Catching Up....

I opted to work from home today (last night an under 1 hour commute turned into a 3 1/2 hour commute -not going to face that again today), so my lunch hour can happily be spent catching up on blogging. I've been taking pictures of meals and thinking I'll just toss them up on the blog tonight - and never got around to it. My bad...

Anyway - couple of changes around the house. New kitchen curtains - believe me, it's a chore for me to consider window treatments, so it was a red letter day to buy and actually put them up.

My microwave, which was mounted over the stove, gave up the ghost a week before Christmas Eve - I need to have a microwave for my mom, so I ran to Sears and tried to buy another one, but found out that it would take weeks for someone to install it for me. I couldn't wait that long, so I had to get a countertop model. After unpacking it and using it for a bit, I realized how much I preferred the countertop model and never liked having a microwave over the stove. I've always wanted to have a shelf instead to keep things like my salt dishes and pepper grinders. So, voila, after a trip to Ikea and Home Depot I now have my "workspace":

Before:



Now:





The rest of the kitchen with the new curtains(the old treatments were bamboo blinds....kind of cool in a Pier1 sort of way, but the cats liked to chew on them):








BTW - these are the cats in question - we adopted them last summer. They are six toed cats we found on Petfinder.org. They've been wonderful and in no time they took over and now rule the house. Introducing Brother and Sister:

Casanova - and he does live up to his name - an incorrigible flirt with incredible personality - we keep making up new names for him and stories about his conquests. Right now, I believe he's Casanova Beauregard Dupre - a talkative ne'er do well jazz trumpeter. He's a shrimp with a meow five times his size:








Ebony - she's the quiet giant with squeeky little meow. Much more skittish, however, she's also much more loyal than her flirtatious brother. She likes to sit and watch the world go by:

Before & After

One of my guests on New Year's Eve is an incredibly gifted painter and interior design person. Over the last few years he's helped me slowly convert my house from the poster child of 70's bad taste to something livable. I've lived in my house for about 12 years and each year I've taken on a project to revamp a room or an area of the house. I wish I had taken pictures of the place when I first moved in (I'm sure I have, but they may have gone with the ex) to see just how bad it was - just try to imagine this: each room a different shade of foil wallpaper or horrid color scheme:

Foyer - Silver and white foil paper - white faux marble tile
Living Room/Dining Room - white walls with with bright orange splashes of paint and a bright orange shag rug - City of Mirrors on each wall and sparkly popcorn ceilings
Kitchen - Black walnut cabinets, lime green counters and hardware, silver, white, lemon and lime trellis foil paper
Family Room - Black walnut paneling, black and white shag rug, full wall brick fireplace
Sun Room - Beige T-11 siding for paneling, cracked beige concrete floor, dark brown structural beams, gorgeous cherry tongue and groove ceiling (yeah- what gives with that??)
Powder Room (our personal favorite) - Red, white and blue plaid wallpaper - not tartan, but squiggly, designed on acid plaid. On the walls, the door and the ceiling. Blood red sink and medicine cabinet frame. We called it the behavior modification room. When my son would play in the basement, he would run up two flights of stairs just to avoid the powder room.


The upstairs was even worse, but I won't frighten any more small children with the descriptions of those rooms. When I first stepped into the house, I turned around immediately to leave, but the ex pulled me in claiming it was such a great deal that "we could fix it up" - great idea, but we, uh, divorced six months later. Still, it's been fun and a challenge to turn the house into something that I am proud of. There are plenty of projects left - landscaping, a patio, etc., but I look forward to them all. I want to take a minute to show pictures of the wonderful work that Gary (of Mather & Smith Designs - serving the NY/NJ/PA/DE/VA area) does:
Before - we at least covered the black walnut paneling:

Ugh…

During – Gary devised a method to cover the paneling with custom wall paper that he painted and then tore and placed on the wall to look like stone – he also decided to lighten everything up by paining the brick and all of the paneling. Taking down the ceiling would have been a nightmare – it went up in the 70’s so I would have to have a specialist take it down, so we decided to paint it a complementary color to the walls. Here are the progress shots:





Look at the difference in the ceiling!



And now, the final version – at Christmas – still have a few odds and ends, but what an improvement!




This is one of the other rooms Gary did for me – the old sun room that was in such bad shape we only used it for storage. I had two of the sliders removed – replaced the other four, added a fireplace for heat and laid laminate flooring. The ceiling and the stained glass window were original, everything else was a redo. From eyesore, to everyone’s favorite room in the house:






Think it’s time to put the Christmas stuff away….;-)

BTW - he also turned the behavior modification room into a beautiful Tuscan powder room - for a while, it was the nicest room in the house!

If you're interested in finding out more, visit their site here:
http://www.mathersmithdesigns.com/

I'm not big on endorsing, but Gary's worth it. He's reliable, he's talented as hell and you'd have an end product that you would love for years