playing

throwing in some decoration even though the room's not ready but i can't stand it any longer so i am, and now i've really got to go to work, bye-- -

thankful

What a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday we had. For four full days our dining room was a hive of activity. No, actually, we sat down to turkey dinner (fabulous) at our surrogate family's (thanks Risé), while our own dining room experienced a transformation. We worked our butts off and finally overcame a major decorating block. Bookcases. I couldn't get anything to work because the room is so small and dark, with traffic patterns along two sides. In January I got rid of the useless china cabinet and moved the short bookcases in from the living room, but they didn't quite cut it. For months I hunted down industrial etageres - there are plenty of beauties out there - but couldn't find a single one that was appropriate for the location. Then, two weeks ago I changed direction altogether and decided on white wood. I was afraid 7-footers would be obtrusive and overpowering, so I really had to hold my breath and leap. Buying a big costly piece can be death-defying but I lived to tell the tale. The white blends into the walls and the cases actually recede. The glass not only pulls more light into the room, it expands it by reflecting the outside view. It all works and I couldn't be happier. Or more thankful.

too cluttered, not enough storage


ikea and saint michael to the rescue


work progresses and things are looking up


a fourth bookcase might work over here too


non-obtrusive, despite a heavy traffic pattern


end results: exactly what i wanted.
now for that chandelier

drip drip drip

This was the primary consideration in remodeling the porch. Condensation. But I decided to make the best of it by using outdoor furnishings that will hold their own against water, mildew and fading. The sofas still sport their shipping plastic, until the outdoor covers arrive (hurry up West Elm!) but the wooden rugs are doing a fine job. Quite beautifully, I must say.

happiness is...

After a long hot summer of hurdles and hard work, rebuilding and painting the porch, having a little something to show for it is happiness, yes it is. We're nowhere near finished, but there is this. Drum roll please...

it always helps to see how far we've come

it's coming along swimmingly

even though it's been a whale of an undertaking *blub*

View Large

View Large

Little by little, bit by bit. I'm not a speed demon, okay? The painting is done, the room is edited, and now I'm looking for things that will coax my 18th century style into the 21st. You can't jump three centuries overnight, you know. Besides, I've learned it's smarter to take time deliberating so I can splurge on as much quality as I can afford, rather than replace things I never wanted in the first place. Then I go for it. But when I go for it I've got to be sure it's right because you can't return custom orders.

Here's what I've done so far and here's where I'm headed. I used to love pretty Victorian clutter, I still like looking at it in other people's homes, but now all I want in mine is space and light. So I began by stripping the room. The first thing to go was a large china cabinet on the far wall. It crowded the room, swallowed the light and wasn't terribly useful. Then I rolled up the oriental rug (is it PC to call it that these days?) No more bright red and blue, no more busy pattern. The bookcases on the left were brought in from the living room because I wanted to expand the dining room's usefulness. I've got more books so I'm looking for something tall but open to avoid blocking the light. I'm also looking for a new pendant light, something with strong clean lines. The chairs will be recovered. What about painting them black and reupholstering with black horsehair? Horsehair! Wow! Does anyone make a synthetic horsehair? I'm also debating whether to cut open the wall on the right to add another set of French doors. S'pose that's enough here?

It better be. If you look through the far door, you'll see another room, piled high with displaced stuff from the rest of the house. I've got big plans there too. I am about to get *sigh* a studio. And life is good.

View Large

View Large

Industrial Bookcases

Pierre Chareau | Maison de Verre Bookcase
Room View

From the sublime to the ridiculously inexpensive, there are bookcases. Industrial bookcases such as those designed in 1932 by Pierre Chareau for Maison de Verre, a fabulous house with a fabulous bookcase. Although the house I plan to bookcase is but a circa '74 trailer, I still intend to live fabulous. Here are some of my options.

