Category: At Home

Industrial Shelving

Next time I have the opportunity to fill a whole wall with shelves, I am going to seize it with both hands and do it! I’m thinking painting a pattern or wallpapering behind the shelves first, then putting up rough industrial shelves: gray brackets and white or light pine boards. I especially envision this in/near a kitchen, holding nicely stacked groups of dishes.

I love the repetition of using the same wood and brackets for the whole space, and leaving the back open so the wallpaper or bold wall color can peek through.

Here are some inspiration pictures, gleaned from Pinterest (click the image to get to the original source):

From Country Living (my personal favorite)
From Apartment Therapy
From Roseland Greene

Excellent. Inexpensive, chic, and useful.

Pondering Beige

Well, I’ve gotten antsy. After living here for almost a year and a half I feel like I want to move to a bigger city. The natural choice for me is San Diego, but I’ve been job hunting all over the country (lots of rejections, lots of no replies). It would even be exciting to move to a different place in town and work my magic there… This has gotten me to thinking about my habit… nay, addiction… of redoing rooms.

If I move into an apartment that won’t let me paint the walls, I may have to get more crafty. And by that I don’t mean sneaky (totally didn’t intend the double meaning of crafty but glad I went with it), I mean actually crafting things. This is not really my thing, you see, because I’m into the dramatic change, and only somewhat concerned about the details. Making an “apartment beige” place look interesting, fresh, and sophisticated is actually quite challenging.  Painting a room a whole new color–easy dramatic change. DIYing a nifty vase? Detail. And while some thrive on that, it’s less exciting for me.

However, I may be able to get some inspiration from Pale and Interesting… Gotta save up my tips and build my shelter book library :)

If I Owned It

I’m such a follower. Sherry and John posted their huge to-do list of things for their new house and it immediately got me in list-making overdrive. I’ll even link to a list-related (?) song you can open in a new tab and listen to while reading the rest of my post ;)  Lisztomania

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If I owned the apartment I’m living in, I would make lots of expensive changes. Then I’d live here for the rest of my life and die happy. The list is daunting and the dollar signs would rack up quickly so I didn’t even try to estimate.

  • Install new, modern, insulated windows
  • Knock out the weird column unit in the kitchen (can be glimpsed at left edge of this pictue) and make the counter wrap around to the wall with the window.
  • Re-refinish the floors (someone did it at one point and the finish is peeling up pretty much all over)
  • Install electrical outlets in the bathroom and replace some areas where the tile is messed up
  • Add hardware to the other two transom windows (like this one) so they open to the hallway
Everything else that I can think of is something totally doable but that I haven’t gathered the courage/inspiration to conquer in a rental (or I can’t justify spending the money in a rental)–like…
  • Re-caulk the tub
  • Refinish the kitchen and office cabinets (including boiling the old paint off all the hardware)
  • Paint all the trim in the place one uniform color.
With my mind constantly on the job hunt and the possibility of moving lurking around every corner, I’ve come to the conclusion that this place is “finished” as far as my time spent here is concerned (except for the nagging need to finish the trim in the dining room). I feel that many of my projects have improved the quality of the space, like painting the living room and dining room, and that simply keeping it clean will please the new landlords once we’re out.