Quick before & after: adding class to a Home Goods clearance table.

One of the first places I started decorating when I pulled all my wall art out of storage was the entrance next to the front door.  I didn't really know what I wanted to do with the space and until last Friday, there were no pictures hung below the light switch panel.  The wall was entirely blank from there to the floor, where there was a sloppy shoe tray that was never put away after last winter, piled high with my summer sandals and whatever I kicked off when I came in.  I've made it a habit to take my shoes off when I come in because I really hate vacuuming the stairs.

As you can see, now there's a table and a sad gap in photos. I'd been hunting for the perfect table to fit in the space for a few months, but most were too wide or too expensive, and it's not like I was scouring Pier 1 or even Target for the perfect table.  Home Goods...on the other hand...

Home Goods can be hit or miss for me.  Sometimes the clearance furniture is too dinged up and still too expensive and this table was really pushing it for me, at $94.  There was another table, same shape, slightly smaller, no drawers, painted grey, for $69.  I thought the knobs looked cheap.

Cheap knobs = meh.

 Luckily for me, I had just been to Pier 1 that morning, where I had bought a demonic meowing cat pen for Brent and found they were selling glass drawer knobs, which I am a total sucker for.  Lowes and Home Depot glass knobs don't cut it for me--I'll buy them off eBay or Urban Outfitters or even stalk Anthropologie, and now finding Pier 1 sells them as well?

 Glass knobs add class.

It literally took less than five minutes to make such an improvement to a table that was otherwise boring.

 Other things I'm going to do with this table: since it's in the entrance, I'm going to put little holiday themed items here when the time comes, like at Halloween and Christmas. I filled the sad gap with my own art.

My first huge furniture purchase, ever. Bonus points for age!

On May 31, 2010, I went antiquing.  Yes, well over two years ago.  I went to one of my favorite haunts, the Antiques Marketplace in Putnam, CT.  It's four stories tall and I always manage to find something, even though I don't usually spend more than $100 when I go.  And by the drawing above, you can tell this dresser I'd spotted was WELL out of my price range (because I drew a picture of it instead of buying it...), especially because I had just spent $1000 building a lofted bed, and lived in a room that was 99 square feet (another post, another time, promise!).

However, there was something about this Victorian hotel dresser (circa 1880) I fell in love with from the start.  I like boxes and compartments, and this boasted 14 compartments of all shapes and sizes, each small set with its own different hardware and carving, so many little details, so much craftsmanship...and it was only $1600. 

Lions!

This is the coolest escutcheon I've EVER seen. I can't believe I spelled that correctly on the first try.

It even still had one of its original keys. 

About a year later, the gorgeous dresser was STILL at the marketplace, but with an adjusted price tag: $1800.  They had moved it to another room and started piling knickknacks and books on it, so I had mistakenly thought it sold until I found it.  I guess they had given up on the hopes that anyone would buy it in this economy.

At 7 feet tall and 4 1/2 feet wide, it's a behemoth of bedroom furniture.  WANT. 

Getting divorced freed me from the plain, character-less, no-history, 50's laminate crap bedroom set I so hated, but my ex had actually insisted I not buy the thing so my first act of rebellion (after serving him divorce papers, throwing all his stuff down the stairs, and changing the locks on the apartment) was to BUY THE THING.

So I went back to the Antiques Marketplace, fully expecting to throw down the entire $1800 for the dresser I so coveted if it was still there after all these years.

I got to the marketplace, and it was jam-packed with shoppers, in the middle of its President's Day Weekend sales.  I'd forgotten they were having a sale and was honestly surprised to see so many people.  I found the dresser in a back room behind old books and facing in a different direction from the last time I'd seen it, so it took me a little while.  

When I found it, I was in for a huge surprise.  That $1800 price tag had been replaced with a huge red card marked "SALE: $695".  

Um, what?  $695, and not $1695?  I ran to the front counter and paid for it, right then, right there.  I didn't even know how I would get it home.  I really didn't care. 

But...I have a boyfriend (named Brent) with a big diesel pickup truck and a dad (named Dad).  A week later, they met for the first time, I bought them both breakfast and we went to pick up this fabulous dresser in the freezing cold. And I was curious to see how Brent would react to it, because I had no problems becoming a cat lady if he didn't.

Anyway, somehow Brent and Dad managed to get this up the stairs in no time flat, without fatalities.  

And here it was on the day it came home.

I didn't just buy this piece to look at, so I filled it with clothes.  Though it's beautiful, I need to put things on it as well like lamps and jewelry and vases and knickknacks. 

Other purchases from the Antiques Marketplace include the ruffled dish left of center (used for bracelets and brooches), and the depression glass ashtray with German advertising (I took German in high school/college and it was $5!).

