JUMBO post!

I wanted to share my lastest project - my newly wallpapered linen closet. Here it is without its shelves:

The walls in here were in less than nice condition and needed sprucing up. The "wallpaper" was actually made via Kinkos on a blueprint copier from vintage wrapping paper. I found the roll many months ago, when it was still cold out (February?) and joked about using it to wallpaper the little bathroom downstairs. When I opened the roll and actually saw how amazing the paper was, I knew I needed to use it somewhere.

I used the same wallpaper paste here that I did with the Woods wallpaper in the foyer. If you ever decide to do something similar I highly recommend using very little paste applied directly to the wall. I ended up rolling it on and wiping most of it off, after I ruined sheet number 1. I made a lot of copies so ruining a sheet or two didn't really matter and I have leftover to use as gift wrap. This paper is super thin and gets pretty wrinkly the second it gets wet. The finished product has some ripples but I still love it. Also - the trimming is best done when the paper is dry. The shelves are back in now; I had painted them white a hundred months ago after stripping a hundred years of contact paper off of them. Now, I think I'll paint just the front edges with the same paint I used on the closet trim. The paint (BM French Beret) was leftover from the bathroom (right next to this closet.)

The paper states that the engravings were taken from Dr. J(ohn) Jonston's (Joannes Jonstonus)
"Description of the Nature of Quadrupeds, Fish, Bloodless Aquatic Animals, Birds, Coiled Creatures, Snakes and Dragons" Amsterdam 1660 A.D. I love the way the drawings on the paper are arranged to interact with each other; like the baboon (?) catching the ostrich egg. I especially like this man faced bird thing with his old school wig hair:

John Jonston (whose name is a perfect example of when something is gained in translation) is also responsible for this piece of incredible:

And this piece of amazing:

Yes, I realize the man needs his own post.
Other things have been happening around Chez Fixin' too - like COUNTERTOPS! Teaser:

Alas, the kitchen is still not finished yet. There is a lot of painting to do, the trim needs a lot of help and yes, we need drawer hardware. I'm hoping to finish up around Christmas.

A new light fixture was purchased for the upstairs hallway. I'll be happy to not have a bare bulb hanging around anymore. That whole area needs some wiring help before the fixture can be mounted. We chose this:

See how nice it looks in the product photo hanging against that grey background? I want to paint the hallway area a similar color. The fixture is by Artemide and is called Logico. We chose the largest size (standard) in the ceiling version. It reminds me of an Alvar Aalto Savoy vase - just upside down. It weighs about a ton and a half and is still in the box for now. I hope that we'll be able to hang it up this weekend.

I also finally ordered a fixture for the living room too. It's not a Mouille fixture but I figured that I should have some light in the living room while I save up $6000+ for a light fixture (yes, I am joking.) I don't have it in hand yet but it looks like this only upside down and with a much thinner neck:

We also bought this vintage (Poseidon?) door knocker that I hope fits on our front door:

What else you ask? Well, the found wooden bench has moved upstairs to our bedroom where it fits nicely against the wall that was formerly a fireplace:

The foyer got a new Kagan style bench with green upholstery that fits exactly where I had always wanted a bench:

We also put a white laquered linen tray top table from Jonathan Adler next to the living room door to use as a catch all for keys, cell phones, glasses, owls and anything else Fernando tends to misplace:

The office has a new case piece where a pile of junk used to hang out:

We also added an IKEA FADO lamp to the back bedroom on our "rid the house of bare bulbs spree." Oh and I'm working on a guest bedroom. We changed the fixture in there to another white IKEA KULLA pendant lamp and just bought a new mattress and box spring. I have a great headboard over at my Mom's house that I have to pick up and few other things planned... but that's all for another super sized post.

i guess we could always slice it up and make some more benches?

I could use many excuses here as to why it's been so long since I've posted - we've been sick with the flu (swine flu?,) I've been taking a jewelry class over at FIT, last weekend we did the flea market so we could clear out some of the attic... etc. Really, there hasn't been much to blog about lately.
I had started a post all about the beach. But now it's Fall and totally irrelevant. Maybe I'll save it and put it up one day when we're freezing this winter. Yesterday we had our storm windows put up so that we hopefully won't freeze to death again this winter. We wanted to get the trim all painted before we popped in the windows but it looks like the trim work isn't happening this year. We'll most likely do it next Spring.

The person we hired used this incredibly long ladder and actually said that he was scared of heights!

