At Long Last Number One!

Well, this is embarrassing. I promised you a reveal of the guest bath. And uh, I was slacking on my pimping. But no more!!!

Before:

So many many things not to love. It's brown. It's dark. It makes me sad. I don't know if you remember my inspiration from the fabulous Sarah Richardson but here it is...

And here we go…the final reveal….

These photos are from my phone and I admit, quality is an issue. But it gives you the general idea. At some point, I'll have a pro come and do it. That may take forever.

What else I am working on in this house of mine? The living room…and then the master. And I have designs on turning the guest bedroom into a den/guest bedroom.  But the living room, she's next.

xoxo,
Summer

These are a few of my favorite things

2014 was a huge year of change…2015 is shaping up to be more of the same.

I wanted to share my Top 5 favorite changes of my year long (almost) renovation.

***NUMBER 5***

THIS

 TO THIS

NUMBER 4

THIS:

TO THIS

GAME. CHANGER.

NUMBER 3

THIS:

TO THIS:

NUMBER 2:

THIS:

TO THIS:

I mean come on…how could this be number 2 you ask? Well hold on to your hats because before this month is done, I will finally reveal what our guest bathroom became. 

For your reference it was this before:

Great-goggly-brown tile-oogly. YIKES. Can not WAIT to show off the new one...As soon as I clean it, I do live in this house.
I know there is no way you guys could be as excited about this as I am, but its come such a long long way.

And for a small bonus, I loved decorating our redone house for the holidays so here's quick glimpse at that.

Until next time.

xoxox,
Summer

A Tale of Two Couches

Spacial planning is really the key to a good functional room and I'm here to tell you, no matter what decor magazines and blogs say, so is reality. We all want our houses to look like they belong in a magazine, but to me, its more important that its functional.


If you remember, I had an inspiration for my living room. It was this:

I still stand by this as awesome…but the couch…well not so much. This one was super itchy. And although I love to entertain, I also like to binge watch Netflix, so I needed a cozy couch.
So I put off my search, until, my parents asked me to host Christmas in my new Casa. That meant 12 humans would be descending. My couch search hit warp speed.

I wandered in to Restoration Hardware (seriously if you live in LA go to the new Melrose Gallery, GOOD LORD). And fell in love with the Belgian Track Arm, 8 feet, Luxe Depth, feather fill. So elegant and cozy.  It wasn't the color I wanted but it was the right size and it was IN STOCK. Amazing. I had some concerns about the linen blend piling. They promised it was not. I ordered it. It was delivered. The second they set it down, I knew it was all wrong.

Size, yes, fabric NO. The linen that looked so elegant when its meticulously cared for in the store just looks like a rumpled shirt. The squishy fabric that felt so ahhhmazing, looks like a slept in bed. AND, surprise, surprise, it was already piling.  It went back in the morning.

So now, what? I needed a couch but now I understood the form and the functionality. I needed something darker because I am NOT meticulous, I needed something firmer because I want it to keep its shape, I needed something I can stretch out on that does not look like a bed. And I needed it fast.

Enter Room and Board and the beloved sectional chaise. I am typically against these because they are a dead space when you have guests. But, the truth is, this fits the way I live. And I am all about living baby!

I can not tell you how comfy that chaise is while I'm binge watching HGTV on a Sunday Morning. At Christmas watching my whole family squish on there to watch the game almost brought a tear to my eye!
With a big dark couch, I don't have to worry about stains. But I do need to worry about levity. So, all the other pieces in this room will have to be light. Like this new console table:

LOVE - print is by Banksy. Not sure its going to stay there, but I like the blue with the reclaimed wood of the West Elm console. This room has far to go. But at least now it has a couch.

xoxoox,
Summer

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot...

No one is forgotten on my new gallery wall!!
I promised the after photo of my wall of fame and drum roll please….here she is…

I call it my #Instagram wall. I LOVE it. I toyed with the idea of doing much larger frames, but this works out perfectly in our tiny foyer.

This was crazy inexpensive too. The frames are Ribba frames from Ikea - like six bucks each.

The least expensive thing I've done in this whole place…and not the last! Stay tuned for my favorite parts of my renovation from 2014.

xoxox,

Summer

p.s. Happy New Year!

Wall of Fame

Hi lovelies!!

Its been awhile. I have been working my little fingers to the bone. BUT, i'm still working on my house.
Also, its my first Christmas that I'll be hosting!! So stay tuned for those pics because I plan on going all OUT!

