Category Archives: house

My downstairs bathroom.

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When we finished renovating our downstairs bathroom back in April, I did a “reveal” over at Decor8 detailing all of the real-life costs associated with this kind of project. Unfortunately, there was subsequently a data loss at Decor8, and Holly lost all of the comments (including the answers to a lot of questions people had about the renovation). There are also some errors in the price breakdown, so I figured I might as well post the photos, interview, and correct information here for the sake of keeping it entire project archived in one place.

What inspired the design of this room?/How did you decide upon the colors & overall style?
The architecture of my house is the base inspiration for everything I do within it. As a Modernist living in a Victorian-era house, I try to be very respectful of its original structure and character while still moving forward and not trying to create a faux-Victorian look. This attitude toward renovation (particularly when it comes to kitchens and bathrooms) is quite prevalent in Scandinavia, but in this country there is a still a tendency to try to make newly renovated spaces look “old”, and unfortunately the result is usually more of a pastiche than anything.

That said, I have tried very hard with both of my bathroom renovations to not make them look too “new”, either! The last thing I want anywhere in my house is for someone to open a door and immediately know that a particular room was recently renovated. My house is full of quirks and imperfections, and I have deliberately carried them into this space. This bathroom was added to the house sometime in the 1930s or ’40s (the space it’s in was originally a pass-through pantry connecting the entry hall to the kitchen at the back of the house), and I elected to keep the cast iron corner tub that was installed at that time. The old toilet was very cute, but it was terribly inefficient—rather than replace it with a “faux-old” toilet, though, I prefer the honesty of a very contemporary-looking one-piece.

But back to the question, you could say that every design decision I make in my house is inspired by Modernism, Industrialism, honesty of materials, and contrasts between old and new.

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Thinking about a new kitchen.

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Filed under house, inspiration

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kitchen. It’s very cute, and it has served us well for the past 3 1/2 years. There are times (okay, pretty much every day), though, when I find myself wishing for a larger sink (not that I don’t enjoy washing baking sheets in the bathtub). There are also times (like after our New Years party or Thanksgiving, for example) when I think it would be nice to have a dishwasher, too. (I see it is possible to install a dishwasher in the kitchen units we have. Hmmm.)

ANYWAY! The lack of a real need for a new kitchen certainly doesn’t keep me from fantasizing about one…

Photo by Alexander Crispin (from Scandinavian Style). This is probably my all-time favorite fantasy kitchen. The combination of materials and colors is just so perfect. I love marble countertops and the patina they gain over time. I am happy with my wood and steel counters for the same reason.

Kitchen by DAPStockholm. I’m not sure how it’s possible that I’m still not tired of seeing that wallpaper everywhere, but I’m not. Also, how cute is that Arne Jacobsen faucet?!

Photo by Jon Jensen. Oh Heath Tile, how you taunt me! I can definitely get behind soft grays in the kitchen.

No one can argue with a white kitchen, right? This just looks so fresh and clean. I spy another AJ faucet, too. (I can’t remember where this photo is from, sorry! I think it may be from a Swedish real estate site that Emma linked to a while back.)

Of course, black kitchens are good, too! I have black cabinets and a black floor in my kitchen, but it never reads as dark or dreary. I wish I had a brick wall that I could paint black, too. Photo by Hotze Eisma.

From ShootFactory. The combination of open and closed cabinets is so practical, and I love all of that wood. In 40 years, this kitchen will still look great.

This is my favorite IKEA kitchen right now. They’ve used a NEXUS lowers and RUBRIK uppers. I particularly like the white kickplate. It makes the cabinets look like they’re floating.

From Factory 20. More marble! Yay! And a glove mold! And a rustic shelf! With black brackets! And black cabinets! Yay! There’s a whole lot going on here that tickles my fancy.