I like the four paned windows much better than the two paned windows that are on the house - the third floor storm windows are just two paned.

So far we've noticed less noise from the street and less wind howling through the house. On Wednesday, when we had 50 mile an hour winds in NY, this happened:

If you guessed that that's a fallen tree from our yard that fell over into the neighboring house's yard, you are correct. We are very happy to report that the tree did no damage to our house, the neighboring house and (unfortunately) the icky chain link fence around our property. The only thing it did in our favor was take out some of the bamboo. Anyone need some firewood?

I keep saying "neighboring house" because currently, no one lives there. It is for sale and has been for a while. If you would like to be my neighbor - now's the perfect time. The price has been drastically reduced and the seller is selling for much lower than he paid. The house is huge, at 3 stories and it's around 15 or 20 feet longer than ours. I've never been inside. The seller had tried to flip the house when the market was good but his team of workers ditched him, he ran out of money and had to sell the house. Up until recently, the realtor with the listing had a non working phone number on the sign and when you called the office you only got a full voicemail box. People stop by all of the time and ask us about it because they can't get hold of the realtor. They finally added a working contact number so I hope it will sell soon. I feel really bad for that house.

So, do you want to see what I found recently? Yes FOUND! Would you throw this away?

I know these photos are a little dark but they were taken at night. It's a signed studio piece by Roy Sheldon.

It was a curb find. Someone put it on the curb! I almost hit the curb when I pulled over to grab it. It does not fit where I wanted a hallway bench but I'm using it here for now, until I find something that fits by the door. Then it will travel upstairs to our bedroom (no, you won't see it on the curb again anytime soon.)

what goes up and never comes down?

You know how people usually just wallpaper one accent wall in a room? Now I know why. This was hard. Really hard. There are 4 doors and a window in the area, lots of trim to cut around, some really uneven areas and of course the curved wall. Luckily, I had my Mom there to instruct me and help out along the way.

After the first mishap - applying the paste to the back of the wallpaper - I did my research on how to put it up. I settled on Roman's Golden Harvest Ultra Clear Adhesive Pro 880 paste. Cole and Son recommends using their own paste or a "pre-mixed wheat paste." I can't remember why I settled on the Pro 880 but it is recommended because it makes future removal easier. This is never coming down (at least for as long as I live here anyway.)

I'm not completely finished yet (this is around 15 hours of work, over two days!) I'm waiting to give the banister and newel post another coat of stain and some poly before I paper that area. Then I'll get to the finishing touches like above the door here:

We also finally hung our freshly painted Arteluce sconces. The ceiling fixture in here needs some adjustments and a special part to fit properly. No different than the rest of the ceiling fixtures in the house!

Yesterday we stopped in at the DWR store in Roslyn. I became smitten with the simple lines of their Shaker Settee. I would love it for underneath the sconces. The problem is it's 5 inches too wide for the space.

So, I guess I'm back to hunting around. I would really like to find something vintage since most of our furniture is vintage. We only have that chair in the corner at the moment to have somewhere to sit down to put on and take off our shoes.

In the slowest kitchen remodel ever news: we decided on a ceiling fan over a light fixture. I had a great vintage light fixture for the kitchen but Fernando thought we'd be better off with a ceiling fan since there's no circulation in there. I did a lot of hunting around to find something reasonable and not gross looking. I usually hate ceiling fans. I found the Minka Aire Concept I fan to be exactly what we were looking for:

It's up and installed already as of last weekend thanks to my Dad (who also bought it for us as an anniversary present.) I would definitely recommend it - it looks great, it's very well made and comes with anything you could possibly need to hang it up. It also has a remote control that we mounted inside the pantry. I'll post some photos soon when there's a little more progress in there!

a little peak inside...

We did a little work in the foyer (finally!) over the weekend. Some painting above the picture rail, sanding and staining of the banister, re-painting a pair of vintage sconces and changing one of the 3-way light switches. Waiting for the banister and newel post to dry:

We also attempted to put up our wallpaper in here and it did not work out. I'll be trying again next weekend so hopefully it will look more like a finished room soon.

let there be light and walls and tile

We have walls in the kitchen again! The new plaster is drying and we've had some new spotlights put in (and the fridge was sold.) There was a little miscommunication and now we have a light that isn't centered above the arch but we're just going to have them take it out altogether. We did have a light wired right into that little passageway so I don't think we'll miss it. There will be 3 new halogen spotlights on each side of the room, the center fixture and a little one between the dining room door and pantry.

