reading nook

We have two bay windows, one in the dining room and one in the living room. I have always loved bay windows and imagined myself sitting on a window seat and read. Although we have the windows we don't have any built-in window seats.

This is how the dining room/bay window looked before we started painting. Those shades were the yuckiest thing ever but we didn't throw them out for a while because we couldn't figure out what to put in its place and we needed the privacy. There is an apartment building on the side of the house and the tenants could look into our place when they are going in the basement to do their laundry.

We painted the walls in the bay window the same gray as the dining room and living room. It's Stonington Gray by Benjamin Moore. The calderesque mobile from CB2 and the floor lamp we already owned. The lamp used to stand next to one of our sofas in the old apartment and the mobile I had never taken out of its box. I saw it in an issue of Domino (R.I.P.) and had to have it. It's from a company named EQ3 and because there wasn't a store in my area I called up one and bought it sight unseen.

Next came the chair, it was a birthday present I gave myself last year and I got it at the DWR Annex in Secaucus. We live kind of close to it and I like to stop by there sometimes just to browse around...The little side tables are from CB2 as well. At first I thought they were a little too matchy matchy with the colors of the mobile but I really like them now.

So far I have not been sitting there to read but sometimes when I talk on the phone I sit there and watch the people walking by...

Seeing the pictures now I need to do something about the cord of the lamp...

after christmas shopping

The holidays are over and we got rid of our tree yesterday. It was hard saying goodbye because it was our first one but hey it's only 335 more days until next Christmas...

Of course you can score the best deals on holiday decorations after the holidays. Picked up these wooden trees and snowflakes at The Container Store for 75% less.

And some ornaments at Urban Outfitters, a three pack of matryoshkas/babushkas and a six pack of mini donuts. Hmmmm donuts!

no more laundromat!

I totally forgot to give an update on our laundry situation since my last post about our washer/dryer in September. In October we had an electrician come out and add a 240 Volt Outlet to the basement. So finally we don't have to schlepp our laundry to the laundromat!

After we had a little bit of flooding in the basement and had to prop up the washer and dryer up on bricks we decided to buy stands for them. Phew those stands are expensive but now the appliances have a much better height to load and unload them.

In case anybody wonders why there are tennis balls on our dryer I used two of them for drying our down pillows, they really make them fluffy again.

redoing the master bathroom - part two

This is how the bathroom looked after the demolition. There were so many layers of sheetrock, that the room is still a couple of inches bigger with the new drywall in place.

While installing the old drywall in the bathroom somebody treated themself to some cold beers. Cheers to renovating bathrooms! If I remember correctly they were from 2000 so the bathroom wasn't renovated that long ago.

Here the drywall is already up, the shower is tiled, vanity and medicine cabinet are in place. You can already start seeing it come together.

The bathroom is quite small so it's had to take good pictures. Can you see me hiding behind the door? Speaking of the door it will have to go, it's such a cheap and wobbly thing...

cuckoo about birds

I like birds, not as a pet but I still like to have the non living kind around the house...

This group of pigeons greeted me one morning on my way to work last week. They reminded me that I have a couple of birds at home myself that need a new place to nest. Ha, ha couldn't resist that one...

In our old place we had the window to nowhere in our dining room. To make it look nicer I bought little bird wall decals on etsy. The sellers name is elephannie and I got the cold birds decal.

I have this white birds on a wire decal from annawand and I need to find a place for them as well as the cuckoo clock from Tchibo. The clock was hanging above our fireplace in the old apartment.

Fun fact for all non German speakers annawand could be a name of a woman (Anna Wand) and also could be read as "on the wall". And Tchibo is a chain which started out selling coffee and now it is also selling all kinds of consumer goods. You can also stop at the stores and drink a cup of coffee. It's like a German version of Starbucks...

redoing the master bathroom - part one

Our upstairs bathroom was not really our style and the shower was a fiberglass (?) insert shower with a frosted glass door which made the already small room feel even smaller. I always felt like I was at a motel taking a shower. We both agreed the bathroom needed to change and started talking about what we wanted in a new bathroom. Since the room is on the small side and even has a slanted ceiling above the toilet the layout needed to stay as is, which also kept the cost down.

We knew we wanted white subway tile in the shower and a dark floor. Also we liked the Kohler Purist fixtures because they look nice but are not crazy expensive like some other bathroom fixture series and brands. The IKEA vanity and sink had the perfect size and price. It's actually a little smaller than the old vanity but the drawers give maximized storage space - more room for us and our stuff!

This is what we came up with...

happy new year!

Hello 2011!

Everybody always has lofty goals or resolutions for the new year and then miserably fails to accomplish them. That's why our main goal for 2011 is to finish unpacking the last boxes and organize everything that hasn't found a space yet. There is still one room we use for storing all the boxes and other stuff so it's not in our way. Actually the room doesn't look so bad in the picture but I wasn't able to capture the mess in its entirety. We started out pretty good on our resolution yesterday and unpacked 5 boxes.

I made a list of things I would like to get done in January.

- finish the fireplace
- cover panel for kitchen island
- prepare the hallway to get painted
- assemble Bekväm step stool and decide on what color to paint or stain it