Category Archives: house

Saturday spent thrifting.

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We went to a “thrift” store way out in West Philly today.  While I didn’t see too many things that I liked I found a few not so thrifty things, such as this desk.  I didn’t enjoy sitting at my old desk.  I loved that it was small and had clean lines but it needed lots of work.  The drawers had to be fixed, it was a little unsteady, also it needed to be sanded and repainted.  I like that this desk, while having the same dimensions as the other desk, takes up a lot more visual space.  This room is small and this side of the room needed something substantial.  I think that sometimes in a small room you have to go large so that things don’t look too cluttered. Click here  and here to see more pictures of my room.

 I love the juxtaposition of the ornate desk next to the yellow industrial clamp lamp (eBay) and red metal filing cabinet (Ikea).

The desk is solid wood and extremely heavy. It is in excellent condition. 

Since we are talking about the desk I might as well mention the chair…I upholstered this chair (which we got with the dining table) in this fabric from Ikea.  I love black and white fabrics and I’ve accumulated a small collection. 

This is the old desk.  For now I am moving it to the basement but in the future when I have some free time I will sand it and refinish it.  It will either go into Kiran’s room or in the office room as a table for my sewing machine (not yet purchased).

Here are some pictures of the yellow porcelain  cups that we got (they were very thrifty at $5 for eight of them):

Shoe Shelf.

Posted in house, master bedroom, shoes by

I am a big believer in buying great quality leather shoes with leather soles.  They aren’t necessarily expensive (I am a size 7 and I am lucky enough to live close to Daffys where I find amazing Italian shoes in my size).  Whenever the soles or the rubber on the heels gets worn down I take them to be repaired.   I have acquired a lot of shoes over the years (what can I say I hardly ever throw out any shoes).  Anyway, I needed some shelves for my shoes and one very snowy day (last week) Scott built these shelves for me.


As you can see they are only half way done.  I want the shelves to go all the way up to the ceiling.  One of the shelves will hold my boots.  Once all the shelves are installed I will prime and paint the wood white.

 

This is a close up of the shelves.  I color cordinated the shoes (!) so they wouldn’t look too cluttered.

TV in the living room?

Posted in house, living room by

After having the television on the third floor (in what is now the office room) we finally decided that we need the TV on the main floor.  Neither Scott nor I watch a lot of television but we love watching movies.  So we decided to move it downstairs mainly because we really want the living room to be the room that we spend most of our time in.  Our biggest challenge is incorporating the TV into the rest of the living room and making is sort of blend in. 

I have been searching for a white high gloss TV stand for a while now.  The living room has a lot of wood so I needed something lighter and airier.

The first step in moving the TV into the living room was buying a credenza to place under the TV.  We  bought  Ikea Trosby sideboard.  This is the first big piece of furniture that we have purchased at Ikea and I am very pleased.  It is very sturdy and the size is perfect.  Also it has tons of storage and we use one side for Kiran’s toys and the other side for the DVD player and CDs. 

We decided on installing two shelves over the TV to put our CD player on.  The main reason for this is that We have a Bose CD player (best purchase ever) and it just sounds better when it is higher.  Also we needed it to be away from Kiran’s reach because he loves shoving CD’s into the CD slots. 

Next Scott installed a plug point slightly higher from where we decided to put up the shelves.  I am not sure how he does it but Scott has become quite an electrician now.  Scott installed, wired and did everything else necessary for me to have a plug point on the first shelf.  I am so excited!

See the plug point!

This is a close up of Scott installing the shelves.  One more shelf to go…

It took a lot of time to align the shelves (everything in our house is slightly crooked) and to decide what to anchor the shelves on.  Most of our walls are plaster but this wall is drywall to it look a lot of time for us to decide whether we wanted to attach the shelves on just drywall or if we wanted to find the wood studs.  We ended up attaching one side of the shelves to the wood studs and the other side was anchored with drywall sinkers.  It took a lot longer than we anticipated but it is almost done. More pictures to follow.

The Dining Room (update).

Posted in Art, Dining Room, house by

I  haven’t posted many new pictures of our house because I can’t seem to take good pictures even with my new camera! Also, every time that I am ready to take pictures the sun disappears so my pictures end up looking really dark.  Anyway here are some pictures of the dining room.

My favorite reading spot

 

We bought the table and buffet from a neighbor about 10 years ago.  I really want a new sleeker and longer teak credenza but we are keeping this one until we find another one.  I bought the chairs on Ebay (two separate auctions from two different sellers).  I love the juxtaposition of the chrome with the wood table.  While we have been looking for a new table I am pretty sure that we will end up keeping this table.  It has four additional leaves and seats twelve people really comfortably.  Also the table is solid wood and indestructible.  I recently bought the yellow enamel lamp on eBay for about $45.  It works and it is great to have a task light because we use the dining room table to read, write, draw etc.  Also, I think the bright splash of color really livens the room.

Click here to see pictures of the progression of the dining room.

All I want is a black wall.

Posted in house, Inspiration by

…maybe even a black room. I am seriously thinking of painting the office room on the third floor a very matte black. I am in love with Jenna Lyons house, especially her bedroom which is the perfect shade of black.

Jenna Lyons bedroom from Living etc.

If not black then I am thinking of a very deep and dark grey color as in the picture below:


Gemma Ahern’s apartment (more here)

…maybe I could do one wall in the dining room as in the picture below. Although I am generally not a fan of “accent” walls.

From Rum Magazine

Black walls are everywhere now and while I am not into following fads I have to say that I am getting increasingly more obsessed with having a black room. For more great inspiration check out Door Sixteen.