I have never once regretted buying this piece. (January 2018 update: I have now owned this dresser almost six years.  It has survived two moves, and still reigns supreme over all my bedroom furniture.)

What a mess...

Organizing my bookcase with nothing but a coffee cup by my side at 7AM...

Five months ago, my last blog post mentioned I was getting a divorce and that I was keeping my condo with the pink carpets.  Well, that's all true.  Just when you think you've gotten into the groove of decorating, your spouse moves out and takes half your DVDs with him but leaves all the particle board furniture that I ABSOLUTELY HATE.  If there's one thing I abhor more than pink carpets and the divorce process, it's got to be sawdust-and-glue-with-laminate furniture that's disgusting and costs too much for the garbage it is.

So X moved out (and I edited his nickname in previous entries. January 2018 note: I edited him almost completely out because he's really not important).  Things got ugly so he left so much stuff here that we almost had to rent a moving van just to bring him the things he wanted, nevermind the things he didn't.  The things he didn't want mainly consisted of furniture that I didn't like anyway, so I hemmed and hawed for a couple months about putting it up on craigslist.

This is no Victorian dresser.  This has no history, no personality, nothing.  It did have a matching 9-drawer dresser with a mirror that I don't have any pictures of and don't really care.

In the end of March, I woke up at 6AM and decided all the furniture I hated was leaving my house.  Right then, right that second.  Couldn't be bothered with Craigslist, it had to go.  It wasn't just X's former office that was chock full of dressers and a kitchen table and some other stuff, it was also my entire ugly 1950's bedroom set that I always hated that he had purchased shortly after we got married when all we needed was a bed...and the wicker headboard that was just a white blob of sticks against the wall.

So on that fateful day in March, I heaved the entire 9-drawer dresser over the bed solo at 6:30AM and prepared to empty my home of every piece of furniture I didn't like.  Every. Piece.  I called my grandfather and he brought his truck, and by 10:30 we'd donated two truck loads of ugly furniture to Goodwill.  Sometimes you just need to purge and it feels so good.

Strangely, most of my purging ended around the beginning of April.  Or so I thought...and then I quit my postal job in the middle of June.  Faced with a plethora of free time...I started purging, again.

However, for all the purging that's been done, I've been making room to bring home things that were in storage that X never liked and thus, never put up.  Like these posters that had been sitting in storage since 2007:

I suppose that's a sufficient teaser, right? Here's a small bullet list of upcoming posts...

• Furniture Find of 2006: Once upon a time there was this circular orange chair that didn't match anything ever, and then it was given to me and I threw it in my car and then made my grandparents live with it for 5 years...
• Before and After: How my grandfather turned a free Craigslist find into a bench for my grandmother, which is adorable.
• Furniture Find of 2012: If you get divorced, you should splurge on a huge piece of furniture that you've had your eyes on for two years.
• Simple DIY projects (random ideas I totally stole and executed from Pinterest...WHAT. That's what it's for.)

Now, all that icky divorce stuff aside, life goes on, and life is good.  I didn't really want to write about it but I can't just skip to the next chapter without acknowledging that it happened and why, all of the sudden, my blog just omits a person who was in my life for years. Truth is, I didn't want to abandon this blog because I put a lot of work into starting it, and seeing as it was relatively new when dung hit the fan, I figured could just give it time and pick it up again when the timing was right.  It wasn't about him anyway, it was about home decor, and we never really saw eye-to-eye with that anyway, kitchen organization aside.  He took all the kitchen gadgets with him, which leaves me with like... a crockpot...and a blender and my mom's juicer from 1992.  Oh, and the coffee maker.  At least he knew better than to take that.

Anyway, there is a new character around, but I'll introduce him in the next blog post, and we have flea market adventures and it's going to be fun to include him in future posts, mainly because we have similar tastes. He's also part of the reason I've started purging more things I don't need, and why I now have an exercise room with a brand-new elliptical machine.  This blog will get there, but things are good. 

Get Organized: Tackling the Kitchen

The cliche "a place for everything and everything in its place" could not describe my kitchen more accurately at this very moment.

Saturday, on the other hand, was a different story. I don't have before pictures of my cabinet and that's a good thing, in case I ever run for President.

One of the problems that had plagued the kitchen since move in day was the abundance of storage--and how could that be a bad thing? It's a bad thing because the previous tenants envisioned it, and their space solutions created nothing but problems. Bulky built-in Lazy Susans in the cabinets took up more space than they were worth, and what was worse, I couldn't even remove them without dismantling the cabinetry. They compromised the height inside so much that standard spice jars couldn't stand up, and small things I placed on them (pudding boxes, just about the only thing that fit) fell over like dominoes and out of sight. I could never find spices, which always led to many profanities just before dinner and burned sauces, and that was just the beginning of it.

