July 2015 – Laughingly Ever After

Patience paid off!

July 29, 2015 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

For the past year I’ve been drooling over this one specific dining room table that I kept seeing on Pinterest. Of course, none of the links listed where the actual table was from. I searched high and low and one day I finally found a blog that stated where the table was from, Restoration Hardware. I immediately went to their website and found the table I’d been lusting over was the Salvaged Wood Trestle Dining Table. And then I found the price. No matter how much I loved this table I just couldn’t (and Matt said no!) see spending that much on just a table.

I began searching for something comparable, specifically with the same or similar style legs. I found a few that were similar but either they weren’t solid wood or they were out of my price range. If i was going to spend $1500+ I figured I might as well just buy the one I really loved. Here are a few similar ones I found: Harverty’s Avondale, the Randall from Wayfair (which is really cheap and mostly made of veneers), the Manor House also from Wayfair (which I can’t currently find online but was listed for $2500.00), the Arcadia Extension Table from World Market (again mostly veneers).

Once I’d decided I probably wasn’t going to find my table, in a price range I liked, I started looking at other options. There is a wholesale store called Nadeau in Raleigh that has solid wood pieces from India. A coworker and I would run over at lunch and look around. I finally decided that I’d most likely just buy a table from there when the time came and while it wouldn’t be my RH table, I could probably find something with that similar rustic feel.

I started following Nadeau on FB and IG since they get shipments in quite frequently. And then last week it happened, my table on their FB page! I freaked and immediately commented to see how much the table was listed for and how big it was. They responded and I showed Matt. The table was still a little more than I wanted to spend but it was THE table! I even waited another week before I went to check it out in person. I was able to get the guy to hold it for the rest of the day so I could go home and measure our space. Once we knew it would fit, I told Matt he had to go see it so on Saturday we ran to Raleigh to check it out. The table is made of solid mango wood and 7’3″ by 3.5′. Matt agreed it was nice and I bought my table. It was delivered yesterday and I can say it is spectacular! It looks beautiful in the space. Now I just need chairs and a rug. I’ve had the rug picked out for a few months now but I’ll wait to purchase it since the table was a little more than I was hoping to spend. I’m hoping the rug will help me decide on what chairs to buy. For now the dining room is coming together. 🙂

A tale of two doors

July 28, 2015 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

Right after Matt and I moved into the new house we had a really bad storm come through and our front door leaked. You can read about that here. That was 3 months ago. Since then I’ve been waiting for my new front door. While we weren’t happy that the front door leaked, it gave me the opportunity to actually get the front door I wanted. When we bought the house, I had dreams of removing the grids from the front door and frosting it with our address in the middle. However, the grids on our door were glued in and the builder said they couldn’t remove them. I was totally bummed.

Anyway, fast forward to today. It’s been 3 months and I am just now getting my new front door. Somewhere in between the door leaking and our 2 month inspection, the warranty guy was let go. So when it came time to sand down the foyer floors by the door and replace the door, the door went missing. No one was really sure what happened to the door. It was either misplaced or stolen which meant a new door would have to be ordered. Last Thursday we got a delivery. A new front door! The CORRECT front door was delivered to the house. The builder picked it up to have it painted and now I’m waiting for them to come and install it. I was hoping they would be early but seeing as it’s after 9am, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Hopefully it won’t take long to replace the door.

This is the old door. You can see the silicone they put around the panel to try and keep the water out. I feel we are lucky it didn’t leak again.

Of course the guys didn’t show up to replace the door till closer to 10. It look about 45 mins to get everything swapped out but I must say the new door is BEAUTIFUL! I love it soo much! I really wish I could leave the glass open but you can see straight up to the master at night. The full pane of glass gives the house a little move charm, I think. I know it’s not a huge difference but I’m really happy.

Old door on the left, new door on the right. SOO much better. I think the new door looks older with more charm. The glass is also a little wider.

From the inside. I had the door painted the same color on both sides.

As for frosting the glass, I realized last night the new door is tempered glass and the glass etching stuff won’t work on tempered glass. I guess I’m going to have to use the spray frost. This is not my ideal method but it’s also a little less permanent than glass etching. Oh and I should mention the sheers I had covering the front door don’t work now because the area around the glass is covered and not boxed off. Does that even make sense? Anyway, my tension rods don’t have a place to fit now. So we are totally ghetto and have suction cups on the glass holding the sheers. Whomp!

Craft room update

July 2, 2015 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

Hello, almost vacation!

Matt and I are planning a little trip to the beach for a few days. I feel like I am in desperate need of a vacation. Our last “real” vacation was two years ago to Jamaica.

So, let’s see, what have I been up to. Well, I am still working on my craft room. I think it’s going to be a work in progress for a while. It’s been so freaking hot lately that I haven’t wanted to work on the stuff I need to finish, like painting my shelf brackets or my chandelier. This past weekend it cooled down enough and I was able to get outside and spray paint my shelf brackets. I bought the Ikea Ekby Gallo shelves while we were there a few weeks ago. I knew I wanted to spray paint the bracket piece gold since gold will be my accent color. I bought some Krylon metallic gold spray paint (I think this is it) and it was the BOMB! The nozzle swiveled and the push button was super smooth. No more spray paint hand cramp. I used 1 can for both brackets.

Now that I have the shelving painted I need Matt to help me install them over my craft table. Then, I need to start working on my chandelier. It’s one mom had and is no longer using so she’s offered it up for my craft room. It’s already goldish but I want it to be a little more gold. I think it will look amazing painted the same gold as the shelf brackets.

I brought my brackets and shelves inside last night so I could take some pics and I realized my shelves are the wrong size. Whomp whomp! The brackets are Gallo or something and the shelves are not. Total IKEA fail! Thankfully the shelves were’t very expensive. I’m sure I can find another place to use them. I told Matt last night I would just have to run to Lowe’s and get a piece of wood that would fit. While not ideal, this will actually allow me to paint the wood the same color as the table, chair and trim. So it might actually look a little better.

While we are on the craft room, I said a while back I would review the fabric I bought for my chair from Spoonflower. Spoonflower is actually local, they are in Durham, and they print their own fabric. This allows for hundreds and hundreds of choices you can’t get anywhere else. I fell in love with several of their patterns and I couldn’t find anything close at other fabric stores. Here’s my review:

They have tons of fabric choices you can’t find anywhere else. They also have a variety of fabric types. Since I was recovering a chair I bought their basic cotton fabric. This runs $17.00 a yard. Not terrible considering it’s custom. I think it took less than a week for my order to complete and ship, which isn’t bad. The packaging arrived and it was pretty cute. Now the fabric. I can’t say I’m blown away with the quality of the fabric. To me, it felt kind of “flimsy”. It’s a very thin, lightweight fabric. I was expecting it to have a little more weight to it. I have various other cotton fabrics in my stash and I don’t think this feels like quite the same quality. With that said, I will say it washed okay and looks fine on my chair. I’m not sure how it will hold up but this is also a chair I don’t plan to use daily. I think the colors and pattern were what I expected and I was very pleased with that. Would I order fabric from them again? Maybe, but only if I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted and they had a pattern I liked. I think I would probably try to find something from Fabric.com first. I only got their basic cotton so I’m not sure how the other fabrics feel. They may be a little nicer but they are also more expensive. I went cheap. 🙂

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