Happy Hump Day

Sorry posts have been a little fewer and far between lately. Like everyone in Chicago, I'm just so excited that it's finally nice out, and have been spending most of my time outdoors. Our backyard hasn't really been touched since we bought the house and we are itching to get it fixed up so we can actually use the space- which is nice because it's HUGE! Right now, it's one giant open plot of weeds. B and I would love to add pathways, perennial gardens, and maybe even a pond or two. I grew up with a great back yard that lent itself well to exploring and I want to give those adventures to T. Problem is, landscaping is expensive. I keep hoping someone will just come and redo my backyard. Where is Yard Crashers when I need them? (side note: how lucky are those people? Totally jealous!) But because Yard Crashers doesn't come to Chicago (I've looked) and my mom won't devote her life to my garden (the nerve!) I'm forced to come up with a plan (and the money) myself. Boo.  Yesterday, instead of working in my yard, I procrastinated and did this:

Idea taken from here.

So now I'm in search of some great gardening blogs. I'd love some how-to's, ideas on inexpensive gardening, and even some in my gardening zone (5, I think) so I can plant similar gardens with plants that will do well. Any recommendations? Websites I should check out? Any locals know some great garden store that has inexpensive materials? Divulge.

Outdoor Lighting

Our outdoor lights on the front of our house need to be replaced. The one above our front door has wires that short out and the one above our garage is broken. Plus, I dislike them both so I will be happy to see them go. I'd like for both options to be black to tie in nicely with our black shutters and railing (that also needs replacement!)

1/2/3/4/5

Our garage light needs to be motion sensitive, but I am debating just adding at motion sensor kit to any light we buy after the fact. I'd leaning towards having both lights be matching for a more cohesive look. Do you agree? What light would you choose?

Happy Birthday to TD!

Well, just like that, my little baby is all grown up. Tudors Down turns one today!

I can't believe it's been a year, but as I sit here is front of my computer, I feel like I've been doing this for years. Not because it is ever strained or forced, but I feel it's just a part of who we are, and that our little Tudors Down has always been there. Silly, maybe, but truthful. 135 post later, this blog is still going strong and growing leaps and bounds by the day. I've been is contact with some amazing people and companies, I've accomplished a huge dream while working towards others, and I've journaled the amazing process that is home ownership. Tough at times, but oh so rewarding.

I owe a huge thank you and virtual big hug to every single one of you who've read my posts, left encouraging comments, and cheered me on along the way. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! I can not wait to see what next year has in store for us. Bring it on.

This isn't working

I have always said that decorating a home doesn't happen overnight, but I am starting to lose.my.mind. B and I have declared this summer the one where we finally whip our backyard and deck into shape. We have a big backyard for our area and we don't utilize it as much as we should, partly because we don't have any outdoor furniture. So last month we started looking for an outdoor patio set, preferably one that sat 6 or more since we like to get drunk with friends entertain. But holy shit. Do you have any idea how much outdoor furniture costs?! It's a freakin boatload, especially if you care at all, even the slightest, about how it looks. I've searched everywhere, and I mean everywhere trying to find something, anything, that looks good and is within our price range. It's not working. I am turning into a Craigslist maniac, checking every hour 'just in case' something new pops up. No luck. I've scoured every store and website I know. Still nothing. I don't know what to do anymore. I complied a list of sets I like, but for some reason or another, won't quite work for us. Who am I kidding, they are all just so damn expensive that I can only admire from afar.

This set, from Target, is still one of our favorites. But seeing as it only seats four, and the chairs alone are close to $400, it just won't work for us. But man, it sure is purty. 

West Elm, oh how I still love thee. You lure me in with your casual cool vibe and make me want to come to this party, any party, and dine on this lovely set. This would work for us, perfectly, but we'd have to take out a second mortgage on our home to pay for it. Hmmm....might be worth it. ;)



 This isn't a whole set, but I am loving all weather wicker for our outdoor dining area. These chairs, from World Market, would be great but sadly, 6 would run us close to $900. Ouch!



This outdoor set, from Ikea, seems to be our best bet. While my heart was set on wicker, it just isn't in our price range right now. This set meets all our requirements: semi- modern, seats six, constructed from a non-wood material (I don't want to deal with fading, chips, or splinters) and is within our price range. I only wish the black/brown option was the same price.

