Front Garden Expansion: Phase 5

09/21/2011

Yesterday’s post inspired me to finish another series I started months ago. Here is the final (for now) phase of our front garden expansion project. Recap: Jason plotted out the garden expansion by cropping the grass really low. Then I helped him put WeedBlock down over the whole area (750+ sq. ft.!). We positioned and planted the first set of grasses and cacti. We got a big delivery of gravel. And now here we are. Jason got some brown metal landscape edging from the hardware store. We decided to go with metal over plastic this time because we’re assuming it will last a lot longer (and not get mangled by the occasional lawn mower clip.) Jason also added a few more plants and moved a pretty blue pot from the back patio out to the front. I love it. Jason did an awesome job with this whole project. I’m really thankful that he loves gardening because he makes our yard look super.

Also, Jason is frugal. (Praise the Lord!) He likes to buy medium size plants and split them up to save money. Yes, it looks a bit sparse now but it will fill in a lot over the next couple of years. Patience, young grasshopper.

The papery, blue-green grasses below are new. I have no idea what they are. If you care, leave a comment and Jason will respond.

Some already established plants now feel unbalanced in this corner but not for long.

3 Comments | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

IKEA 2012

08/18/2011

Have you looked through the IKEA 2012 catalog yet? I’ve skimmed but I haven’t had a chance to give it a thorough inspection yet. (I do that when I get the paper copy.) If you have, are you excited about any of the new products? I was intrigued and challenged by the Small Spaces video series.

I noticed that our SOMNAT crib went down $20 in price.

I’d love to have this poster…

Other than that nothing jumped out at me but I really enjoy browsing through the catalog every year. In several places IKEA succeeded in making these spaces look real and lived in. I love this. It’s a nice change from staged, perfect catalog images.

2 Comments | Art, Art: graphic design, Art: interior design, Art: modern design | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

07/29/2011

If you liked that Curtis Jeré style tree in our hallway, I saw these at Pier 1 recently. I like. HomeGoods often has similar metal wall art trees.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

House Tour: Hallway & Cloffice

07/27/2011

Hallway

Ah, the hallway. It’s so utilitarian. Attic access in the ceiling. Smoke detector. Carbon monoxide detector. Thermostat. Air intake. Doorways…

A couple of black and white photographs of Jason and I from my college photography class back in 2003 (shortly after we got married) hang on one wall. They’re not excellent photos but I like that I shot them with an old manual film camera and developed them myself.

At the end of the hallway hangs this brass tree. I spotted it on an estate sale website a few years ago and Jason was able to find it for me. I don’t remember what he paid for it… maybe $40? My relatives from Sweden wanted to buy it from us when they were visiting.

Cloffice

I actually spend a lot of time in this hallway thanks to my cloffice (closet+office). I wrote about the original transformation from a coat closet into a home office earlier this year. It hasn’t changed much since then, except that the hallway was painted SW greek white.

When Jason removed the closet door and doorway to give me more elbow room, there was a strip of the original hardwood floors missing. We came up with this simple solution of inlaying a piece of wood and painting it with white trim paint. I like how it defines the space and it has held up well to 6 months of chair rolling.

The desk is not very deep. It works well for using the computer and not much else, unless I move my keyboard, mouse and laptop stand out of the way. I love having two monitors, and though I think side by side would have been better, this works. I don’t believe I mentioned before that the desktop is removable; it’s sitting on two wooden rails and tightly wedged into place so it doesn’t move. We didn’t make it permanent because there is an access panel to get to the plumbing of the hall bathroom tub on the back of the closet. See it there behind my pen cup?

It feels as small as it looks. Or maybe it looks bigger than it feels. It’s a pretty tight work space and I find myself paying bills on the couch and blogging from bed more than I used to when I had a regular home office. But, this solution was so worth it to free up a bedroom for our future kids. That little cardboard owl cup serves as my waste basket. My printer was relocated to the living room bookshelf. I traded my scanner for a slim design that can slip onto the top shelf of my cloffice, between my portfolio and my storage boxes. The best thing about it being small is that I can’t afford to let it get messy.

7 Comments | Art, Art: Closet Office, Art: house tour, Art: interior design, Art: mcm thrift store find, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Vintage Floor Lamp

07/18/2011

Jason inherited a few unwanted furniture pieces from his late Grandma Joan. We made a short list of things in her house that we liked but didn’t expect we’d get unless no one else wanted them. We just didn’t want to see them get discarded. This floor lamp was one of them.

By the looks of it, it had been down in that basement for years, tarnished and covered with cobwebs. We decided to spray paint it to cover the tarnished areas with Rustoleum Antique Bronze. Each of the three lights has a (teak?) wood handle that we love. We wiped the wood clean with damp rags and then Jason rehydrated the wood with lemon oil. He sanded the rough spots on the metal with steel wool before spraying it. (I didn’t get a true before shot.)