Another photo by Hotze Eisma. I may have lied about that first kitchen being my favorite, because this one is giving me palpitations right now. Everything here is perfect, right down to the imperfect tiles. Also, the combination of white, black, wood, a green lamp, and Bertoia chairs makes this kitchen the perfect companion to the room right above my kitchen: My office!

Yay! Black trim!

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First of all, thank you so much for all of the birthday wishes yesterday. They are much appreciated. I had a very nice, low-key birthday (just how I like it). Evan gave me the supercute J.A. snail box I’ve had my eye on, and we had mini-red velvet Bundt cakes from Junior’s. Yerrrmy!

I’m on a mini-vacation until Monday, but here are some photos of the exterior of my house, now with black trim (Benjamin Moore Black Beauty)! Keep in mind that the windows still need to be repaired and painted, and the stair treads still need to be stained to match the porch ceiling.

(Sorry for the weird sizes, but I’m not on my own computer right now, and have no access to Photoshop!)

And a before picture, for comparison. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but we’ve also had the bricks cleaned and repointed. Oh! And that ironwork on top of the porch? We had it sandblasted (it was really rusty) and powdercoated (by the same guys that did our bathtub, sink, and radiators!) in black. It looks great.

Bye-bye peeling, discolored, forest green paint! ICK:

New porch ceiling!

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Look! We have a new porch ceiling! And a new porch light! Yes, I know the light is very traditional, and it’s really a bit too “faux-old” for my taste—but it does suit the house quite well, and the scale of it is right. Our porch is high off the ground, and small overhead lights look out of place. (By the way, we bought it at Pottery Barn on clearance and then squirreled it away in the basement for a year. They don’t have it anymore, sorry!)

Here’s a gross before shot. As you can see, the current situation is definitely an upgrade from rotted plywood and a bare bulb.

Sorry I don’t have many “during” shots! The demo took forever (not that I had anything to do with it—I left the dirty work for Evan). It was disgusting and marked by the discovery of a wasp infestation.

The new ceiling is tongue-and-groove pine beadboard. We put it up using a nail gun and an air compressor, which was SO FAST AND EASY. I applied two coats of oil-based ZAR Wood Stain in Dark Mahogony, then a coat of ZAR Ultra Max polyurethane in a satin finish.

(And yes, that’s BLACK trim you see! More exterior renovation photos to come…)

Hella Jongerius for IKEA PS.

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Hella Jongerius has created a line of beautiful wall-hangings for the 2009 IKEA PS collection. Here’s Pelle, the rabbit, hanging in my upstairs hallway. Also available are Gullspira (the goat) and Mikkel (the fox).

From Hella’s website:

Hella Jongerius created wallhangings for the IKEA-Unicef programme, which helps women in India to start up small sewing businesses and enables their children to go to school. Sources of inspiration are the animals that feature in Swedish fairy tales. In the production process small scale craft production in India is combined with large scale industrial production by IKEA, while the images refer to the local roots of this global company.

The result consists of textiles of which not only IKEA and Jongerius will benefit, but also the craftswomen who left their traces in the making.

The textiles are made with a variety of materials and techniques, which gives the end result a rich look. The used materials are a mix of woolen felt, a woven woolen dobby and printed cotton. A bright colored polyester band with button holes at the top of the work gives a sturdy accent and serves to attach it to the wall. The parts are stitched together and embroidered by hand. The combination of colors, print and embroidered accents give each of the three designs an individual character.

Each wallhanging is made from beginning to end by one woman. On the back of the work is a label with the names of IKEA, Hella Jongerius and the embroidered name of the woman who made it.

Why a goat, a fox and a rabbit?
“They refer in an abstract way to animals featured in Swedish fairy tales. Animals have already been featured in much of my earlier work; they trigger first and foremost the imagination. An animal has the power to be familiar; expressing moods comparable to the moods of human beings, and at the same time an animal remains puzzling.”


An early sketch for the 2009 IKEA PS collection

The wallhangings join Hella’s previous work for the IKEA PS line, four Jonsberg vases introduced in 2005. They are still available for sale—and I own all four!

