The House / Newburgh | Door Sixteen

Kitchen planning. For real this time.

Nov 20, 2012

1. “Triangles” wallpaper by Lisa Congdon for Hygge & West.
As I mentioned recently, I am dying to use Lisa’s new wallpaper in the kitchen. I’m planning to cover the top half of the wall opposite the sink and stove, where there’s little risk of it being damaged by food or water.

2. SMEG refigerator.
Everyone in my life is sick of hearing me talk about this refrigerator, but that’s just too bad. The refrigerator we bought for our kitchen 7 years ago is way too big for two people, and it’s way too big for our kitchen. There weren’t as many readily-available small fridges on the market back then, and I’m pretty sure SMEG wasn’t even selling these guys in the US yet. Anyway, even though I’ve been coveting them for a while, I hadn’t seen one in person until the West Elm Market (definitely worth a trip if you’re in Brooklyn!) opened across the street from my apartment last month. Since then, I’ve been in to pet the display models regularly. I’m sure the employees think I’m a pervert. Yes, it’s an expensive refrigerator. No, we don’t need a new refrigerator. I’m thinking we could donate the one we have to Habitat, and then…I don’t know what “and then.” (And then I sell my spleen on the black market? And then find 200,000 pennies under the sofa cushions?)

3. Tolix-esque Marais Stool
We really need to have a place for people to sit in the kitchen. As much as I’m not a fan of the whole “kitchen as a hangout zone” thing, I have not been successful in trying to keep my house guests out while I cook. So, seats. I’ll move the butcherblock island to the center of the room so they have some where to rest their wine glasses, too. Kind of bummned to see that the genuine Tolix Marais stools no longer come in yellow. Does anyone have experience with these replicas?

4. Sagaform Herb Pot.
I’ve completely given up trying to grow herbs in my garden (because trouble has a cute face and is named Haggis), but this thing will work nicely inside. I can keep it on the windowsill, and it’s big enough to grow basil, parsley and mint, the three fresh herbs I need most often. Also, it’s cute. Not as cute as a groundhog, but cute.

5. Vipp Trash Bin.
Consider this a “far off in the future” plan, like maybe for when Evan and I are retired? In 30 years I’ll go and re-read this post and try to justify it then.

6. IKEA UDDEN kitchen units.
Sadly, these freestanding kitchen units have been discontinued in IKEA’s North American market. We bought two of them 7 years ago for less than $200 each, and they’ve been really great. I love having a stainless steel work surface! We bought them thinking they’d be a “temporary” (HA! HA! HA!) solution until we had the expertise to install a permanent/fitted kitchen, but they’ve worked out so well that there’s no reason to replace them. I have thought about maybe having plywood cut to replace the drawer fronts, but I’m not sure. I guess I’ll see if the room feels like it needs more wood in it when everything else is done.

7. Subway tile with black grout.
We used inexpensive, standard white subway tile in the downstairs bathroom ($100 total!), and it looks great. Because we have freestanding cabinets and a lot of exposed wall area, we want to tile all the way from the backsplash area down to the the baseboard molding—around the entire perimeter of the room. That’s a lot of tiling. My plan is to teach Daniel how to tile and then “supervise” (a.k.a. drink iced coffee) while he practices on my kitchen walls.

8. Caravaggio pendant lamps.
A while back, Victoria wound up with one of these lamps on her hands and no use for it, and knowing that I’ve had my eye on it for ages, she very generously asked if I might be able to use it in my house. How could I say no?! I’ll need to fork out for a second one, but I think a pair of these over the island will look great. Or maybe just one is fine? We’ll still need to do something in the way of general lighting for the perimeter of the room though—track lighting, maybe, now that IKEA has brought back the lovely and affordable SANDA series.

9. Karlsson Big Flip clock.
OK, the bad reviews for this clock on Amazon are killing me. It’s been on my wishlist from afar for a while now, and after seeing it in person over the weekend I can’t stop thinking about how great it would look in the kitchen. Maybe all three of the people who left reviews are just lying? Hah. Ugh. There’s one hanging in a store near our apartment—I’ll start keeping an eye on it to see if it has the right date. I really want it to work!

