Come see what I’ve been working on….

As I’ve mentioned once or twice now, I have been working on the house really hard lately. I’ve got all kinds of projects I’ll focus on individually, but for today I thought I’d give you an updated tour of the downstairs. We finally managed to get rugs for this joint, and oh my gosh the difference it has made.

For starters, I no longer have to run to the bathroom eight times a day just to wash off my feet. I also don’t have to have Atti’s therapy on the dining room table to prevent the poor therapists from rolling around in dustballs. And best of all, I get to regularly break out the love of my life – the Dyson – and put him through his paces.

I got all our rugs from Overstock.com, and I’d never even waste my time looking anywhere else anymore. We searched for months, everywhere from Home Depot to fancy carpet stores, and everything was either boring, more expensive than my couch, or both. Usually both. Overstock has a great selection, and free shipping. We’re pleased as punch.

Let’s start in the dining room:

This carpet is pretty plain, navy blue with some little squares in the corners, but it’s perfect for what I wanted to accomplish here. I didn’t want a pattern that wouldn’t make sense with a giant table blocking most of it, and I needed to bring the navy blue into this side of the house.

Then let’s go to the family room:

I had so much of my other colors in this room, I knew this rug needed to be somewhere in the rosy spectrum. So much was going to be exposed, I didn’t want it to be plain, but since so much was going to be exposed, I also didn’t want it too busy. I’m thrilled with how this carpet is perfectly in the middle. And the round pattern echoes a motif I have running all throughout the house: round couch, round chairs in the entry room, round picture frames, you get the idea.

I’ve also gotten some new furniture for this room since the last tour:

The entertainment center is nothing special – just West Elm’s catalog – but after a year of searching for something to fit that space and still allow a TV on top, it’s like gold to me. West Elm has loads of long, low, furniture options and it just happened to solve a major design dilemma for me. More than one person has asked if we had it custom built.

The coffeetable (round again, what do you know?) was a Craigslist find for a whopping $75. Vintage midcentury modern table with a teak veneer that matches the desk in the little office nook across the way, and it is *precisely* the right size for that space. I think it’d be too small for most places, but for that spot, with the furniture I’ve already got? It’s exactly exactly right. I tell you, I have had the best Craigslist mojo ever.

And now for my favorite rug:

This was the smallest space I had to work with, and the space with the least amount of color going on, so I wanted to really cut loose. I almost talked myself out of this one because it looked so wild on my computer screen, but I’m so grateful I trusted my gut and went for it. People go nuts over this rug. This rug alone turned this little neglected sitting space into a room.

OK, enough rug talk. Here’s the latest change to the kitchen:

I adore serving pieces, but I didn’t have anyplace to put them. I can’t fit a china cabinet in my dining room, and the kitchen cabinets are too narrow for some of my mammoth platters, so I figured I’d store them up on top. I was looking around for cheap plate stands, but each one that was sturdy enough to hold a plate was about $10, so I put this project off. Then I got the idea of nailing a piece of molding in place along the cabinets to create kind of a pencil ledge. I figured I could just balance the platters between the wall and the molding and save myself a quick $100. Then I thought, why even bother with the molding? I ended up marking where I wanted each plate or bowl to go, and then nailing a couple of nails in place to hold the bottom edge. It actually ended up working better than the molding because I can customize each dish individually. So if I have a bowl with a really high side I can move the nails out closer to the edge and move the nails closer to the wall for a platter.

I feel like this place is finally getting close to finished. I just need to work on the walls now, I think I have maybe five pictures hung in this whole place.