Guest bedroom.

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That’s the STICKA blanket from IKEA’s 2009 PS collection (which I blogged about back in January), designed by Kazuyo Nomura. The entire collection is FINALLY available in US stores! The blanket is beautiful. My mother bought it in the natural color with multicolored stitching—very cute.

This bed is an old full-sized BERGEN (pre-MALM) bed from IKEA. We stopped using it when we moved into this house and had room for a queen-size bed, but I’m glad we held onto it. The original finish was oak veneer, but I painted it white (two coats of good primer, followed by two coats of BM Simply White to match the trim). It looks so fresh and clean!

The wall color is Benjamin Moore Lacey Pearl (matte)—it’s like the world’s palest neutral gray, and I’m totally in love with it. Trim is BM Simply White (satin), with BM Toucan Black (satin) inside the fireplace.

Exceptionally beautiful poster by Elisabeth Dunker for Studio Violet. Love.

I’m back!

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I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I made a real post. I just needed a break. I’m eternally behind on emails, projects, sleep…everything. I can’t say I’m any more caught up now than I was four weeks ago, but sometimes you just need to have one less thing to think about.

Anyway, Fritz here would like to welcome you (and me) back, and show off one of our newly reupholstered chairs. He would also like to mention that he has not chewed on the new fabric at all—not even a tiny taste.

This is one of the two chairs we bought almost two years ago (!) and “temporarily” wrapped in linen with plans to have new cushions made. It sure took us long enough, but I love the new fabric SO MUCH. We had a local upholsterer do the work. For all four cushions (two chairs), it only cost $200 for the foam to be re-wrapped and new, zippered covers made with flat seams. The fabric is a commercial-grade Maharam wool blend, which we bought at an enormous discount from Modern Fabrics. I cannot recommend them enough as a resource—excellent customer service, great prices, and a pretty amazing selection of high-end remnants.

Coral pendant in the hallway.

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Months after I nearly developed a brain aneurysm assembling it, my David Trubridge Coral pendant is finally hanging in the front hallway! It’s fun to walk in the house and see something this HIGH DRAMA right away. The shadows are really spectacular in the evening, but even when the light is off, it’s still sculpturally beautiful.

For reference, this is the 23.5″ diameter Coral pendant. Even with 11′ ceilings, it’s plenty big. If you have low ceilings, I definitely suggest doing some measuring first to make sure you’re not going to be walking into it all the time—unless, of course, you’re planning to put it over your dining table!

Garland + Benedict.

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I’ve had a Tord Boontje Garland light (this is the black chrome finish) for several years, but for the most part it’s just been sitting in a tangled clump in a box since we moved into the house. The standard way to hang it is on a bare bulb suspended by a cord, but with our high ceilings, the proportions wind up looking really skimpy and just too dangly.

After spending a solid hour detangling the thing last night, I decided to try wrapping it directly around the bulb on a flush-mount fixture in the bedroom. This is the white porcelain Benedict light from Schoolhouse Electric. The glass socket is really beautiful, so I wrapped the Garland just low enough that it’s still visible.

I’m really happy with the result, and I can’t wait for it to get dark enough to check out the shadows it casts on the ceiling! I used an Edison Double Loop bulb for added effect (the light cast by Edison bulbs is very warm, dim and soft, and the bulbs themselves are beautiful—they’re perfect for mood-lighting in fixtures that have visible bulbs). The Garland itself is quite affordable, and I think it’s worth upgrading the light source to something more elegant than the standard plastic cord set that comes with it—in fact, you can even order the Garlands by themselves ($76 with cord/$64 without); you’re not obligated to order the cord set. If you want the effect of a hanging pendant, the Lewis fixture from Schoolhouse Electric (with a cloth cord!) would look fantastic.

