House Ideas

So yeah, I'm completely obsessed with http://www.apartmenttherapy.com . To the point where I spend all my "non-working" work time browsing for ideas. So far I have all kinds of ideas for our house to make it a more use able space. Now I just have to hope (1) I don't totally screw this up (because I don't really have an eye for colors or anything and (2) it doesn't get too expensive.

Bedroom: Right now our bedroom is 4 different colors (thanks to previous owner!): purple, green, light green, and white. Yeah, I know. We already have a bed frame and some nice Danish Modern dressers we plan to keep. But we have bedside tables and my closet is in serious need of organizational therapy. Plus we've only decorated minimally, mostly by sticking art on the walls when we first moved in simply to keep from having it in boxes indefinitely.

The plan- we bought a grayish taupe paint for the entire room. No accent walls. We'll have new gray carpet installed in about 6 weeks. We're going for calm and simple. The bed will go against the wall between our closets, with an Ikea Lack floating shelf over the headboard to use as a bedside table (for a lamp, our phone chargers, and some photos). I might put a wall hanging up to give the area a softness and some color.

We'll rethink our art choices for the room to keep the colors and themes in line. I definitely want to order a print of this French wine label. I've had my eye on it for about a year. We'll get it framed and hang it opposite to the bed on a large, empty wall. We also have a beautiful original of a tree we bought from a street artist in Hawaii that will also have a prominent place in the room. With some closet organization the room should become a calming, functional space.

The spare room: I described this room in detail before, so I'll just repost the picture because I like it so much. In addition to a closet work space we'll have the same new carpet installed. The walls are yellow (my choice when we moved in), so the room will have a bright, airy feel. Eventually we want to buy a klick-klack futon for guests, but ultimately we're keeping this room very simple as a flex space.

Living Room- The living room will stay about the same for now because we have a nice color scheme, a nice couch, and recently bought a new entertainment hutch. The space is looking really good. The only changes I plan to make are rearranging our wall art.

Kitchen- this is going to be a big project. After trolling Ikea for hours last night Leigh and I decided to take a trip to Seattle next spring and sit with a kitchen designer. Ikea's website has beautiful, large kitchens for $1000-4500. I can't imagine we'd spend more than $3,000 on the whole project. Our kitchen is a small, "two butt," galley style kitchen. I'd love to have a mini version of this kitchen, with cabinets to suit our storage needs and an island with storage and a breakfast bar in our current eat-in kitchen. We can have Ikea deliver our new kitchen to the Alaska Marine Lines docks in Seattle, then contract with AML to barge our kitchen (and other purchases) to Anchorage. Once in Anchorage we'll have to find a handy man to install it for us.

Porch- Right now we have a large, homemade porch in our backyard with sliding door access from the kitchen. The porch is fine, but not that functional, and we could really use some more space. For several months Leigh and I have talked about putting an addition on the house. basically we'd break down our current porch, recycle the materials to have a professional porch built, then enclose the porch to make an extra room off the back of the house. We'll lose our porch, but we're also planning to convert part of our yard into a stone patio this summer.

The new room would serve as a second living space that is designed to handle things like muddy boots, dog paws, snow gear, etc. We're thinking it'll have a standard exterior door with a dog door installed, plus a series of large windows facing the yard to let in light. I'd love a skylight or two if possible.

But here's the fun part, we're going to design the room to fit our lifestyle. We want a small wood stove to heat the space so the puppy can stay there while we're at work (no more midday naps on the sofa, Cannelle!) to contain the doggy smell to one room. We'll also put in some seating near the wood stove for reading or enjoying some sunlight. Since we'll forfeit our dining table with our new kitchen island, we want to store a dining table on the wall of the new room like this:

We typically eat at our dining table or on the couch, so we don't actually need a big dining table. But sometimes we have people over for dinner or celebrate holidays. In that case we will need the option of a proper table. This is the best of both worlds: we'll have a simple space to eat on ordinary days (the new breakfast bar) and we can pull the table off the wall and set it up in the addition for entertaining.

Our current entry way is a very small landing at the front door. There's almost no storage and we have a pile of snowy boots creating a puddle all the time. When we build the addition we'll start using the back door most of the time. As you come in the back door, there will be a nice basin with a drain and hose in the corner, plus plenty of coat and hat storage, maybe even space to prop up your skis, etc. This will keep all of the snow and mud in a space that is easy to wash and out of the way. As an added bonus, the basin will be a fully functioning dog bath area (no more baths in my bathtub, Cannelle!) and great for hosing off garden boots and such.

So that's our plan. Aside from big items like the addition and kitchen cabinets, none of these ideas are terribly expensive or drastic, but they are all innovative. I have apartmenttherapy.com to thank for most of these ideas and my own stir craziness to thank for the motivation to put them to use! I suspect that this summer will be filled with weekend projects and, hopefully, next spring will mean a new kitchen and plans for an addition!