artsy fartsy
We have accumulated quite a bit of artsy stuff. We seldom agree on what we should hang in the house and where, but we’ve managed to keep out walls from looking too bare. Here are some of the prints and pieces of art we having hanging in our home.
The first piece on the Mid-Century Monster art tour is a beautiful geisha which hangs in our bedroom.
This print was designed by Sanithna Phansavanh for recent art show called RE- A Benefit Poster Show for Japan. Only five were made, and since Sanithna’s a swell guy he signed our print 1/5.
Also in out bedroom hangs this piece by Tara McPherson.
McPherson created this print for a series based on the show Lost. Spoiler alert if you haven’t finished the show!
Now we move on to the office. We have a couple cool pieces in there. The first two you’ll see when walking in are these two concert posters.
The one on the left is from a Man or Astro-man? show that I went to in Athens, Georgia. The print is by Jay Ryan. The other poster is from when we say Jens Lekman in Chicago. Sadly, I no longer remember the artist.
On the opposite wall we have an original page from Scott Pilgrim, by Brian Lee O’Malley.
This was given to us by our friend Paul as a wedding gift. It has inspired jealousy from many a guest.
Now on to the living room. The first pieces that visitors will notice when walking into our living room are out minimalist Star Wars prints. The prints were designed by Justin Van Gendersen.
We really love them because if folks recognize the names of the destinations then they’re fellow nerds.
Also hanging in our living room is a piece from one of our favorite local artists, catlanta!
For those that haven’t heard of catlanta, he’s a local Atlanta artist who hides art in the city and then tweets the location for fans to go find it.
The living room is also the home of our largest piece in the house.
We commissioned this piece from Atlanta artist Peter Ferrari, or as he’s more commonly known, PLF. It’s a 4′ x 3′ aerosol piece, and it’s quickly become one of our prized possessions. Here’s a shot of it with a little bit more of the room:
Last, but definitely not least, is our beautiful Daredevil piece.
Leslie had this gorgeous piece commissioned as a wedding present by popular Marvel Comics artist Alex Maleev.
Thus completes your tour of our art gallery! Of course there are still many spots in our house that could use the right piece. And there are still arguments to be had over whether or not something has the right to be hung. Frankly, I don’t see why there needs to be a discussion on whether or not my Army of Darkness poster, signed by Bruce Campbell, should be hung in the guest room.
neighborhood in the news
On-line magazine Rue just did a photo shoot in one of our neighbor’s homes. Head on over to their site to see their fancy schmancy holiday issue and a handful of photos from a great MCM home. The photos in Northcrest start on page 46.
(Shout out to our pals over at Home Sweet Split-Level for sending this out on our neighborhood message board. Thanks!)
be our guest
Sorry in advance for the photo-heavy post, but I’m in love with our guest bedroom.
We have some very special guests coming to stay with us in a couple weeks, so we’ve been slowly readying the guest room for awhile. Mostly it was full of stuff we’d previously used for our master bedroom, and random assorted furniture (well, the latter part is still kinda true).
Originally we were thinking we’d go pretty modern in this room. We were thinking of blacks, grays and yellows or grays and bright greens, but we just couldn’t find pieces that were fitting. One day we stumbled on a duvet on sale at West Elm and went in another direction entirely. I think it sort of looks like a modern treehouse room.
See? It sort of fits. The wood ceiling really makes the treehouse vibe work.
This is the duvet we got at West Elm. Here is what’s left online.
Here’s where you start to notice the random pieces of furniture. We have an Ikea night stand and dresser in this room that we eventually want to replace with some vintage pieces. Just haven’t stumbled on the right ones yet.
On the left side of the bed are two of my favorite things: a sewing chair and stool that used to belong to my great grandmother.
I’ve actually seen an exact match of the chair in a local antique store, but my great-grandpa sort of ‘hacked’ this one. He made the seat deeper (for more storage) and put it on wheels (for easier scootin’ around a sewing room).
Here is a close-up of the fabric on the chair. It clashes with everything, but I love it. They’re in the guest room not because they match, but because this room is off-limits to the cats at all times.
The inside of the sewing chair is still filled with my grandmother’s spools of thread. I think I’ve only used one spool since she passed away. When I open it up, it smells like my grandma’s sewing room and brings back a million childhood memories. I hate to open it too much because I’m afraid the smell will fade and lose it’s magic.
This is also on the wall to the left of the bed. Random wire flower thinggies I found at Target. I don’t love-love it, but it fills up an otherwise blank wall.
Here’s the other side of the room (and Friday being sneaky). This is the other Ikea piece we’d like to replace soon. The circle mirror between the bathroom and bedroom doors is from West Elm too.
On the dresser is another little bit of memorabilia from my great grandma.
This is a little dachshund that looks like her beloved dog, Dixie. (Dixie passed away long before I was born.)
This little jewelry box is filled with some of her brooches and pins.
One of the drawers in her jewelry box is filled with diaper pins. They were either used on my mom or me (or both), no one remembers. But they were special enough for her to keep.
Today we just hung some bamboo shades in the windows. This room gets a little warm in the afternoons, so we wanted something to block out the sun a bit. The shades are from Lowe’s and the curtains are from World Market.
