Heading Outside

We had ONE day of nice weather around here on Friday, and I'm officially ready for spring and summer weather to arrive, though we've now been back down into the 40s for two days. It's forever fascinating to me how people in the midwest are wearing boots and jackets in 50 degree weather in October while they are happy to freeze in sandals in the same 50 degree weather in March.

We're still waiting to see if a deck is in our 2017 future, but that has in no way deterred me from planning our outdoors living spaces. I have always loved really luxe-feeling decks, but up until now we've mostly stuck to secondhand and CHEAP. We sold our flimsy outdoors table when we moved from our old house, so this time, I'm planning from scratch.

I'm not exactly afraid of color, but I also prefer it in contrast to a lot of neutrals. So I'm following the high contrast, neutral palette of our house outdoors where if the weather is nice enough to hang out outside-- there's a lot of color already. Here are some of my favorite options:

Top: CB2 and Bottom: Target

Now back to my search to find that money tree... 

Mudroom Inspiration

Fun fact. When you go almost four months without uploading any pictures from your phone to your computer, sometimes you end up with over 3400 of them to deal with at the same time-- which is both scary and impressive to me. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that many of them exist because I tend to take 100 pictures in 30 seconds when it comes to the kids, but then don't delete the 99 of them that didn't make the cut. But I digress.

We [mostly] finished the fireplace, though it could still use one more coat of paint. We recently discovered an excellent self-leveling paint  that's designed for use on cabinets and doors, and it would  be awesome on something like our fireplace surround as well. That being said, it's done for now, and I've been taking full advantage of it. See examples A, B and C below.

We planned on executing a quick build on our mudroom area after we moved in, since we also opted to take it over from the builders when we couldn't decide exactly what we needed out of it, but instead we designed a temporary solution by way of removable hooks and a bench that only barely improved the space and lasted a full eight months before we did anything else.

Unlike the fireplace, which we thought about for a long time but then designed quickly and built much more slowly, the mudroom took much longer to conceive but ultimately was simpler to build. We wanted a decent sized bench and some open cabinet space for shoes and outdoors accessories, but also a good amount of concealed storage for things like Nate's camera and lenses, seasonal gear, etc..

White paint and open cabinets

White paint with stained wood bench

Our space was a little weird due to the strange angle of the wall at one end, so we debated closing it in or concealing it, but ultimately went for the most storage possible and discovered that these odd little cubbies hold more than you'd expect. 

Now that construction is [mostly] completed, we've moved on to a search for some attractive, functional baskets that we can keep in the open cubbies for each person in our family. I have searched high and low but a few things have become evident in my search. 

1. Stores that I typically love like Home Goods and Marshalls usually have one or two cute wire baskets, but it's rare and in this case, I have not been able to find a set of 4-6 matching baskets.

2. Baskets are freaking expensive.

Thus, I've ended up online. I kind of hate ordering something like this that I know will be a pain in the butt to return if it doesn't work, but you can't beat the price and Amazon Prime is my bae. That is, incidentally, the first time I've ever personally used the term "bae." 

1. The Lucky Clover Basket

I love the simple and imperfect wiring in this basket, and I like the dark finish as well. It also seems convenient to choose a basket that has designated openings to grab it down from the cubbies.

2. Spectrum Diversified Basket

I like the real handles on this basket, which make it feel more portable, like something that I can pull out of a cubby and into the garage or a different room.

3. Spectrum Diversified Basket with label

No handles on this basket, but I love the black finish and the playfulness in the wiring. I also think it could be super convenient to have a built-in option for labeling each person's basket, though I'm not sure we could actually fit 5 or 6 of it in our open cubbies. 

We've ordered baskets and attached the final piece of trim to the built-ins, so we're definitely into the home stretch. "After" pictures to come soon!

Amazon affiliate links used above. Thank you for the support.

Are you sick of hearing about the fireplace yet?

After three months in our new home, we finally moved our beam to our driveway, where it then sat for a few weeks. But-- but!-- once our motivation set in, things moved quickly. Though our style mostly trends more streamlined, the laws of 1850s barn beams dictate that you appreciate them in (most of) their imperfect, dilapidated glory. So after a power wash and just enough sanding to remove flaking outer layers, we mixed a dark and a natural stain and gave the beam just two coats so that the details in the wood shine. 

Then we waited for a willing soul to stop by and lend some brute strength to the task of bringing this baby into the house. Nate's an engineer, so he ran equations and thought and re-thought the hanging process until he was satisfied that nothing could pull this mantel from the wall.

It was, however, too heavy for even these two strong men to lift from floor to the spot where it would be adhered to the wall, so we devised a levy system out of stools and step ladders. 

 Success at last!

And when you go to all this effort to customize your fireplace, you take an awkward family photo in front of it to commemorate all of the f-bombs and harried child redirection that went into the job.

Adding the remaining pieces to frame out the rest of the surround was comparatively nothing.

Our pretty marble tile arrived. I love that we got such varied marbling in our tiles. Though there's lots of white and gray, there's also a little tan and even purplish tones, and it takes on a sparkling appearance in the evening that is so so pretty. More on the pain-in-the-ass process of herringbone tile manipulation to come.

