Art: interior design | myMCMlife.com

Mission Accomplished: It’s a Dresser

03/18/2013

My big goal for this weekend was to find a dresser for the bedroom our future foster kids will stay in. Eventually, I’d like to add a beautiful vintage dresser but for now we just needed any dresser. I found this specimen for $22.99 at a thrift store in our neighborhood. I spent about 3 hours repairing, sanding and painting it. I spent another $12 on handles and hardware. It’s not big but it will work for now. I painted it the same color green as the little 2 drawer nightstand I painted a couple years ago for our first kids’ room that’s now in Ali’s room. Eventually they may end up in the same room. So here’s my wonky little weekend DIY project, before:

And after:

I need to call our case worker to double-check but I believe all of our requirements to reopen our home as foster parents are now met. BIG SIGH!

…

Preparing for Foster Kids: Bedroom Tour (the 1st time)

New Home Tour: Nursery (Alianna’s Room)

Room to Grow: Making a Bedroom for Foster Kids (the 2nd time)

3 Comments | Art, Art: furnishing restoration, Art: interior design, Art: new home kids room, Family, Family: Foster Parenting | Tagged: bedroom, DIY, dresser, foster care, foster kids, foster parenting, home safety, storage | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home Tour: Master Bathroom

03/14/2013

At our last house Jason and I built and tiled a custom 4’x5′ shower with two shower heads for our master bathroom, inspired by the house in Costa Rica we stayed at for my sister and brother-in-law’s wedding. It was huge! Our architect was determined to make sure our new master bathroom was not a downgrade so this one is even bigger. And the best part about it is that we have enough water pressure in this house to use two shower heads at the same time…although the hot water does run out a lot faster. It’s awesome in a private locker room kind of way. I like to joke with Jason that when we’re old we’ll be able to hobble our walkers right in here.

The pretty orchid was a housewarming gift from the couple across the street.

I love the natural light that pours into this room and especially the shower. I have bad vision without my glasses on and natural light in the shower helps me see. Notice that no electric lights are turned on in any of these pictures. It’s that bright, even on a cloudy day.

Sources can be found on this post I did about our master bathroom plan. The only change is the towels and bathmat, which we ended up getting from Target.

…

FYI, our architect is Ryan Thewes.

New Home Tour: Kitchen

New Home Tour: Living Room

New Home Tour: Dining Room

New Home Tour: Den/Playroom

New Home Tour: Nursery (Alianna’s Room)

Room to Grow: Making a Bedroom for Foster Kids

2 Comments | Art, Art: house tour, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: bathroom, home tour, house tour, master bathroom, spa | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home Tour: Nursery (Alianna’s Room)

03/05/2013

This is the only room of the house that I couldn’t photograph during Ali’s nap so she’s demonstrating how she uses her room. She loves her pushing buttons on her CD player and yanking the pillow and blankets (for Mama’s comfort) off of her rocking chair so she can climb up in it to look at her books.

Here’s a floor plan in case anyone likes them as much as me. Her room is about 10×11 ft not including the doorway.

About this room.

I fell in love with colored cribs when I was planning a nursery the first time around. This one (SOMNAT) is from IKEA a couple years ago, no longer available.

The pink blanket in her crib was made for her by her Great Aunt Janice. The white Care Bears blanket was her first baby blanket from her birth mom. The stuffed brown spaniel was bought by us for our first baby, before we knew she existed. The white bear was a gift from the magistrate who granted us custody of Ali. The aardvark was a gift from good friends and her birthday buddy Jonas has the same one.

The hand painted name banner above the crib was an adoption gift from a high school youth group friend of ours.

The flower on the wall and the “A” pillow on the rocking chair were adoption gifts from a co-worker. She made the pillow. The green quilt on the rocking chair was made for Ali by her Great Aunt Linda.

The crocheted toy and the two cross-stitch pieces framed on the wall were made by Nana (Jason’s mom). The butterfly wood puzzle above the frame and the owl wall hooks that hold her backpack were gifts from Aunt Jess (my sister) and Uncle Jeff. The monkey poster was a gift from the same friend who gave Ali the aardvark. The heart banner I made for Valentine’s Day and then moved in here because that big white wall was driving me nuts.

The Eames replica rocking chair was from here. (I love it!)

The dresser, night stand (painted by me) and yellow lamp are vintage. It took me months to find a changing table height dresser that was narrow enough to fit in the kids room at our last house. I’d be happy to have a longer one here now.

