Craft Room Link Party at HOUSEography!

Who doesn't love a party?  

Melissa over at HOUSEography is hosting a link party for craft rooms.  There are some seriously swoon-worthy spaces over there.  I even shared my closet-turned-craft room! 

Go over and check it out!  We love Melissa's blog and it's in our "swoon worthy sites" on the side-bar.  Her original house and mine are soooo similar.  She's recently done an absolutely amazing addition which doubled the size of her home - it was even featured on Young House Love!  When I get down in the dumps about not selling our home, I head on over to HOUSEography to look at Melissa's space, since we'd be using her home as inspiration for an addition over here at Chez O'Neal ... in the event we decide to stay put and add on.

In any event, hop on over to HOUSEography!

See you swoon,

Fabric, Fabric, Fabric

I know I got Shanna's attention, she is a fabric fanatic and I am quickly joining her.  You may remember my post right after we bought our entryway bench from Target.  I knew when I bought it, from reading the reviews, that the cushions were nothing to write home about but I liked the look of the piece and everyone said it was pretty solid.  At the time I paid $160.00 for it so it was a no brainer, I had scoured the Internet and furniture stores and could not find anything for less so that is how this baby became mine.

Back to the cushions, they really are pretty terrible.  They are hard as a rock and have an aged yellowish tint, not quite what I had in mind.  Shanna found this tutorial on Honey We're Home which is the perfect solution for my bench!  Now to pick the fabric. 

I have been slowly adding color to the house through my curtains and homemade art, pillows will soon join the party but the bench has me a little stumped.  I want to bring in fun patterns and textures without going overboard.  I went to IKEA at lunch yesterday to check out their selection and this is what I found:

Of course I was drawn to a plain neutral at first but I am not sure that is the best choice for this particular project:

On to the prints:

I need some opinions here, do you like any of these or even a particular color to go with my neutral sitting room (which has a few changes to come soon, you will have to wait and see what happens but I think you will love it!)?

If you have any fabric suggestions, stores, or websites that might help me make this decision please send them my way!

See you swoon,



Reader Submission: Rachel's NYC Master Bathroom Reno

I'm so excited to bring you today's post!  My dear friend Rachel and her beautiful family live in a lovely sun-filled condo in Queens, New York.  She and her husband decided it was high time to renovate their dated master bathroom.  All told it took about 6 weeks from start to finish, and my oh my, just wait until you see these absolutely amazing afters!  But here is a tease up front - this is a close up of her shower fixture.  You know with attention to detail like this, it's going to be good.

Before, Rachel's bathroom was perfectly functional but oh so very blue.  Blue sink, toilet, tile.  The shower was enclosed by a shower door that she and her husband hated (something to which I can totally relate).  It was high time to upgrade this bad boy.  Rather than DIY, they hired a contractor to handle the transformation for them.  He took care of all aspects of the demo and reno:  from hauling away the old stuff, to installing the new fixtures, laying the new tile all over the room and finishing out the space (note: Rachel highly recommends her contractor, Brian Costello in the NYC-area, for anyone looking for someone to handle renovation or woodworking projects; his contact info is at the end of the post).  Without further ado, here are the befores. 

The contractor got to work and demoed the room.  Here are just a sampling of the in process demo and reno pictures.  This took a few weeks.  Luckily, Rachel has a second bath in her home that they used during the reno process.

Rachel wanted the new space to be bright, clean and timeless.  She and her husband worked together to come up with the perfect chic and crisp color palette of lots of white and grey with some pops of black.  They went with stunning grey and white marble tile on the floor and timeless subway tile on the wall with a chic black and grey strip of marble tile as a border.  

Because the room was so small and there was no changing that, they wanted it to feel as spacious as possible.  As you will see below, success.  White porcelain for the toilet and sink.  A new white curtain replaces that old dated shower door.  Gorgeous chrome fixtures with hints of old school charm (the "cold" and "hot" on the faucets and shower curtain rings!) give the room tons of polish and personality.

