Midcentury Dreaming

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on the chevron floor angles and for the sweet well-wishes! I'm doing better, but still trying to take it easy until next week, when I'm having a second procedure done on my throat. It's been nice to press the reset button a little bit and spend some much-needed quality time with my family. Thanks for hanging in there for me. :)

Some of you may have seen on my instagram account that recently I stopped by to see a house that we almost put an offer in on, but didn't. As much as I wanted to make a move, the timing just wasn't right - the house went on the market a few weeks before Michael accepted his new job offer and before we had fully committed to moving to Phoenix. I wanted this house SO much though. I pretty much give it credit for getting me excited about the idea of leaving New York and buying a home. :)

It was just what I imagined us buying - a completely original midcentury gem in a cool old neighborhood. Of course, these houses only come on the market once in a blue moon, so it sold in just a matter of hours for more than the asking price. I was heartbroken even though I had never even seen the house in person and we weren't even technically looking at that point. But seriously. Check out that door!! So cool, so much potential.

It never makes sense to go down this road, but it's hard not to play the should have/could have/would have game with this house. I love the house we did end up getting, and in many ways our current house is a better fit for us, but it's going to definitely be a different look when we're finished with it than a midcentury house would have been. (Angie Hranowsky's home comes to mind).

Anyway, I decided to rub salt in my wound by driving past the midcentury house the other day. Turns out a flipper bought the house (GASP) and there were workers there ripping absolutely everything out. It was completely gutted, and all the kitchen cabinets and interior doors were being taken out just as I pulled up. The guys saw me poking around and admiring the pulls on two bifold doors and told me I was welcome to have them before they tossed the doors.

My grandparents and my great grandma (the one from Sweden) both lived in really cool midcentury style homes in Arizona and I think this home felt a lot like theirs to me. Grandma Johnson had this really cool stone mosaic coffee table and these pulls reminded me of that table and the style of her home. But I can be stupidly sentimental about grandparents sometimes. It's probably for the best the universe bequeathed these pulls to me so I can have a little something that makes me think of their homes, and thereby overcoming the temptation to buy the whole dang house when it goes back on the market in a few months. (I may have still called the flipper's listing agent though, just for kicks) :)

I'm sure some of you have a few good sob-stories for me about a home that you desperately wanted, but that just wasn't meant to be. Dish!

The Best Gold Spray Paint

I had meant to order some of my favorite brass hardware from Martha Stewart's line at The Home Depot for the laundry room redo. Most of her brass pieces are only available online and so I was up a creek a bit by the time I remembered to place an order. It was way too late in the game and I needed a Plan B.

So I went to a couple different hardware stores and rounded up my favorite knobs, bin pulls and ring pulls. I didn't really care what the finish was on these because I knew I wanted to spray paint them all gold... But I forgot to buy the spray paint while I was at the hardware store. #sleepdeprivation

I did remember about the spray paint while I was at Michaels though and in a moment of frustration I decided to buy a can of gold spray paint there and just make it work.

The spray paint I ended up buying is call Design Master and, let me tell you. It is amazing. Not too pink, not too sparkly, not too flat. It's definitely my favorite gold spray paint so far. Such a happy accident!

Have you guys tried Design Master? What's your go-to spray paint for metallics? I used to swear by only Rustoleum's Metallic line in brass, but I'm glad that I'm broadening my horizons with the Design Master gold. I think it's a little less sparkly than the Rustoleum, which I definitely prefer.

The Coolest Built-In Bunk Beds (and DIY Brass Hardware)

Christina is one of my favorite people. She is as kind, talented and gorgeous as the day is long. The last time I was in Arizona, I swung by her new house for a little tour. I'm going to beg her to let me share everything here on LGN when she's finished (I'll probably have to arm wrestle the editors at Elle Decor for it - it's SO good!).

In case you haven't seen these yet, and since we were talking about cool bunk beds the other day, I thought I'd share the built-in bunks Christina did in her triplet sons' room. So, so cool right? That railing is unreal.

One of my favorite parts of the bed is the DIY hardware Christina made by spray painting pipes! I've made curtain rods out of pipes before, but never oversize pulls. The brass spray paint takes them to a whole new level.

I love how chunky these are. Anything smaller would have been lost on the beds. 

See what I mean by talented?! 

PS Christina shared a little tour of her twin daughters' bedroom here, back in the day. Still love that room. :)

Painting Laminate Bathroom Cabinets

The title of this post really should be "Putting Lipstick on a Pig."

