Author: Staci

Staci blogs about travel at TheVoyageer.com.

An Alternate Universe

To be honest, when I leave my apartment on a quiet morning and admire the bright pink flowers in front of the house complementing the rich teal shutters, I know that this is really a lovely place to live. I love the size and the layout. I love the size of the yard and I can see LOTS of potential.

If we could transplant this whole house and yard to California, we would do it in a second (minus the basement, which isn’t appropriate for a state that gets lots of earthquakes… Also, unfinished basements are super creepy).

However, I know that transplanting the house is not economical nor possible, so we have come to terms with the fact that we’ve got just about 1 month left in our current adobe abode. I’ve been smiling at the exterior color that was an “oops” color–it has grown on me a lot, and the green lawn and bushes in front of the house have really helped me come to terms with it.

We still talk about what we would do with the house if we owned it and were planning on living here long-term. Here’s our brainstorming list! It’s presented in relative order of priority. And dollar signs on a scale of $ to $$$ …just for fun, I guess.

  • Update the weird 80s track lighting in the bathroom $
  • Quadruple the size of our usable backyard by fencing it in properly $$$
  • Build a 16 x 16 wood deck in the back of the house $$$
  • (Click here for a mock-up of my dream backyard)… 
  • Remodel the kitchen with new cabinets $$$
  • Update wiring in the whole house; relocate some plugs $$$
  • Create an additional flagstone patio further back in the yard, with a chiminea $$
  • Finish at least half of the basement with wiring, drywall, and carpet $$$
  • Finish the laundry room with updated plumbing, relocate washer and dryer to south side of house, install cabinet system $$$

Needless to say, it would be easy to put $20k or more into the house. I love it but I am ready for some modern convenience, like, say a dishwasher or drywall, for that matter! But… I’ll touch on that in another post…

Coffee Table Candidates

I like my coffee table, I really do, but right now with two couches its long and lean nature is nothing but a shin hazard. It is more appropriate for a low solo couch.

I’ve been thinking that given adequate space, I’d like to put the coffee table at the base of the bed instead. Now, this isn’t possible right now but we’ll see how things shape up in the new place.

With two couches in an “L” (as seen above), what the space really needs is a round table. Here are my favorites!

Smart Round Marble Top Coffee Table from CB2: I love the look of this: the marble and chrome would be a great complement to the rest of my furnishings (I have lots of wood items).  I’d be worried that one foot high isn’t tall enough. However, our vintage couch is very low. I guess I would want to see this in person before spending 329 bones.

Foxed Mirror Coffee Table: Even more expensive (eek!) this one is 17 inches off the ground and three feet wide (on its long side. It’s oval, unlike the others). I feel like that’s a great size and I like the dark metal base. $399.

Origami Coffee Table: Drool. This is what dreams are made of. Only 27 inches in diameter which is fine by me. The tallest of the three, 18 inches high. I love the base! It’s so unexpected and sets it apart, and it has a bone-tile top which is closer to the marble look I had originally been drawn to. Also $399.

And here’s the dark horse candidate:

Hex Side Table: Marble top, check. Dark base, check. 18 inches tall, check. $149 each, which looks good at first but I would want to link 3 together like they did in one of the website photos. Which puts the price up to $447, making it easily the most expensive option.

Considering the most expensive furniture items we have (aside from our mattress) are the IKEA dresser and wardrobe, which came in at under $200 each, I suppose you could say that for now, I am just dreaming.

Loving the Living Room

Well, slowly but surely, I’m continuing to make my way around the house for my room tours. Just in time to move.

The living room, while the most energy-inefficient room in the house (several degrees above/below the other rooms, depending on the season) is my favorite room in the house. It’s gotta be because of the IKEA curtains I had my heart set on for quite some time.

Here’s a little secret: with four windows, curtains can add up very fast. These IKEA beauties weren’t cheap at $60 per set (I mean, that’s not a ton but more than curtains at Target would be). Since the windows were so small anyway, I thought a whole panel would look a bit strange on each side of the window. Things would get really heavy really fast. Do you see where I am going with this? I cut each panel up the center and hemmed them, thereby making 8 panels from 4. Making that first big irreversible cut was so hard to bring myself to do! I’am really happy now, though. The bamboo blinds came with the house and I hated them until we got the curtains up, and now I love them. Isn’t life funny?

When we first toured the house we were to move into, I had visions of making everything white to look like whitewashed adobe walls you’d see in interiors of the southwest. So, that’s what we did! I feel that it helps the walls seem cooler and with the numerous but relatively small windows the room has, I needed light to bounce around as much as possible. So, with several coats of white on the walls, I was determined to infuse color into the room using textiles, art, and furniture, and prove to myself (a color addict) that a white room can be colorful!

The mantel proved more challenging than I originally thought it would be, since it’s pretty shallow. I know it looks deep in the next picture, but trust me there isn’t really room to layer objects (like Emily Henderson’s recent video recommends).  Behind that large frame is a little cut-out, with a bumpy, non-functioning outlet in the bottom of it that makes it impossible to use as a showcase for doodads… yep, so we just covered it up. I like the height that the frame gives to the all-white fireplace, and it was a good opportunity to showcase some wedding pictures as well.

These photos are from the time I shot my home tour (in March?) but not much has changed. I have done some rearranging here and there, and I finally painted the inside of the fireplace in with flat black, and we sort-of-but-not-really finished the dresser by the front door. Another post for another time, that.

Sources:

  • Blue couch, free. My, my, my. This blue couch has been passed down through several dorm rooms, to Lisa (my old roommate) and now to us.
  • Gray couch, free, reupholstery, $130. Last summer we drove to St Louis for our anniversary and then made a hop on over to the town where my dad grew up in Illinois (and where my grandma still lives) to pick up this bonafide family heirloom. The cushions (original to the 60s or 70s) were pretty rotted out so we got brand new cushions in a cool gray microsuede we picked up at Hancock Fabrics on clearance.
  • Coffee Table, Goodwill. Refreshed from a pretty sorry state.
  • Sofa table (holding the TV & Playstation), handed down to me when a neighbor passed away [not shown].
  • Side chair, free, plus materials for my first reupholstery project.
  • Side table (gray), got used when our alma mater had a garage sale. Side table (wood), is actually a drum!
  • Entryway dresser, Goodwill–repainted using house paint (the same color as the guest room). Only two of the drawers were usable so I transformed the bottom section into a shoe catchall!
  • Rugs, both natural fiber from World Market. The circle one from 2005 and the jute one from last fall.

When my in-laws recently decided to list the house for sale, I was pleased that the realtor agreed to just use the photos I’d taken of each room for my house tour on the listing. My first foray into real estate photography! If I want to get serious, I’ve gotta get a wider-angle lens, but I told him to pass my name along to any other agents in the office if they liked my photos! 

For a whole house tour, click here, and for other room details, you can check out the guestroom, bedroom, and bathroom!