 

So is there anything I've missed? Is there some store that I don't know of that sells super cheap outdoor furniture? Has anyone managed to score a great set on Craigslist? If so, I'm totally jealous, because all the outdoor sets on Chicago's look like they are straight out of the 80's. 

Earth Day

Monday was Earth day, which is kind of a big deal in our family. My mom is a master gardener and me, well....I'm learning. But lack of skill doesn't stop me from enjoying gardening. Last year, we took our house from this:

To this:

This year we are excited to continue working on our ever progressing yard. I have the same mindset when it comes to decorating as I do with gardening: the perfect 'look' doesn't happen overnight. Allow things to evolve, change, and grow. Keep trying until you get it right.

As beautiful as those BIG yellow mums were, they won't be returning. They didn't make it over our harsh winter and we have already put something new in the right one's place. Hint: it's not a flower. Last year we laid the foundation of the garden, planting shrubs like azalea's and roses, and this year we are focusing on color. We have a lot of spots to fill in with annuals and I'm excited to have more money to spend on those this year. Shrubs and bushes aren't cheap!

Earth day was beautiful here. The sun was shining and it was quite warm, so my mom and I couldn't wait any longer to visit the garden center at Home Depot. This is what we returned with:

We were all so happy to be outside amongst the flowers (color, how I've missed you) and T was loving at the plants. She is an outdoors-y girl for sure. This year she had an opinion about what she liked (Red!) and what she didn't and couldn't wait to get home to help me plant. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but couldn't resist myself and bought all the flowers on the left side of the potting soil. My mom assured me that even though our frost date is Mother's Day, it would be okay to plant some pansies, phlox, and a couple other plants. Let's hope she's right! Did you do anything special on Earth day? T started soccer and stopped in the middle of practice to hug a tree. What can I say, she's our little hippie chick.

Check out our updated house tour!

Stairway from Hell

I've received many questions about our stairway, asking how we turned it from a complete eyesore to something a little less so. Most of the progress we made on our stairway happened before the blog, so I'll try my best to explain the steps and fill in with pics as I go.

When we bought our house, carpeting covered most of the floors and I do no say this lightly: It.was.a.disaster. Bluish-gray carpet covered in stains, holes, and cigarette smoke lay heavily across every bedroom and our staircase. The previous owners smoked inside and I think the carpet absorbed 95% of those smells. We ripped out all the carpeting our second day in the house. I actually think having the carpeting inside before was a good thing because as soon as it was removed, most all of the cigarette smell was gone (the yellow walls and ceilings were a different story). The sub-floors were in good condition so thankfully no fixing was needed there, but we didn't pan out so well with our staircase. The wood underneath was just crappy 2x10's. Each board was filled with holes, chips, shards of wood shooting out, and endless amounts of staples, nails, and glue. It was a lovely sight. This staircase, from Little Green Notebook, would look like a masterpiece next to ours:

 

It would have been the most beneficial to replace our treads right from the beginning, but I said most beneficial, not most cost effective. We did not have the money in our budget to take on that project. So we had to make do with what we had. First, we had to remove all the nails and staples in the staircase. This project took forever. Whoever installed that carpet made sure it wasn't going anywhere. Then, I used a palm sander with a super low grit sandpaper (I think it was 40grit) to sand the treads as best I could. The divets and holes in our staircase were so deep that sanding did not fix this problem. We just wanted to make sure no shards of wood would puncture any one's feet while on the stairs. As soon as the dust was cleaned, we primed and painted the stairs with oil base paint.
This is how our staircase looked for about a year:

You can totally see all the holes in the risers, and the treads were even worse. But when B finished our stairway end cap our stairs looked terrible next to all it's prettiness.

 