By the way, “arranging” a Garland light so that it looks like the product photos is a total nightmare. It takes FOR-EV-ERRR. This post (which I found in a fit of frustrated Googling) sums up the experience quite accurately!

EDIT: Oooooh, nighttime shots! I’m in love. The shadow effect is so dramatic with the Garland this close to the ceiling! The moth-to-flame feeling of this light is perfect for summer nights, isn’t it?

Faux-Aalto FROSTA upgrade.

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This is one of those DIY projects that kind of makes you feel like a jerk while you’re planning it, but the end result is so good that the shame is worth it. I’m really not a fan of knockoffs for a variety of reasons, but I just couldn’t resist.

It’s not exactly a secret that the design of IKEA’s $12.99 FROSTA stool is, um, heavily “influenced” by Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60, designed in 1933 (and currently retailing in the US for $250–300, depending on options). The materials and construction are virtually identical, with the primary differences lying in the curvature of the legs (admittedly more elegant on the original) and the color of the finish—the Aalto stool is available in a variety of colors and with laminated tops. (Yes, the Aalto stool is also available with four legs, just like the FROSTA!)

Anyway, blah blah blah, I decided to nudge our two FROSTA stools just a wee bit closer to looking like the real thing. I mean, why not, right?

The first thing I did was convert them from four legs to three. One leg from each got discarded (I may use them as shelf brackets at some point), and the other two were repositioned. I haven’t owned a protractor since 8th grade, so I did what you’d expect a graphic designer to do in this kind of situation and figured out the measurements by making a pie chart in Illustrator! (I could have saved myself some time by reading Martha’s post on the subject, though.) I didn’t use glue or do anything fancy, I just drilled a tiny pilot holes and screwed the legs in place. Totally easy, anyone can do it.

The final step was painting the top of the stools black. I bagged the legs as I did here, then taped off the edges of the top very, very carefully. I like the Delicate Surfaces painter’s tape for things like this since it’s thin and allows for a really tight fit to curves. Two light coats of my favorite Rust-Oleum’s Painter Touch Ultra Cover 2x (this is the semi-gloss finish), and the stools were done!

15 months later…

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All I’ve been working on lately are DOORS. Doors, doors, and more doors. Scraping, sanding, patching, caulking, priming, painting, hanging, fixing locks, fixing hinges, fixing knobs, and so on. (I must say, it’s very nice to not have to look at closet contents anymore! Doors are a good thing.)

One of the hazards of keeping a blog is that I have the ability to look back and see just how long it takes to me to complete simple tasks. Case in point…

I posted this picture 15 months ago, when I first started working on this particular door. The bottom panels had been crudely cut out and replaced with screening (which had then gotten rusty and paint-y and dented and gross) at some point.

Back in September, I returned to working on the same door. I was still uncertain about the best way to go about replacing the panels. I had figured out that the door did not, in fact, belong on a closet, but rather in the doorway between the front and center bedrooms (both rooms are accessible from the hallway as well—we have a lot of doors).

Fast-forward (or slow-forward, as the case may be) to eight months later, and I’m WORKING ON THE SAME DOOR AGAIN. Only this time, I’m actually finishing it!

Whoever put the screening in obviously did so for the sake of cross-ventilation through the length of the house, and I admit that it makes a lot of sense. Radiator screening seemed like it would be much nicer than window screening, though, so I bought a sheet and spray-painted it white on both sides. The original trim pieces were missing on one side, but lattice strips turned out to be exactly the right width and depth to replace them.

I mitered the corners of the lattice and used short nails to fix the strips in place. After filling the nail holes, caulking the joints, and painting the whole business white, the door will FINALLY be ready to re-hang. (I’ll let you know when that happens. It could be next year sometime. Hah!)

Guest bedroom window.

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Huh. I started putting this post together 4 or 5 days ago, and I guess I thought I had already finished it? I have no idea. It’s been a weird week. I spent about 8 solid hours priming and caulking doors on Sunday. It’s amazing how an entire day can be devoured by a single, simple task like that. Job-work has been busy but unusually productive, and evenings have consisted of painting doors, eating sushi, getting my hair cut, and sleeping through my stop on the train.

