Author Archives: CT

We moved into our new house in mid-February and I know I haven’t shown much of it here on the blog.  We painted the whole first floor when we moved in and changed out the outlets and switches from almond to white.  We stalled out for a while and we were just kind of living with things to see what was working and what we needed to change.  One thing that needed a little help was our entry way.

See the mess?  (Yes that is a Darth Vader toy thing. It’s going up to the music room but it needed to get hosed off outside first.)  We needed a “landing strip” as they call it on Apartment Therapy.

One of the “fun parts” of living in the desert is scorpions and since our new house backs up to the mountain preserve, we have a lot of wild life, scorpions included.  JT found one in his shoe one day shortly after we moved in so we decided it would be best to store shoes in a way that would be not as inviting to any stinging inhabitants.  (We also have a black light flashlight so we can check things out – scorpions glow under a black light.)  You can also see that we were using a painter’s tape floor warning as there is a small step at the entry that is hard to see when the floor is all one tile.  A lot of temporary things.

A trip to Ikea (yes, Ikea again) found us with the Hemmes shoe cabinet flat-packed into our car and this afternoon JT began the arduous process that is assembling one of those things — we have built a few Ikea items and this was one of the most complex.

And — after!

(Sorry for the dark photos, we just wrapped this up about an hour ago and I wanted to use my Sunday evening to type up a little post. The Hemmes cardboard boxes are even still in the picture there, I am not one of those super slick bloggers, I guess.)

Thanks to Swedish design, we now have a place we can stash our shoes that doesn’t junk up the entry way so much and will hopefully stay bug free.  I think I will eventually change the knobs out to de-Ikea-fy it a little and we talked about maybe putting a more rustic wood ledge on top …. we shall see.

I pulled the blue painter’s tape off the floor and put down four of the Flor “Mod Cow” carpet tiles I’ve been hoarding, I mean holding on to for a while now.

It’s off to Goodwill for the old shoe rack.  We’ve been on a good roll of purging out items we haven’t been using and right now we have two bins in the garage waiting to go.  I also have some plans for that little sliver of a wall next to the front door too – more projects!

Shenanigan approved the new rug.

Hope you had a great weekend full of successful projects. Cheers – CT

(Another P.S. – I don’t want our gun artwork to seem insensitive in light of current events.  It’s more intended as an ironic statement …)

Hiatus?  Hiding?  Out having a time?  Call it what you will, I’ve been MIA from the blog for a little bit.

With so much unexplored terrain around, gorgeous weather and some guests in town, we’ve been out and about a lot.  Places like the Scottsdale Arts Festival, the Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum (again, there is a new installation and I got one of the oranges), two of the many casinos, Tucson, record stores, Goodwills, The Farm at South Mountain, Glendale, March’s Sweet Salvage event and occasionally work.

Last Saturday we headed out to Tonto National Park and hiked around Saguaro Lake, stopping only for a hat and sunglasses selfie.

We dressed up the guest room a little before my mom came for her visit.  I’ve been keeping/hoarding this mosquito net for a looooooong time and I finally found a place to hang it.

The bed tray came from Goodwill and was something like $3.50.  It’s not the most functional bedroom furniture but it gives the room a little something extra while it waits between guests.

We also upholstered the box spring following this tutorial from Momma Rake.

We got to use the nail/staple gun my sister got Josh for Christmas.  I lucked out and found almost the exact same fabric as the headboard to use on the box spring – an off-white cotton duck.  I thought about painting the whole shebang with my textile paint so it wasn’t so beige but put that on hold for now.

We found some furniture feet on Amazon.  I looked at the ones at Home Depot and they were either too fat and short (like bun feet) or too tall and slender (they had a 6″ Parson leg but no 4″ Parson leg).

Finally I found some cording that blended with the fabric and hot glued it around to cover up the staples.  In theory you shouldn’t see the cording at all when the top mattress is in place but it was  kind of a belt and suspenders move.  In retrospect I might have worked on moving the staples further inland on the box frame but all the good wood for attaching was mainly around the edges.

We got some artwork hung up and I tweaked the big painting yet again to have some more teal in it to match the cozy throw JT got me a few years back.

And . . . that’s all for this month!  Just kidding.  This weekend is the Modern Phoenix Home Tour and we have tickets!  Have a great weekend!