10. Reclaimed wood shelving.
It definitely doesn’t make sense to have these shelves shipped to me from California, but I wanted to link to Etsy seller Blake Avenue anyway because the design of the brackets is so simple and beautiful. In addition to realizing we don’t need a large refrigerator, we’ve also come to see that we don’t need upper cabinets because the pantry holds everything—so more open shelving is in order. I love IKEA’s GRUNDTAL shelves, but they’re not good for small jars and bottles. I need to look into local resources for reclaimed wood and brackets. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in upstate New York, so I’m sure we’ll be able to find what we need. The current shelves can be moved to our basement, where they’ll be perfect for storing paint and gardening supplies.

11. Embossed wallpaper.
I’ve been wanting to use this pressed tin-style wallpaper painted black since I saw it in a sneak peek of the Brinsons’ kitchen on Design*Sponge. We have a giant, inoperational, curvy hearth smack dab in the middle of the longest wall in the kitchen, and I think using something like this on it might be the best solution. We’ve struggled to come up with a way to frame out the hearth so that it would be tile-able, but because of the depth of the curve above the stove I’m not sure if that’s possible. I’d just need to figure out where the wallpaper would end and the tile would begin. That hearth is kind of my nemesis and it adds nothing to the room, but I am extremely hesitant to strip out any of the original details of our house. The hearth stays. I do want to incorporate this wallpaper somehow, somewhere—I love the contrasts between it, the graphic triangle wallpaper and the smooth white tiles.

Here’s the kitchen as it looks right now, more or less. Can I tell you how DESPERATE I am to have a tiled backsplash? Wiping food spatters off of a painted wall was OK for the first year or two, but now things are just looking nasty. I’m also really sick of that pale blue paint, which would be lovely in another kind of room but is just depressing and sad in the kitchen. Overall, this should be a pretty straightforward renovation. All of the hard work (plumbing, electric, plastering) is already done, so it’s really just cosmetic. I know once I get going it’ll all take shape at a good pace. Getting started is the hard part.

Oh yeah! The garden.

Nov 14, 2012

The House / Newburgh

49 comments

So, the last time I posted an update about progress in the garden at our house was in August. August 2010, that is. I really don’t know what my problem is. I guess my hesitancy to post about it is in part because we’ve been living in this house for nearly 7 years now, and there’s just no good excuse as to why the garden isn’t DONE, already. I took these photos a few months ago after we’d finally assembled the recessed planters, and I figured I’d post them a week later since by that time we’d have actual plants in them…but yeah, that never happened. The summer was hot and hectic, and there wasn’t any time to do it. Also mosquitoes.

And no, I don’t know why that photo is angled. I swear I wasn’t trying to be artsy. I was hanging out of a window on the second floor when I took it, so maybe I was just trying to avoid plummeting to my death and wasn’t really focused on the composition.

I did manage to cover most of the exposed dirt with mulch, which was a relief. My eventual goal is to only have “living mulch” (creeping, low-lying plants) and rocks in those areas, but it’ll take a while to fill in. Having to spend hours weeding that area every week was making me crazy, and the bare dirt was washing down over the paving stones every time it rained. So, for the time being, mulch is making life much easier.

I also planted lots of creeping Jenny between the paving stones, and it started spreading right away. I bought two big plants and divided them because that’s much less expensive than buying lots of tiny plants. Creeping Jenny does really well in our soil, and I love the contrast of the bright yellow-green against the concrete pavers. Next summer I’ll plant more in other areas, too.

I’m not sure what happened to 2011 in terms of gardening. We did spent a LOT of time carrying gravel out there to cover all of the old, broken concrete that extends about 10 feet from the back of the house. Having the concrete removed and replaced with slate or something else would have been too expensive, so the gravel cover-up has worked out really nicely instead. Anything we put in the garden has to be carried (by hand) from our car in the street down the front basement stairs, through the basement and then back up the (precarious) rear basement stairs. Our house is attached on one side and we have a “difficult” neighbor on the other side, so we have no access points to the garden that don’t involved stairs and basements. So yeah, we carried all of the deck wood, the foundation blocks, the pavers, the plants and the gravel through the basement. Slowly. Which is part of why this has all taken forever.

