Long Weekend Plans

This Monday is Labour Day, so the end of today's work day marks the beginning of a long weekend :-)

I have a lot to do this weekend!

My room is still a disaster. These are the pictures I took right after I'd done the second trip with packed items from my apartment. Since then, I've at least put my bed back together and I gotta say, I'm pretty proud it only took me about an hour! It's the Ikea Brimnes bed (great space saver!) and it literally took me ALL night (like until 3 am!) to put it together the first time around.

 

I go to the CNE every year, so I'll be making a stop there on Saturday. The Saturday before Labour Day is usually the busiest day, which is less than ideal, but that's what happens when you spend every prior weekend packing and moving :-(

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I also have been more than persuaded by Sherry from Young House Love to go out and get a can of Oil Rubbed Bronze (ORB) spray paint lol. She's like the Frank's Red Hot Sauce old lady: She uses that $hit on everything (and it looks GREAT!) I've never used it before so I'm testing it out on the frame that I bought for my Ork poster. I also have the go ahead to use it on some of the hardware in my parents' house. Almost all the fixtures in their house are brass (outdated) so my mother said I could test the door knob and hinges on the basement door (yay!) and test out the light fixtures on the first floor (which she doesn't plan on keeping anyway so she's got nothing to lose).

Do you have any exciting plans for this long weekend?

Favourite Nooks

I had two favourite areas in my apartment: The view from the living room door and the view from the bed. 

I loved the  view from the living room door because I got to see my pretty mirror (a Craigslist find) and my shelf (the very first thing I ever spray painted) with the candles and bamboo plant (that Kevin gave to me when I started my current job).

I loved the view from the bed because I could see the lamps (Craigslist) with the shades I recovered, the French provincial dresser (Craigslist) that I painted (in the tiny bedroom and it took me days), the lamp shade that I bought from Ikea and added to the gross brass wall light fixture (that I spray painted black) and the French door (Craigslist) that my Dad helped install and cut a thin strip from because our door frame is crooked.

Unfortunately, I never did take a picture from that angle - but I sure did appreciate it while lazying around in bed on the weekend :-)

These areas will be missed!

Do you have an area in your house that makes you smile or that you're proud of?

If I Were the Landlord Series - Part 4

Our house is divided into two units - first floor and second floor - and we share the same entrance. We have an exterior porch door, and interior porch door, then a shared hallway, and finally there are two doors side-by-side that lead to the two units. Our door opens directly to a flight of stairs because we're on the second floor.

The issue here is the interior porch door. The porch is very bright (it's on the east side of the house and has wall-to-wall windows facing west, north and east), but as soon as the interior door is closed, the hallway turns into a black hole. The interior door has a small crescent window at the top, but it doesn't let in nearly enough light.

Consequently, every time Kevin or I come home, we have to turn on the light, and I know the light shines into this bedroom (our landlord's bedroom has two doors - 1 in his unit and 1 that leads into the hall - he doesn't use the hallway door), but the alternative is to stumble around in the dark and wake him up with all the noise... it's a lose-lose (for him).

If I were him, I would've installed a door that was at least half-glass. It would have let in a lot more light and it's much more appealing visually. It also would've allowed us to see who was at the door when we opened it. Even if the glass were frosted we would've been able to tell who it was by the blurry outline. Consequently, I never opened the door unless I knew for sure who was on the other side. Call me paranoid, but I didn't want to take any chances!

Aren't these doors gorgeous? Also, this is why I love Pinterest. Search for "glass front door" and you're instantly taken to gorgeous entryways.

1) via 2) via 3) via 4) via

p.s. I haven't posted in a few days because I've been very busy with the move! I'll post on that later :-)

If I Were The Landlord Series - Part 3

I'm a woman who loves her bathroom products, but our bathroom medicine cabinet isn't spacious. We have a small wall-mounted one and I'm constantly trying to reconfigure it to fit all my products. I bought a free-standing medicine cabinet that stands behind the toilet so I could have extra space, but having 2 medicine cabinets jutting out from the wall made the bathroom look smaller.  Also, because our lighting fixture is directly above the medicine cabinet, the light is blocked by the cabinet and doesn't shine down onto the vanity area very well... and good lighting is key for makeup application!

If I were my landlord, I would install a much bigger medicine cabinet in the wall between the studs so that it lays flush with the wall. That way it wouldn't impede with the lights at all and future tenants could store more bathroom goodies. I absolutely l.o.v.e the bathroom in image #1 and the cabinet here is what I consider the perfect size for a single sink. And the paint choice and light fixture location in #2 look very similar to that of my apartment.  

#1 via; #2 via; #3 via; #4 via

Totally random and off-topic, but I really love beadboard in bathrooms :-)

If I Were The Landlord Series - Part 2

This apartment has 1 window in each room and they're all  very decent sizes. The bedroom and bathroom windows face west so we get a lot of evening light in those rooms, especially in the winter when the leaves have fallen from the huge tree in our neighbour's yard. The living room has a HUGE east facing window, which brings in fantastic light in the morning. This room is where all my plants die live. But the kitchen. Oh the kitchen. This window has the most ideal orientation - south! There's just one problem, about 3 feet in front of our kitchen is our neighbour's house so all we see from that window is green siding. What a waste! 

There are so many issues with this window:

1. The view sucks
2. It always seems like night in the kitchen because this window lets in NO light
3. Our neighbours have a window, that if you were to draw a straight line from their window through to our window, it would lead straight into our fridge. I'm pretty much always walking around in my skivvies in the morning while I'm eating breakfast or making lunch and cringe every time the fridge door light shines on me when I open it. Those guys are either going to celebrate or be very sad when I'm gone in a week... 

