New Year, Old Rugs

Happy New Year! 🥳 2024 is going to be the year of color! Who's tired of Beige? Greige? Grey? All things monotone and natural?  In my humble opinion, your house should bring you joy and comfort. It shouldn't subscribe to some Shea McGee standard of decorating where you bought everything at Target to decorate your house. Get out there and pillage your local thrift stores and FB marketplace. Decorate your house the way you want to and not succumb to what Instagram thinks looks great. Buying things second hand also eliminates purchasing items made in China and has chemical off-gassing.   This year, spend less, and give your house the color and character is so drastically needs.  

My new old Rug is from the 1920's, a Persian Spartan Antique rug with lots of Navy and Maroon/pink wool. It's 9 x 12 and I snatched it up from my local Restore. It had been donated by The Persian Carpet Company across the street.   I got it for an embarrassingly low price.   I saved even more money by laundering it myself with the good ol' garden hose, a bucket of dish soap and water, and a scrub brush.  It air dried for several days in my garage with fans running.  This corner of the room needs more color or perhaps I leave it neutral and let the rug shine.

I purchased the rug in late November and it took several weeks to launder so I had time to give my lampshades new pleated fabric from Joann's. I wanted to add even more color that would go with the rug. I also found this beautiful wool throw blanket from an Etsy seller called SultansGem.  

My vintage knitted Peacock feather tablecloth works so well in here and I have new books to read for the new year. One is called the Secret Gardens of the Cotswolds. A place I'd like to visit some day.

Does anyone else leave up their New Year's Eve lights all through January?  It really helps me cope with the loss my Christmas decorations. 

Also I don't care if my living room/house makes me look 80 years old.  80 year olds know what's up. 

 Happy New Year, now who's down for Thrifting??

xo

Cathleen

Café Curtains in white

Our Formal eating area overlooks the living room and it flows in one big space.  The idea of having café curtains in this area is two fold. One to create some privacy from backyard and to still allow light into the living room. I love curtains and don't really like blinds, but these large windows make it quite difficult to open and close drapes.  

When I stumbled upon Rejuvenation and saw these brass café curtain rods and rings I knew they would work perfectly in these windows. I wanted them to be inside mounted and also to match the curtain rods at the tops of the windows. Here is a link to these custom fit rods and solid brass rings. I needed four rods and 40 rings for 4 windows. The white drapes are from Wayfair and I love that they are sheer but provide total privacy.   

                            

I had put to throw in a photo of my new coffee table book that really cheers up my living room in the new year. Veranda's "A Room of One's Own."

I got a new throw pillow from West Elm too. I hit up the after Christmas sale and found a few treasures.  It has a pretty metallic material that goes great for January. It's called the Watercolor Fragments Brocade Pillow.

The café curtains look great closed or open. I love how the rings make them easy to open and close too (as opposed to inserting the rod into the fabric.)

With all the  holiday decorations gone, I'm loving just a few simple garlands of lights and black pom poms on the mantel. I also kept some dried golden hydrangeas. I don't want to part with them. 

In the eat in kitchen I also added a brass café rod, but this one is a long tension rod from Home Depot. This window is approximately 70" wide so Rejuvenation didn't have that width.  I used 4 of the curtains from Wayfair. 

Hope this inspires you to use Café Curtains in your home. I think they're back in style!

xo

Cathleen

 

New Pics

It's been a minute since I've updated some of the house pics. Things change around here and I don't always remember to update everyone. Since I've last posted, right before my Mom came to visit in November we had the downstairs painted, which wasn't all that exciting, but it sure did freshen the place up. The downstairs used to be a flat sheen in a Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray. Basically what the builders used. I wanted the paint to be a Satin Sheen and so I applied Paper White by Benjamin Moore *same as upstairs hallways. I loved it up there so figured it would work downstairs too.

Some close ups of the artwork too -mostly a mix of Etsy finds, original sibling art (thanks @Retrolyte) and Grandma's artwork.  If you're going to put a gallery in your house, I highly recommend mixing new art with old and mixing up the frames. Also using things that you love and make you happy. 

I also updated the rug, since the old one had a lot of damage from puppy nails. The potted plant in the corner was a holiday find and is still going strong. Bonus, my Mom helped me plant it while she were here.

A few furniture updates to the living room have been made as well and Joe and I slapped up some peel and stick wallpaper behind the TV.  Doesn't it look like real painted brick?  The windows were all trimmed with craftsman style wood trim a while back but I never got around to showing you.

I found the floral chairs from CB2 and I just love them. They add a nice vintage Italian charm to the space and definitely are the new focal point.

I found a new large area rug as well. Having a new puppy just really was a doozy for our floor coverings. Plus the old one was around for a while and had seen better days.

The black leather sofa from CB2 as well is called "Seville" and is made of Buffalo leather. The quality is suburb and should last forever.

I love how bright and clean everything feels now, especially in January when all the holiday decor goes and you're left with a clean palette again.  And someone over there in the corner is looking like she needs a little fun!

I'm going to spend some of January photographing some other rooms that haven't been shown in a while. As well as spend time thinking about the Master Bedroom color. 2020 seems like it's going to be a good year. 

xo

Cathleen

Building Built-ins

When we moved out of our house where my husband had built built-in's we lost a great deal of storage.  In our new home we have cute little nooks on either side of the fire place. A perfect location to build built-ins. The builder of our house said we should hire this out because they wouldn't do a great job.  Thanks for the honesty! We don't hire things out, so it was a great DIY project to start out with.  And I was getting pretty frustrated looking at stuff all over the ground.

BEFORE

Joe bought  3/4" wood, 1/2" trim for outer edges, 1/4" trim for inner edges, and base molding from Lowes. There are several steps here that I'm leaving out because the hubs is WAY too busy to pin down right now. In fact I think he's training some people in China right now on Skype! LOL.

Both sides have holes drilled in the back for cords to run down to the outlets.

The boys helped sand all the shelves before I painted them.  These kids love earning video game time. Did I bribe them? Yes yes I did. Totally worth it.

It took three coats of white semi-gloss paint to get a nice finish. In hindsight I wish I had use an oil based paint for a harder finish.

After about three days of drying I started to add things in. I shopped around in the house for cute baskets and items that I wanted out.  This will probably change up, but for now I'm happy to have things off of the floor!

AFTER

So thankful for a handy husband! Can't wait to add a pretty light fixture in here, some window treatments, crown molding, and extra seating.

xo
Cathleen