The curtains are IKEA and were discontinued. I based the whole color palette of her room on them before purchasing so thank God for eBay! They tie together the blue crib and rugs, pink wall and yellow lamp. The book ledges (RIBBA), rugs (TOFTBO) and toy boxes are also from IKEA.

…

FYI, our architect is Ryan Thewes.

New Home Tour: Kitchen

New Home Tour: Living Room

New Home Tour: Dining Room

New Home Tour: Den/Playroom

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: house tour, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Art: new home nursery | Tagged: ali's room, alianna, baby, home tour, house tour, kids room, nursery, precious | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home Tour: Den/Playroom

02/28/2013

Depending on the angle of the photo, it looks like a den…

But 98% of the time it’s a playroom. (Technically, it’s a guest room, too, though it hasn’t been used as such yet. Someday it’ll be a bedroom.)

The closet is full of books, toys and games.

A few things to note about this room:

The sofa is vintage. We’d like to reupholster it someday but it’s not in bad shape and the pull out mattress is in excellent shape.

The rug is from Urban Outfitters. I purchased it for a staging project right before we moved in. We had it in the living room for a little while but it was way too small in there. It’s perfect in here.

This room is the smallest bedroom in the house but the super high ceilings make if feel big and the high windows and concrete wall make it very unique. I’m hoping a teenager will love it as a bedroom someday.

The play stove is second-hand, hand made but someone. I got it at a yard sale. It was Ali’s adoption day gift.

Ali’s navy table was a Christmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa. The metal folding chair is vintage from an estate sale in my neighborhood. I got it when I was putting together our first room for future foster kids.

The small guitar was a baby shower gift before our first placement. It’s still a bit too complex for Ali but she likes to bang on it, August Rush style. The blue guitar is really special to me. It was the guitar Jason first learned to play guitar on…it deserves it’s own post.

The TV is not attached to anything except power. Eventually we plan to get another Roku box for this room (which we use for Hulu and Netflix) and attach a DVD player. We’ll also need some kind of shelving for that.

The robot decals I won from a giveaway on Design Mom. Ali loves to give them kisses.

Ali’s favorite activities right now are the slide (going down and sending toys down) and sitting at her table to play with stickers

…

FYI, our architect is Ryan Thewes.

New Home Tour: Kitchen

New Home Tour: Living Room

New Home Tour: Dining Room

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: house tour, Art: interior design, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: den, kids, new home tour, new house, parenting, playroom, toys | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home Tour: Dining Room

02/25/2013

Our dining room is sunny, shiny and functional. It’s pretty minimalist for now, which helps with keeping it clean when you have a 19 month old. It overlooks our courtyard and natural light pours in all day long.

I’m very happy with our impulsive decision to get the big version of the IKEA MASKROS light for this room.

Besides the planet-size chandelier, the biggest statement of the dining room is the exposed concrete block wall that runs along the face of most of our house, including the courtyard.

This room gets some pretty amazing sunlight. Lunch time is particularly nice.

It may not look like it since it’s all sparkly clean for these photos, but we’re one of those weird families that all sits down together to eat here every evening. We hold hands and thank God for the food and then we all sit together until everyone is finished. Strange, huh? I love having six chairs even though we only use 2 plus a high chair most days – it feels like we’re always ready for more.

In a dream world, I’d add a rug under this table but with the amount of food that ends up under the high chair, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. A tarp maybe, but not a rug! This sweet puppy helps a lot with food clean up but she’s a picky eater. Lucy won’t eat any vegetables except raw onions, very little fruit and no seafood.

This big blank wall is just begging for art. I know what I want to put here but it’s not going to be cheap to get a giant canvas or poster made. So we wait. Good thing we like white walls. We’d also like put a credenza or hutch against that wall.

FYI, our architect is Ryan Thewes.

New Home Tour: Kitchen

New Home Tour: Living Room

4 Comments | Art, Art: house tour, Art: interior design | Tagged: dining room, home, home tour, house tour, mid-century modern, modern | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home Tour: Living Room

02/21/2013

My other favorite room in our house is the the living room. It’s the perfect spot for my morning quiet time, for playing together as a family, for an afternoon cup of tea while the toddler naps, for chatting with visitors, for a late night crackling fire in the fireplace.

Eventually we’re going to get a big soft rug and a sofa that better fits the space. I love these birds and how the sunlight moves across the blue wall like geometric clouds.