We’re not sure where we’ll end up using it but for now we’re enjoying it as a piece of art in the living room and we’re thankful it’s no longer rotting away in a basement in PA.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

CBB 3.0 – Update: FINISHED!

07/06/2011

The last month and a half of construction on our friends’ home build was such a flurry of progress that I didn’t get any pictorial updates in the middle of it. I did, however, insist that they give me 5 minutes to take these photos on the morning of moving day before we started dropping boxes and clothes everywhere.

The stairway up from the garage:

The dining area, with huge windows overlooking the woods of Shelby Park:

The kitchen:

This doorway between the kitchen and dining area leads into the living room:

Straight on is the coat closet at the top of the steps coming up from the garage. Pantry on the right:

A tile backsplash was put in a few days after these photos were taken:

Front door entryway (which probably won’t get used much):

Living room:

Guest room:

Hall bathroom. I love having natural light in the shower:

Hallway looking back toward the living room, dining room and kitchen:

Laundry room:

Nursery:

Master bedroom:

Master bathroom:

Through the master bathroom to get to the huge closet. The floors in the bathrooms and this closet are heated, stained concrete:

Hall closet:

Bonus room that will become an office and music room:

Jeremy took this picture of the back of the house the day they got the keys:

Jason has been helping them with their landscaping the past couple weeks:

Moving Day was bittersweet. We worked hard and I didn’t get a lot of time to reflect on it with Leila and Jeremy but for me, memories of May 1, 2010 kept flooding back to me. (Pun intentional.) Their new home is wonderful and beautiful and shiny. It’s HOME. After living out of suitcases, moving from borrowed space to borrowed space for the past 13 months, they’re finally home.. That part of it is wonderful.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how different this was than a traditional move. Nothing was packed and organized like it should have been. Clothes and computers were at Leila’s brother’s house and were moved in piles, shopping bags and suitcases. Antique furniture was in another friend’s basement and was muddy with river water, cracked, dirty. Their TV (which survived being half submerged in water) was at another friend’s house. The bulk of it was in a storage warehouse, mostly outdoor tools, Christmas decorations and some clothing. An oil changing pan slipped out of my hand and liquid splashed against the concrete floor. I scrambled to find some paper towels, thinking I’d be soaking up motor oil. It was muddy, putrid river water. At one point, I picked up a box to load into the silver bullet and recognized my own handwriting on it. When I’m packing, I always label boxes as specifically as I can. It said: “Light bulbs, socks, misc.” I remember packing that box. We had been wiping mud off of dishes and glasses all afternoon in the May sunshine and packing them carefully away. There were a lot of random bits and pieces at the end of the day so I did my best to pack and label them. I can’t remember was “misc” was… a battery, a lid, some keys, perhaps. Cleaning off broken belongings, finding things thought to be gone forever, wondering where certain items ended up… the process of unpacking and moving in to this beautiful new house may be harder for our friends than I expected.

A new chapter has started for Leila and J. Thank God they’re not overly sentimental about “stuff.” They lost almost all their material possessions last year but they’ve come out stronger and wiser. I’m excited to see what wonderful things lie ahead for them and I’m proud to call these fighters my friends.

(Picture from my niece’s birth day, February 24.)

4 Comments | Art, Art: CBB 3.0, Art: interior design, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Extended Family and Friends | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

House Tour: Kitchen & Dining Room

06/27/2011

Kitchen

Our living room connects to the kitchen and dining room. Just before we bought our house in 2007 it was fully renovated. The original hardwoods throughout the house were refinished, some walls were removed, everything was covered in a fresh coat of paint. The room the presumably had the most floor-to-ceiling changes was the kitchen. The cabinets are from IKEA. The countertops are square foot granite tiles. The floors are 2-ft travertine tiles. I love that it’s open and airy. It never feels too small to me, except when we have parties and everyone ends up standing around in the kitchen. (Why is that?)

Dining Room

Yes, it bothers me that the light in the dining room is not centered over the table. It’s even worse when the table is extended to it’s full length. Someday we’ll get around to fixing that… and probably changing the light altogether. It’s a small dining room but it works. The walls in the dining room and kitchen are Sherwin Williams Greek White. The door there leads into Jason’s studio (which used to be considered the den).

