Sitting the bench.

When entering or leaving our condo I often find myself on the floor lacing up my boots or taking them off. Since we have a slim cove in our long hallway entrance, I plan on building a bench for this area making it easier and much more welcoming for any visitors. The idea is for the bench to fill this 96"x16" space and to have built in cubby holes to place our shoes. Below are some design inspirations I have been looking at in which I may utilize one or many ideas and incorporate them into my design.


I like the space this one allows underneath but I feel it may be too boxy for my intentions and make the hallway feel claustrophobic.


I really like this design because of the multiple cubby hole space that is incorporated into the design and not as big or clunky.


I know this doesn't have the shoe cubbies we are looking for but I really like this design and think some can be added and still maintain it's sleekness.


I'm not so sure about this one but I love the simplicity of it's manufacturing. Soon as I saw it I realized how easy it is to build.

All these benches can be found at Design Public.

pillow talk

I had grand plans for pillows to put around the dining room. I had downloaded patterns and fabric colors and I did little layouts. Then I figured out how many pillows I actually needed. 14.

The day I came up with this number, Carpenter and I went to Ikea to look at picture frames. The economy won on this one. I ended up buying pre-made pillow cases and pillows from Ikea. Then I had enough Marimekko fabric left over to have 1 side of 3 pillows sewn with this fabric.


It is a cozy place to sit and have cocktails...I must admit.


And the great thing about bringing in color with the pillows is that I can change the look later on by swapping out a few.

wall art part 3

I have a lot of wall space in my dining room. I've been dying to have something to break up all of that soft gray. Carpenter was kind enough to hang these today before jumping on the road for a job out east. (thank you)


I got these prints from Good Shape Design
I'm totally loving the partridges. Plus it's nice to have a little splash of red. And the tree is mighty cute, as well.

Dog decorating

No we are not remodeling a room for our dog.

Riley gets a bit stressed out when we have guests sometimes. As our guests were leaving the other night, we noticed Riley decided to do a tiny bit of decorating himself.

This is also a sneak peek into a later project. I'm not sure if the bathroom will be phase 3 or 4, but trust me, it needs some love.

wall art part 2

This is in our living room which I've only blogged about on one other occasion, because the living room is phase 2 of our remodeling project. We are still in phase 1. This was actually the first thing we hung on the walls. Carpenter hung it about 3 weeks ago (although I bought it months ago) and I just couldn't stop staring at it. I was just so happy to have something on the walls.

Now that it's been up for awhile I still look at it a lot. I must just like the print.




And the orange in it is brought out by the orange on our fireplace.
We got this print from 20 x 200. Get on their email list. It's a bit hit and miss, but when they email you something you like, jump on it. The good stuff can sell out in a matter of minutes.

re-use modern

If I needed a dresser I would be all over this one. Zoe Murphy, a young British designer prints on used mid 20th century modern furniture. She has some fun wall prints, as well.


see more here

wall art part 1

Hurray! We are finally starting to get stuff on our walls. It's weird that somehow they make it an seem like a real room. This is especially funny considering the things we don't have in our bedroom.

A few things still lacking in our bedroom: nightstands, doors, proper lighting and a rug.

I ordered these prints from Binth a million years ago it seems, but it took us forever to get around to getting frames. The prints with matting were 12.25" square and so we ended up ordering 12" frames and trimming.


note: since this photo was taken, carpenter has hung them straight. :-)





I didn't even realize this at the time, but I apparently had an animal theme going. From right to left: octopus, chicken, dragon. Check out more prints on Binth.

cushion love

Our dining room cushions are finished! Actually they have been finished for a bit, but I'm just getting around to sharing.

There are actually 3 cushions covered in Marimekko fabric. We have a family friend that is just great at sewing anything. (I'm very envious.)

On the back wall (the longest wall) the cushions are 3 ft deep. Our plan is to line the whole wall with large pillows. I want the fabric to be upholstery fabric again. I just need to decide on colors and patterns for all the pillows. We have a little fabric left over. Plus I want to do solid black, solid red and then add another pattern with an additional color I'm also considering adding a long, black square bolster along the back on the long cushions.



The benches are super fabulous. My hubby made them and we decided to paint them black. It just brings everything together more.



He made the tables also and I love them! I don't love the stain color though. The stain I picked out was pretty light and pretty neutral but when he went to stain them the color was completely different. It actually looked gray...silvery gray. Very weird. We were in a crunch since we were having people over. Carpenter decided at the last minute to stain them the color of our trim, which is the color of our floor and very close to the color of our timber ceiling. A bit much...So the tables will already be getting a makeover.

The worst blogger ever

Hello peeps.
Yes. I am the worst blogger ever. I'd like to blame it on work, yoga study, my trip to India...or the election. Go Obama!!
But the reality is that I'm just not that good at this. With that said, I will be posting again in the next few days.

There are actually changes to report! We are actually starting to put stuff on our walls. We have cushions on our benches
and have a plan for bedroom doors. Hurray! Stay tuned!

dining room happenings

There is much happening with our dining room. Sorry for the delay on updating the blog.

So here goes. No more canned lighting (in the dining room, anyway.)We now have more dining room appropriate lighting. We love it. It totally changed the mood of the room. Dimmer switch to come soon.


We went with a West Elm item to counter balance the price of our fabric. I love the foo foo contrast of the lighting against all of the brick and timber in our condo.


A little reminder of the fabric I ordered for our benches.


It just arrived from Finland. Yea! And it's now in the hands of a fabulous seamstress.
The fabric is called Kirsikka from Marimekko.

We also got our chairs to go opposite the benches.




They are bent plywood chairs from CB2.