To be completely clear, these first two pieces of drywall are actually pieces #3 and 4, because it took Nate and I two mega fail moments where we almost had a piece of drywall placed and then it tumbled over backwards and epically smashed on the floor for us to figure out that we needed a different methodology.

See that extension pole on a broom to the left of the fireplace in the photo below? That along with some strategically pre-placed nails for balance was our saving grace, because Nate could take breaks to rest the drywall at intervals on his way up to the ceiling while I pressed the tops of the sheets against the frame with the flat broom to keep them steady while they got screwed in. 

We are so lucky that aside from a few ankle cuts from where the drywall bounced off Nate on its way down the second time, and a few spots of adhesive on our rug, we otherwise escaped unscathed. This is a "do not try this at home" lesson for all. There's a reason why people use professionals for projects such as this one.

After the drywall went up, so did the trim. We intentionally sized our fireplace to minimize drywall cuts, and then the trim ended up covering most of the seams. Score! We tiled before we drywalled the lower section so that we had a better idea of how we needed to trim it out. Again, more on that later.

And though we've managed to get her primed, the autumn and then winter holidays showed up, and I decided that I wanted to decorate my unfinished mantel more than I wanted to finish painting it. So there it remains until after the new year, where it may continue to haunt us for another few months before one of us sucks it up and gets it done.

Nevertheless, we've come a long way.

Five Friday Facts

1. Starting when I was in high school through my mid-twenties, Friday was this major thing. The idea of having no plans gave me anxiety, and when it came to going out-- the more friends the better! Fridays were an evening for fun clothes, a little too much makeup, and a beer in the shower. Now that I'm a parent of three, Friday nights are equally amazing because on Saturday we don't have to wake up to catch the bus at 6:58am, we often get to hang out around the house instead of rushing-rushing-rushing to the next thing, and I can make a night special by calling it a movie night and serving frozen pizza to my little people.

2. Cheese pizza for grown ups: order/ bake/ cook a plain pie for the not-so-foodies in your life. Then saute some spinach (a LOT shrinks down a LOT so I basically put a salad's worth in a pan with a few teaspoons of water and a lid) and top your pizza with the spinach, a drizzle of balsamic glaze/ balsamic vinegar reduction, and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Gourmet for pennies! You're welcome.

3. Fall is wonderful and everything, but it's not the only season worth living for: I hate pumpkin pie and pumpkin spice lattes (though I loooove pumpkin beer), I hate my amped up allergies to something that's yet to be defined, I love sweater weather but hate the days where I have to basically plan out three outfits per kid because it starts off at 48 degrees but ends at 75 and rains somewhere in the middle, and I really am not a fan of cider mills because cider and donuts = sugar = bees and I am NOT a fan of them.

4. In less than a week my third baby will be 4 months old and I could already see myself wanting another despite the fact that we've 90 percent decided that he'll be our last. But the time is passing by so very quickly and I can already tell that he's going to be a toddler before I know it. He's already scooting (scary) and sleeping through the night (scary because I know it could change on a dime) and he's just the sweetest little dude on the planet. I'll have five more just like him, please.

5. Instagram is driving me nuts. Though I love the photo-centric format and I really love the fact that I can have my feed automatically printed every 60 pictures (Chatbooks are the only reason why my kids are going to have their early days documented because traditional baby books have been a major fail around here!), it seems like every day people's feeds are getting more contrived and more magazine-like to sell the lifestyle they want everyone to think they are leading. It also, at least for me, breeds discontent. I want the beautiful white rooms and whimsically perfect cookies and adorable children who are always coiffed and styled perfectly. It's hard to remind myself that Instagram, like Facebook, leads people to compare their own rounded knowledge of themselves with the external image that others are portraying. So I'm thinking about seeing myself out. Or changing my social media habits. Or something.

So here's a pumpkin beer toast to the short-lived neverending days of parenting young children and maintaining some semblence of sanity and a career in a world where women are losing themselves in their filtered online lives. Here's to the 9 hour workday I have tomorrow that allows my husband and me to reduce childcare costs and pay for extracurricular activities and the unspoken costs of moving into a new build home, and reduces both our family time but also our stress levels. And here's to the blessed freedom of a Friday night without plans or expectations.

Cheers!
Erin

PS- On the home decor front, we've started planning out our mudroom and study built-ins. I am so so so anxious to get started! Plans coming soon.

Outdoor Living at E-Haus

One of the hardest parts of moving into a new or new build house these days is the sheer quantity of inspirational pictures available to dissatisfy even the most excited home owner. Taking a step back, though, it's good to have to wait, and earn, and dream. 

I wanted a fireplace to be immediately set in our house, to the point where I very nearly pulled the trigger on having one of the house contractors build out a generic mantel for us just so that we could have one done. At another point, someone suggested that we use the same stone from our exterior to build a 2-story stone fireplace and I thought-- yes! that makes sense!-- even though something else in me kept me questioning if it was the right plan. Luckily, my doubt and Nate's steadfast insistence that he build out the fireplace surround kept us from making a hasty choice, and a few months later I came across a picture that I immediately loved. Now, after a few months of tweaking, our fireplace surround is 80 percent complete and we couldn't be happier with our choices. 