Anyway, this post is about windows! Well, one window in particular, the 42″ wide one in our (future) guest bedroom.

Yeah, it was looking pretty funky. Click to enlarge . . . if you dare!

I wanted to share these detailed “before” pictures to give an idea of just how bad an old sash window can LOOK while still being perfectly salvageable. It makes me sad that so many buyers of old houses will immediately have the original windows ripped out and replaced! ALL of the 14 windows in our house are original, including nearly every pane of gorgeous, wavy glass. I consider the old windows an asset that add to the value of the house as an historic structure.

The parts that comprise a traditional sash window are incredibly simple, making them easy to repair. There are no plastic parts, no fragile bits to snap or break, the wood is old-growth and rock-solid, and if you take care of them, they truly will last for hundreds (!) of years. Replacement windows, on the other hand, seldom have a life span beyond 10-25 years. With proper insulation and a good storm window in place, old windows are very nearly as energy-efficient as new ones, too. We have seen a HUGE difference in our energy costs since I started repairing the windows last summer.

I won’t bore you with a bunch of “during” shots, but i wanted to share this one so you can see what a huge improvement just removing all of the gunked-up old caulk and peeling paint can make. It’s tedious work, to be sure, but it’s also very satisfying.

Here’s the finished window (click the bottom photo to see the whole thing)! Amazing difference, right? Eventually I’ll have to access it from the outside to properly insulate around the frame (and to repaint the exterior side, which is a whole OTHER project), but for now, it’s like a new (old) window.

There are so many resources on the internet for learning how to restore old windows, so I don’t see the point in getting TOO in-depth with the details here, but I will give you a list of links to check out if you’re interested:

How to Restore Sash Windows
Making Old Windows Energy Efficient
Fixing Rotted Wood with Epoxy
The Repair of Historic Wooden Windows
How to Replace Window Sash Cords (video)
Sash Repair Hardware

Jacobsen stool rehabilitation.

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I bought this 3-legged Arne Jacobsen stool several years ago for about $10 (yes, seriously), and despite having initially planned to repair and refinish the molded plywood top, years passed and I managed to convince myself that I like the chips/scratches/wear. Well, there’s a fine line between “nice patina” and “broken mess”, and I finally got around to facing reality and gave the thing the rehab work it deserved.

First, I used Zinsser Ready Patch to fill in the areas in the veneer that were chipped out and damaged. (Ready Patch is one of those amazing products that I can’t imagine living without. It is seriously amazing stuff. I use it to repair everything from holes in walls to gouges in woodwork to damaged window sashes.) I overfilled the patches, and didn’t worry about getting it pretty. Once it was completely dry (about 3 hours), I very carefully sanded and sculpted the filled areas with my Mouse Sander (a very handy tool to have) and a fine-grit sandpaper. I also have the entire top a very light sanding, just to remove any flaking paint and give the new finish a nice surface to adhere to.

After wiping down the top with a tack cloth, I wrapped up the legs in plastic bags and painter’s tape. Next I applied two coats of Rust-Oleum’s Painter Touch Ultra Cover 2x with a semi-gloss finish. I can’t recommend this spray paint enough—it applies very evenly with excellent coverage, dries quickly, and I haven’t had any problems with the nozzle clogging. Wonderful stuff. I don’t think I’d attempt to apply paint to something like this with a brush, by the way. There’s a time and a place for spray paint, and this is it.

I’m showing this photo of the underside of the stool for one reason: This is where Fritz got his name! It’s true. I was lying on my back and playing with him on the floor, and I happened to catch sight of the manufacturer’s name on the bottom of the stool. So while Fritz is absolutely NOT named for a piece of furniture, this is what put the name in our heads for the first time. It stuck, and it’s perfect.

