Hallways seem to be the ugly step-sister in the house fairy tale. At least, that is how it seems in our home. While we don’t really have much by way of a hall, I have tried to make what we do have a bit more fun. Luckily we got a wall decal from Graphique de France (for review on our product review site), so I wanted to share the outcome with you here! The photo is the view from our kitchen.
It’s a lot more fun to look up and see the Eiffel Tower than a boring white wall. And it was very quick and easy to put up too! A really fun and simple way to make a change, but without a big commitment too (they are removable, and reusable). Even though our walls aren’t flat and have orange peel texture on them, the decal still stuck really well.
Sure, it’s not the same as being in Paris and seeing the real Eiffel Tower, but it is fun!
After a lot of looking, and bringing home sample tiles, we made a choice for our backsplash. White subway tiles! Every photo we looked at in various magazines and online showed white subway tiles as backsplashes for kitchens similar to our own. The funny thing is, we never even considered them at first! What do you think of subway tiles?
Hopefully we will be tiling soon. We just have one more choice to make, and that is if we are going to do an accent tile to break up all the white or not. We found two choices that we think are pretty cool, but we just aren’t sure if we have the space to pull it off and make it look good. Whatever we decide though, we are getting closer to having our kitchen back in total working order. Photos to come.
The weather here has been somewhat spring like, which of course makes me with spring could arrive even sooner. When I saw this image, the tile really resonated with me, as I too am wishing for spring.
The so-called “man cave” is something that we will NEVER have in our house. Why? We just don’t need one. The term makes is sound like men are the only people in the world who can enjoy a room with a huge television, and other fun things like pool tables and air hockey. I have never been able to figure it out.
Maybe people would assume that our family room was my husband’s man cave, but honestly it’s a room we use (and designed) together. Yes, it has over-sized reclining leather sofas, a massive television, and lots of fun video games. But we both love those things!
I do think that it’s good for both spouses to have a space of their own though. For us it’s our offices, each very different. Mine is a organized and bright, while he likes things messy and dark. It is very nice to have space that isn’t shared, and I realize that it’s a bit of a luxury (one that we planned for when purchasing our home). Even a small space would work though, I know many creative people who have carved out spaces for themselves in closets even!
What about you and your partner/spouse? Do you decorate together? Do you have spaces that the other person isn’t allowed to touch? And if it’s called a “man cave”, what do you call the female version?
When we were thinking about redoing our kitchen, the first thing that we had to consider (besides what we hoped to accomplish) was how much we could spend. Seeing as we have a small income, we always try to design for the biggest bang on the littlest buck.
We had hoped to replace our kitchen cabinets before putting on a new counter top, however the price was way beyond what we could budget for. Our cabinets still function, and since we had painted them they look much nicer than they are. We decided to keep them, and focus on finding the best counter top for our budget.
I had actually seen the Wilsonart HD in a home that was being remodeled in my parents neighborhood. Luckily the owner was excited about what he was doing, and more than happy to show us around and give us the low down on all the products he had used. The kitchen counters in the home used to be laminate from the early 1990s. When we first walked into the new kitchen we really thought it was stone! So when he told us what it was we knew we had to look into it. After all, it was being used in a home that was worth 3x more than ours.
Sure enough when we saw it in person at our local Lowe’s we were sold. Not only was the price going to fit well in our budget, but it was a product that we knew would look amazing in our kitchen! A stone look and feeling, with out the stone price tag. We decided to start saving up in hopes to do the kitchen in the summer. Luckily for us, Wilsonart donated our counter top and our integrated sink as part of their Ambassador Program (learn more at the Lean Remodeler). We were thrilled to learn that we would be able to get our new kitchen much sooner than expected.
Like most people with bigger dreams than budgets, we always want to make the biggest impact with the money we do spend. It really helps that we are handy and can do a lot of the work ourselves, since labor can cost quiet a bit. One thing that we have learned over the course of making our home our own is that it really doesn’t take much to make a big impact! Paint, simple accessories, and even doing just one big change (like a counter top, or new flooring), can refresh a space without breaking the bank.
What about you? Do you have big dreams and a small budget too?
The weather today was absolutely gorgeous and spring like! The sun was out, it was winter warm (I believe it reached 40 degrees F), snow was even melting. Winter is not my favorite time of the year, I miss being able to work in the garden and I often find myself day dreaming of gardening.
I came across this image and was floored! I would love for my garden to be this gorgeous. Ours is still very much a work in progress, and of course we have our growing zone to contend with too, but oh I dream of lush gardens like this one!
What about the rest of you in the northern hemisphere? Are you already dreaming of spring time and the fun that comes with it? Are the seed catalogs arriving and taunting you too?
