Cabinets and Appliances, Check

After spending three hours at Ikea tonight, we finally have our cabinets and appliances ordered. The kitchen department was pretty backed up—I think everyone was taking advantage of the 20%-off-your-kitchen-order. We're going to start the demolition this weekend. And one fine day the kitchen will look something like this (sans the countertops):

 We're pooped for now, but I'll be sure to post pictures of all the demo fun.

Front Yard Facelift: Finally Complete!

I've slowly been working away at the front yard project this past month and I finally finished it up today. Whew. Here's what it looked like before I did the overhaul:

 

And here are a few afters:

I added a few more plants to the front bed to fill it out a little—some knockout roses and jasmine (I put in the japanese boxwood and loropetalum a while ago). I'm hoping the jasmine will grow up and around the white columns nicely. I also painted some terra cotta pots I got from Craigslist and Old Time Pottery using this tutorial from Young House Love. I wanted a color that would stand out against the red brick, so I went for a mustard yellow.

It wasn't all fun and games, though. I totally bit it when I was trying to fit one of the window boxes into its slot. I dropped the entire box and had to replant the whole thing. Boo.

Luckily I finished up right before one of those flash afternoon Florida storms came rolling in.

 

Maybe the front yard will give us the motivation to finish up some backyard projects soon...

Office (Mini?) Makeover

While we're waiting for some estimates for our kitchen remodel, Robbie and I started tackling our office makeover. I'm not really sure how it started—I had mentioned how I thought the room would look more open if we moved the desk against one of the walls (instead of out in the middle of the room). So bookcases were rearranged, said desk was moved. Then Robbie went into organizing mode and started alphabetizing our books. Then I sort of mentioned how I wanted to repaint the room. Robbie wasn't jazzed about that. He picked out all the original paint colors in the house and wasn't ready to let go of his Grazing Fawn (I think that was the name of the paint color). But in the end, we reached one of those give-and-take couple deals:

Me: "So, I kind of want to repaint this room. I think it just looks way to dark."

Robbie: "But I like this color. It's Grazing Fawn."

Me: "But wouldn't this room look so much better painted blue?"

Robbie: ........

Robbie: "Ok, we can paint the room if we get a new desk."

Me: "Deal!"

I had gone out and bought the desk at a vintage shop on the day we moved into the new house. Robbie had never loved it and I have to admit, my love for it hasn't held up over the years. What can I say, it was an impulse buy (which is pretty rare for me).

So of course I had to start looking around for the perfect white desk. I actually found a pretty affordable white parsons-style desk on overstock.com. I've also been doing the Craigslist cruise to see what's out there locally. Here's the Overstock desk in a little mood board I created for the future blue and white office:

We already have the rug (Ikea) and two of the bookcases (Ikea), which I'd already planned on painting white (they're dark brown now). I'd also like to incorporate some floating shelves so we can easily store all the stuff that usually ends up in piles on the desk.

So our old desk may be coming to a Craigslist near you soon...

Room of the Week: Inspiration for Our Living Room

This week's picture is actually serving as the inspiration for our future living room.

I'd like to do a soft gray wall (to replace the peachy-ish walls we have now) and then incorporate bright colors and graphic patterns with the furniture. I'd also eventually like to put up crown molding. I'm getting a little ahead of myself (gots to do the kitchen first) but it's nice to dream...

*Photo from DecorPad

Columns and Wiring and Shelving, Oh My!

In knocking down half the wall between the kitchen and the living room, we're trying to create a more open, unconfined floor plan. But we recently found out something that throws a little wrench into the idea of an unfettered view between the kitchen and the living room: we have to put some kind of vertical column or pillar from the ceiling to the new island/bar. See where my little red arrow is? Right theerre.

Not for any structural purposes, though—we need to find a way to run electrical wire to the island to power the stove, put in electrical outlets, etc. See, we're on a slab foundation and we can't really run wiring underneath the floor (well, we could, but that would be more cha ching and we don't want to tear up the terrazzo flooring). And since there won't be any walls around the island to run electrical down, enter the column (of doom?). Well, we weren't really jazzed about having some weird, why-is-that-there? column coming down onto the island but, I thought, why don't we try to make it look like it's supposed to be there? I figure we can attach some cool shelving onto the column and use it as a place to display bar glasses or decorative glass. I'm thinking something like this

 Or this

 Hey, it might end up looking pretty cool.

Room of the Week

Design inspiration from the world wide web. This week: the kitchen.
 

Those floors are so cool!

Robbie's Gardening Corner

When Robbie tried starting a vegetable garden from seed last fall, he didn't have a ton of luck. We got a little bit of broccoli out of it and a few squashes. When spring started this year, he decided he would go the easier—and probably more successful-for-first-time-gardeners—route of buying veggie plants and putting them in the ground.

He planted some tomatoes, cucumber, peas, eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, and cantaloupe. They're looking pretty good, other than the fact that there's some small critter digging around in the bed (maybe it's the Henry cat?).

He made the frame for the bed out of some pressure-treated cedar planks that he picked up from Home Depot and then just filled it in with soil. Easy enough!