Holy Union

I always liked the light fixture that was installed in our dining room when we bought our house. It felt fun and interesting... but then two things happened. 1. We painted the walls yellow which made the little votives look kind of dirty in comparison, and 2. the bulbs started burning out, and it turns out they cost $9 a piece. I've already spent $27 replacing bulbs, and I'm sure the other ones are close to burning out as well, so I figured I'd cut my losses and get something new.

Shall we pay our respects with a throwback to this hilarious moment?

Moving on. I've been on the lookout for the perfect fixture for the past 6 months or so, and finally, this guy went on sale at Crate & Barrel.

The mighty Union Pendant was still a little more than I wanted to spend, so lucky me that I got to buy the floor sample for an additional 15% off. I used the last of our wedding gift card money and paid the balance out of pocket which felt very weird, since we've shopped for "free" at Crate & Barrel for over a year now!

Had I hung the fixture exactly as it came, it would have nearly sat on the floor because the chain was so long. Typically, you just remove extra lengths to shorten it up, but the wonderful people at Crate & Barrel had soldered every. single. chain. link. together. This meant that I had to saw through the links and then bend them apart, which added an additional hour or so to the process. I'm a little nervous that I now have little metal filings embedded in my skin from all the sawing, which I only know is something to be concerned about because when you go to get an MRI, they ask you if there's a possibility of having metal shavings in your body. I guess because the magnet would pull them out  (the M of MRI stands for magnetic)? Yikes. Fingers crossed I don't ever have to find out.

Anyway, onto the fun part. Let's install this baby! I don't have very many pictures of the installation process because holy cow are light fixtures heavy, which makes balancing on a ladder and snapping pictures a bit tricky. 

Step 1. Turn off power to the fixture

Step 2. Remove the fixture (de-couple the fixture's wires from the ceiling wires)

Step 3. Install the new fixture (re-couple the fixture's wires with the ceiling wires, being sure to match black to black, white to white, and copper to copper)

Step 4. Have sore arms for 5 days from holding the fixture up for so long. Oh, and marvel at your work.

The old one is sitting in the garage waiting for me to Craigslist it. Know anyone that wants an inexpensive light fixture with semi-expensive bulbs?

Now I have this pretty view when I come down the stairs. It's nice and substantial feeling without being bulky, and it only has one bulb! 

The one that's in there is the one that came with it, but I think I may switch it out for an Edison bulb. Any suggestions on where to get them? Good deals? Cool shapes? I've never bought one before so I'm not "in the know."

Shady Business

I feel like a broken record. It seems like all of my posts start a little something like this... "I've finally gotten around to doing something I've been meaning to do for months!" But that's the truth. When we bought our house, I made a biiiiig looooong to do list of everything I planned to get done, and I'm slowly checking off the remaining items. So it's true for this post as well as dozens of others: I finally hung the curtains I've been meaning to hang since we moved in.

Hanging curtains has felt like a really daunting task, specifically in the living room. Allow me to explain. John & Sherry are awesome at swapping out art & furniture, rearranging, and re-thinking rooms in their house. I love this about them because it means their decor and style are really fluid, and they don't mind shifting a room around to paint or accommodate their latest project. I am nothing like this. I wish I were, but I'm not.

My mom tells a lovely story about how when I was little, she and my dad bought me some elaborate dollhouse that took them hours (and hours and hours) to assemble. When they gave it to me, I was somewhat interested, but after about a week I stopped playing with it. One day, my mom was looking at it and moved some of the furniture and people around. As it turned out, I did not like that. Apparently, I told her I had put everything where I wanted it, and that's where things needed to stay, and that's why I hadn't touched it. Soon after, I had one of my friends over and refused to let them play with the dollhouse. Not because I was bad at sharing (although I'm sure my mother could tell you stories about that deficiency as well), but because I didn't want anything moved.

Moral of the story is that once I find a place for things, that's where I like for them to stay. Now, how does this apply to curtain hanging? Well, as you can see below, in order to hang the curtains it required that we dismantle the entire living room. I've been avoiding this like the plague, mainly because our couch is made up of three interlocking pieces that are really tricky to un-hook and re-hook. Finally, I found the perfect curtains and decided it was time to take the plunge.

The curtains are called Matilda and came from Ikea. I noticed them when I was there one day and fell in love. It's a little weird to imagine that I found something from Ikea that I love this much, but they're seriously perfect. They're very light and airy and have just enough of a detail/texture to be interesting but not draw too much attention to themselves. The curtain rods are pretty standard looking and came from Crate & Barrel with leftover wedding gift card money.

Before I show you the living room, let's start in the kitchen because that's where I took the best pictures. The first step was to figure out how high to hang the rod. I put some tape on the wall so I could mark where it needed to go and not worry about needing to do touch-ups if I marked anything incorrectly, plus it kept the metal mounting piece from rubbing the paint off as I slid it around.

As far as how high to hang it, I put the curtain on the rod and raised it up to where the curtains just barely touched the floor, then marked where the bottom of the mounting piece should go.

I went back and marked where the screws went.

Next, I drilled the holes using a drill bit that would be the right size if I were to screw the screws directly into the wall (rather than using an anchor). This is basically just a pilot hole to see if there's a stud. 

