Tag: interior design

Pining for Pine

If  you were to ask me a couple of years ago what popped into my head when I heard “PINE,” I would have described something like this:

Rustic Pine Bed

Yikes. Fitting for a mountain hideaway cabin, but in my home? No thank you.

When Doug and I decided to renew our lease we sat down and went through the past two IKEA catalogues to see what styles stood out to us… What were we drawn to? If we’re going to stay ten more months, let’s put some purpose into our home, right?

This room spoke to me, but I am realistic enough to know that our home will never look like this:

Pine and White Inspiration, IKEA

(IKEA catalogue)

In fact, all the pictures he pointed out included natural wood, most often pine. So I hopped on the pine train and started thinking about ways to incorporate it into our home. To be honest, using the same wood in all the different rooms is a great way to unify the whole living space together. We came up with three ways to include pine in our home, which I’ll post more about next week, when I have the place cleaned up and ready for photos. Today, I’ve got a birthday party to put together.

How about some more pine inspiration?

Large IKEA Pine Collage

(IKEA… all IKEA.) 

What design element are you drawn to these days? 

Colorful Kitchen Inspiration

To wrap up my week dwelling on things you can put in your kitchen, both essential and trivial, I thought I would take a trip to fantasyland for a little while and share some wonderful colorful kitchens I’ve pinned on Pinterest.

Every few days, I’ll check the apartment rental market and the condo sales market in San Diego just for fun. I see so many boring flipped kitchens with the same old predictable colors and finishes. These are so different and so exciting! No cherry cabinets with black granite countertops here! (Can we all agree that that combination comes off very heavy?) Experimenting with color is also an inexpensive way to freshen up a kitchen while saving the big bucks for a full kitchen overhaul a few years down the line.

Click each image to be taken to its website.

Color Cabinets - Photo by Magnus Anesund

The first time I saw this picture, I was so excited that I dragged Doug over to the computer and made him check it out. One must really be a color expert to pull this off because bright colors, if they aren’t tempered with enough gray and brown, can look circus-y really fast. It works sooo well here because everything else is white, white, white. Even the floors have been whitewashed or limed to achieve the white wood effect. I would love to see this in a commercial space setting.

House Beautiful

This is an easy project anybody nervous about committing to color can handle. Don’t want to make an irreversible mistake on the cabinets? Painting the inside of the cabinet is really easy to change when the mood strikes.

Blue Kitchen Space

I love the way the smallness of this kitchen is celebrated. I feel like if the blue walls were white, the area would seem even smaller–with the bold shade of blue, the area is like, “I’m here, I may not be huge but I’m stylish. Now cook amazing meals here.”

Ursula Mayer for Schorn & Groh.

How about bringing the color into the room via countertops? What an unexpected punch of color! Plenty of retro kitchens have tile accents on the counter, but this sleek slab of pink is absolutely scene-stealing!

I feel like a kitchen that’s exciting to simply be in would be exciting to cook in. Let the creativity flow!

What do you think? Would you take a big color risk in the kitchen? 

The Couch and Table

Friends, I know you have all been dying to hear the full story on the new chartreuse couch and glass dining table. No? What if I bribe you by promising a glamour shot of each?

I love our vintage Danish modern couch, but the basic foam cushions over the wooden frame was hard on the old aching joints after several hours of blogging or watching TV. The easy solution would be to spend less time on the couch, right? Well… instead, we decided to add a new couch member to the family.

New Couch

Shortly after embarking to save up to $1000 for either a new or vintage couch (one with tufting to soften the number of modern straight lined pieces in the living area), this beaut popped up on Craigslist for $250. We drove over to check it out and loved it instantly! It’s very soft–perfect for naps. I forgot to negotiate down the price, as you should do with Craigslist dealings, but the seller delivered to our apartment for free which is worth much more than the $25 or $50 I probably could have talked him down.

The fabric is very, very high quality and I believe was scotchguarded many years ago so it’s been wearing quite well. The only thing that makes it less than ideal is how low it is–I mean the cushions are low and when you sit down you sink even lower. But it’s not uncomfortable or anything, so I like it.

Chrome Table

As for the chrome and glass table…! The round wooden table we had before technically fit better in our space–round is always a great space-saver. The top was very water damaged and therefore rough on the skin, and it was very crowded for knees underneath. This table is much larger and can accommodate 6 people if we need it to! Coming into possession of this table is one of the reasons I love that my parents never throw anything away. I grew up with it! I have vivid memories of my mom asking me to Windex this as one of my chores in elementary school. I used to be such a drama queen about it… coughing and hacking as if the ammonia scent was going to kill me (I really did think it would). I still don’t love Windexing but I do love the gleam of the clean tabletop.

Someday, I’ll even buy four matching chairs to go under it! I know, I know… dream big!