Designology Interiors: June 2011

Card Catalog

An update on the art cabinet saga... I have been looking for a flat art file or card catalog and *finally* found a great one on Craigslist in Ann Arbor. It was fun to meet the couple and hear about how they came across the piece at a University of Michigan auction in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. They have seven kids(!!!) and the older ones helped us load some of the drawers into our truck, how cute. It was easier to move the card catalog without all the drawers inside, but removing them took some time since there are 72!

Don't you love the hardware? All of the drawers have the original cards too. I have a section of the f's and I think there were 108 files in the collection.

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Old House Love...the back story

We wavered for years about whether or not we should sell our house. We lived in this great little tudor on the cutest dead-end street ever. Our house was small, but we had fixed up just about every square inch of it...and this is where we brought our little Peyton home from the hospital.

So we decided to stay for a few more years.

Then I saw this beautiful Victorian house online and I just had to see inside. We loooved it! We listed our house and it sold in THREE weeks! We were excited, sad... and homeless (ahh!)

Everyone we took through the Victorian house mentioned the phrase labor of love and money pit. I was able to see past all of that because, well, love is blind. I was picturing us happily painting walls and sanding floors...but when would all this work be taking place? After work and every weekend for the the rest of our lives? So, we passed on it.

front door back yard second set of stairs
... crazy, right?

We were sure that we wanted an older home, 1930's or earlier, which really narrowed down the search. We also didn't want to look at foreclosures because of the added stress of dealing with the banks and the unpredictable time frame.
No thanks.

Somehow this log cabin was a possibility for like 1 day. (We don't live in Telluride so it felt a little out of place, like The Berenstain Bears live there or something!) Also, the house was left incomplete, so who knows how much it would really cost us. So... on to the next one.

How amazing is this house? It was love at first sight. Such a great original floor plan but then there were several phases of strange, do-it-yourself additions. Our realtor pointed out some structural issues so we moved on and continued our search.

..and chose this one, a 1915 craftsman next to a huge park. So here are the *before* pictures of our house. I quickly took these pictures with my phone while the guys were refinishing the floors. The house was full of saturated gold paint colors, which made the house feel really dark. We painted most of the rooms since these photos, but there is still a lot left to do....that's the fun part!

Dining Room

Living Room Fireplace & stone walls

Living Room

Guest Bath

a fantastic built-in

Master Bedroom

Peyton's room... before all the toys arrive

upstairs foyer

Color palettes and Ikea Hacking

One of my favorite sources for color inspiration is Design Seeds. Jessica loves color and dreams up and creates these amazing color schemes from photographs... and every single one is striking. You can read more about how she got started here.
Wouldn't you love to design a room (or a whole house!) with one of these color palettes?

Another site I love is Ikea Hackers. It's exactly what you are thinking: one of a kind designs made by modifying Ikea products. Some of the projects seem a little far fetched, but a lot of the designs are wonderful and created on a *tiny* budget.

1 These upholstered chairs are stenciled by hand. So cute and way easier to keep clean than solid white upholstery. 2 The next project is a dresser that has been inset into plaster walls. What a simple idea, and much cheaper than a custom built-in bank of drawers. This might have caught my eye because my daughter had two of these dressers in her room. 3 These lights are so fun, right? The first one is a simple pendant light covered with little strips of charcoal colored felt. 4 I'm loving these glowing pair of pendants wrapped in fibers. 5 I know you have all seen this floral metal bowl at Ikea before, but probably not as a light. It would be so cute in a kids room instead of a plug in night light.

Art Cabinet Saga

Long story short, I missed out on the flat file art cabinet I told you about a few weeks ago. The store called to let me know the cabinet had arrived, so I rushed there right after work and another customer had just purchased it. It was beautiful oak and a little beat up like the one in this picture. Bummer. Now I'll really be on the look out for another one!

Backyard Wish List

I've been trying to plan my back yard design, instead of randomly buying things all summer long. (Does that sound familiar?!) In the mean time, these *super hot* days are reminding me that we need an umbrella asap. I'm loving this offset one... and Sunbrella umbrellas are 60% off this week with free shipping too. Hmmm.