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

Overdue

06/22/2011

Last year Jason and I celebrated 7 years of marriage and 11 years since our first date. It was our 7-11 year. I had been wanting to get some professional pictures done. It was time; we hadn’t had any done since our wedding. Sitting in front of a backdrop at a department store isn’t our thing so we commissioned our friend Beth Rose, who is an awesome photographer, to do some lifestyle portraits for us. And I had the perfect idea. A 7-Eleven photo shoot. I envisioned a local Slurpee selling gas station as our setting. Problem is, there aren’t ANY 7-Elevens in Nashville. None in Atlanta where we go to IKEA. None in Naples, FL where we went on vacation last year. None in Cincinnati where we frequently visit our friends. So I shelved the idea. Then, over Christmas we planned to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Emmaus, PA. Before our trip, I looked it up and sure enough, there is a 7-Eleven right near his house. I had a new solution: bring Slurpee cups back home and do the photo in Nashville in the spring. BR was game. (The cup designs exceeded my expectations!) I convinced myself that as long as we did the shoot before May, it was technically still our 7-11 year. But, I’m overdue in sharing these since we’re now absolutely in our 8-12 year. Ah well. But now that you know the back story, the cups will make sense.

(Cup-free pictures were posted here.)

I’m thinking of getting one of the three above (where the cups are prominent) blown up to poster size for something funky/different for the house. Leaning towards the 2nd from the bottom. Do you have a favorite?

All photos by Beth Rose Photography bethrose.com

5 Comments | Art, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Jason, Family: Me | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Patio Dining Digs

06/20/2011

I wanted to follow up Last Monday’s finished fence post with a report on our favorite new spot to eat meals at home:

We had actually planned on building a new wood table this summer using these plans. But, while we were at IKEA a few weeks ago and possibly feeling a bit exhausted by all the projects we’ve been doing lately, we saw the perfect patio table (VINÖ). Suddenly, $180 sounded like an offer we couldn’t refuse.

Being the cheapsakes that we are, we refused to pay $60 a pop for the matching outdoor chairs and instead found some simple metal and plastic folding ones (JEFF) for $10. (6 for the price of 1? Thank ya!)

Please note, this table is the easiest IKEA assembly ever! The legs fold out and then 2 wing nuts get screwed on. It took 1 minute. We were so pumped that we moved on from there to start assembly of the KURA bed—coincidentally, the most complicated IKEA assembly ever…

Anyway, we’re loving how the fence creates a cozy, defined space around the patio and garden.

Our first dinner on the new table: shish kabobs with shrimp, onions and peppers; corn on the cob and sweet tea. Perfect.

Even more perfect because I got to share it with this guy.

Yay for one more project checked off our to do list and to a summer full of relaxing on the patio!

1 Comment | Art, Art: eating out, Art: gardening, Art: interior design, Art: modern design | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Preparing for Foster Kids: Bedroom Tour

06/16/2011

Our kids room is done-done-done. Ready to go. Just add kiddos!

I’m kind of in love with this room. It was so much fun to put together. It’s a mix of new and old. It’s a mix of patterns, textures and colors (mostly blue, green and gray … our favorites). It’s a mix of gifts, sentimental items and things purchased especially for our kiddos.

Sources: The walls are Ellie Gray by Sherwin Williams. The bed, crib, rugs (machine washable bathmats!), stuffed spaniel, stuffed vegetables, twin duvet, under bed storage box and book ledges are from IKEA. The twin sheets, lamp shade, and (shower) curtain are from Target. The alphabet animal poster, puzzle blocks, and alphabet flash cards are from Petit Collage (I won from a giveaway on Design Mom). The green quilt on the bed was a wedding gift handmade by a friend. The reading chair (reupholstered), night stand (painted), green crib sheet from Pottery Barn, stacking ring toy and full length mirror (painted) are all from yard sales. The yellow lamp is from a thrift store. The xylophone is from an estate sale. The Gee Wiz game on top of the dresser was a gift from an antique store given to us by a friend. The monkey poster is by French Paper gifted from the same friend. The mobile and toss pillows are handmade by me. The color wheel clock is from MOMA given to me by my Uncle Bob many years ago. The dinosaur is Jason’s from childhood. The chalkboard door was painted by me. The folding chair is from a yard sale. The dresser is from Target purchased second hand from craigslist (we’re still looking for a changing table height mid-century replacement). And lastly, the blue Sekova guitar originally belonged to Jason’s mom when she was a teenager and was the guitar Jason first learned to play on as a boy. In high school he painted it blue. It’s not playable now but I love that it’s finally displayed somewhere. It means a lot to me. I’m so proud of my incredibly talented husband, who is now living his dream as a professional guitarist.

Here’s the floor plan. It was quite a puzzle fitting a twin bed, crib, chair, dresser and night stand into a 10 x 11 room while still leaving some floor space for playing. Once we put the KURA bed together we decided to flip flop it and the night stand with the reading nook and wall mirror in my original plan. It just worked better with the design of the bed.

19 Comments | Art, Art: Bedoom for Foster Kids, Art: house tour, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Foster Parenting | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

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