Anyway, back to the stool!

Not bad, huh? No, it doesn’t look brand new, and that’s just fine with me—I actually like that you can still see the tiny cracks in the veneer through the paint. It still has character, and it still looks like it’s supposed to. The only difference is that now I can sit in it again (or use it as a side table or a footrest—I love stools!) without worrying about ripping huge chunks off of it.

There are always those who will argue that refinishing furniture ruins the value, but the chips in the ply were getting worse and worse by the day, and I don’t want the stool to become a decorative object out of fear of damaging it further. Jacobsen designed furniture that is meant to be functional, and I get a lot of use out of this thing. It has a small footprint, it’s incredibly well-balanced and sturdy, and it’s surprisingly comfortable. Doesn’t the true value of a functional object primarily lie in its usefulness?

Bedroom progress.

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The bedroom has been moved back to the front of the house (here!), and the room is starting to take shape. Stay tuned…

Wallpapered dressing room.

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Let’s see…I started talking about wallpapering this room in October 2007, got around to buying the paper in September 2008, and then FINALLY managed to actually go ahead with the task on Friday! As planned, I used Berry Black from Ferm Living. Because my ceilings are so high, I needed almost exactly two rolls to do just the one wall.

I love this room so much now. It never felt complete to me before, and I knew wallpaper would make all the difference. My friend Heather came over to help, and the whole process went very smoothly—only about 5 hours from start to finish, including multiple breaks for lunch and dog-loving.

I’m still not sure about keeping that little bookshelf in there, but for now, it’s fine. I also need a big plant, I think. Weirdly, the wallpaper has made me hate the orange-y floor color a little less than I did before. Hmmm.

Not quite historically accurate.

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The linen closet in our dressing room has been devoid of hardware since we bought the house, with the original drillings having been filled in and covered over long ago. I’d been planning to re-drill the holes and replace the old lockset and knob with salvaged parts, but, well—it’s been three years now, and that still hasn’t happened. I’m sick of looking at a partially-open linen closet every day, though, so I forced myself to come up with a “temporary” (cough) solution using something already in the house.

I bought a couple of these rubberized coral hooks at Anthropologie several years ago, but never wound up putting them to use. As it turns out, they work quite nicely as door handles! Since there’s no lock mechanism, I used a magnetic latch to hold the door shut. So easy.

Perhaps not historically accurate, but definitely cute.

More work in the office.

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We finally have a ceiling light in the office! This is the 15″ LERAN pendant from IKEA. I love how it looks against the wallpaper, and at night it casts beautiful shadows across the ceiling through the bamboo.

I also conceded to needing just a bit more storage for papers and photos (as well as the printer, backup drive, etc.), so we put up this wall cabinet (also from IKEA, from the ASPVIK line). I’ve been wanting this cabinet since September, so I’m happy that it’s turned out to be as functional and well-made as I thought it would be. I really like having storage pieces mounted to the wall, too, rather than sitting on the floor. The feeling is so much more open and airy, something I didn’t want to lose in this room by filling it with too much furniture.

I’ve been a very busy bee so far on my “vacation”. More updates to come!

p.s. The plant on top of the cabinet is a False Aralia. Isn’t it cool?

p.p.s. I don’t know what I would do without IKEA.

Rug & chair.

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Last night, during a marathon email session, I decided it was finally time to put a decent chair in the white office. The little black stool is fine for quick sits, but that’s it. I didn’t want to put the wheels of this chair (Eames DAT-1, mustard vinyl over black fiberglass; bought for less than $50) directly on the white floor, but I remembered this supercheap IKEA SVEJE rug (can’t find it on their website, but I think it was about $12) I bought a while back but never put into use. Perfect! I thought it would bother me having the stripes running parallel to the lines in the floorboards, but it’s fine. [EDIT: Um, maybe it's fine because they're not parallel, they're perpendicular. Hello! I need sleep.] And my back is much happier now.