I absolutely love the clerestory windows and the light shelf below them. We have strings of LED lights up there for a soft glow in the evening.

That’s a pocket door that ~~leads into~~ hides my work room (office, laundry, crafts). I always wanted a pocket door.

We’re still deciding on some large scale art for that big white wall on the right.

In the summer the foliage in the backyard is so thick we can hardly see our neighbor’s house. In the winter, Ms. Dawn gets to watch us having dance parties in our living room while she stands at her kitchen sink. We don’t mind.

We only keep a few toys in the living room since we have a den/playroom and Ali has a bedroom for her belongings. It’s nice to have a few smaller toys for her out here, though.

I put this flow chart where I’d walk past it every morning on the way to work.

I found this in Jason’s grandma’s basement a couple years ago.

We wanted to keep the living room separated from the kitchen and dining room but still feel like one big open great room. This floating wall was the perfect solution for us.

Yes, we scarred our beautiful fireplace with the dreaded big black box. Let’s face it…we use it more than the fireplace even though we’re really not much of TV watchers. Ali sometimes watches 1 or 2 shows a day on Netflix, like Dora the Explorer, Yo Gabba Gabba or Seseme Street. It’s a nice down time for all of us and some days is the only way I can get dinner made or laundry folded.

Thanks for stopping by!

FYI, our architect is Ryan Thewes.

Kids Room: A Theme Developed

02/18/2013

When I started pulling together the bedroom for our next kids, the ones who will join us through foster care, I really didn’t have a theme in mind. I was just trying to use what we had. The woodland friends curtain was from the kids room at our last house and what prompted me to use green for the accent wall color. The bedding was also from the previous room.

I ordered a Nashville road map from AAA because it was a way to get a large, colorful, free piece of art for the wall. I also thought it might be helpful for older kids to see where our house is in relation to where they used to live.

As I was going through our art collection one day, I decided this room would be a nice place to display our Hatch Show Print posters. (Hatch is a historic letterpress print shop in downtown Nashville that’s famous for their concert posters.) Jason wanted to throw my old acoustic guitar away but I saved it, thinking again about older kids.

As I looked around the almost completed room, I noticed a lot of music related items and considered replacing the woodland friends curtain, even though it had been my starting point. Just yesterday it hit me! The theme of the room is the one thing every kid who lives here will have in common: Nashville. Our house is not far from Hatch Show Print in downtown Nashville. We’re also close to Shelby Park so we see lots of trees, owls and squirrels here. I love when something comes together organically like that.

(I wrote this post from my phone so please forgive me for their weird formatting and any typos.)

2 Comments | Art, Art: interior design, Art: kids room, Family, Family: Foster Parenting | Tagged: foster care, foster kids, guitar, kids room, music city, Nashville | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Sylvester Sofa Sale!

02/14/2013

Say that 3x fast! Jason and I have decided it’s time to say so long to the sectional sofa we spent a big part of the summer reupholstering, so we’ve reduced the price to move it quickly. While we love it to pieces it’s just not right for us and our home for two reasons: 1. The shape doesn’t suit our living room very well. It makes an almost equal size “L” (about 8’x9′ I think) and our living room is more rectangular. We realized a longer straight sofa would suit our space much better. 2. It’s too precious for our young family. We’re pretty careful with our belongings but not only do we have a toddler whose friends often come over to play, we’re getting ready to open our home up to more kiddos of various ages and furniture-respecting backgrounds. We’d hate to see something abusive happen to Ol’ Sly so we’re hoping he’s a perfect fit for someone else’s abode.

Hope on over to ReAbide for more details on the Sylvester Sectional Sofa.
Contact me at Martina (at) ReAbide [dot] com if you’d like more information.

(In case anyone is wondering, I would love to keep this sectional for home staging. It’s very versatile for that purpose. I’m still considering that option; however selling it would make it more affordable for us to buy a different sofa for our living room…and that might be more important right now.)

1 Comment | Art, Art: furnishing restoration, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: ReAbide | Tagged: furniture, mid-century modern, reabide, restoration, vintage | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Master Bedroom Ideas

02/12/2013

I’m planning on doing virtual tours of more rooms of our new home. (Kitchen tour here.) In fact, I’ve already taken photos of Ali’s room, the next kids room, the den, the dining room, the living room and the master bathroom…however my computer doesn’t have enough free memory to upload the pictures from my camera. So yeah, I need to deal with that. One room you will not be seeing photos of any time soon, however, is the master bedroom. We currently have our mattress on the floor, a headboard leaning against the wall, end tables that are too big, temporary curtains and three big plastic storage totes that we haven’t found space for yet. So if that conjures up a visual, that’s the best I can offer.

