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The Exterior To-Do List

I didn’t do much to the backyard last year. Or to the front. Really, what I mean to say is that I didn’t do anything to the exterior of the house last year. This year, it shows. The garden needs tending, the grass needs seeding, and to top it all off, we should probably paint. The garage is starting to peel pretty badly, and the house could use some attention, too.

Jenny Lyons' Former Garden
(Not our yard! That’s Jenna Lyons’ former garden.)

I had a grand plan of things I wanted to do to the outside of our home that I put together back in 2009, two months before Eleanor was born. Allow me to quote myself: “Of course, the arrival of spring will also mean the arrival of our baby, so maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves!”

Nah, you think? Childless me was so naive.

So now, two kids and four years later, I’m reassessing. I’m copying and pasting my original exterior to-do list, below, with some clarification.

paint & repair the trim
We still need to do this.
paint the front porch and the back deck
I would miss the hand-painted rug that I did, but the porch needs to be refinished.
replace the railings for the front porch with a style more appropriate for the house
I’d still love to do this, but at least our railings are functional.
cover the sides of the front stairs (lattice?)
Yep. Actually, stucco would be a more seamless choice.
build a gate to hide the storage area under our back deck (lattice?)
Still a good idea.
replace our ugly white screen doors with simple, unobtrusive ones
I removed the front screen door entirely because I couldn’t stand it anymore, but I’ve yet to replace it.
install gutters with covers that supposedly don’t need to be cleaned
We can skip this, and continue to have our gutters cleaned seasonally.
remove the aluminum siding on the addition and stucco it to match the rest of the house
We had a couple of quotes and this is cost-prohibitive.
change the house color
It would be nice.
paint the garage to match
The garage needs to be painted either way, and of course it should match the house.
put up cute new house numbers
Yes!
maybe change the mailbox?
Maybe!
add an outlet out front and in back (there are none outside)
We did this! And now it’s broken! Yay.
add another metal sculpture in front of the house (we already have one)
Really? One is enough, Nicole.
put in some foundation plants/shrubs
I sort of did this, but more is needed.
plant a small tree (pagoda dogwood?) out front
Probably not the best idea to plant a tree too near the house.

I feel bad, looking at this list and realizing how much of this has yet to be done, but it’s expensive stuff. And the only new item I’d like to add to the list? Build a wooden fence. The neighbor’s yappy dogs used to be an annoyance. Now that we have kids and they have a more aggressive dog that wants to bite their hands off, a wooden fence would be nice.

Lists, Outside • 15 Comments • April 10, 2013

Pink Rugs: The Choice of Design Bloggers

April
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Wood Coffee Table in the Living Room

Can I make that sweeping generalization in the title? Probably not, but I do love having a pink rug in my living room. (Although those chevrons have been done to death. It was not so when I bought my rug in 2008!)

I love this space from Holly Becker of Decor8, with its pink overdye rug. The photo appeared in her book, Decorate Workshop.

Holly Becker's Home

And Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan of Apartment Therapy has a hot pink rug, too. This was his living room, featured in Apartment Therapy’s Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces.

Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan's Home

You see what I mean about design bloggers and pink rugs? Maybe we’re an odd bunch, but I love the look.

I just wish I’d known better than to choose cotton for a busy living room in a house with two young kids, a dog, and three cats — though in my defense, we didn’t have children at the time. I’ve been looking at wool rugs for a possible replacement (maybe?), and I keep coming back to pink. Here are some of my favorites.

Pink Rugs

Madeline Weinrib Zigzag Rug
cotton, available at ABC Carpet & Home
This is my rug. It can be ordered in custom colors, but when I came across it in shades of pink, I had to buy it. I would still recommend it, but for a room with less foot traffic.
Dippy Pink Rug by Susan Sharp
wool, from The Rug Company
Gorgeous, and less in-your-face ombré as it appears on screen (as seen in Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan’s home, above, and repurposed in his apartment). It’s expensive though.
Preppy Pastel Pink Rug
wool, from The Land of Nod
The color looks more vibrant than pastel to me. The price is right, but the solid color is a bit plain.
Overdye Magenta Rug
wool, from Rugs USA
I like that the underlying pattern is less obvious than in some overdyed rugs. Less trendy. I would love this rug in my living room. Think it would work with my floral chair?

'R' for Rugs, Living Room • 36 Comments • April 8, 2013

The New Coffee/Play Table

April
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We’ll have space for a play table in August’s room once he transitions from a crib to a bed and we’re able to take the glider and ottoman out. I was thinking about using our old coffee table, but Brandon pointed out that the whole reason we replaced it was because we were worried about its stability. Putting it in his room started to seem like a pretty bad idea, even though it would have looked cute.

I spotted a wood and sandstone coffee table that I liked at the Crate & Barrel outlet when I was there with my friend Kathryn (we met when I redesigned her bedroom), so I bought it. It’s similar to my old table, but slightly larger and a whole lot sturdier.