(Is it weird that I’ve been putting prices on everything lately? I know I always like to know how much stuff costs, especially if it’s affordable. I’m a big fan of accessible design.)

Rot and decay (AKA the roof and cornice).

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I apologize for the bad quality of these photos (they were taken with a cell phone by a contractor), but to be honest, a higher resolution isn’t going to do our poor roof and cornice any favors.

We had a contractor out on Saturday to take a look the exterior of our house. We’ve known since we bought the house three years ago that this day would come eventually, but now that we’ve finished the bulk of the large interior projects, we can’t put off dealing with the exterior any longer. This past winter was really bad, with a lot of heavy ice buildup and major runoff that didn’t drain properly. The Big Stuff has to be done sooner rather than later, and this is work that we can’t do ourselves.

There are a lot of things wrong with the exterior of our house, but let’s just start with the roof for now. It’s a flat roof (though it does have a slight pitch to it), and it’s not visible from the ground. Neither Evan or I have ever been up on the roof before, and this is the first time we’re seeing photos of it. It’s weird to see such a major part of the house that’s been invisible to us for so long!

The roof itself (pictured above) is actually in decent shape, fortunately. Before the contractor went up, there was some talk about replacing it with EPDM, but it looks like that won’t be necessary.

Sadly, everything else up there is a mess. The decorative cornice in particular is a total disaster. As you can see from the top photo, the level of decay is beyond what can be addressed with scraping and a fresh coat of paint. At this point, it looks like the entire cornice will need to be rebuilt.

The last photo is of improperly installed flashing around the roof line. This is where water has been seeping behind the cornice (and probably into the walls—thank goodness for brick houses with plaster walls!) for many, many years. Coupled with clogged downspouts, broken gutters, and general bad drainage, our house is feeling very, very sad.

Just wait until you see the brick work that needs to be done! And the porch that’s falling apart! Oy. Time for the dogs to find gainful employment!

On a happy note, at least we loved the contractor.

ENJE roller shades.

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I’ve had a lot of problems getting the curtain/shade/blind (I hate the term “window treatment”—it makes me think of a gigantic box valance) situation in our house where it should be. Six-inch casings, non-standard sizes, 10′ ceilings, and curved walls with side-by-side windows make everything a challenge. The cost of custom-made shades freaks me out, and with 14 windows, it’s just not going to happen.

I love the way the old windows look without anything covering them, but that’s not practical in every room of the house. In the office at the back of the house, there’s no need for privacy, but the “reflective black hole” effect at night is a little creepy.

Enter the ENJE roller blind from IKEA. $24.99, attractive metal hardware, sheer enough to allow full daylight to pass through, opaque enough to keep glare (and the black hole) away, and with a margin large enough that the window sashes show on all four sides even with the blind fully closed. Yay! Let’s buy a hundred of them!

Perfect, yes, except for the part where they come in five sizes, none of which will fit any of our windows. Sigh.

BUT WAIT!!! A little Googling showed me that not only can they be trimmed, but they look really good after doing so. Aided with a metal blade in the jigsaw, good-quality fabric shears, a straight edge, and some good advice from Morgan at The Brick House, I was able to alter two shades to fit my windows perfectly, and it only took about 30 minutes.

See? They even let in the scraps of daylight hanging around at dusk.

I wound up cutting the top roller and bottom rod separately (I removed it first), then verrrrry carefully cutting the fabric the full length of the shade. I cannot stress enough the importance of using a good quality pair of shears to do this! Hopefully you have scissors in your house reserved exclusively for cutting fabric. And you NEVER EVER cut paper or anything else with them. Right? Right. That’s what you should use to cut the shade. Not the grimy Fiskars in your junk drawer. Cut slooooowly and evenly, following the line you drew in ever-so-faintly with a hard pencil after measuring carefully. Slide the bottom rod back on, roll up, and you’re all set.