I have started collecting inspiration, though. We definitely want to do an accent wall behind the bed, most likely with wallpaper. I didn’t take a photo of the headboard yet but its the same color wood as the dresser with a black horizontal stripe. We have lamps that we want to use but need a fresh coat of spray paint. I’m stuck on orange for some reason. I sent Jason these two initial ideas.

While I love the wallpaper on the left (by Orla Kiely), the one on the right feels cozy and warm. The one on the left is more masculine so it’s not surprising that Jason liked it better. I decided to take another stab at it after I discovered that Urban Outfitters sells wallpaper.

I’m liking #4 best with either this or the light gray wallpaper.

Some big art for above the dresser with orange in it would be another nice addition. This is all just dreaming and brainstorming right now since we don’t have any budget for any of this right now. First order of business: build a bed frame for our vintage headboard and footboard so we can get our mattress off the floor.

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: interior design, Art: master bedroom redo, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: interior design, master bedroom | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home Tour: Kitchen

01/25/2013

Well, I suppose it’s about time that I start giving a virtual tour of our new home. Y’all were so patient and encouraging during the building process and now that we’re getting more and more settled in, I’m feeling ready to start sharing some rooms. Let’s kick this thing off with the kitchen, which is quite possibly my favorite room of the house. I’ve been challenging myself to take over more of the family cooking and I’m starting to really enjoy it…due in part to how much I love the functionality and atmosphere of this room. Everything ended up just like my plan with a few additions thanks to our friend Andy at Markraft Kitchens.

When I walk through the front door, this is my view of the kitchen.

Having an open shelf for cookbooks was on my dream kitchen wish list. We also have a medicine lockbox (DCS requirement) for our daily vitamins and tissues. Ali won’t leave anything on this shelf alone.

I was originally going to get silver stools but I decided we needed some color up in here. Our countertops extend out about 12″ there for casual conversation with friends while we’re cooking.

Another dream kitchen wish list item: a corner cabinet facing out under the bar toward the dining room. It ended up being the perfect spot for Lucy’s food and accessories, and her water bowl is very close to the sink. Perfect.

This section of cabinets is the pantry, coffee/tea bar and home of the small appliances.

Another dream kitchen wish list item. This coffee/tea bar turned out even better than I had envisioned. We use this everyday, many times a day.

I prefer to keep my microwave and toaster oven hidden so he’s where they live. I’m so glad that Andy, our cabinet guru, found a way to make this work for us.

That door there is our coat closet.

We’re planning to add a tile backspace eventually. I really love the light we get in this space.

Our architect, Ryan Thewes, was so thoughtful and thorough with his planning of window placement. The clerestory windows let in a ton of light, mostly indirect. We never need to turn lights on during the day.

Besides the cookbook shelf, one open shelf for our everyday dishes and glasses was at the top of my dream kitchen wish list. BAM. Exactly how I wanted it!

This was a last minute addition to our kitchen plan: a pull out drawer for the trash and recycling. I’m so glad we did this. It’s really practical and I like that it’s close to the front door (the one on the left) where we walk in with the junk mail and go out with the trash.

I’m getting used to cooking with gas. My favorite part of the Whirlpool White Ice gas range is the knobs.

So that’s it, my dream kitchen!

Sources:

Floors: natural, unstained, utility grade hickory
Cabinets: walnut-stained cherry and white thermofoil sold through Markraft
Countertops: Kashmir granite
Appliances: Whirlpool White Ice
Pendant lights: IKEA
Big A: ReAbide
Stools: Tabouret on Overstock.com
Love Bacon print: Matt Butler on Etsy
Wall color: Greek Villa by Sherwin Williams

If I skipped anything you’re curious about, just ask!

6 Comments | Art, Art: house tour, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Art: new home build | Tagged: home tour, house tour, interior design, kitchen, mid-century modern, modern | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

myMCMlife.com

Mission Accomplished: It’s a Dresser

New Home Tour: Master Bathroom

New Home Tour: Nursery (Alianna’s Room)

New Home Tour: Den/Playroom

New Home Tour: Dining Room

New Home Tour: Living Room

Kids Room: A Theme Developed

Sylvester Sofa Sale!

Master Bedroom Ideas

New Home Tour: Kitchen

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