• Room Redo Up on Copy Cat Chic!

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Showing posts with label guest room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guest room. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

what a wednesday...

I'm trying to get on some sort of regular posting schedule but stuff just seems to keep coming up. Alas. I'll get there, hopefully sooner rather than later.

So...eventful day, yeah? Today is a more somber Wednesday than we usually have, I think we can all agree. For starters, the news from Cairo is nothing short of bone chilling. On the drive home, I listened to an NPR reporter describe being shot at by military snipers while counting the bodies lined up in the hospital she and her team were sheltering in, and of running and stopping short as a man in an alleyway in front of her dropped dead from a bullet to his chest. And add to that the UPS plane that went down in Birmingham...the tragedy is on a different level but it's a tragedy nonetheless. My dad's company oversees all of the maintenance on UPS planes, and he's been known to sit in the "jump seat" in a plane for a quick jaunt to Louisville and back, to make sure there are no issues before he signs off on a plane inspection. As you can imagine, they had a helluva morning trying to determine if they played any role in this crash. Thankfully (for my dad) that particular plane hadn't been scheduled for maintenance since late 2011, but it was due back this October and was scheduled to be their last plane inspection of the year.

I dunno, it just makes my chest tighten when things like this happen. Sometimes we are a lot less removed from events than we think we are, and it today made me very thankful that I could text my dad this afternoon to ask his advice on something as mundane as how to get my yard ready for spring. So with all this in mind, it's kind of a strange place I find myself in--a few good things have happened lately and I want to celebrate them, but it feels pretty ungracious and inconsiderate to care about things as small as some lovely new shoes or a promising blog development. I guess it's kind of my eternal struggle as a Gemini--everything seems meaningful and it's hard to know which path is right.

But ultimately I can't help but think that, sometimes, the best way of making sense of bad things is to take a moment to appreciate the good things that are happening all around you. Sometimes they're big and sometimes they're small, but they're important just the same. The good adds light where the bad takes it away, and it feeds our hopes as it reminds us that things can and will be better than they are.

So in the interest of celebrating the good, I'm happy to announce that I'm the newest design intern for Copy Cat Chic! It's a blog I really love because it's such a valuable resource for being able to (design-wise at least) have your cake and eat it too. I'm just really pumped about it, you guys.

Secondly, my fairy godmother sent me these insanely good shoes this week:

Casadei

Brian Atwood


And the best part is that I didn't even have to scrub floors or fetch water to receive said fairy godmother!

Thirdly, I finished a major DIY project! I did a DIY version of those famous black Dorothy Draper chests using RAST dressers from Ikea (aka the patron saint of all that is holy in the DIY universe). That will be a separate post, but oh what a post it will be. It's just really satisfying to know I spent less on the whole project than I did on my last grocery shopping trip, and to have something super chic to (finally) put in my hovel guest room upstairs.

So since all my posts are turning out to be whoppers lately, I think I'll end here. Remember to be thankful for the good people and the good things you've got going on.

xo,
Lindsey

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Progress in the guest room!

Happy Sunday!! I used two exclamation marks in an attempt to make myself get excited about Sundays. I loooooathe Sundays. I can't help it, all I can think about all day is that I have to go to work tomorrow and it really just bums me out!

But this weekend has been a pretty productive one, nonetheless. We've got the usual laundry/cleaning/drinking beers while watching bad bands out of the way, along with several little annoying house-related tasks. We've got some more ceiling lights installed, which brings our total number of naked bulbs in the house down to 4! This house doesn't seem like it has an inordinate amount of light fixtures, but I guess it feels that way when you have to replace all of them. Jake also installed a new dimmer switch in the kitchen for me...

HALLELUJAH.

We've had a dimmer switch the entire time, but it's covered in paint, the switch plate has been missing since we started replacing them in March, and I no longer have to worry about accidentally sticking my fingers in a electrified wire tangle! Life is good. But the best part is that I've finally started on the guest room. As I've mentioned previously, it currently looks like a rat kingdom. So far it's really been used as a dumping ground, literally and figuratively. All of the stuff we haven't found places for yet, along with two litter boxes, just makes it feel like a black hole where sadness goes to die. But no longer! Jake's parents are coming in a few weeks and since I looooove a deadline, it's motivated me to get it at least halfway done for them.

The BEST part about this room is that since Jake doesn't have to live in it, I don't have to consult him about anything! And I'm so excited I could just squeal about that. I've got the color palette set, but I'm still playing with some of the individual elements. In addition to hosting sleepover parties, I want it to be a functional room from a storage standpoint so I'm going to hold off picking things like a desk, shelving, etc. until I figure out how I really need that room to work for me.

Here are a few inspiration images I'm working off of:

via Kishani Perera, my design spirit animal
(this is also on the top of my deck inspiration file)





via MWM


I picked up two RAST dressers from Ikea this week for a whopping $35 a pop, and I've already started transforming them into those black and gold Dorothy Draper-inspired nightstands in the pic above (that one's real, FYI). I'll do a separate post on those, but it's been a breeze so far and I really couldn't be happier with my progress (don't worry, the deck itself is written on our renovation list in giant black marker). All the small drawer pieces still need to be flipped over and painted, but the bodies of the dressers are already done. Once the drawers have 2 coats on each side, then I'll stencil the gold part onto the drawers and just assemble them. I'm so PUMPED, you guys! I'll also be DIY-ing an upholstered headboard, which I haven't done before and am really looking forward to.