Design Snob

Dining room preview

When I lived in my apartment, I really didn’t have room for a dining table. Six-hundred square feet really doesn’t lend itself very well to entertaining. One of the things I became excited about when I bought my house was the prospects of having fabulous dinner parties. And so the story begins…

Dining Table

My house is 80 years old, but was totally renovated in 2007. They removed the dining room, to add a third bedroom and second bath, which is perfectly fine with me. The dining area, included with-in the kitchen it about 6-feet by 4-feet, so it had some limitations on houw much I could do in there and not overwhelm my kitchen (see link for my post about it). So I’m sure you can imagine, it was a challenge. I found the table, and coordinating chairs on target.com, they had a special for free shipping, and on-top of that, everything was 15% off too! The table & chairs arrived just in time for the baby-shower I had at the house for Catrina Garrisi, a friend in the landscape architecture program at A&M.

Close up of the place setting

A couple weeks went by after that, and I had a vision for the table. I intended to have the kitchen and living room go together with the same style. I wanted each room to flow with the other. I wanted to inject some of the age and character that you see on the outside of the house back into the newly renovated interior. Since the house was built in the 1920s I felt that the craftsman style, was the style hat wold best suit the home, so i added craftsman details to the fireplace, and added a 5-foot high craftsman style wainscoting on the wall that joins the kitchen and living room. Anyway I’m rambling, let’s stop chasing that rabbit and get back to the story, the dining table transformation.

chandelier I created

I had some dishes that I still loved, the only problem was that most of the bowls and salad plates had chipped or broken somehow, I guess they weren’t meant to last, but the dinner plates were still in fine condition. So I went down to the place I purchased them, my local Pier 1 Imports, to see if they had anything that coordinated (i hate matchy-matchy.) I found these new divine salad plates, shaped like a leaf, it would frame the leafy greens I typically serve with elegance, how perfect for salad. Next was the issue of finding a new bowl to complete the set, I continued to browse and spotted the lime-green bowl with a floral detain around the ourside rim, the problem was they only had 3 left, so I call my mom, gave her the SKU and she found teh remaining 5 I needed at her Pier 1 in Houston. While I was at the imports store, I saw some adorable plates for hors d’œuvres, that were $2 each so I purchased them as well. Before I left, I saw a beautiful handpainter moroccan mirror, but it wasn’t marked, so I I asked the sales-person how much it was and it was on sale, so I got it as well!

Next on my list was glassware to complete the ensemble, so I walked to the other end of the shopping center and went to World Market because I had remembered seeing some moroccan tea glasses, which would tie perfectly into my moroccan theme. While there I also spotted some beautiful goblets, and picked up the lanterns I wanted to create my “chandelier” with.

I decorated the guest bath and guest room; this weekend we finished it. I have always wanted a poster bed and I found one at World Market – which so happened to be on sale (just a bit more then what I wanted to spend, but worth it), so we got it. We then hunted down a mattress set (that fit our budget). I wanted to find a mismatched set, or equivalent, for around $300 — and something not made of just cardboard. At the end of the day, it came down to finding something under $500. Finally we found a “Aggie Special” at a local mattress dealer in town (which even delivered, same day, for only $20). We got a comfortable semi-firm mattress (which is good for a guest room — not to hard, not to soft).

Now that we had the primary item of the room we needed to find bedding and accessories. The original color scheme was going to be lilac, white, burgundy, rust, and mahogany (woods). After thinking about it, it clashed with my main theme of light airy spa — so I switched it to white, silver, and mahogany (woods).

For the bedding, I wanted a large overstuffed white bedding. I found two 300 thread-count overstuffed Ralph Lauren pillows, a 400 thread-count white down alternative (allergen free room, remember) over-sized comforter, a silver coverlet for the end of the bed, 450 thread-count Egyptian cotton silver sheets, and some white throw pillows/bolsters.

At Target, they had their world collection on sale (getting ready for the summer shipment). They had two solid wood and glass cabinets. I had saw them before but they were each over $170, way out of the budget. Anyways, when I was there just looking around, I saw that they were over 60% off, each — so I got two of them. Now, if you know me, you know I collect oversized glasses. With the additional element of glass on the cabinet/night stands I decided to show off the glass collection in that room — which fits perfectly with the light airy spa theme.