As you can see the poor doorbell got plastered into the wrong spot. Hopefully, he will be centered back up above the arch soon.

We also had a couple of spotlights installed in the dining room to highlight whatever we end up putting above the fireplace. We had another installed on the wall to the left between the two windows, also to highlight future art. On the opposite wall to the fireplace we had two sconces wired, one on either side of the window.

In powder "closet" news - the tile has arrived! We're very happy with it. It was hard for me to order something like this online since I wasn't able to feel them or see them in person. This time I really got lucky. I couldn't resist laying them out on the floor (even though the room is still quite gross) and as you can see it's not going to take much to cover it. That's a whopping 4 square feet there!

I've been looking around for a nice wallpaper to use in here and Fernando has been freaking me out with the idea of Men splashing urine on the walls. The room is SO small and the walls are so close to the toilet. He's insisting I need a washable wallpaper or tiles on the wall and I've just decided that this will be a Ladies (or Men who pee like Women) only room.

And with that here's a taste of what I'm imagining for in here:

I guess I could have just scanned a sample since these pics are not a very good representation but I didn't. So, you have to imagine that there is lots of black and a bit of grey and silver and the hummingbirds are coral and turquoise. I may change my mind (or come to my senses and buy something vinyl) tomorrow but this is definitely what I like today.

everything a big bad wolf could want.

I hate to admit it but I'm already getting excited about decorating. In truth, I've been excited about decorating this house since the second I first walked inside. Our last place was a very streamlined apartment in a 1950's era building - with a long hallway and large rooms. It was bright but we didn't have windows on every wall. There was a lot of room for large artwork and low, long furniture.

This house is very different than what we've been used to. For one, the windows are lower to the ground and more abundant. There are also many doors. This doesn't leave a lot of wall space for large paintings and long furniture that's more than two feet off of the ground! A few weeks ago I had to make the hard decision to sell one of my favorite pieces of furniture, a vintage, long George Nelson "Thin Edge" teak credenza. The only place we could use it is in the attic... and it's so heavy, I wouldn't want to ask anyone to carry it up there! We sold it yesterday and as hard as I thought it would be to let it go, I now actually feel good. I know that it will eventually be sold (it went to a dealer) to someone else who will have the space to truly enjoy it.

So anyway, here comes my first decor commitment to this house: I purchased wallpaper for the foyer.

I chose Cole and Son's "Woods" wallpaper in what I can only call greige. On the Cole and Son website the color is identified as "69/12149." When I first viewed it in the "New Contemporary II" book in the wallpaper store, I immediately thought "how beige." I also thought ick about all of the other colors that "Woods" comes in (especially the white, too bright.) No problem, I didn't really want to use "Woods" anymore, right? I've been coveting that wallpaper for a few years but have now seen it in every design magazine and mentioned on a million blogs. Why would I want to be like everyone else anyway? I much prefer Cole and Son's "Cow Parsley" in black or "66/7046" anyway, right? Well, actually no. Once I saw the aforementioned wallpapers in the foyer and under the right lighting 69/12149 just jumped out at me! I'll give some props to 69/12151 too - very pretty, but Fernando shot it down (too lavender.) And "Cow Parsley" in 66/7046? Well she seemed a little too busy for our small foyer.

So now here I am with my very own "Woods" wallpaper. And I ordered it in the color that I thought would be the ugliest. But you see, it does this strange thing when you hold it up to the walls in my foyer in daylight - it turns a lovely silvery grey. Magic.

wallpaper free!

It's all gone. We could have had it worse but it was still hard getting it all down. There was wallpaper in the foyer, kitchen?, upstairs hallway and two bedrooms. The foyer, kitchen and hallway were easy - everything just pulled down without a fight. But the bedrooms seemed to be really fond of their covering. Here's one of the bedrooms that Fernando and Chris had previously attacked:


And here's the other bedroom with it's wallpaper on:



It's hard to tell from the last photo that the original background color of the wallpaper was a pale BLUE. There were spots that had been covered by frames throughout the years that were still a little blue. So why does it all look so yellow? NICOTINE.

It was a two day affair and far from fun but my mother and I got through it. I even had a huge blister on my finger from all of the scraping but thanks to my sister's Reiki, you'd never know now.

The walls in the second room are now ready to be prepped for painting. The room with the blue flowered wallpaper has the worst plaster damage in the house. We may not get to it for a while - luckily, we have 3 other bedrooms to use in the meantime.