This room has great views of the trees and creek in our backyard, and our rickety back deck. Again, this definitely helps out the treehouse-vibe.
Here’s a close up of the bedding. We found the quilt at TJMaxx, it’s Storehouse brand. And by chance it matches the Target bedskirt.
We also relocated the doxie pillow from Fab. He’s safer in this room than on our couch, where our actual doxie thinks she belongs.
And to finish things off, I’ll end with a few photos of the guest bathroom. Not much has changed here, but the bedroom and bathroom are definitely more cohesive than they were before.
All of the tile is original.
And, again, a ceiling shot. I seriously love the ceilings in this house.
So that’s the guest room. It’s mostly done, with the exception of a few vintage furniture pieces and some finishing touches for the walls.
Now come visit us!
couch potatoes
Haven’t posted anything in a bit, but we’ve finally got some news to talk about: we got a new couch! I know, I know, it’s just a couch, but you wouldn’t believe what we went through to get this couch. The stores we drove to, the sales people we had to deal with. We purchased our old couches around 2004, and while they were still very comfortable, they don’t really fit the style of the house and the animals have beaten them up over the years.
This was our living room set up with the old couches.
What’s that? Oh yeah, we got a new coffee table too. It’s nothing too fancy. It’s a vintage piece we got at Highland Row Antiques. It has a veneer top and it’s got a couple dings and scratches, but it was only $20 and it fits the style of the house.
Anyway, so after visiting a ton of different furniture joints, we finally settled on a couch. And yes, it also ended up being the most expensive one we liked. Here’s our new living room set up.
We found the couch at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. It’s part of the Dexter collection (perhaps it was inspired by serial killers?). And this is silly, but we also found a cool dachshund pillow on fab.com. We like it because of our doxie, but it really looks great on a long couch.
So the room is now on it’s way to being finished. We’re looking at some options for art to go on the wall behind the couch. And we’d eventually like to get some sort of loveseat. For now we’re just happy to have retired our old couches.
the Northcrest tour of homes!
Today was the Tour of Homes Northcrest. Several folks in the neighborhood welcomed us into their beautiful homes. I’d like to share a few of the great things that I saw.
kitchen beast: defeated!
Hooray! The kitchen is finally finished! No more dinners at Taco Bell! No more washing dishes in the bathtub!
All things considered it really wasn’t that bad and the wait wasn’t too long. We had a lot of help and we’re so thankful for everyone that contributed to our new kitchen.
We have a ton of photos to share of the new kitchen, but before we do, let’s take a walk down memory lane and take a look at what our original kitchen looked like…
So this is what you used to see as soon as you walked into the house. On the left is the staircase heading downstairs, and on the right is a giant wall of black walnut. There was no light in the entryway, so at night it felt like you were walking into a cave.
This is the view of the front door from the living room. The kitchen is through that tiny opening on the left.
And here are some shots from inside the kitchen. It was a small and contained box and there wasn’t enough room for two people to be in there and not get in each other’s way. Our friend Rick described the typical kitchen models in our neighborhood as the original housewife’s cubical, and at one point I’m sure that’s how it was intended.
These are our awesome, modern appliances, sticking out like a sore thumb in our woefully outdated kitchen.
This shot is back a bit more to include our dining room area.
Here is our dining room space. We’ve had this set of table and chairs almost as long as we’ve been together. They’re pretty modern and kind of work with the old and new kitchen, but they’re getting a bit rickety and will be replaced at some point.
And that was the old kitchen! It was fine for a while, but it just didn’t have the space and function that we needed. We wanted something that was more modern, practical, and open…
And here is the new kitchen! This is the first thing you see when you walk in the door. The space is now open with plenty of room to move around. The cabinets are a light maple. We wanted a light cabinet to open up the space since we have dark pine ceilings. We decided to go with quartz countertops (Silestone) because it matched the style of the house better than granite options we looked at.
The island is one of our favorite features in the new kitchen. It’s enormous! They could have filmed a season of Lost on this thing! After seeing the drawers installed we changed our mind on what hardware we wanted to use in the kitchen. We wanted hardware that was as minimal as possible and didn’t take away from the sexiness the island had without hardware.
And finally, our dining room window is Friday’s favorite spot in the house. She likes to watch everything that’s going on outside and bark and neighbors and such. We decided to get her a new bed from molly mutt bed that matched the style of our house and our new kitchen. She seems to dig it.
And there you have it. It took a few months to complete, but it was well worth the headaches. You might have noticed that there is a space between the two cabinets on the back wall by the dinner table. Eventually that wall will have shelves between the cabinets so we can display our fancy, schmancy vintage plates and such. Hopefully that is coming soon. We’ve also got a few finishing touches to do (baseboards, paint, etc.) and we’re still contemplating whether or not to do a tile backspash of some sort.
Overall we are thrilled with the result. We both still walk in there and can’t believe it’s our kitchen. We’re already starting to forget what the old one looked like!
the japanese maple
Since we moved into our house the Japanese Maple in our back yard has been one of my favorite things our property has to offer. And it’s finally the time of year for its leaves to show!
We have another baby Japanese Maple that we planted in a rock garden in the front of the house. It’s going to be years before it makes it to the size of the granddaddy in the backyard, but over the past year it’s definitely shown some progress.
