One last stop around the house: The DIY bike rack

I realized when posting the French door how-to that I forgot to show my four faithful readers one corner of our house:  the bike rack!

Mr. Great Indoors and I started biking together about a year and a half ago after he had an accident running (darn ankles).  He bought a bike off Craigslist and we started riding together shortly thereafter.  It's an awesome hobby because we can spend time together but still get exercise.  And because both of us have bad knees, it's a lot kinder to our bodies than running ever was.

Around the House: Master Suite

We've reached the end of the house tour!  I feel so fancy calling it the master "suite," but I guess it really is.  Our bedroom somehow fits a King bed (technically a California King), a dresser, a chest of drawers, and two side tables.  We were lucky enough to get an antique bedroom suite from Mr. Great Indoors' family; from what we've heard it's been around since the 1910s or so.

Let's get a close-up on that monogrammed artwork, shall we?  This was a DIY of mine about a year ago.  I had some floral art that didn't quite match anything in our house, so I pulled that out and used some white paintable wallpaper with our monogram printed on regular paper.  The tan lines tie it so well to our new comforter.

The closet in our last place was tiiiiny, so this master closet was a breath of fresh air.  It's actually so big that we stuffed a chest of drawers inside.

While the closet might not be tiny by closet standards, the bathroom is.

We love our wall nook, which Mr. GI built last summer.  I'll have to devote a post to it soon.

My favorite thing about our bathroom is that we have an awesome view of the garden.  Some day we'll change out the blue counter top (even though it doesn't match our current shower curtain, at least the inside of the wall nook matches!).  And we're always fighting a moisture problem in the bathroom, which we thought we fixed last summer but still seems to be an issue.  Ah, the joys of being a homeowner.  The bedroom doesn't need quite as much work thankfully, although it definitely needs a coat of paint and new carpet.


That's the end of the house tour!  Hope you enjoyed it.  We certainly have some things to do around this little place of ours, but we'll love doing all of it.  I can't wait!

Around the House: Dreams of Our Guest Bedroom and Bathroom

I've got lots of dreams for the guest bedroom, and only time will tell what actually happens.

+ A headboard.  Our current "headboard" is a mirror hung sideways on the wall.  It bounces light around a little, which is nice, but I need something with a little more oomph in here that doesn't make the pillows look homeless.

Around the House: Guest Bedroom Closet Office

My favorite part of the guest bedroom and probably my favorite DIY to date is the closet office Mr. GI and I rigged up about a year ago.  I wanted a place for my crafting supplies and other random stuff, and I loved all the office closets I’d seen around the blogosphere.  So with Mr. GI’s help, we made it happen!

Here it is before.  What a mess!  I had already yanked down the bifold doors to the closet.  Personal vendetta?  Maybe.

Around the House: Guest Bedroom and Bathroom

I originally had one looooong post about the guest bedroom and bathroom as they stand, plus all of my hopes and dreams for the spaces.  But I figure my three loyal readers don't want to read a 2340987 word essay in one sitting, so I'm breaking it up.  First up, the guest bedroom and bathroom as they were and are.

The guest bedroom started out as this sad little room with a boob light.  (Those are azalea bushes right outside the bedroom window-- beautiful in April!)

The boob light is still there (I'd love to replace it someday with a ceiling fan to keep our guests cool), but it looks much more friendly these days.  Isn't it so happy?  I've loved that comforter since the day I bought it -- I've got a thing for stripes -- but it's a twin-size comforter and the bed is actually a full.  A little short on the sides, unfortunately, but it definitely works until we can revamp this room a bit.  Once I get around to getting another comforter, I'm stashing this one in the attic until I can put it in a girl's room someday.  I just can't give it up!  :-)  And a tip for any of you who doesn't have a bed skirt that matches your comforter, just follow Martha's lead.  I just bought a full-sized sheet that matched the green comforter stripes, and voila!

Around the House: The Man Cave

First of all, let's meet Mr. Great Indoors.  Ain't he cute?

On our trip up the Blue Ridge Parkway last summer

Mr. GI has lots of manly hobbies that required his own space, just like my girly hobbies required my own space (which is up next in the house tour!).  Our realtor sold our house as "three bedrooms," but this space -- from the minute we bought it -- was the Man Cave.  Or perhaps I should say The Man Cave.  The MC is the tiniest room in the house, probably only bested by the master bathroom. As such, it's really tough to take a picture of the entire space.

Around the House: Laundry Nook

Rather than a whole room for laundry, we've got a nook in the main hallway.  When we moved in, it had bi-fold doors, but it didn't take long for us to rip those suckers out.  I really hate bi-fold doors (we've only got one set left in the house, our master bedroom closet doors), but they were especially useless in the laundry nook:  our pretty new washer and dryer were too deep for the doors to close!

Around the House: The Kitchen

The kitchen is the space we’ve done the most on since we moved in, and it was also the space that had been updated the least before we bought the house.

Those cabinets. Whoa.

Even after settling in, it was still so dark.

Around the House: Living Room

Our living room has evolved quite a bit in the past few months. When we moved in, it looked like this:

You can see the dining room area in this pic [plus that hideous fan I'd like to violently rip out of the ceiling. Ugh. Those lampshades should be illegal].

After getting rid of our embarrassingly-awful college furniture, we made a Clampetts-come-to-town trek huge trip to IKEA in the old Nissan (R.I.P.) with the new home owner tax credit to get an all new living room. Much assembly later (thanks to two very good friends), we had two Karlstad love seats, a Poang chair, and other fun stuff.

Around the House: Dining Room

We love entertaining, but our dining room doesn’t quite do our hosting appetite justice. Our dining room table is a four-seater that we can stretch to six if necessary. Until we can expand to our dream table (maybe similar to this one), we aim to recover the chairs. If you can believe it, we also have a matching tablecloth….

Our dining room corner is also home to our drinking habit liquor and accessories. Taking a cue from a picture I saw online, we hung two wine cases on the wall to house our beverages and some glassware. Mr. GI built our wine rack.

Around the House: Indoors

When we moved in, our house had been empty for about six months. We were lucky to buy it in turn-key condition-- ready to move in, with new floors and a new roof. There were a few things that drew us in the first time we saw the house-- the beautiful brick, red doors with black shutters (Go Dawgs!), the vaulted ceiling in the main room, the nice wall and trim colors throughout the house, and, most importantly, the amount of shade provided by the front yard trees. Our informal house searching list included an established neighborhood with plenty of tree cover. There were a few benefits to that-- first, power savings, and second, the quality of construction. We looked at so many newer homes with no foliage to speak of and cookie-cutter construction that looked like the house might just blow over in the first strong wind. Give me a house with some personality already!

Floor plan created on floorplanner.com

Around the House: Outdoors

First stop on the house tour is the outside of the house. I can't tell you how exciting it was to move from a string of apartments to a house... with a mailbox... and a driveway. No more climbing up three flights of stairs with an armful of groceries. Potty training our brand new puppy was infinitely easier when we could just let him out in the backyard. And, since our home is only one story, no toting a washer and dryer up/downstairs! Hooray!

Our house was built in 1982 and owned by the same family for quite a few years, then rented out by a realtor (from whom we bought the house), so the property already had some landscaping but it hadn't been maintained. There are a few pre-established beds throughout the yard, which we're hoping to take full advantage of. Plus, we've got some wonderful resources in green-thumb friends and family horticulturists. Despite my black-thumb reputation (especially with rosemary-- I've killed at least four plants in the last two years), I've got high hopes for our landscaping!