I’m very pleased that the fence has finally weathered to a nice gray, and that the deck is also looking more worn-in. We’d initially planned to stain it, but it looks like procrastination has paid off for once because I like it better looking natural. I’m sure we’ll have to treat it with oil or something eventually, but for now it’s fine.

FACT: Strings of lights make everything look better immediately. I bought two packs of cheap $12 dorm-room globe lights at Target and put them up back in June when Lisa, Victoria and Jenna came to visit. They’re just looped around the fence tops, so (in theory) I can easily take them down this winter, but they’re also rated for outdoor use, so (in reality) I can leave them up all year round. They make the garden feel so cozy at night.

It’s fun to look at these garden progress photos from over the years! It’s pretty much unrecognizable from the chain link fence/dog kennel/inflatable swimming pool/weed extravaganza that was going on back there when we saw the house for the first time in 2005. Like I’ve said so many times before, Evan and I have no idea what we’re doing. We just figure it all out as we go along. I’m glad we’ve somehow managed to wind up with a garden that looks approximately like what we envisioned, since we couldn’t have afforded to pay someone else to do it for us.

Garden design by Susan Welti of Foras Studio for Carin Goldberg and Jim Biber of Pentagram
Bottom photo originally published in Domino magazine

I still refer to these photos often. That issue of Domino came out literally the same month we closed on the house in early 2006, and I think I should probably send Susan Welti a thank you card for sharing her design work publicly. She even provided a garden map and a plant list in the issue, which has been really helpful! Next summer I’m hoping to get some Mexican feather grass and Solomon’s seal into our recessed planters.

Write it down and hold me to it: Summer 2013 is when “Door Sixteen Gardens” will officially be completed. YES. (Can you believe it’s almost 2013?!?! How is that a real year that’s actually in the near future and not in a science fiction movie? So crazy.)

This is what my living room looks like now.

Aug 26, 2012

The House / Newburgh

76 comments

I’m pretty happy with how the living room at the house is looking right now, so I thought I’d put down the iPhone, pick up a real camera, and take a few photos.

Bruno went through a phase (and by “phase” I mean the first nine years of his life) where he pretty much regarded any kind of floor covering as a giant wee-wee pad, so rugs have mostly been something I fantasize about for a long time. Something happened this past year, though—I’m not sure what (his brain is probably the size of a walnut, so I doubt he knows either), but when I decided to take a chance and put my favorite rug down in the apartment Bruno didn’t pee on it. Not the first day, not the second day, not ever. Good boy!

I’ve been wanting the Stockholm Rand rug from IKEA for years now. Every time I see it come up on a blog or in an interiors magazine, my heart jumps a little. I decided that I’d buy it maybe make Bruno wear a diaper. The only thing is, though, that this rug is one elusive little sucker. I can’t even tell you the number of times I obsessively checked the websites for the Paramus, Elizabeth and Red Hook IKEAs hoping to find it in stock somewere.

Alas, it was not to be—until a few weeks ago. The Red Hook IKEA got about a dozen in stock, so Evan and I hustled over there on our way up to the house one night. He ran in with 10 minutes to spare until closing while I stayed in the car with the dogs, and the rug was ours.

It totally makes the living room. (I mean aside from the fireplace.)

See that good little boy under the chair?

Giant green nature in the dressing room.

Jul 29, 2012

Inspiration
The House / Newburgh

32 comments

I’m on an ongoing quest to address a lot of little projects around the house that have gone undone or put off or half-addressed for a while, and taking care of the dressing room was the most recent item on the agenda. The dressing room is actually the smallest of the four bedrooms in the house—it’s only about 6×12′ and it has doors leading to both the hallway and the master bedroom, so it was probably originally intended to be used as a nursery.

Let’s flash back to this post from June 2009, shall we? Specifically these last lines:

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.

Yup, a mere three years later, I finally moved out the little bookshelf (which was serving zero purpose and never felt quite right), moved in a bench (the screamingly-bright fluorescent orange Offcut Bench from Tom Dixon—there are no words adequate enough to describe how electric this thing is in person), and got that big plant taken care of! I’m not sure why I put these things off for so long. The room looks so much better now! (If you REALLY want to see how much this room has transformed over time, take a look at how it looked six years ago. Yikes!)

