Doorknobs

On Sunday, we (well, I tried first and failed) installed purty doorknobs on our dutch door that leads to the upstairs.

The knobs are from Anthro, the mortise guts are from a big box store, and the key hole cover thing was original to the door. The key hole plate was covered in tons of paint which I removed last year by using this technique.

With the new hardware, the door is now screaming to be repainted. Hopefully I can get to it this week!

Now that the snow is melting and it is a little less dangerous to bring the table saw into the back yard to cut wood, we are making some more progress on our upstairs built-ins ... I should have some updates by the end of the week! Yippie!

Here we go...

Erin at The Stucco Bungalow bestowed the honor of Stylish Blogger Award (with sparkles) to a group of bloggers that included Me!

So here goes:

RULE #1: By accepting this Stylish Blogger Award, I am obligated to share with you 7 things about myself.


It's all about me time...

1. I am named after Elvis' daughter since we share a birthday. Some of my family members believe I am named after them.


2. Most of my family members cannot spell my name. It is Lisa.


3. I have three cuckoo clocks and many inherited garden gnomes. I am German.


4. I own the ugliest kitchen ever and am hoping one day to get on one of those shows that fixes it up for free. I guess I should start applying.


5. As a kid, we traveled every weekend and during the summers across the country... on motorcycle.


6. I currently have three travel mugs and a coffee mug on my desk.


7. I have mad nail polishing skills.

RULE #2: Pay it forward and bestow the Stylish Blogger Award upon 15 bloggers.

I will be honoring two bloggers that are currently up to their eye balls in lath and plaster bits. (Yes, I'm breaking the rules and will have bad luck)

Eva at The Fourth Door

(She's only working on a bizzillion things at the same time.)

Emilie at Home Sweet Headache

(Emilie and my brother just gutted their only bathroom this week. She'll be posting pictures soon.)

Kitchen design inspiration

I'm considering designing my kitchen around these measuring cups I found at Anthropologie for a few bucks (get it ... bucks).

DVF is going home!

I love Diane von Furstenberg so much. Today I decided to hop on over to her website to see if there were any cute dresses on sale to add to my collection. I had a lovely surprise to find that the label is now getting into the home market.

Pictures from Bloomingdales

Now what? Sneaker drawers!

Finally, the shelves for the shoe storage towers are painted. I used Ace Hardware's Cabinet, Door and Trim paint (as recommended by non-paid-endorser Sara at Russet Street Reno - by the way check out her cabinets!).

In the end, the paint went on really nice even though it took 3-4 coats on each side of the shelf with a 6-8 hour drying time.

I'm still working on shelf placement and playing shoe tetris on which shoe goes on which shelf. Also some shoes are going to a nice farm in the country...shhh...don't tell them!

The shoe drawers are also a work in progress right now. With snow on the ground, we get a little stuck on the sanding and cutting wood process since that all gets done outside. And it is also ski season.

I wanted these drawers be pretty deep to have some flexibility in their use. Our plan is to use them as sneaker drawers, but the next person down the line might not have a large sneaker collection and want to use the storage for something normal like sweaters or linens.

So, I'm wondering how to divide the sneakers. They stand-up on their own, like how I currently have them, but need a divider for the next row of sneakers. Ideally, I would like something that could be moved and not so permanent. I did some research and most typical drawer dividers are too short for the width of these drawers.

Any ideas?

This tension rod is the only thing I could think of to divide and conquer the sneakers.

My resolutions are crap

Yep, my new year's resolution theme is crap. Here goes:

1. Get rid of crap. I don't know how two people have been able to accumulate some much junk. We are going to start a twice a month stop to Goodwill and resale store. The plan is to downsize our stuff by over 50%.
2. Stop crapping out on projects and finish them up! I'm still working on painting the shoe shelves with the slowest drying paint ever made. The shelves should be done by the end of the week and hopefully we can cut some wood for the cabinet doors. After the shoe storage is complete, we will be working on our downstairs office then back upstairs to update the second bathroom.
3. Clean out the crap in my email accounts.
4. Figure out who is not picking up their dog's crap on our block.

Dream Home

This year's HGTV's Dream Home is in Stowe, Vermont - one of our favorite places! It seems we only enter the Dream Home contest when the house is near a ski mountain.

Where would your dream home be located?