Kevin's mom gave us a baker's rack (fantastic gift!) that we use to store our microwave, toaster, cookbooks, etc. For the longest time, we hesitated in putting it where we wanted (in front of the window!) because we didn't want to block what very little light came through. We had it on the wall to the left of the fridge and had our kitchen table in front of this window, but it was really close to the oven this way. Last year, Kerry and her boyfriend, Aaron stayed with us. I was making them pancakes and left the room for a minute. I came back to find Aaron flipping his own pancakes...while seated at the table!! LOL At that moment, I was like, "To hell with this window!" and we moved the baker's rack to the window and the kitchen table to the wall.

While this new arrangement made things in our apartment flow a lot better, I was still very unhappy with the lack of light in our apartment. Especially because the kitchen is the first room you walk into upon entering our place. I always used to think, "Wouldn't this room be so much brighter with a sky light?" Our landlord put in pot lights when he renovated this room, but a skylight would've made so much more sense! Especially if it was one that could open to let hot air escape. We literally always have the lights on in the kitchen so a skylight would've saved a lot of electricity and if it opened, we'd be able to let the hot air escape in the summer. It feels like a furnace in here if I dare turn on the stove in the summer months. 

Since I'm a friendly tenant and chat up all my neighbours, one of our neighbours, Pam, invited me to her house one day to check on the renovations she had done. Her house is semi-detached and ours is detached, but they're mirror images of each other. Guess what she had upstairs in her tenant's kitchen? A SKY LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't believe it. It was amazing. It was so BRIGHT. She was in the middle of redoing the floors so the place wasn't looking how it normally does, but I was blown away by how much better that room looked with some natural light coming in. I took some pictures :-) They're not the best, but it'll give you some idea of what we're missing.  

This photo was taken at about 4:30pm. This room is a mirror image of our kitchen; the window to the left is the same one that I took a picture of above. See how much BRIGHTER her kitchen is? I'm so jealous. Pam says the skylight is what sold her on the house when she was buying it!


If I were the landlord, I would definitely have put in a sky light - one that can open. It would cost a bit up front, but I really think it would be a great investment. 

Canadian House & Home - August Roundup

Here's my roundup of Canadian House & Home's August issue.  I noticed they focused on lighting and I saw some really cool stuff in this issue!

The bases of the two top right lamps here really caught my eye. I love their organic shapes. These lamp bases are all really unique looking with classic shades.

 

These are some fun, colourfully patterned lamp shades. I would pair these shades with more classic bases - opposite to the lamps in the photo above. I've actually recovered my bedroom lamp shades with some fun purple fabric. I'll post about those some time soon!

These are the coolest looking hanging lights! The bowler hat light is way more whimsical than anything I'd put in my house, but I can definitely appreciate the aesthetic. I also don't think it would diffuse light very well, but who cares?! It would be a great conversation piece! The hand-blown glass one has an industrial feel to it and I like it. Are exposed bulbs making a comeback? I'm seeing them in all the magazines lately...

MacGyver Ain't Got Nothin' On Me!

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For some reason, there's no overhead light in the bedroom. We have a wall lamp just to the left of the door and I bought a pair of lamps on Craigslist that sit on my dresser. The wall lamp... well, there's not much I can say about it other than it was HIDEOUS.  I don't actually have an original photo of the lamp shade, but this one comes close.

One of the first things I did after moving in was switch out the lamp shade and spray paint the base with silver spray paint, so it looked like this.

I know this doesn't really look good either, but it was such an improvement that it was good enough for me. At least for the better part of a year. Today, I took it upon myself to update it once more. I detached it from the wall (if you look at the pic here, you can kinda see the brassy colour it used to be), spray painted the base matte black (using Rustoleum), and added black ribbon to the top and bottom of the shade. 

I absolutely L-O-V-E the way the matte black looks!!! It makes a huge difference. I think I could've done a better job of gluing the ribbon on though... it looks kinda bumpy :( womp womp. Maybe I'll take it off and try again, but I'd have to get new ribbon, argh!

 

If you thought the lamp re-do was why I'm saying I'm MacGyver, you're mistaken. Good guess though :P 

Short version: I MacGyver-ed open the front door with a boot lace and a bobby pin, which totally made my day and made me feel like a freakin' superstar!

Long version: I'm my excitement to get into the front enclosure to spray paint the lamp base, I locked myself out of our apartment. We have an exterior door with a deadbolt, but our interior door just has a doorknob lock and I mindlessly locked it. Sumumabeech!!! This was just before 4:30pm. Kevin and my landlord don't get home until at least after 6pm. I didn't have my cell phone. I thought, "well, it's gonna be a while until I can get back in.. might as well start spray painting" About 5 minutes later (seriously) I was done spray painting. I ended up taking a nap on our shoe stand, that ate up about 15 minutes. At about 5 I thought, "If I just pull hard enough, I'm sure the door will open. This lock is flimsy.." 1 minute of embarrassingly pathetic pulling later, I gave up and sprayed a second coat on the lamp shade. I checked my pockets for anything of use and I found a bobby pin! My dad's a locksmith so I know that's not how you open locks, no matter how many times you see on TV, but I still had over an hour to burn until anyone came home, so I gave it a try. No dice. But the whole time I was trying I kept thinking, "If this actually works, it'll be the coolest thing ever!" I pick up a boot next. Using that and the bobby pin, I looped the boot lace between the door and the frame, then pulled the ends of the lace, which depressed the door knob latch a little bit. I used the bobby pin to get under the edge of the latch and was able to move it into the door enough to open the door. I was excited it actually worked so I immediately called my dad once I got inside. Remember, he's a locksmith. His first words after I told him I'm a superstar and locks can't hold me back were, "Em, you don't have very good locks on that door if you can open it with some string and a hair pin."  Way to burst my bubble, Dad!