So…I’m in love with this new plant. It’s a fiddle-leaf fig tree, and it’s BIG and LUSH. I have a really sad history of killing plants (Remember this guy? Dead in less than a week), but I’m determined to keep this one alive. Apparently fiddle-leaf figs are pretty durable as long as they get a decent amount of sun and a nice, long drink a few times a month, so I actually think I can do this. I need to get a bigger pot, though, since I expect it to get much bigger. I’m also going to have to do some pruning of the lower leaves in order to train it to grow taller—I’d love to see it eventually hit the ceiling and grow into the bedroom.

And now for some fiddle-leaf fig inspiration…

Above photos:
1. Interior design by Mikel Larrinaga, via Nuevo Estilo
2. Home in Houston, Texas, via Memorial Bend Architecture
3. Interior design by Emma Reddington at The Marion House Book
4. Interior design by Anna Burke, via Lonny (March/April 2012)

A sleepover party at my house.

Jun 4, 2012

Blogs + Tweets
Food + Drink
Friends + Family
Health
The House / Newburgh

43 comments

I know, this post is a bit overdue! Chances are you’ve already heard on Twitter or seen another blog post, but two weekends ago, I hosted a sleepover party at my house with Victoria, Lisa and Jenna. I’ve never had so many overnight guests before! We had such a wonderful time. I wish I had more photos to share, but for some reason I tend to not think about picking up my camera when I’m with friends. I wish that weren’t the case, because it’s so nice to have visual memories of time spent together.

Breakfast on Sunday was exactly how I like it to be: perfect tofu scramble, collard greens, bagels from Beacon Bakery across the river, vegan sausages…and plenty of coffee, of course. There are fewer things that make me feel happier than preparing food for people and feeding them in my home.

On Saturday night, we all made ancho lentil tacos together. It was truly a collaborative effort (FYI, Lisa makes a mean guacamole!), and it felt really good to have a bunch of people in my kitchen. It’s hard for me to let go on control sometimes and allow guests to help me (even with stuff like washing dishes!), but I forced myself to just let it go for the weekend—and it was soooooo worth it.

We ate dessert (coconut milk ice cream and cookies!) in the garden. VERY exciting! We’ve been working on the garden for years now, and a lack of time, budget and resources have meant it’s been very slow going. Until that weekend, I’d never really spent any time in the garden just relaxing and enjoying myself. It’s only been a place for hauling, digging and sweating. The garden is still far from being done, but I’m glad I didn’t label it off-limits—something I tend to do with parts of my house that aren’t “perfect.”

(Hanging up those globe lights helped a lot. They’re just $12 cheapies from Target, but they added so much cozy atmosphere!)

I can’t say enough how much I love my friends. Having so much time together just felt right. I’d met all of them before, but being all in one place at the same time was very special. It wasn’t about networking or blogging or work or any of that stuff. It was just about talking, relaxing, watching movies, eating, staying up late and being friends. I didn’t want to say goodbye.

It’s funny, people are so critical of Twitter and blogs and how the internet supposedly takes us out of “real life,” but if I’m speaking truthfully, the internet (Twitter in particular) is the reason I actually have any semblance of a real-world social life. I’ve made a lot of friends online over the past 15 years, and a great many of them have become very real parts of my life—online and off. (And before the internet, I made lots of friends through writing letters with penpals.) Some of us just aren’t good at getting to know new people face-to-face. I’m one of those people. And that’s OK. Most of my friends are like that, too.

Lisa, Jenna and Victoria each wrote a post with pictures about our weekend together. They’re all much better photographers than me!

1. New York weekend at Lisa Congdon’s blog, Today is Going to Be Awesome.

2. Slumber party weekend at Jenna Park’s blog, Sweet Fine Day.

3. Unexpected guests at Victoria Smith’s blog, sfgirlbybay.*

*Victoria actually took a WHOLE BUNCH of photos from all over my house, so it’s sort of like an updated house tour. I know I’m kind of stingy with photos of my house lately (I guess because I haven’t been working on many projects), so if you’d like to see how it looks these days, head over! This is the first time anyone other than me has photographed my house, and I’m honored that Victoria found my home worthy of sharing on her beautiful blog.

Thinking about kitchen lighting.