The garden level bathroom is straight from the 70s, complete with lovely beigey-pink floor tile, a non-functioning hot tub style bath (ew) and, my favorite, laminate counters and cabinets. Please do your best to control your jealousy:

It's one of those spaces that you walk in to, trying to brainstorm ways to make it look better, and then you walk out five seconds later saying "Just burn it down."

Then last week I was at a Home Depot in Westchester that I hadn't ever been to before and they had a bunch of the Martha Stewart hardware in stock, including these polished nickel babies.

I decided to go for it and came home with $27 worth of hardware and a hope and a prayer for this sad little bathroom of mine.

   I painted the cabinets with two coats of my trusty Rustoleum enamel in gloss black. If you have similar laminate cabinets that you're dying to ditch, I totally recommend going this route first. Why not? You can prime if you want to, but I didn't worry about it. I just gave the old laminate a good cleaning first. Then I installed the new hardware once the paint was dry to the touch.

I had to hang the pulls a little higher than I would have normally preferred because of the way the drawer was made (boo). But it's still an improvement in looks and in functionality (I basically needed a screwdriver to pry the drawers open before the pulls were on).

We also brought in the vintage lucite stool I reupholstered here. Evie climbs up and kneels on it when she's washing her little hands.

I also added a new wastebasket from West Elm. $5 from the clearance section. Love the pattern here.

And I hung two of the $5 magnifying mirrors from IKEA. We've had these for a couple of years now and they are A+ in my book. As I side note, I am crazy in love with anything scissor-arm (these brass beauties were my favorite purchase to date).

This cute new coat rack from Urban is also a favorite now.

Truthfully, I am crossing my fingers that the landlord is up for a full bathroom reno this summer. (and really, shouldn't he be? maybe I should send him this post as a refresher on how nasty the space is!) But before then, I have big plans for the mirror area and I'm going to paint out the kick panel black and I think I'll add little feet so the vanity looks more like a piece of furniture. I wish I would have just done this while I had all the paint and everything out. In person it's not as obvious that that kick panel needs to be painted out.

All in all, I don't totally, totally hate this space anymore. And burning it down is a distant plan B now. So, that's good! All thanks to these pretty pulls and a little black paint.

What pigs have you been slathering with lipstick lately? I'd love to feel like I'm in good company here. :)

Knob Favorites

I get bored of furniture really fast, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense to move or get rid of a perfectly fine piece of furniture, especially when it's functional and fits a space well. I was super bored of this console last month, but before I looked into replacing it with something else or painting it another color, I switch out the hardware on the top drawer with these brass ring pulls from eBay (you can see the old knobs here) and BAM. I like the console again!

I'm sort of funny about hardware. I love taking a peek at Anthropologie's offerings because their hardware section is like bins of gorgeous candy - all glossy and colorful! But when it comes down to it, I feel like most of the knobs they have are best suited for a kid's room. I prefer hardware to be a little more simple - mostly metallics and usually just one or two colors.

Here are some of my favorite classic and quirky pieces out there right now. I'd stick with more classic pulls on a colorful/funky piece of furniture and consider the quirky options for a super tame piece (maybe something you kept wood, or painted all white or black).

1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11

1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11

Sneak Peek: Campaign Style Kitchen Island

I'm racing around like crazy this week trying to get some big jobs wrapped before the weekend. But all I really want to do is stay home and take photos in the daylight of my kitchen island to share with you guys! This DIY is finally done and I think my favorite part was discovering just how much I like the look of these mini brass furniture nails in campaign hardware. The nails cost just a couple bucks for six packs of 25. I have a whole stash in my "garage" (aka my pantry) and I have a feeling they're going to keep coming in handy!

New Dressers

We've needed a pair of new dressers for our bedroom for a while. I found a set (not a pair in the same height) on eBay that I loved. It had the prettiest tiger maple veneer. But we really needed a matching pair and something much bigger and taller with at least five drawers.

I lucked out when we went down to Jersey last week and I stumbled across this pair of MCM dresser with a cool wood grain. Not exactly the dressers I loved from eBay, but the dimensions were perfect and the price was great (only $200 for the pair).

At first I was on the fence about the hardware. The zigzag is kind of cool, but now I'm over them I think. The brass plate is getting corroded, so I'm thinking I just want to do simple brass ring pulls like the dresser had that I first fell in love with.

What's your vote? Clean and touch up the brass zigzag pulls, or replace with simple brass ring pulls?

PS I usually have a huge stash of these brass ring pulls since they look great on everything. They are about 2" in diameter. I might just try them again, though I wish I had something closer to the 2.5-3" diameter range. Gracious Home has an impressive hardware selection that I might check out this week. Do you have an sources for large brass ring pulls? Liz's Antique Hardware is great if you have about $30 a pull to spend.