Happy New Year!

Posted in house, plants by
view from the living room window

In the past I have rarely made new year’s resolutions. However, this year I have decided that I have to make some changes. Between working, renovating the house, cleaning, cooking, and taking care of our son I feel like I don’t have any time for myself! I have always liked my time alone and this year I resolve to find some time for myself.

Here is a list of my resolutions (in no particular order):
1) Take a renovation hiatus of two months and enjoy the house without thinking of the next project (this will be very hard to do).
2) read more books (I used to read a lot and now I spend all my reading time pouring over magazines, blogs, the internet etc)
3) get back to sleeping at least eight hours a day
4) watch a movie at home at least once a week
5) Save and spend less (hard to do when I am constantly dreaming up a new house project)
6) Relax
7) Call all my fabulous friends, who live really far from me, more often.

PS: I love plants and even when it is freezing cold outside, with snow on the ground I have a little bit of paradise on my window sills.

I’m Back!

Posted in backyard, house by

I can’t believe that it’s been so long since I posted something. I’ve been really busy at work and at home. All my time at home seems to be consumed with taking care of Kiran who is now 20 months old. I have also been very busy around the house and there’s been a lot of changes (more pictures to come soon). I also bought a new camera so the quality of the pictures (hopefully) will be much better.

For now here is a picture of what my backyard looks like today:


This was what it looked like earlier this year:

For more pictures of my backyard check out this Apartment Therapy post.

Front of the House.

Posted in exterior, house by

It’s been a long time since I blogged last. It’s not that I have been busy renovating or having a hectic time at work…it is just that the weather has been so nice that I have been enjoying the beautiful days. I also went away to Austin on our first family vacation since Kiran was born. This is a picture of my friend Maza, Kiran and me on top of some mountain in Austin. I remember the roads were windy and I was hoping I wouldn’t get car sick so I wasn’t paying much attention to the name of the place. It was definitely beautiful. Maza when you read this please leave a comment about the name of this place.


So when we got back from our vacation, and I got out of the cab, I was first relieved that the house was intact and second I felt welcomed by our house. This is when I realized that I haven’t posted many pictures of the front of the house.

This is a picture of the front of the house. You can see the tree that the Passyunk Square Civic Association planted a year and a half ago. I was so scared that it would die because they planted it in the Fall of 2007 and it got really cold very fast that year. Needless to say the tree survived.


This is a close up of the tree:

This picture shows my new planter. I have been trying to decide what sort of arrangement of plants I should have in the front of the house. I couldn’t really come up with any plan so I decided that what I needed to do was just decide on at least one planter and that the rest will follow. I got this planter from Ikea for around $49. I planted a boxwood in it because it is an evergreen and requires minimal attention.


This is a picture of the house numbers. I bought talavera tiles and glued them on a wrought iron frame. The frame is attached to the brick with sinkers and screws. I had originally planned on gluing the numbers to the brick but I didn’t want to ruin the brick. I bought these numbers before we even closed on the house. It took us over two years to install them.

This is a view of the front door with a dragon fly knocker. This knocker was given to us as a gift by our friend Michelle a long long time ago in Texas. I was saving it for the right place and now it has found its home.

Office Room

Posted in house, third floor by
Office Room

The “office room” is a very long and narrow room on the third floor. This floor has two rooms and these were the only rooms in the house that were decent, when we bought the house. Now I think these rooms are the worst. We haven’t done anything to these two rooms other than put some furniture in them. The second room on the third floor is the guest room. It is tiny.

In this picture you can see the fabulous chair I bought on ebay. It looks great and is very comfortable.

The cactus is 10 years old! We bought it as a tiny little plant when we first moved to Philly. I sort of injured him (yes it is a “he”) while moving him upstairs and I hope he lives. Kiran kept playing with him so he (the cactus) had to be moved.

Work, work, work.

Posted in house, living room by

I guess I unofficially took some time off from blogging. Well, things have just been a little crazy. I am super busy at work. On top of that I am supposed to be planning Kiran’s birthday and we are also installing the baseboard molding in the living room and dining room. Our house has so many corners that the baseboard molding has been taking forever. As far as Kiran’s party goes so far I bought some paper daisies (as decoration). I did buy some wine but we’ve finished a lot of it! So I really need to go back to the liquor store, figure out what food I am going to make, finish installing the baseboard molding, clean the house, buy something for Kiran to wear, and then cook everything by Saturday morning. This doesn’t include all the stuff I have to get done for work.

Paper daisies

I bought these paper daisies from here. The comforter cover is from Ikea and I bought is last week. I have been looking everywhere for an orange and white comforter cover and I was so excited to find this one and it was very cheap ($19.99 and includes two adorable pillow shams).

The picture below shows the living room wall without any baseboard molding. We had to remove the crumbling plaster walls in the living room and install dry wall with insulation.


This pictures below are of the dining room wall with baseboard molding. We were able to salvage the plaster walls in here. It took countless hours to repair the plaster but it is definitely worth it. I love these walls.

Without the top piece


With the top piece

We bought primed pine and the molding consists of three different pieces: the flat piece, a top piece and the quarter round on the bottom. Our friend lent us his nail gun so installing the baseboards took a lot less time than when we did Kiran’s room. We still have to install the molding in the master bedroom…maybe this will be another project (with the wallpaper) for the Fall. Hopefully, we will finish caulking the molding and painting the nail holes tonight. I need the house to be in order. The disarray is driving me nuts.