Jun 4, 2012

Inspiration
The House / Newburgh

28 comments

I always think it’s funny when people comment on how “fast” I am about completing renovation projects in our house. Maybe it’s because I don’t post very often, or because I tend to not show a lot of in-progress shots? Whatever it is, it’s a big, fat illusion. We are the slowest renovators ever. Case in point, we’ve now been living with our “temporary” kitchen for more than SIX YEARS. In fact, it’s been a whole year and a half since I last wrote about how I should probably start getting to work on fixing up the kitchen for real. How much have I done since then? Zilch. I mean, unless you count complaining about it. I never procrastinate when it comes to complaining.

Photo by Karl Anderson & Anna Kern for Sköna hem nr 4, 2012

I like this solution a lot. My kitchen is actually a decent size (maybe 15′x15′?), but it’s a difficult space—it has three doorways, two tall windows that reach well below counter height, and a big hearth. There’s very little continuous wall space, so it seems small. The ceilings are high, though (about 10′), so having a bunch of dangling pendant lamps isn’t as precarious as it might seem. It would be easy to hang them high enough that the average person wouldn’t be smacking skull to bulb. Even a 3′ dangle would accommodate a 7′ person. (I’m over-thinking this, yes.) The height of the bulbs is adjustable by simply wrapping or unwrapping the cord. Nice. Plumen CFL bulbs would look great and be more efficient than incandescents.

The other good thing about this solution is that it provides an easy way to run lights across a wide distance without having to install additional electrical boxes in the ceiling (those of you who live in old houses with original ceilings understand why adding/moving boxes is a pain), since all of the cords run from the same source. Yes, track lighting would also be an option, and I’m not writing it off completely…but it can get expensive once you you enter the world of the non-ugly. (IKEA used to have a really nice and affordable track system called SÄNDA, but it was just discontinued. Sigh.)

Most importantly, this fits into my “unfancy” approach to kitchen renovation. It doesn’t alter the original structure of the house, it’s inexpensive, it’s simple to execute, easily reversible, and the materials are honest.

Photos from the Moormann-Berge Gästehaus // Interiors designed by Nils Holger Moormann

I think I might have posted these photos already ages ago, but I thought it was worth adding them to this post since this is essentially the same idea but with a branch instead of metal rod. I like this, too, but I think it’s better for over a dining table than for general kitchen lighting. I also love that built-in bench. All of the windows and doors in my kitchen make it impossible to do anything like that, but I would if I could.

Haircuts, rambling, and a drifting attention span.

Jan 25, 2012

Four Legs
Friends + Family
Newburgh
The House / Newburgh
Vanity + Wearables

80 comments

Is it just me, or it next to impossible to snap back into work mode this year? Maybe it’s because I took two weeks in a row off in December, but I just don’t feel like I’m fully present and engaged in what I need to be doing every day. I think the weather might be partly to blame—it’s been unseasonably mild in lower New York this year, and I constantly feel like it’s either late fall or early spring. I’m just sort of floating from one day to the next.

I did just have a really great weekend, though. Jen from Honey Kennedy came to stay at my house in Newburgh for three whole days, and we had a wonderful time. Jen is terribly sweet and funny and really, really nice to be around (just ask Fritz and Bruno, who fell deeply and madly in love with her), and I’m happy to have finally met her in person.

Aside from holding the very first semester of Anna’s School for Unicorns (a.k.a Photoshop classes), I also made us some very very thick and rich and spicy and almost too delicious hot cocoa using Vosges Aztec Elixer. And tofu scramble. And burnt kale chips. And reheated pizza. I’m pretty sure it was like going away to a fancy resort for Jen! (Or, um, not…)

I got my hair cut again, too. More of the same! I’ve been back to Mariko at Dlala Salon four times now since I got the best haircut ever 8 months ago, and that has to be a record for me in terms of frequency. Can I add that NOT ONCE have I taken a pair of manicure scissors to my bangs in a fit of midnight desperation since I started seeing Mariko? Her cuts look so good growing out that I don’t have to.

It’s pretty neat having LONG hair, too! I haven’t had this much hair since I was a freshman in high school, which was…um…23 years ago. I’m going to just let it keep growing. Now that I know about layers and deep parts and stuff, it’s nice to have waves and partial buzz cuts and long bangs.