All that to say (100 degree summer that would have killed a new lawn aside so yay for waiting until fall for that!), there is a benefit to the time and budget-dictated delay in creating our outdoors spaces. While we'll be spreading topsoil (so. so. so. much topsoil) and grass seed shortly, we're planning our first outdoors construction projects for next spring/ summer so that we can save towards them over the winter. 

Our property is skewed such that our front yard is really where we have both the best view and the space for outdoors living-- so how to we make this work best?! 

Do we put a patio directly in front of the house?

Do we wrap it around to the side and create an outdoors room or screened-in porch? 

Where do we plant our garden-- at the edge of our property? 

Where will we contruct the workshop?

Which project comes first-- the patio or the deck?

And what do we plant in the beds around the house?

(And this, by the way, is the view)

Pretty darn spectacular. So what do we do?!

Outdoor Living at E-Haus

One of the hardest parts of moving into a new or new build house these days is the sheer quantity of inspirational pictures available to dissatisfy even the most excited home owner. Taking a step back, though, it's good to have to wait, and earn, and dream. 

I wanted a fireplace to be immediately set in our house, to the point where I very nearly pulled the trigger on having one of the house contractors build out a generic mantel for us just so that we could have one done. At another point, someone suggested that we use the same stone from our exterior to build a 2-story stone fireplace and I thought-- yes! that makes sense!-- even though something else in me kept me questioning if it was the right plan. Luckily, my doubt and Nate's steadfast insistence that he build out the fireplace surround kept us from making a hasty choice, and a few months later I came across a picture that I immediately loved. Now, after a few months of tweaking, our fireplace surround is 80 percent complete and we couldn't be happier with our choices. 

All that to say (100 degree summer that would have killed a new lawn aside so yay for waiting until fall for that!), there is a benefit to the time and budget-dictated delay in creating our outdoors spaces. While we'll be spreading topsoil (so. so. so. much topsoil) and grass seed shortly, we're planning our first outdoors construction projects for next spring/ summer so that we can save towards them over the winter. 

Our property is skewed such that our front yard is really where we have both the best view and the space for outdoors living-- so how to we make this work best?! 

Do we put a patio directly in front of the house?

Do we wrap it around to the side and create an outdoors room or screened-in porch? 

Where do we plant our garden-- at the edge of our property? 

Where will we contruct the workshop?

Which project comes first-- the patio or the deck?

And what do we plant in the beds around the house?

(And this, by the way, is the view)

Pretty darn spectacular. So what do we do?!

Fireplace construction, continued.

Our supervisor and the current dictator of all our house projects. He's a tough boss but at least he is cute and lets us sleep a little bit at night.

I'm not scared of heights, but the way this ladder balances on its rubber-covered feet slightly stressed me out. We ended up going with a telescoping ladder  that will let us use it as a normal step ladder in addition to getting up high when we need to access the roof or apparently, the windows in our great room. We also found it when it was on sale for less than $130, which was a huge bonus and the reason why we went with 22' instead of 16' or 18'.

You know that your husband is an engineer when he devises strings with washers to ensure that the fireplace surround will be exactly centered and exactly level. He also claims that our kids could climb this frame without damaging themselves or the wall, but we don't plan on testing that theory.

This picture makes me a little seasick, but it's what happens when your husband insists that a lower mantel makes more sense and you are too visual of a person to be able to respond without seeing what it would look like. Ultimately I won this battle and we went with the rule of thirds. The mantel will be at 6 feet (the right side) and exactly a third of the way up the wall.

Now that we're actually making progress on framing the surround and finishing our mantel (more to come on that soon!), we needed to decide on a tile to use around the firebox and I headed to the store. Our initial plan was to utilize a subway-style marble tile but as it turns out, there were lots of viable options. 

(L- I love this pattern and the contrast of black and white that would complement our tuxedo kitchen. I was less sure of how the super graphic pattern would play with all of the other elements of our 18 foot tall fireplace surround. R- Herringbone is classic and I thought this oversized version was fun. But I questioned the beige undertones and monotony of color throughout.)

 

(L- I really think that this basketweave pattern would play well with the rectangles on the upper part of the wall, and the wood-look tile combined with marble is gorgeous. But I wondered if it might be too trendy in the end. R- Our original plan. I don't think subway tile can go wrong!)

(L- We love gray, perhaps a little too much, and the strong variation throughout this marble might give that contrast without going to an extreme like with the black & white tile above. R- Another herringbone option, this time with smaller tiles and both gray and beige undertones throughout. I was a little concerned that the small scale tile would look too tiny on our huge wall.)

Next step will be to lock our multi-hundred pound mantel into place this weekend after it's done curing. We ended up finishing it with a danish oil in a mix of medium and dark walnut to get close to the color of our dark hardwood floors.