When I realized that Rob and I needed a sideboard/credenza for our dining room to hold serving pieces and extra dishes, I began looking at all our options. I quickly realized that I didn’t really want a sideboard enough to part with hundreds of dollars. I wanted a stopgap sideboard that would suffice until I could afford the sideboard of my dreams.

Enter ugly dresser found from Craigslist:


This dresser had 4 things that made it the perfect temporary sideboard:
1. Cabinets with doors in addition to drawers. Drawers can be useful in a dining room (hello silverware storage), but for the most part they become unwieldy when filled with heavy dishes. The cabinets with doors are perfect for large heavy stacks of plates and other china. (The drawers are perfect for bulky large platters or those over-sized chip/dip trays that won’t fit anywhere else in your house.)
2. Interesting Hardware. The drawer pulls had some spunk.
3. Interesting Architecture. The cabinet doors had some intriguing ornament to them. Don’t get me wrong; it’s definitely UGLY — late 70′s/early 80′s plastic-glued-to-manufactured-wood furniture. However, when looking at the pictures of the dresser on Craigslist and later in person at the thrift store, I saw some potential.
4. Cheap price. I’m not going to euphemize this one; the dresser wasn’t affordable or cost-efficient. It was cheap. And at a fraction of the cost of my other options, I pulled the trigger.

Fast forward through the horrible difficulties of transporting over-sized, manufactured wood furniture (thanks Mom for letting me borrow your Envoy!), and I had to decide how to make this ugly dresser fit in our cute little home. I did some research online & decided on spray paint, but not just any old color. I chose silver spray paint with gold for the handles. We lugged the monstrosity outside, gave it a good cleaning, and 3 coats of spray paint later, Voilà!:

Gilding (silvering) makes it all look ok!

I’m taking this opportunity to try out some new technology. Yesterday, I finally relented and upgraded my 16gb white iPhone 3G to the 16gb white iPhone 4. On Sunday, we were at Walmart buying our food for the week and trying to stay out of the way of all the tourists. On a whim, I asked if we could check to see if the store had any of the white phones in, now that they were being offered for $147. And although Rob had called earlier in the week (to ask the same thing) with no luck, this time we hit the jackpot! Walmart had 2! white iPhones in stock.

On Saturday, Rob and I timed the speeds it took my 3G and his 4 to perform tasks. It took 40 seconds on my phone to open the camera, take a picture, and return to the home screen. That was unacceptable. Now my cute little phone is functional again! (And it matches its sister – my white iPad 2.)

This post is really just an experiment in blogging. I’m making the whole post from my new iPhone. The star of this post is a new indoor/outdoor rug that I bought for our master bathroom. I’ve seen this rug a few places online (here and here), but I found the best price for it at OutdoorRugsOnly.com.

Check out how it looks in our bathroom! We’re using it to replace a brown shag; I just wasn’t happy with how the shag stood up to the harsh bathroom environment. It’s a little crazy, but I think that Rob and I both like it. Even the cats are getting used to it. (Initially, they walked on the plastic material like they were walking on something very unpleasant–paws held high, nervously looking around, very careful steps.)

Our front door has a big decorative glass window in it. To give us the feeling of privacy in the evening, we hung a curtain on the door. At night, we go into “lockdown.” This process simply entails pulling the curtains on the front door and kitchen window that looks out onto our front porch.

In the fall, I hang a gray velvet curtain (matches our couch) from Anthropologie –the Viceroy Velvet Curtain. (One of my splurges with our house). I found a matching gray curtain at TJMaxx and used the iron-on hem tape to shorten it to fit our kitchen window. (There was no way I was going to buy another Viceroy Velvet and massacre it.)

Viceroy Velvet Curtain Closed

Viceroy Velvet Curtain Open

Gray Curtain in Kitchen Closed

Gray Curtain in Kitchen Opened

When Spring comes, I switch out these gray velvet curtains for something , lighter, friendlier, and more colorful. I found two curtains at Pier One on sale when we first moved in; I loved the colors and snatched them up. I hung the one in the kitchen from it’s bottom hem instead of using the loops (again using the iron-on hem tape to shorten the curtain to fit).

Curtain at Front Door Closed (Plus Cat)

Curtain at Front Door Opened (Plus Cat)

Curtain at Kitchen Closed

Curtain at Kitchen Open

Sorry for the poor quality of all the open curtain images; I couldn’t get my lighting settings right when I was taking pictures.

Yesterday’s news of the upcoming iPad 2 release may have overshadowed an equally important announcement — the development of Mouthwash 2. This is not an evolution in mouthwash dispensing; it is a revolution.