Playmobil Castle in a Home Library

Playmobil Castle

You like how I ‘styled’ it? It’s officially a play table now. (Funny thing about that Playmobile castle — I saw it last year at Berwyn’s Toys & Trains, and I joked to the kids that “daddy would really like that toy.” Guess who bought it?)

Playing with a Playmobil Castle

Actually, keeping the table in the library may turn out to be a better plan than moving it to August’s room. It fits the space well and looks fine, but has the added bonus of being neutral territory. If the castle was in either kid’s room, there would be more fighting over it because it’s seen as theirs, but out in the library they share it pretty well. I had to take the nesting side tables away that were next to the chair though, which I’d painted specifically for that space and liked. Too many tables, you know? Now I’m not sure if they’re coming back.

August's Room, Library, Parenting • 19 Comments • April 3, 2013

IVAR!

April
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Remember this floor plan sketch for the basement, with the storage units labeled GORM (which is either a really unfortunate name or an IKEA product)? Right. Well, I went out to IKEA last week with the little ones in tow to make it happen. I’d promised Eleanor a visit to Småland, so she played while August and I hit up the utility shelving section. The shelving I’d planned on was cheap, but it felt cheap. Wobbly and thin, I was afraid it wouldn’t hold up well, so I went for IVAR instead.

Five days later, Brandon took all of the pieces out of the car and brought them downstairs. I took over from there.

IKEA IVAR Wooden Storage Shelving

Building the corner unit went smoothly. Each shelf has a tiny plastic pouch with its six pegs stapled to it. You just line those up in the end and corner supports, rest a shelf on top, and away you go. I assembled it, attached the whole thing to studs in the wall, and was done in 15 minutes. Next, I wanted to build the chest of drawers I’d bought. It was an expensive component but I figured the drawers would prove useful.

The instructions showed the chest installed with a cross-brace above, and I realized I’d have to move the corner unit to attach a brace to the side. Not a big deal; I just had to unscrew the safety strap attaching it to the wall. I went to get a shelf so that I could determine the proper distance, and I realized I had no pegs. The corner shelves each had a piece of wood beneath for stability, which allowed space to attach their hardware pouches. The others are just shelves that stack flat against each other. Of course by the time I’d reached the warehouse section of IKEA with two punchy children up past their bedtime ready to run around or melt down, that detail didn’t register properly. I also overbought long shelves and now need to return to IKEA for shorter versions, along with my 48 missing pegs. I don’t do well with last-minute changes, clearly.

No matter! I took one corner shelf out and used the pegs to attach a shelf along the top, I lined another shelf up along the floor, and took measurements that way. Whee, problem solved! Why do people have such a hard time assembling IKEA furniture?

IVAR Shelving

I attached the cross-braces to two sections, congratulated myself on a job well done, anchored everything to the wall, and moved on to build the drawers. As I put it together, stopping intermittently to take photos, I was composing this blog post in my head.

Do you know how fun it is for a perfectionist to put together one of these storage units? No, really, I’m not being sarcastic. Do you know how fun it is!? This thing snaps together and is easy to build, but not if you want it to be level/plumb, or sturdy. And this is both.

Whee, what fun! Let’s stop and take pictures! Note that this is step 1. This will later become important.

Step 1 of Building the IVAR Drawer Unit

I was running out of room in the small storage room of my basement, but I wanted to build everything right there. The chest weighs 70 pounds, and I wouldn’t be able to move it myself if it was fully assembled in another room because it would be too bulky. (I wanted to build everything myself.) So I cleared a small area and got to work. The directions weren’t clear and attaching the drawer glides was confusing because you had to intuit everything from illustrations, but I figured it out. Drawer glides, attach the sides, slide in the backer, attach the last side, done. Time to build the individual drawers.

Since I didn’t have much room, I figured I’d be clever and build just one and make sure it fit, attach the case to the shelving supports, then build the other two drawers. So I did. And that drawer slid in so smoothly into the middle slot. Success! I did a little dance and got back to work. The chest was heavy and cumbersome, but not impossible to get into place. (Again, I wanted to do this all myself.) I finally lined everything up just so, screwed the final brackets in place, and slid the drawer I’d already built into place. I put it in the lowest slot this time, then noticed the three-inch gap along the bottom. I chastised myself, channeling Brandon in my head with appropriate Star Wars nerdery, but apparently the phrase isn’t even “don’t get cocky, kid.” The “kid” part comes just before. I didn’t even get that right.

Step 1 of Building the IVAR Drawer Unit

I fumbled for the next 15 minutes turning the drawer upside-down, then removing the unit I’d just gotten into place and turning the whole thing upside-down, and still I couldn’t get my drawer to line up. Finally, I realized I’d attached the glides incorrectly. They had to be unscrewed, turned and flipped, and reattached. Remember step 1? Yeah, that’s where I screwed up. After I’d corrected my mistake, getting the chest back into place was much more difficult than it had been the first time. Of course it was more difficult! This is why people hate assembling IKEA furniture!

Six hours after I’d started my shelving project, I got the chest and all three drawers into place, threw a few fake plastic trees on a corner shelf (sans green plastic watering can), and called it a day.

IVAR Drawer Unit