And of course our fabulous benches and tables are compliments of my husband. He is staining them this week so they will be all ready for our new cushions.

Marking things off the list. I'm loving it!

Here is where the dining room stands at the moment.

When it is finished we will rent some lights and take better photography of our finished projects.

Contents of Tables

1. 4x4x30 1/4 piece of red oak, pre-sanded and routed out 3/4" for the table supports; pictured here

2. A carefully chosen piece of 4'x8' red oak plywood. I dug through the stack to find an exceptional grain with great repetition and color variation.

From one piece of plywood I was able to assemble three table tops. I sandwiched pieces together with glue and belt sanded the sides for a clean finish with an excellent pattern.

3. The base was assembled with 1x4 oak pieces notched, sanded then pegged to the 4x4 post. Angled pieces were then fit into the routed top of the post as supports for under the table.

Finally I assembled the table top to the base by flipping the tops over then aligning and squaring off the base upside down on top of the table top. Below are final pics of the first table.



I am quite excited about actually placing these in our dining room. Art Director and I can then decide how to finish the set, whether we stain or just prime and seal them. One final sanding is still needed but I don't want to do that until we come to a finish decision.
Look for the final color reveal coming soon.

Time to clamp down

Though I am finished with the construction of the benches (primer and sealer are yet to be finished due to aesthetic conflict over stain) I figured I would post some photos of the process. Above you'll see the base assembly after being pegged and glued. Though the pegs are strong enough I used glue to give it a little something extra. (Sort of like the jalapenos in Art Director's guacamole!) Below you'll seer the front and back of the base before final base assembly.

Since the benches are 3 feet wide I had to assemble the tops from three separate pieces of 1" wood using dowels. It worked well but not as great as I would have thought. Much sanding was done to make the top as seamless as possible.

The final step of the assembly process was attaching the top to the base after a preliminary sanding. I flipped the top over on to the workbench and then placed the base upside down on top of that. I carefully marked out the base and the aligned the holes for the placement of 1/4" pegs. As you can see I glued, clamped and pegged the top to the base and let it set for 24 hours before doing another rough sanding.

Here I have gathered all three benches for in a mock set up of how they would lay out in our dining room. If you look carefully you'll see the beginnings of the table tops resting carefully on top.

a fireplace makeover

well the fireplace is actually part of phase 2 of the remodel (since it's in the living room) but since we were buying paint anyway, we thought we would give it a little love.


here is what it looked like before the paint. it was a pale yellow color and had cheap home depot marble tiles around the fireplace opening. the marble was so random. it really didn't go with anything else.


here is what it looks like now. we added rust colored paint to the walls. then we primed and painted over the white marble with a charcoal gray. (the true color is unfortunately hard to tell from the photo) all of the other walls in the living room are brick so it's the only place to add some color.

we have many other plans for the living room and the fireplace, but they will have to wait until we have completed our projects in the bedroom, hallway and dining room.

The pressure's on

So I have to admit, I thought it would be the end of the summer before "carpenter" would actually get around to building the furniture for our dining room. You've heard the story about the baker's wife, right?

So now I need to get serious about fabric. A few months ago I was all set on a couple Amy Butler options...and now I fell in love with a Marimekko pattern. I didn't want to, it just happened and now I can't get it out of my head.

Here's the deal. As much as I love love love Amy Butler's fabrics, I'm going need a lot of it and I worry that I may grow sick of my color choices. So I decided to go with a more neutral color scheme for the benches and then I can go crazy with color with pillows, art work, etc.


Here is the pattern. Tell me what you think?


Here it is on a couch. I like that it's fun and modern without being too bright.

Ok. Next dilemma...keep the wood on the benches as it with an oil and wax finish or stain it a dark color? Our original plan was to stain the benches darker, but now I might feel sad about covering up the wood.

Recessionary Spending

Every morning I get up and I put on the news. Every morning the news tells me we "may" be in a recession. They're not sure yet but it is possible, so...just in case I decided I'm going to save money and make my own furniture. (That's not really true. I was always planning to build my own furniture. The recession was just a coincidence.) For the cost of an expensive piece from Ikea I was able to design and build my own benches from solid red oak.

The idea for the design was simple. Straight lines to match the infrastructure of our loft. No styles or complicated details. Sounds easy, right? WRONG. I decided to NOT use any nails or screws just to see if I could do it. Only wood. I used a simple peg system , still all oak, and eco-friendly wood glue. Here is a detail of the pegs for the front part of the base.

For the actual assembly of the bench I had to build a jig layout with some scrap 2x4 and plywood I had to demo from the jobsite. (I am building these during my down time while on my jobsite, including evenings) The jig allowed for a faster assembly of the other two benches.

I have built all three benches, one at 5'x 3', one 5'6"x 3', and one 4'x 2'. They should fill the dining room nicely without overcrowding and the 3 foot depth will make for some cool loungy seating.

PS COMING SOON...3 cafe style tables...nice!

a little more color

The next room to get color is our bedroom. Of the 3 walls in our bedroom, 2 of them are brick, so I was going crazy not having color on the wall opposite our bed.


no paint


here is a little corner so you can see it against the brick.


I can't wait to start hanging stuff on the walls.


Riley thinks the new paint color makes the room super cozy.

dining room progress

Yup. It's painting time. My fabulous husband painted the dining room. I'm super excited. It's starting to look like a room. We painted it a soft bluish gray. We wanted to go with a more neutral color on the walls and bring in other colors through art work and throw pillows that will go on the benches.


a little "before" reminder


Doesn't it make the walls look so much higher?



Doesn't our dining table from our apartment look so tiny in here?