But I'm also trying to finish up some projects before we have guests. Not the least of which is our Wall of Fame Gallery wall.

A little back story, last year I had a big birthday party with a Photo Booth. All of my friends and family were there and they all took photos. They are AWESOME.  I decided to take some of these photos and make a gallery wall.
This wall required many steps:
1. Determining the best place to display the photos
2. Determining how many photos I wanted to display (there were a LOT).
3. Determining what size frames
4. Layout
5. Frame Hanging

I'm on step 5.

This is what I decided on for layout and location. It'll be the first thing you see when you step in our house.

And this grainy shot is me trying out the frames.

Trying to figure out how to mount these puppies was a giant pain in the you know what.  As you can see, these aren't even. Sooo, now I have to go and get a level. Crooked frames will drive me crazy.

Can't wait to show you the final!

xoxox,
Summer

Designing Woman

Now that my renovation is complete, I'm on to the business of decorating. So before I get to deeply in this, let me say: The Kid is broke. So alot of what I want to do, will have to wait. But I can style it with what I currently have and dream up what I want to do...so the master bedroom for now is this:

 This is the first iteration of my bedside table...styled with all my favorite things...fashion magazines, a crystal vase a dear friend brought me from Paris, a photo of my favorite sculpture at the Louvre and roses. This is pretty girly, even for me, so I don't think its long for this world.

The other side I wanted to play with metals so I have a gold spiky knick knack that I love a gold toned and framed water color print that's giving me some color.

 The primary pattern I have in the room are the silk link curtains from West Elm, sheers will get behind them eventually.

That's all for now. This is really a kind of before shot. I'm for sure replacing the bed side tables. Right now we have a lot of grayish blues working in here, too much actually. I need some contrast. So look for a rug coming, and end of bed bench, new side tables and lighting and different styling on those stands. I want to drop back on the sweet a little and give it a bit more Va-Va-Voom. If any room can be sexy, its your bedroom!

Luckily, its not a lot to buy in here, so I should be able to manage in 2014. Now the living room? That's a whole 'nother Oprah.

Stay tuned!

xoxoxo,
Summer

Backyard Boogie

So here's the thing. I am broke. I spent all of my capital, I mean all of it, on my interior renovation. And the outside was just a dirt pit. It made zero sense. We added glass doors to all of the back of the house. And our view was a dirt patch.
When we got burglarized it also became apparent that we needed a fence. So, I thought we could just put in the fence...but that seemed silly. We maybe would do it in stages, fence for safety, then patio, then grass. So with this strategy in mind, I hired a landscape designer. I reasoned, I would pay this, to make sure we didn't install things that we would need to just redo later. I met with a few and settled on Vanessa Rutter of Foundation Design. BEST. DECISION. EVER.

Firstly, she got what I wanted. Her design was flawless. The plan was so exciting, we decided to do it all at once and just be done with it. We asked our current contractor and the contractor she worked with to both bid. We went with hers because we wanted her to oversee it and I know how difficult working with someone else's vendor can be.  SECOND BEST DECISION EVER. Jose Luna. A God. Both of us living here in this house are punchy about deadlines...maybe because the front of the house took F O R E V E R. They said about two and half weeks. Suuuure, we thought. But I'll be damned if they didnt finish in LESS than two weeks. So quick, I didn't even have time to blog about it! So here it is:

So this is how it looked when it all began:

The view from the kitchen door before we took up the tile.

This was our "backyard". Pay close attention to that trellis. YIKES. 

The grey concrete is where the addition would eventually live.

 This is the view of the nothing-ness is where my master bedroom is now.

That damn trellis. GEESH.

This is the dirt patch after we took up the 4 different cement tile combinations we had back there. 

You may also notice the HUGE step it required to get inside as our house is elevated.

I don't have a picture of our cement fence. It wasn't special. But the now, the now IS special.

This is them building out the stairs and the patio. Behind it is the secure fence, 8 foot high now. 

This is them digging up the lawn for the grass. 

This was after they poured the cement. OMG. I was so excited.

AND THIS. THIS is now.

Can you stand it? To save money we went with baby plants, mostly drought  resistant succulents. The trees by the gate will eventually grow to 6 feet plus for another layer of protection from prying eyes and prying fingers. I have to say. I LOVE this space and I probably have exactly one month of good weather to enjoy it.

xoxox,

Summer