Because there wasn't a stud, I went ahead and used a larger bit that would accommodate the anchors. If there had been a stud, I would have left the hole at the smaller size. You can see the little pile of drywall dust which is because I made a little tape shelf to collect it rather than letting it fall on the floor.

Next, I hammered in my anchors.

Then, I screwed in the mounting piece.

Thank you, Crate and Barrel, for selling such well-designed curtain rods! This was the most painless experience I've had with hanging rods. Next I just slid on the bracket.

I used a long piece of tape to mark how far over on the other side of the window the bracket should go based on the side I had already completed, then repeated the process.

Next, I added a bracket in the middle, and hung 'em up! This was before...

And here we are after!

Sooo much better, right?! I learned from John & Sherry that when you hang curtains correctly, meaning to the side of the window rather than covering the window, it makes the window look bigger. I would say this is good proof!

Shall we head up to the loft? If you'll remember, this is where we started.

And here we are now! I found these vertically striped curtains at World Market when they were 50% off and thought they'd add a little color without being too loud.

Last but not least, the living room. After scooching all of the furniture to the other side, I installed the 3 brackets and voila! What I really love is that it gives the illusion that the wall is just one giant window rather than 3 separate ones.

Originally, I hadn't even planned on using the same curtains in the living room and dining room (which is sadly just because it didn't occur to me), but I'm very glad that this is how it worked out. I think they help tie the rooms together, which is awesome since the colors are obviously very different.

Isn't it funny how much of a difference they make? Every little thing makes a difference, which makes each project really exciting.

My next post will be a before and after one. My last before and afters were 6 months ago, and we've certainly come a long way since then!

Flower Power

Oh gosh. Long time no see, guys. Sorry about that... there have been some fairly large life developments lately that have totally put projects and blogging on the back burner. I'm totally swamped, but in a good way, so hopefully in the next few weeks I'll write up a little summary of what's been going on. I'm pretty excited about the direction things are going, so hopefully you'll be interested to hear about it!

With that said.... our living room is nearly finished. We spend the majority of the time we're home sitting on our couch chatting, doing things on our computers, reading, watching TV, etc., so it's been nice to have it 90% of the way for so long. What's lacking are some curtains, a clock, and much needed art over the couch. That big, open wall just feels so expansive and bare.

Some of you may remember that when we were tearing out the tile floors back in January, John commented on the "museum lights" in the living room and wondered what kind of museum-quality art would be hung under them.

Sorry to disappoint, but the Mona Lisa will not be making an appearance. Instead, I found three canvases from World Market (the place where all good things come from). Generally speaking, I wouldn't say my style is all that floral or girly, but I do love flowers and I was very ready to get some art on the walls. While the first and second ones could get a little too feminine for my taste, I love the third one and figured I could make it the focal point to calm down some of the flower power.

These pieces were more than I was willing to spend, but when I got an email that all of their art was 40% off and I had an additional 10% off from being a member, I figured I wasn't going to find a better deal. I dropped by and bought them, then got home and set them inside. Then a few days went by.... then a week... then a month. Yep, it wasn't till around the 45 day mark that I finally worked up the energy to hang them. And let's be honest... my real motivator was that I was tired of worrying about Roomba smacking into them while he did his cleaning route.

One night I got John to help me hang them up. I knew I wanted two screws per canvas, so I found the center of where I wanted them hung and screwed my screws in 6" apart. I did a tape trick I learned from John & Sherry where you make a little shelf out of painter's tape to catch the drywall dust that falls when you screw things in.

What made this kind of tricky was that the two floral paintings were square, while the artichokey-succulent one was rectangular and taller than the other two. I wanted the bottom of the canvases to be flush which meant that I needed to hang the top of the square ones lower than the top of the rectangular ones.

I just measured the difference in their height, dropped down from the first screws by that amount, measured how far over I wanted to go, had John hold the laser, and screwed them in. Really, the toughest part of this process was that the couch was in the way and we didn't want to move it because it has three interlocking parts and rubber non-slick pads to keep it in place. It was a pain getting it there the first time and we didn't want to deal with that again.

Luckily, my measurements were decently on target and the bottoms were pretty much level.

To hang the last one, we just shot the laser level over from the right set of screws and put in two more. Boom. Done. And thanks to the tape shelves, there was no cleanup necessary.

Isn't it so much more cheerful with something on the walls? I love having some red and yellowish greens in there to pull in the warm colors from the kitchen, because the living room has been feeling a little too cold for my taste.

I have to say that my favorite thing is that all three paintings have some metallic gold accents in them, and when they catch the light the glimmer just a little bit.

Ahh. We are near completion! Shall we call it 92% done now? Next I have to work up the nerve to hang the curtain rods which is going to be quite a challenge if I don't move the couch. High ceilings are awesome until you have to climb on a latter to get to the top of them! Does anyone have a trick on how to get a ladder over the couch? I've been dragging my heels on these curtains for way. too. long. Thinking about it makes me realize that I don't even have curtains to hang... just the rods. I guess I should look into that before I get too far into the process! That's the thing with high ceilings, though, is that you usually have to order longer length curtains online rather than being able to pick them up in stores. Darn you shipping and then inevitably hating them once they come in!