Restoration Hardware | 1950s Dutch Shipyard Shelving
63"W x 18"D x 96"H
$2795
Room View

Restoration Hardware | Dutch Industrial Etagere
40"W x 18"D x 84"H
$1295
Room View

Restoration Hardware | French Library Shelving
42"W x 24"D x 93"H
$995
Room View

Cisco-Eagle | Industrial Steel Shelving
48"W x 18"D x 75"H
$558.69
New York Magazine

Pottery Barn | Benchwright Bookcase
54"W x 20"D x 66"H
$799.00 special $699.00
Room View

Anthropologie | Decker Bookshelf
36"W x 14"D x 79"H
$698.00
Room View

West Elm | Flat-Bar Bookcase
30"W x 15"D x 69"H
$399
Room View

Crate & Barrel | Fulton Bookcase
26"W x 12"D x 75"H
$699.00
Room View

Restoration Hardware | Baker's Rack
73"W x 21"D x 78"H
$1795
Room View

Restoration Hardware | Salvaged Wood and Steel Shelving
71"W x 20"D x 78"H
$1995
Room View

Hudson Goods | Industrial Factory Cart Shelf
32"W x 15"D x 44"H
$649.00
Hudson Goods

IKEA | Hyllis
24"W x 11"D x 55"H
$14.99
Room View

Marie Claire Maison

Outlier | Large Industrial Bookcase
Vintage Industrial Bookshelf on Casters
Build Your Own

Inside a Doublewide

What do I always say up there at the very top of the page? "It's not what you decorate, but how you decorate it that counts." I think that's true of everything, but it's especially true of my house - because it's a mobile home. The comment I heard most often throughout its first remodel was, "But this won't look like a trailer anymore!" Mind you, I might be trailer trash myself, but my doublewide is not.

Here's another doublewide that defies stereotypes. It belongs to Theresa and Craig Smith, who furnished it with architectural salvadge and antiques from their shop, Cottage Gardens in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Their imaginative work was discovered by the editors of Country Living magazine and is currently featured online in videos and photos, that I've reposted here.

As the interviewer says about meeting Theresa, "She whipped out pictures of her house that were just to die for, and I'm looking through them and ooing and ahing and getting so excited, and she says, 'Well, there's a little hiccup - it's actually a mobile home.' You could have pushed me over with a feather. It was amazing, so amazing. I just couldn't believe they were interiors based on a mobile home. In 28 years of Country Living, we had never shot a mobile home, so we knew we had stumbled upon something really great."

See for yourself . . .
(help the videos load by clicking "pause" for a bit)



The Kitchen
The secret behind this amazing kitchen? Repurposing and imagination!




The Living Room
Paint and architectural salvage create an economically-friendly room.




The Bedroom
Create an elegant personal space complete with collections and special touches.




The Workspace
Inspiration is key in a studio. Bright wall paint and other ideas here!






A Double-Wide Mobile Home

Designed by Theresa and Craig Smith
Photographed by Keith Scott Morton
Published by Country Living

Theresa Smith has honed her distinctively elegant salvage style through years of antiques shows — and it all comes together in her Glendale, Kentucky, mobile home.

Thirteen years ago, Theresa Smith was a single mother of three, moving back from a job overseas, with one week to find a new home. She ordered a 28- by 72-foot mobile home with as few walls as possible, so it would feel light and open. Five years later, she married Craig Smith, and they built a new home together. Soon after, the Smiths decided to go into the antiques business, selling at shows around the country, so moving back to her mortgage-free mobile home made sense. Inside this four-bedroom, 2,016-square-foot home, Theresa proves that "it isn't the structure you live in, it's what you do with it that makes it a home."
[Now, where have I heard that before?]

A double-wide mobile home on two acres of land offers a home base for Theresa and Craig Smith, who travel nearly half the year for their antiques business and their Elizabethtown shop, Cottage Gardens.

An actual front porch, with mail still in the mailbox, from a house in Louisville now graces Theresa's sun room.

Craig Smith makes and sells candelabra such as this one out of old lamp parts. Find the Smiths' work at their store, Cottage Gardens, in Elizabethtown, Ky., and at the Marburger Antique Show in Texas the first weekend in October.

Theresa chose garden furniture for the kitchen because "the glass top and airy lines don't stop the eye." The chandelier is one of 14 in the house.

Antique antics find plenty of room for expression here. At last count, Theresa had 130 ironstone butter pats. "They have no purpose, I just like their looks," she says.

Theresa found a cache of old, heavy enamel letters and sold all but these three.

Red walls in Theresa's studio are the one exception to her home's ivory rule. An old restaurant prep table serves as a desk. Metal security grates are now bulletin boards.