As for the walls, they stayed the prepainted khaki color — the trim the chocolate brown. The curtains are light white on silver curtain roads. The accessories are the glass collection and trinkets from ours and our friends and family’s travels. I’m really happy with how it turned out. Now I just need someone to come use it. Hint Hint.

Last weekend we finished up the master bathroom. We started by painting the walls; we wanted a caramel color and chocolate brown trim. The room ended up a pumpkin wall color and chocolate trim. We actually like it, so it stayed — it feels really warm. We hung some floating shelves and got all new accessories. We stayed with white towels so we can rotate them with the guest bathroom. The shower curtain is a heavy white damask with gold flecks — plays really well with the pumpkin walls.

The only major change was to move/replace the lighting. We got a new bronze fixture and wanted it centered over the sink. All in all, it was a simple change — just some paint, accessories, and lighting upgrade.

When you move from a 600 square foot apartment into a 1500 square foot house, you may know that the house is kind of empty. Which is depressing — but you lift your spirits by going furniture shopping! And who can resist furniture shopping when the furniture you want is on sale with only $1 shipping!?! Yes, we recently got a new entertainment center and two living room chairs from Target.com. The furniture was 15% off normal retail price and Target online was having a deal: shipping for everything online, only $1. How could we resist! So three days after ordering, the the furniture arrived.

It took me over two hours to put together the three pieces. It was like Ikea furniture, but this was real wood (not compressed wood board) and had a lot of parts. If you know Ikea, the furniture has a screw here and a wood peg here. This furniture had 5 screes on one side, 6 on top, 12 on bottom, 5 on the other, over 50 wood begs, so on — very, very, sturdy solid wood furniture. I am very happy with it. The chair fabric is growing on me — at first I thought it was woven sea grass green/yellow. Now it looks like a very neutral natural color. Over all it is a nice addition to the house.

The office is on the way to being finished. The walls and trim are all painted. Most of the current furniture is in place. The other day we were hanging floating shelves from Ikea. We had three shelves and they were going 15 inches on center from the celling down the wall in a column (like a floating bookshelf). We tried to find studs in the wall that lined up with the holes on the mounting bracket — and we thought we did.

Actually, we screwed a three inch screw right into a cold water pipe in the wall. As I have said, the house was renovated, so all the plumbing is new — we have the new PEX (Polyethylene) piping. The only problem with plastic pipe, screws can puncture it, unlike traditional metal pipes. Anyways, we could tell something was wrong, so we cut a hole into the wall to see if it in fact it was a pipe — sure enough, it was. We then needed to find out how to turn off the water to the house. The pipe was not leaking bad because we left the screw in the pipe — I could just imagine that we would be panicking, not knowing what to do, as the house filled with water. Luckily the house was not flooding, so we called BTU (Bryan Texas Utilities Emergency Hotline) to find out how to turn off the water to the house from the water-meter in the front yard.

Once the water was tunred off, we went to Lowe’s to get the tools we needed. We got a pipe cutter, fitting to connect the pipe back together, drywall tape, and drywall compound — total cost, $20. The new type of fittings are really nice. We just needed to cut out the part of the pipe that had the screw hole, then push each end of the cut pipe into the new fitting. When you hear the click, you know the pipe is connected. We turned the water back on and no drips. Oh, a side not, unlike traditional fittings, if you ever needed to remove this fitting, all you need to do is turn the water off then push two small buttons on the fitting and the pipe ends will be released.

Now that the flooding disaster was avoided, we needed to patch the wall. We kept each piece of drywall we cut out of the wall, we re-inserted them into the corresponding holes and taped the joints with the drywall tape. It is funny that something that it placed onto the wall, once finished, will look like nothing is there. Just strange to think that our walls are covered in drywall tape, yet we think it is one solid flat piece of wall.

We then spread out the drywall compound and let it dry over night. The drywall compound went on bright pink and as it cured it dried white. Once it dried we sanded the edges and re-applied some to smooth it out even more. That dried again over night. When you have a giant patch on the wall that is bright white against your wall paint, it looks like the patch is going to be very noticeable, even when it is finished. So all night I kept thinking that every time I walked into that room I will see that patch staring me in the face. I just had to wait until it was completely finished.

