Projects!

Ok, so one of the reasons I started this was to document and share my crafty projects. After I was on my way to buying this house, and therefore done with studying hundreds of for sale postings on the internet, my attention turned to decorating this beast (and I use "beast" in terms of size, she's already a very beautiful lady). I started perusing designspongeonline.com and craftynest.com for fun and cheap DIY (do it yourself) house projects. I've gotten some cool ideas, and thought I'd share my before and afters too.

The projects started before I moved in, as I had almost 2 months to be anxious about the fact that I was moving into a huge house with no furniture. Here are the first two creations, which were done over many hours of watching "The Wire" and "Firefly" at the old house.

Project 1: Decoupage Coffee table

I had subscriptions to Baltimore Magazine, Johns Hopkins Mag, Entertainment Weekly, and Wired. I hate throwing things away, so all of these had piled up for about 3+ months (which means over 12 issues of EW). I wanted to put all the fancy patterns and pics to use, then recycle the rest.

I found a listing for a coffee table on craigslist for $10 less than a mile away, so I picked it up immediately. I misplaced the "before" picture, but it was all birchwood legs, with a cheap looking laminate top, and was majorly scuffed and discolored.

After hours of gluing little pieces of magazine scraps to the surface with a couple of bottles of Elemer's Glue and a spackling spatula, applying a couple of coats of a spray laquer, and painting the legs black, voila!



I kept saying that if it was cool I'd be proud, but if it was tacky I could just resell on craigslist. Needless to say, I'm pretty proud.

Yes, Obama is well represented in the table, but its a sign of the times! Magazines love him!

Project 2: Glider chair

While visiting the parents house in June, I was practically glued to their glider chair in the kitchen/den. I found an ugly one on craigslist for $20 and made it a little more dodern and awesome with some nice fabric and black spray paint.

Before:

Achieved with a couple stitches into the original fabric and a bit of "No-stitch glue" because I am lazy. I think it really pops. Gregory loves sleeping on it too, but that is true about most surfaces in the house. :)


Next post: My Arizona Iced tea inspired bathroom.

And me + Gregory + house!

Yes, this is an awkward make-the-cat-look-like-he's-not-running-away pic, but here we are with my new house.

Note the new paint job on the door (Thanks, Mom!) and the flowers, which are fighting for their lives in this summer heat.

Off to see a flick on the Hill (first time!) with Polish kielbasa, pierogies, and wine in tow.

Next goal is to get the inside of the house presentable enough to show off, which would be easier if there wasn't so much fun stuff going on! Artscape this weekend! I really need to lock myself in the house and paint my bedroom, as the yellowish-beige on every wall of the house is getting to me, but the Butterfly potatoes and chicken-on-a-stick are a-calling to me.

Welcome to my new home

Thanks for visiting!

Here's my story: sometime in the last year with the magic combination of a) me having a lovely job that seems to have no intention to stop paying me anytime soon, b) said job willing to reimburse for a MS program, which I plan to take advantage of starting in the fall (part-time = 3+ years!!!), c) the economy going to shit and the housing market with it, d) the lovely $8000 first-time homebuyer credit...I thought it was time to stop renting. I guess in December or so I semi-arbitrarily decided that I should buy a house by summer. Skip through the searching and the 40 houses I looked at and logged detailed notes about in an excel file (I'm such a nerd), and I bought the perfect little (but not so little) house a block from Patterson Park. While it was totally rehabbed recently, there is still much to be done to make it worthy of me calling it home, i.e. fantastic.

Since I got this "I"m going grow up and own something" idea, I've been glued to HGTV and home-interior design blogs. Though an engineer by trade, I'm beginning to flex my creative side more. I see things and think "I can do that!" This will chronicle my successes and failures in designing my house and share pics with my friends and family who are far away but should still suck it up and make the trip to visit me.

Here's the pic of the house before I moved in, and later I'll add a pic of the Ashley-fied version!