in the dining room.  Since most of our walls are plaster I can’t just hammer in a nail.  I have to instead beg and plead with Scott to drill another hole for me in one of the plaster walls that he laboriously repaired.  

Sick of Being Sick!

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I can’t believe that I am sick again. I seem to have been getting sick a lot lately. On Friday I found out that Jai had pink eye (he’s better now). On Friday evening I went to bed with a pounding headache, and congestion and I woke up at 3AM on Saturday with a sinus infection. I have had a cough for two months that just doesn’t seem to want to go away.  All this has resulted in me doing next to nothing on the house.  All my energy is taken up with work, spending time with Kiran and Jai in the evenings, cooking dinner, and putting them to bed.  After they go to bed I usually have work and email to catch up on.  Scott and usually sit around in the evenings with both of us doing work on our computers. 

We had our third floor office room and guest room painted almost a year ago.  While I managed to set up the bed in the guest room and make it nice (mainly because we have lots of guests visiting) I have hardly arranged anything in the office room.

This is what is the office room now (which used to be the guest bedroom).  Click here to see what the office room looked like before (when it was in what is now the guest room). 

It is basically a huge mess with papers everywhere.  I still love sitting at this desk, especially in the mornings, when the room in bathed in beautiful sunlight.  The drawings to the right were done by Scott’s mother in the 1970s in art class.  We found them all crumpled up in his Dad’s attic. 

At least the good thing about being sick today is I am getting lots of rest.  Jai is sleeping and Scott and Kiran are at the park.  Hopefully I can take a nap before Jai wakes up.

Kiran’s Room Update.

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It has been a while since I posted pictures of Kiran’s more grown up room.  We replaced his crib with a full size bed.  We opted for a full size bed because there was ample space for a full bed and we both prefer to lay down in his bed while reading to him. 

//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js This room has four large windows and is flooded with light.  I hung some fairy lights over Kiran’s bed which looks magical at night.  There are a lot of different types of light in this room just as in the rest of the house.  I rarely use the overhead lights, unless we are doing a painting project, puzzle etc.  There is a yellow bedside light (Ikea) for reading, a desk light (for all desk activities also from Ikea), wicker light (Ikea) for when we have dance parties or when the room needs to look moody, and another task light over the settee for reading.  All the lights in his room were inexpensive.

The bedspread is from Urban Outfitters, the long cushion is a new Vera print bought on sale at Anthropologie and the other cushion is from Urbanoutfitters.  The dresser is Scott’s old dresser from when he was a kid.  I plan on painting it sometime soon. 

 The vintage Casalino yellow chairs were our gift to Kiran for his 4th Birthday.  I think I paid $40 for the pair on eBay.  We made the desk using Ikea legs and a table top (also from Ikea) that Scott cut to measure the space.  The vintage settee (to the right of the below picture) needs to be upholstered. 

 The view from the second floor hallway into Kiran’s room.