Once the drywall compound was dry and sanded we painted it the wall color. Once the paint was dry, we hung the shelf up using butterfly bolts with blunt ends. In the picture with the floating shelf, the holes were right in the middle, the self goes horizontally over the patched holes. If you did not know about the patch, you would never even know it was there. If you come over and we point it out, you can see where the wall changes texture, but other then that, it looks like the same wall.

The Kitchen is now finished. All the stainless-steel Frigidaire appliances have arrived and been installed. The walls were painted a light slate blue. To finish the kitchen we wanted more light and a tile backsplash. The room only had one overhead light and with the large cabinetry, it cast a heavy shadow on the countertop. Also, we could foresee problems with the drywall backsplash (getting splashed and food on it) so we found it prudent to tile.

The picture to the right is the kitchen just after the appliances have been installed and all the walls were painted the blue. Yes, we painted the backsplash — we did not think we would want to tile so soon. To start, we installed the under cabinet lighting. It only cost $40 for the lights and wire. We installed/ran the wire and in just three hours had dimmable six under cabinet lights. I was amazed how well the lights illuminated the countertops and how it immediately increased the perceptual cost of the kitchen (made it look expensive — even though it only cost $40). It was a good idea to do the lighting, it helped us see when we started with the tile.

Next we started to afix the tile to the wall. The tile was only $150, around 30 12″ x 12″ sheets. We decided to lay the tile vertically, rather then horizontally. We think that it makes the backsplash look taller and gives it a more sophisticated chic look. The only issue is that it created more cuts we needed to fill.

As you can see on the other picture, “teeth” like spaces that we had to cut tiles and fill around on the whole backsplash — over 100 individual cuts; including the tile cuts around five outlets. We purchased a wet tile saw to make the cuts. It was only $50 and worked for what we needed. After all the cuts the blade was completely exhausted and all the diamond teeth had been warn off — you get what you pay for. We do not foresee doing any more tile work in the near future, but if we are going to all we need to do is buy a blade.

After 6 hours, including the hundred cuts, and over night drying, came the grout. We got a pewter gray non-sanded grout (because of the small 1/8″ title spacing). It took about 7 pounds of dry grout to grout all of the back splash. After spreading the grout with a trowel, in 30 minutes we came back over it with large wet sponges to wipe of the excess. Then after a few minutes we wiped it with a soft towel to remove the haze that develops. After another night of drying, we then came back over it with another dry cloth. Done! To completely finish, we installed stainless steel electrical receptacle covers for that extra detail of elegance.

The house has a working fireplace. Only problem is it is not an “appropriate” style (for us or the house) — just white painted brick/mantel. We wanted to update the fireplace look without harming the bone structure of the original design. The house was built late 1920s, so we wanted to keep with that style — yet, update it with more modern materials. We did some research online for fireplaces from the 20s and then compiled an idea for this fireplace. The first step was to incase the brick in MDF and to spray paint the inside of the fireplace with high-temperature resistant black enamel paint (it was originally dingy white). We made sure to leave some space in the MDF on the front of the fireplace for the green/blue/gray slate tile. The cost of redoing the fireplace was not going to cost us much. We already had extra MDF from another project. All we needed to purchase was some paint, stain, and the slate tile (which cost around $25). After the liquid nails dried over night and the MDF was securely attached, we attached the molding. Molding adds detail and also hides small imperfections, like non-straight cuts (don’t look at me, blame the saw). Once the molding was attached, we patched all the holes and crevasses with wood filler. Adding the wood filler make the MDF look like one cohesive piece of wood, as if it was built that way. After the wood filler dried and was sanded, we painted and stained. As the paint and stain was drying we tiled the front. The tile came in 12″ x 12″ attached sheets with 1/8″ grout line spacing. But became this fireplace was custom, the spacing was off. We had to cut each tile off the sheet and hand place it on the fireplace with 1/4″ grout line spacing. It took a bit of extra time, but worth the final product. Briana, one of my landscape studio peers, came over to hang out and helped us tile. It was one project that was good to have six hands. Because of the larger 1/4″ grout line spacing we needed to use a sanded grout. After everything was dry, we did touchups and painted above the fireplace a slight metallic gold. It was going to be a green venetian plaster, but with the dark brown fireplace mantel we thought it might look like a tree. The gold is nice because it is like the slight yellow walls, but adds an extra element of sheen and that modern material look we were going for.