Hello! Long time, no blog! My apologies for not updating more often. The end of my pregnancy was tough and now I have a wee babe, so I'll try to write as much as I can, but posts may be shorter and further apart.

Way back when I redid the living room, I wanted something to hang above the storage dresser and between the awesome new ebony lamps I got. None of my currently owned art fit the bill so I decided to make something myself. I wanted it to be bold and modern--and easy enough to replicate that even an artistically challenged person such as myself could replicate it. I was thinking something along these lines:

And here's what it looks like now:


 This dresser serves as both a sideboard and tons of additional storage for us. It's the same cheap IKEA dresser we have in the kitchen, but with a natural wood stain. That painting used to hang above the couch in the living room, but I love it over the radiator in this corner of the dining room. The desk seen in the pic above was actually a DIY project. We used IKEA kitchen cabinets for storage and put Grant's already existing table top (displaced when Grant got kicked out of his office to make room for Ruby).


We spent the weekend taking a trip to Home Depot to buy a ton of plants. Grant's dad made us this bench and I thought it would serve as the perfect plant stand. These are just cheap terra cotta plants that I painted to match the decor a little better. I love them.

Sneak peek at the kitchen redo!


While we sold the big red couch, we retained its thone-of-a-chair partner--after all, Homer needs something to lay on in every room.

 I spy a spider plant in the corner. Not the prettiest in the world, but according to the internet they're hard to kill!


 I made the leap to paint our DIY $100 trestle table black and I'm loving how sleek it looks! I also love the new rug we got--black and white and aztec all over!

Since I last checked in with you about the living room, the new side chairs and couch have both arrived and are getting plenty of use by both human and canine bottoms alike! Aside from adding new throw pillows (to bring in some much needed color into the room) and purchasing a sofa table (we're using some plastic shelving behind the couch right now as a placeholder), this room is on its way to being completed! Enjoy some progress pics below:

Like many pre-war NYC apartments, ours features an incredibly long hallway. At over 46 feet long, it spans the length of the apartment and presents quite the design issue. Not only do we need to put down floor covering (all of the foot and paw traffic would annoy the neighbors if we left the original hardwood), but we have over 400 square feet of wall space to decorate. On top of this, our foyer has to serve as a mudroom for everyone who lives here.

I'll admit that when we moved in--and the years that followed--I didn't really put much thought into the design of the space. Despite the fact that it was the most heavily trafficked area in the house (and thus the most viewed) its designation as a weigh station between far more important destinations caused me to overlook it. Its design before was purely functional, housing larger pieces of art that wouldn't fit on any other wall, serving as a place to throw our coats and valuable wall space to hang my ridiculous collection of family and friend photographs. Here's what it looked like before.





At the time that I hung those photos up, I thought the snake pattern was so cool and original. Borne from a lack of photos to cover the whole wall, the pics were arranged in ebbs and flows down the hallway. Coats were stored on a simple IKEA coat rack up front that never had enough hooks, and we put our shoes on while seated on a bench that Grant's dad made for us. It was all very blah, non-functional and cluttered.

Well, with my intense nesting came a desire to clean up all of the wavy lines on those walls--and to find a place for everything. Here were my ideas for the space.

1. A large-scale piece of art to counter the preserved newspapers hung on the shorter wall
2. Photos hung in straight lines down the hall
3. A new, brighter runner
4. A bench that offered storage as well as a place to sit
5. Wall hooks to maximize hanging space

Here's what I've come up with so far:


The view from the bathroom is one of my favorites. I hung a woven piece and a tapestry that Grant bought on a trip to India on either side of the alcove, and I love the way that the colors play together.



Looking down the hall the other way, it's so nice to see the streamlined photos. I'd like to do something with that front door (framed peephole/doorbell? Painted door?), but overall I think it's a vast improvement.


I moved the red IKEA trunk from the dining room to this space and it fits perfectly. It's thin enough to allow people, dogs and carts to get through to the rest of the house, and provides both storage and a place to sit and put on shoes. I moved the DIY plank art that was previously hung in the center of the hallway to above the trunk, and installed wall hooks above to hang coats on. I feel like the space is too white overall so I'll be adding something to the space, but as far as function goes this setup is working a lot better than the previous one.



In the small front alcove (not-quite-foyer) I have a thin shelf that houses all of our dog leashes, hats, gloves, purses, mail, keys, laundry supplies and oft-used shoes. The system isn't perfect and the shelf needs a lot of styling help, so that's where I'll be focusing most of my improvement efforts in this area. Still work to be done, but I'm so happy with the results to far!

Here are some quick before-and-afters!