Evidence #1: Photograph of our bathroom tray of morning accoutrements. Note the large bottle of Listerine in the back. This is not the largest bottle of Listerine available for purchase (it’s actually one of the smallest), but it still takes up a large portion of the tray’s surface area.

Evidence #2: Everytime we use the Listerine, a small amount runs down the bottle. This Listerine evaporates, hardens, and becomes a difficult to clean puddle of crud.

Solution: Mouthwash 2. A small olive oil bottle for dispensing mouth wash (complete set includes stainless steel condiment cups for ease of use).

Mouthwash 2 in Use:

Mouthwash 2 in the Tray:

And now a larger context shot of Mouthwash 2 that also happens to show our new Morning Bar. (Our morning bar is actually only a compact refrigerator and our Keurig; the refrigerator is stocked with morning necessities — creamer, Diet Sunkist (for me), Lemon/Lime Seltzer, and vodka. –Just kidding on the vodka….or am I? I’m still working on the “look” of that area.)

Just for fun, I also include a shot of another wall in the bathroom. I recently updated this wall after receiving a 20×200 print from my parents for Christmas — Now by Marian Bantjes. (As an aside Marian Bantjes has a new book out that I’m coveting: I Wonder.)

Here’s a close-up of the picture. It sits beside another 8.5 x 11 that I printed out as a placeholder. It’s actually a rip-off of another 20×200 print that I liked: Untitled by Mike Monteiro . I’m just trying to find the right shot from our recent Caribbean trip to print out for that frame. There’s also a little owl trinket case from Anthro that my brother-in-law gave me for Christmas.

Check out previous bathroom posts here, here, and here!

When we bought our house, the master bathroom was decorated in not-so-lovely shades of brown. While we haven’t wanted to splurge on redoing the tile, we have completely repainted the whole thing, bought new hardware, and really tried to update the look. A constant thorn in my side keeping me from truly enjoying our bath was the swirly brown cultured marble vanity top.

The original vanity top

A close-up

After hours of internet research, I decided to try out a product called Rust-Oleum’s Tub and Tile Refinishing Kit. We would like to completely replace the vanity and tile one day; this $25.00 fix was meant to only get rid of the swirly brown for now.

We pulled the vanity off the counter (after disconnecting plumbing); the past owners made that part easy by not caulking the vanity top! (Yay)

The kit requires a certain amount or prep work; in our case, we washed the surface with Lime-Away and then sanded the counter down with fine grit sandpaper. We mixed the two chemicals and quickly used a low-nap, 4″ roller to do the first coat. (It already looked so much better!)

I used a brush (for the sake of experimentation) to do the second coat, and I would really recommend the opposite approach to anyone undertaking this project. The brush will allow you to get a really heavy coat first coat (no streaks). If you follow that with a rolled coat, I think the smoothness would result in the perfect finish. The brush definitely adds more bubbles.

Close-Up View

The directions indicate a second coat is ok after an hour drying time for the first. But don’t extrapolate & think that you can touch the top after the second coat dries for an hour. It feels dry, but those fingerprints will stay! Stay tuned for the finished product (after the full 3 days drying time)!

I need help choosing the new color for our front door (with the caveat that any proposed changes to our home have to be approved by the Architectural Review Board first!) Below you see the original color (red), and four new choices. I’m leaning towards the lightest turquoise color. To get an idea of the direction we’re going (post modern/beachy/50′s modern with a hint of naturalized), I’ve done a materials montage (as it currently stands)!

Our master bathroom is huge. It’s enormous. And i know this is a unique problem (probably not to be pitied), but it’s really got a lot of wasted space.

One of my ways to combat the crazy expanse is to make the bathroom a little bit eccentric. We have 2 silver walls, floor-to-ceiling silver trees, a shag rug (not even close to the bathmat area), and now–we installed a chandelier over the bathtub.

For lighting in the bathroom, we had 2 fixtures over the vanity, a fan/light combo (which I still have to get to because the light doesn’t work), and 2 can lights–one over the shower & one over the tub. I like can lights, but I felt like we could definitely go fancier over our bathtub. But, it turns out, you can’t replace a can light like you can just a regular ceiling fixture. They are generally attached to the roof joists, and to pull out the light, you’d end up making a pretty big hole in your ceiling. I thought we’d have to live with the can lights.

But Lowe’s sells can light adapters (check the model number for compatibility), and after carefully reading & re-reading the adapter instructions & the light instructions, I think we were able to install the chandelier so it won’t come crashing down. The adapter screws into the bulb for the can light, and then you wire the new fixture to that. It’s a bit tricky; and there are weight limitations (35 lbs in our case, on which we are on the upper limit), but it’s really not too bad.

And now we’ve got a chandelier over the tub! (Next we need the refrigerator in there…inspired by my friend’s house in Raleigh…)