On a side note, I just want to put this reminder out there: Much like paint is just paint, HAIR IS JUST HAIR. The great thing about it is that even if you do something stupid and it looks terrible, you can always just cut your hair short and eventually it’ll grow out. As a side bonus, you get to have a million different hairdos as it gets longer. If you want a fun haircut, get a fun haircut. It’s just hair.

Fritz turned four years old a few days ago. I can’t believe he’s four already! It seems like it was just yesterday that were were bringing home this insanely adorable, sleepy lump of fur. He was so cute! (And then he ate our sofa.) Fritzy is so good now. Yes, he has his moments when he does an ultra-annoying Chewbacca/seagull vocal impersonation for seemingly no reason at all and for lengths of time that are highly unnecessary, but he’s a total snuggle bug and just an all-around great dog. He’s also really warm and he likes to sleep under the covers at night, so our heating bill is less with him around. And he’s still really cute.

Oh, clothes! I found that nice triangle-print shirt at Target! The proportions really aren’t as weird as the photo on their website makes it look. It’s quite flattering, actually. And Martha has a the same one of course.

Yeah, that’s a new black + white iPhone case. I ordered one from Society6 because I’ve been thinking about selling some stuff through them and I wanted to know what the quality is like, and I’ll be honest…as cute as the illustration (by Dawn Gardner, whose work I love) on my new case is, the quality is really, really sub-par. I’ve had a capsule case from Uncommon since I got my phone in May (that’s the multicolored one in the top photo, designed by Marco Cibola), and I love it. The plastic is smooth, strong and durable; the edges are smooth and comfortable to hold; and the design is actually embedded in case. The case from Society6 is unbelievably flimsy, and you can literally scratch the printed image off with your fingernail. I fully expect it to look terrible in a couple of months. Both cases were about $40, and while that’s pretty steep for something so small and made out of plastic, it’s definitely way too much for the ones from Society6. Bummer! It’s definitely cute, though, so I’ll keep using it until it breaks.

UPDATE: Society6 contacted me after reading this post, and they have very kindly offered to send me a replacement case as they believe I may have been sent a defect. Fingers crossed that the new one is better. I’ll update this post when I receive it!

UPDATE 2: I received the replacement and it’s exactly the same. The quality is too poor for me to recommend it, sadly. It should also be noted that Society6 has a no-return policy except in the case of defects, so if you’re disappointed by a product upon arrival, you’re out of luck.

(Like I said, RAMBLY.)

10-hour to-do.

Jan 16, 2012

Newburgh
The House / Newburgh
To-Do

25 comments

The bookshelf-building project has been going well (aside from the fact that the shelves don’t really have many books on them yet), but it’s been at the expense of the rest of the house. You know when you start working on something and you wind up having to make the most giant mess in the world and then you realize you have to actually finish this other project first and that leads to a secondary giant mess on top of the first mess, and you were up until 4AM and it still didn’t make any difference and now you just feel sick but you also don’t want to live in that MEGA-MESS you created?

That’s how I’m feeling right now, and I have approximately 10 hours in which to make things better. Get it done.

TO-DO BEFORE 6PM:

+ ~~PUT AWAY ALL THE STUFF~~.
+ Cut and mount roller shades in the kitchen.
+ Cut and mount roller shade in the guest bedroom.
+ ~~Bring the records downstairs~~.
+ ~~Hang the Flentsed mobile~~.
+ Hang the String light.
+ ~~Clean bathrooms~~.
+ ~~Clean kitchen~~.
+ ~~Bring all tools and supplies to the basement~~.
+ ~~Dust~~.
+ ~~Vacuum~~.
+ ~~Mop~~.
+ Frame stuff and then hang it on the walls.

(You’ll note that several of these items are carried over from my vacation to-do list from a few weeks ago. Sigh…)

Newer Posts >< Older Posts

Kitchen planning. For real this time.

Oh yeah! The garden.

This is what my living room looks like now.

Giant green nature in the dressing room.

A sleepover party at my house.

Thinking about kitchen lighting.

Haircuts, rambling, and a drifting attention span.

10-hour to-do.

My name is Anna.

I love my sponsors!!

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