happy halloween

Happy Halloween! I am not that big of a fan of Halloween decorating but in the fall I like having pumpkins on my front steps and this year I added some Halloween decor that I found at the Dollar Tree. Those stores are usually a treasure trove when it comes to buying cheap items to decorate for the holidays. The crow already lost some feathers, I think a neighborhood cat thought it was real and tried to wrestle with it. One morning our stoop was covered in black feathers and on top of that a bird pooped on the crow as well. At least I took the photos before this happened. Are you guys going all out with decorating for Halloween or are you not even acknowledge it? Whatever your plans are for today/tonight, have fun!

week forty two

Remember that last week I told you I wanted to catch up on sleep and be back with posts here this week, well of course I jinxed it, instead of the work getting a little slower we got a new deal in and the next two weeks will be pretty busy again. Lately I spend up to twelve hours a day at work and have not much time for anything else but I am not complaining because I really like my new job. On the other hand I feel guilty about not being able to blog and most of all reading yours. I miss you guys!

Last week we finally got our new driveway poured only to get it ripped up again this week. It was not looking too good and our contractor convinced us to have it redone. Progress in the backyard is pretty slow at the moment at least when it comes to the finishing touches. Today the footings for our new deck will be poured and after a couple days of curing we will get a new deck. On Saturday we started painting the chain link fence that sits to the right of our driveway. Not the best idea I had, the work is a bit time consuming, but it is looking so much better than the green and rusty mess we have right now. Oh, and the highlight of the week was that I finally received my Eames House Bird I bought myself as a belated birthday present. It's looking pretty good in front of our fireplace. 

Have a great week!

week forty one

Only eleven more weeks and we are starting a new year. I still cannot believe it and need to start cracking the whip on myself to finish one or two more of the projects that I had on the list for this year. Week forty one passed as quickly as the past weeks and because I finally need to catch up on sleep while I have the chance, I decided to take this week off from blogging again. I will be back with posts about my Open House New York impressions and the progress of the backyard. The site I volunteered at had amazing views (see below) and the rest was not too shabby either, actually it was a quite amazing apartment.

Hope to see you all back here next week!

before and after - tv corner

In my post yesterday I totally forgot to include a picture of our TV situation before we upgraded to the new dresser. Because it took so long to finish this dresser I will have to milk it for as many posts as I can ;) This and the fact that my week was pretty hectic and exhausting again, with no time to prepare a post for today, gave me the idea to just show you before and after shots of our TV corner.

Looking forward to catching up on sleep this weekend and volunteering at the Open House New York Weekend again. Hopefully I will be able to share my experience with you again within the upcoming weeks. Have an awesome weekend!

mini makeover Vll - dresser

Drum roll please! I finally finished the dresser I acquired on Craig's List, mind you that this whole process took over two years, this makeover was anything but mini in the end. When I first saw the dresser online my  idea was to quickly paint it another color but when it arrived I was intrigued what kind of finish might be lurking under all that paint. I whipped out my trusty stripper to strip a small corner of the dresser, lo and behold I discovered nice dark wood veneer. This motivated me to strip the whole dresser. Once I had most of the dresser stripped I started sanding the already stripped parts for what felt like an eternity, so I took a break from working on it. At that point I did not think that the break would be two years long but that is how long it took for me to get back around to this project. First thing on my to-do list after the break was scraping out paint residue from the grooves in the drawer fronts, I used wooden skewers for this because I did not want to damage the veneer, not the most fun job I can tell you. After that it took me another three weekends to finish sanding, my hand felt like it would be permanently stuck in the position of clinging to the electric sander. Once I deemed the dresser ready for some staining and oiling, the finish line was near. I stained the dresser on a Sunday and oiled it the following week while watching TV in the evening. Oh, I should not forget to mention the hard work that went into polishing the 12 brass pulls. All in all I am very pleased how the dresser turned out but the process of getting there was not fun at all. Now our TV finally has a nice piece of furniture to sit on, if only I could hide the cables, the DVD player and cable box. In my eyes they ruin the whole look but I did not want to get rid of the items for the photos, as they are there in real life and hard to hide. 

Have you ever dragged on a project as long as I did? I have to admit I have another piece of furniture that has been waiting for years to be finished, most parts are already sanded and only need to be painted. I swear this will be finished this year as well.

week fourty

Good morning everyone! Another week flew by, I feel like Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner...On Wednesday the brick foundation of our extension got repointed, one corner looked very scary and some bricks were loose, you could just take them out. It was like playing Jenga, you would pray that the house would not cave in at that corner. Now everything looks great again. On Saturday we had planned to pour our driveway but because of the weather the concrete will now be poured on Thursday, fingers crossed. Friday a friend from Germany arrived and we took her shopping on Saturday and on Sunday we strolled around the city. Finally discovered Sockerbit, why did I not know about this Swedish candy store before? Of course I went crazy with licorice and all things I put in my bag were delicious.

Hope you had a great weekend as well? What were you guys up to?

houndstooth

Some of you might remember that I posted a picture on Instagram of me trying on a houndstooth coat at Zara back in August. Well, you gave me the final push to make the decision to splurge on it and I ran back to the store a couple of days later. I love houndstooth and apparently others do too, for instance the people at Ligne Rose, who celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Togo seating collection with a special edition upholstered in a houndstooth print fabric by Alcantarra. Do I have to mention that I want want want it? But it is not going to happen, we have two nice sofas and we won't change a thing about them. BUt a girl can dream, right? 

Have a happy weekend! Any fun plans? I have a friend flying in from Germany today and tomorrow our driveway will be poured. I still cannot believe this is finally happening...

1. coat 2. sofa 3. duvet cover 4. pillow 5. area rug

backyard - fix me now

After about three years of dreaming, pinning ideas, bouncing ideas back and forth, not able to make a decision we are finally under way with our biggest project as of yet, the backyard. When we bought the house we were already certain that the concrete mess that is, nay was, our backyard needed to go eventually. Last year after submitting our yard for a makeover contest we got the final push to start with the project. Unfortunately we did not win the contest, we did not even manage to get to the last round.

 Last Saturday our yard was taken over by a crew of men and machines that removed all the concrete. I have to say even the dirt looks much better than the concrete. The whole process has been smooth so far but I will be so happy when it is all done, the whole anxiety of everything turning out the way I imagined it is giving me a constant headache. I'm probably the worst client because I want to be in control and involved in everything. Argh...Guess I need to compensate with more DIY project of my own in the next months.

Are you a little bit of a control freak like me? Do you have any plans for a big renovation or are you in the middle of one?

PS. Do you see our door leading into nothing? There used to be a deck and I have been tempted to open it so many times but so far none of us accidentally tried to step out.

week thirty five through week thirty nine

Good morning October! Bye bye September! The last month was a blur, right after Labor Day worked picked up to a crazy level and with my family in town for two weeks I had no time for the blog. But now I am back and it looks like the new month will be under the motto backyard renovation. Last Saturday, the day after my parents left, we had a crew of guys demoing the concrete in our driveway and the backyard. You can't image how much better it already looks, even though we are left with dirt for now. Today they are digging a trench for the drainage and tomorrow our foundation will be getting re-pointed. If all goes to plan the new driveway will be poured on Saturday. I will be writing some posts with backyard updates this month and hopefully be able to show you the finished project as well. If the weather is kind to us, we might even fire up the grill one last time to christen our new deck...

Have a great week! It's so good to be back, now I will have some catching up to do what you guys were up to in September...