Coffee cups fit much better in this space!

The pots and pans didn't even fit in the kitchen cabinets, so all were regulated to the broom-closet-turned-pantry (previous tenants' brainchild, apparently, and there is nowhere to store the mop and broom).

I could go on and on, but it was a disaster. Canned goods and boxed goods and what-have-you ended up whereever they would fit, and that was just generally "anywhere but the kitchen counter", and I never knew what I had for ingredients, so dinner was whatever ingredients I picked up from the store that same day. (I'm a big fan of grocery shopping every other day, since there are three grocery stores within 5 minutes of the condo, and one within walking distance.)

I finally had it with the kitchen and decided the best way to tackle its organization was TO TAKE INVENTORY. Break out the notepads and pens!

Here's just some highlights of what I found:

• 3 jars of Peanut Satay Sauce
• 7 boxes of cornbread mix (I had JUST bought two because I thought I was OUT.)
• 7 cans of black olives
• 3 containers of ground white pepper
• 9 cans of chick peas (I like to call them garbanzo beans because it's fun to say).

So to avoid this nonsense, the inventory notebook is now consulted before making out my shopping list.  

And then, there were the cookbooks.

Several months ago, I purchased a wicker shelf at an auction, intending to put my life's work of journals on it, but it wasn't aesthetically pleasing in the space where I put it.

No, it didn't stay in my car all this time, but it did inspire me to buy an SUV.

No. It's bad enough my headboard is also wicker.

GAG.

Anyway, bookcase is now in a more suitable place!

It freshens up the kitchen and gives more storage though I was just complaining about having too much storage.  More workable storage, and that's important.

Welcome to Rose City Abode!

If there's two things you must know about me in this introductory blog post, it's this:

1. I love old houses in an unhealthy way.
2. The only time I find pink acceptable is when blossoming cherry trees are involved.

If you would have told me when I was in high school that the first place I was going to live once officially leaving my mother's was going to be a rented 1973 condo with rose carpets, I probably wouldn't have spoken to you ever again.

Seriously. Like never.

Somehow, that's exactly what happened in December 2010. I found a 1300-square-foot condo for $900/month with heat, hot water, and sewer included--in Connecticut, which seemed just as unlikely as moving to such a new place last renovated in the early 90s. Remember those southwestern Adobe patterns in pastels, Santa Fe nouveau? That was happening in the bathroom upstairs.

I can't make this stuff up.

And lo, I packed up and moved to Norwich, CT, "The Rose of New England" in a week. (The "Rose City Abode"!) All of my furniture had been picked out to match the space I had come from--a 99-square-foot room with 70's wood paneling...I could almost hear the same echos of disgust--but at least that old room had blue carpets, and blue is my favorite color. (Yes, you read correctly: 99-square-feet! There will be a future post about that too.)

Rose wall-to-wall carpets in every room of the condo, save the bathrooms, entrance, and kitchen.

The living room. 

 Up the staircase. 

 This bedroom.

 That bedroom.

ALL THREE BEDROOMS.

The horror!

As a renter with no intention of blowing any part of my budget on something that's not mine, I wasn't going to change a thing. The carpets stayed. The bathroom stayed. The doctor's office wallpaper in the master bedroom stayed. I just decided to decorate around it. My couch was sage green. How could I save this from nose-diving off the cliffs of gag-me girly?

Despite the fact I had been living in a room that was 9'x11', I had been stock-piling furniture in storage for years. Just as I love old houses, I love old furniture.  I also had some decor from a booth I used to have at a local indoor flea market. In fact, you could have argued that more stuff in my booth was not-for-sale, just eye-candy designed to draw attention to the stuff I was selling. I had a huge floor vase thing full of peacock feathers that I would sell individually, but when I left the flea market I had about 30 left of 100.

This $40 art deco sideboard doubled as a counter at the flea market, and the peacock vase is in the corner.

I had moved in 10 days before Christmas, and not only did I decorate, but I hosted Christmas dinner for the first time ever, and a housewarming party.

Christmas 2010

For having lived in the space only ten days, I didn't do a bad job! Objects of note:

• The tablecloth was imported from India, with hues of black, greens, pinks, and blues, to match the furniture, carpet, and peacock feathers.
• Yes, I used a cedar chest as a coffee table, but we're not all perfect.
• I wonder if I will ever see this room so nice ever again.

Now that Christmas is upon us again, I can't believe that I've co-existed with pink carpets for almost a year.