A commercial sink provides a sleek counterpoint to all the peeling paint.

Space limited? Try layering upward. Theresa used architectural elements to punctuate walls and shelves. Removed from their original purpose, they form intriguing silhouettes in the kitchen. Theresa replaced standard-issue oak cabinets with vintage cupboards and even a Sellers cabinet (left). An old store counter (foreground) now serves as a work island.

Round iron vents such as this once hung beneath the eaves of Kentucky homes to let hot air escape.

In the master bedroom, "I like to pair worn metal or wood with something fabulous," says Theresa. The canopy is from an old store display. Theresa sandblasted it, left it out to rust, then sealed it and wove scrim in its curlicues. Displayed below: her grandmother's pearls, beads, hats, and bags.

Vignettes juxtapose textures, shapes, and styles. A dining room cupboard showcases Theresa's overflowing collection of white ironstone. "None of it is pristine or perfect," she says. "It's stained and chipped and cracked, and that's the way I like it." Old dolls' heads add a touch of humor.

In the master bedroom, a framed display of carved heads and a statuette, candleholders from a restaurant, and Italian chairs surround a salvaged mantel.

only thing in the pot is paint

...but it's a'cookin, as I'm painting about 9 12 hours a day now. Couldn't get going until I got rid of stuff, so I donated to charity. Lots. Most was perfectly good but, hey, it's not a waste of money if someone else can benefit from it, right? Who knows, it could even find it's way home with one of you. Just take pictures, okay? Now if you'll excuse me I gotta give that pot a stir and fry me up a messa Benjamin Moore Moonlight White...

see it up close

see it up close

Why do I bother showing you these digital paint chips? Because I love writing HTML code, I reckon. Since every monitor displays colors differently, it's impossible to make these chips look consistent, let alone accurate. I can tell you that you would never know these are the same colors in my house, so I'll try to describe them.

Moonlight White

WALL - Moonlight White is a definite bright white with hints of beige, gray, and olive. On my monitor this chip looks more medium warm beige, like the old wall color in the photo above, but that ain't it. Go figure.

Simply White

TRIM - Simply White is a very bright white with almost no discernable color to it. Not true, of course, but it certainly doesn't look pink like the chip above.

Silhouette

ISLAND - Silhouette is a deep dark charcoal that looks almost black in my kitchen, with a decidedly olive/brown cast. It's a gorgeous color, kind of dark aged bronze with lots of complexity. Doesn't look anything like the color in the photo, does it? I rest my case. Actually, the photo in my previous post is a better representation of the island color. Take a look.

lighten UP

Workstead
Design Within Reach

Hubbardton Forge

Restoration Hardware

In between brushstrokes, I've been hunting down an iron or bronze light fixture to hang over my kitchen island. Something that visually connects with the iron curves of my stools. Nothing special, mind you, just a major statement in an early Edison sort of Victorian industrial era Steampunk style, that's all. The island is integral to the main living area, and the first thing you see when you walk in the door, so a statement it must make. It also must make adequate light for kitchen work. Oh, and one more must - I have a thing against incandescent lightbulbs yellowing my paint colors. I know I should be using those fluorescent environmental bulbs, but they're worse. They're as yellow as bug lights and repel me faster than they repel bugs. (Maybe I'm just buggy to begin with.) So of course I only use the expensive burn-out-after-24-hour Reveal bulbs. The whiteness of their light is pure sunshine. Somebody better have a light bulb go off in their head and invent a hybrid so I don't have to feel guilty anymore, that's all I've got to say.

This, then, is my kitchen island, my steampunk stools and my missing light fixture. Which of the following would you hang here? Like Proud Mary, we're gonna start out easy, then we're gonna finish nice and rough...

1. Restoration Hardware

2. Ballard Designs

3. Ballard Designs

4. Martha Stewart

5. Pottery Barn

6. Erin Martin Design

7. Barn Light Electric

8. Erin Martin Design

9. Ballard Designs

10. Pottery Barn

11. Rejuvenation

12. Rejuvenation

13. Moormann Berge

14. Tonic Home

15. Pottery Barn

16. Lindsey Adelman Studio

17. Lindsey Adelman Studio

18. David Trubridge

19. Anthropologie

20. Pottery Barn

21. Hubbardton Forge

Early Electrics