We had to do something. At the time, our Apartment Therapy shoot was a week away and neither of us wanted the above sight to be the first thing Carolyn saw upon entering our home. The process wasn't too painful, but I cried. Majorly cried. I have to give some background story for the following to make sense. We had about five days before our photo shoot. B and I were running on very little sleep as we kept cramming in projects to finish before the big day. We were tired, exhausted, and running out of the little money we had budgeted for this shoot. I remembered I had some free paint from Ace Hardware's customer appreciation day, so I slapped some of the dark gray paint on every other riser (so we could still walk up the stairs if needed) at around one in the morning. Great. Easy. Done. Not so bad. Yeah, until the next morning when I realized that I had just spent hours taping and painting with LATEX paint. Not a good choice for a staircase. In no time, our paint was peeling up. Crying: take one. I was a mess and the lack of sleep was getting to me. B, being the leveled headed guy he is, assured me it was no big deal and presented me with choices: sand off the gray or paint over it with oil. After a minor hissy fit on my part, we decided to paint over the latex with oil. I had no idea if this would even work, or hold up, but we went for it. We liked how the dark gray paint disguised all the dings and dents in the risers so we mixed half gray oil based paint and half black oil paint to get a color we liked. Here was our process: we put a coat over the existing gray. Let dry. The following day we painted the stairs that had yet to be painted. Remember to put painters tape on the DRY stairs so you know which ones you can step on. The next day put coat two over the first 'set' of stairs. Let dry. The following day put the second coat over the second 'set' of stairs. Make sense? Good. This took us four days total and it was the day before the shoot when I decided I hated the way the whole staircase looked and all our efforts and money was for nothing. Crying: Take two. I'm pretty sure this crying was done in a ball on the floor. Looking back, I laugh at this now, but at the time those damn stairs seemed like the biggest problem in the world. Sleep deprivation and nerves does crazy things to people.

B loved the stairs, but commented on how we spent all this time fixing and painting the treads and  neglected to risers, making everything look crappy. So, the day before the photo shoot, he took spackle and put a skim coat over every riser-filling in every hole, ding, and eyesore. After a light sanding and a fresh coat of white paint, this was our finished product:

I'm pretty sure this is when I stopped crying and fell in love with the stairs. And so did Carolyn. And every other friend who has since seen it. Looking back, this project was super easy and made such a change to our entry. So if anyone is thinking of tackling this project, I'd say go for it. Just make sure you get adequate sleep before hand.

Kirklands: Sneak Peak

When I was younger, I was a bona fide mall rat. My mom would take my friends and I for a day of shopping and being the cool kids we were, my mom didn't shop with us. Instead, she went to her stores and we always met her at the same place: Kirkland's. Being the 11 year old I was, I thought that store was boring and smelled funny. Who would want to look at fake fruit and candles when you could look at bright colored bangles and buy candy by the pounds?

Fast forward 15 years later. We started decorating our home and we needed bedroom lamps. I couldn't find anything that fit our bill: yellow, gourd shaped, and a drum shade. Sure I was able to find something that met those requirements, but nothing that was in our price range. Getting frustrated, I turned to my mom, who quickly suggested looking at Kirkland's, her still-to-this-day favorite store.

Still having a bit of that sassy 11 year old in me, I scoffed at the idea, but decided to peruse their website anyways. Oh. my. god. What a difference 15 years makes. The items were modern, updated, and just as good as other retailers charging twice as much. Why have I stayed away for so long? I ordered a set of yellow lamps that are still living happily in our master bedroom a year and a half later.

So when Kirkland's asked me to participate in show casing a 'sneak peak' of new items that will be released this week, I was totally on board. I know and love the store, why wouldn't I do it. And I have to say, I am pretty pleased with these new items.

I like all these items but I lovelovelove the wooden star burst. I cannot tell you how much I want this. And no, I wasn't paid to say that. It's hard to find wall art that a- looks good and b-isn't crazy expensive. This is only $49.99 and I could see it fitting many places in my home. I'd love to hang this in our master bedroom for a little more warmth and interest.

The round mirrors, only $19.99, are so versatile. I rarely leave well enough alone, so I could see myself spray painting these a rainbow of colors for T's room.

The floor lamp, while very traditional, feels updated because of it's modern drum shade. This would look pretty in almost any ones living room. A friend of mine came over the other evening and commented on how relaxing and inviting our home looks at night. My secret? No overhead lighting at night. We rely on lamps and candles to create soft, subtle lighting throughout our home. One these in the living room would do the trick.

The Ellie stool is pretty neat because it's metal legs are a nice spin on the classic wood/upholstered bench we see everywhere. I like to put benches at the end of a bed because I feel it grounds the area. Best part? It's $99 price tag means you could easily afford to change the fabric to suite your fancy. Trust me, it's an easy DIY!

Here's a quick little mood board of most of these items placed in a bedroom. I like how the bench and star burst work well with each other and the black metal legs of the stool go nicely with the lamp base. Of course, this isn't all I'd place in the bedroom. I'd bring in pops of bright colors via accessories and such.

 

Enough of what I would do with these pieces. What's your favorite and how would you incorporate them into your home?