2012 Calendar

So, a few weeks ago I won a calendar from Aesthetic Outburst. Pretty exciting. This is only the second time I've ever won anything. And it's perfect because I wanted a calendar this size for the office but couldn't find anything I liked.

Even if I hadn't won it, it's basically exactly what I was looking for. The design is simple and geometric and lovely. Extra awesome? I can crop it down to a 4" x 6" to frame later as the months go by.

We also did a little rearranging since my husband got a new-to-him desktop computer, to make room for the monitor.

Featured...

So they picked my bedroom as the Pick of the Week on the IKEA Share Space blog!

I'm kind of excited :)

Still think I want to paint the dresser drawer fronts white though....

Happenings.

I was hoping to have posted the finished fireplace by now. Only, it's not finished yet. Boo. Hubby got frustrated with the trim and hasn't attempted to do it again yet. Once that's done, I can do a couple coats of paint and voila!

Here's a blurry photo I snapped with my phone of it primed with painter's tape to indicate where the detail trim is going to go. I think it's gonna be pretty awesome when it's finished. You can see the new travertine tile too. Love it.

In the meantime, I've started painting the trim Ultra White in satin (Olympic Premium brand). I've gotten three and a half doors done so far and the difference is AMAZING. My lovely grey walls suddenly look a million times more awesome. I don't know why I waited so long. Oh that's right, because it's tedious and takes forever. And we only have 16 doors in the house, plus all the trim....

Here's a shot of the pantry so you can see the difference between the white and the yellow:

I painted the front of the pantry door and the trim, but since we have that storage rack on the back I haven't gotten to that side yet. I'm not exactly looking forward to taking that beast down and then reinstalling it.

Fireplace, Part Two: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

Well the MDF is was up (see below), the brad holes are caulked, and the whole thing is primed. I hate the mantle though. I think it looks way too big and too boxy. It's made from 1" x 8" boards. Hubby has been bugging me to let him nail it down and force me to commit.

At first I was thinking maybe just taking two inches off the front, but after living with it for almost a week, I'm seriously thinking we should make it look more like what was there before, but a little cleaner and simpler.

I would disassemble the current mantle and use one of the 1" x 8" boards, with trim underneath.

So here's some more fireplace inspiration I've been looking at. Initially I was kind of hoping it would look like this fireplace from The Peartree Cottage. That is a massive brick fireplace though, and the scale is very different than what I'm working with.

This is a DIY fireplace surround by Frugal Home Designs:

More trim detail than I would use though, but closer to my revised vision.

This one is from Domino, via Apartment Therapy. I kind of love it.

While our personal style is vintage modern, the house is more neo-classical generic builder, so the fireplace should really stay with a transitional style rather than something overly modern. I like the trim detail on this one too, so we will probably be copying that.

We picked up the new tile and started installing that. Turned out the old tile was adhered directly to dry wall, so it left huge holes while I was removing it, and in order to patch them we had to take down the MDF on the legs.

The tile is a 2" x 2" travertine mosaic from Home Depot. I'm pretty excited about how it's looking so far. Once the tile is done we can install the trim work and I can paint. It's taking a bit longer than I had hoped, but we should be done before the Spring semester starts.

Dining Room Painted

So we just painted the dining room....

Another shade of grey! Tempered Gray, actually, which is the same shade throughout the entry, laundry room, living room, and hallway. It's one shade lighter on the paint swatch than Urban Sunrise, the color it was before.

Tempered Gray is a truly neutral grey, but Urban Sunrise had a hint of blue in it, and it made the dining room feel cold. I tried to offset it with blue to make the grey look warmer, but I still hated it. I still want to add in some warmer colors like a yellow, but I haven't found anything I like yet.