Doesn't it look just amazing?  I gasped (in a good way!) when Rachel shared these swoon-worthy after pictures with me.  A big thanks to Rach for letting me share her master loo here on the blog today.  

So, what's your favorite part of the transformation?  Mine is definitely those hot & cold fixtures.  I just love them.  OK, and the white subway tile.  

See you swoon,

In case anyone is interested in where she got the goods, here's a source list for Rachel's bathroom:

Contractor:  Brian Costello (NYC Boroughs/Long Island Area) 516.852.9414

Sink & Showerhead:  Kohler

Faucet:  Aquadis

Medicine Cabinet and all Tile:  Home Depot

Shower Curtain and Curtain Rings:  Restoration Hardware

Light Fixture, Glass Shelves, Towel Bar: Pottery Barn "Mercer" Line

Toilet:  American Standard Cadet (low flow & self closing lid)

Swoon-Worthy Site: Copy Cat Chic

A round of applause for this girl, Copy Cat Chic has won my heart and is a must read every day for me.  Reichel Broussard's blog showcases what we are all trying to do, find fabulous things at a reasonable price. 

I have been scrolling through page after page trying to absorb all of her finds, I am sure you are going to love this.  Reichel does a great job of combining home with fashion which helps to mix things up and if you all are anything like me, you love both equally so to have it all in one spot is a perfect combo!

Here's to you Reichel, thank you for a beautiful blog, you have a reader forever in me!  Anyone out there know of any other blogs out there like this?  What are your favorite go to sites each day?  Shanna and I are always looking for new blogs to add to our repertoire so send them our way!

See you swoon,

Come to My Window [Basement Edition]

Remember how scary my basement laundry room was before I redid it last year?  If you need some help remembering, click here for the transformation.  We recently made some structural repairs to the house and while the contractors were here, they suggested we replace the old basement window with glass block.  They were working in that area anyway and the glass block was very inexpensive and easy to install.  We readily agreed:  that window has long been a thorn in my side: it's ugly, it's gross and it's clearly seen better days.  Here it is before I spruced it and the rest of the laundry room up (apologies for the poor picture quality in the "before" shot: I snapped with my phone a long time ago):

When I redid our laundry room, I did the best I could to make the window less scary.  I cleaned out the window well, painted it and then bought an inexpensive curtain and rod to cover the window but still let in light.  Here is my solution, which doesn't look so bad, if I may say so.

Here is the window when the contractors finished.  It looks terrific! The whole well looks so much cleaner.  They cut the glass to fit around the dryer vent too, but did so in a way that if the dryer were eventually moved upstairs or to a different location, all we (or the next owner) would need to do is have one glass block inserted in the spot.  

Of course, I was not content to leave well enough alone, so I painted the concrete around the window the same blue on the walls.   Not a huge difference, but to me, it finishes off the area just a tad more.  It would have haunted me at night if I did not do this.  Yeah, you know me.

I like the clean look of the window so much that I didn't bother putting the old curtain back up.  I love that we still get light through the window, too.

What about you? Got any recent upgrades in your home that you'd like to share? Let us know! We looooove to feature our readers' projects!

See you swoon,

At last, the curtains have arrived

First off, HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!

Secondly, the curtains I have been talking about for what seems like months and months (it probably has been months and months) have arrived and have taken quite nicely to their new home in my dining room.

They are hand made, embroidered from top to bottom, and just gorgeous. What I love most about the newest addition to my home besides how well they go with my art creation from last week is that they add so much life to the room with all their vibrant colors.  The curtains have given me a little push to keep going this weekend and tackle a couple more projects on my to do list, stay tuned next week! 

I will not keep you waiting any longer, Anthropologie Hibiscus Trellis Curtains:

What do you think?  Any fun buys on your list?  Share them with us!

See you swoon,

Thursday Pop Quiz!

Don't worry: you won't be graded.

My friends know I love polls and quizzes, so  couple of weeks ago when this fun little quiz was making its rounds over on Twitter, I was all about it.  I thought it was so fun.  The site Sproost has a style search engine, in which you rate how you feel about a bunch of rooms' decor from "love it" to "hate it" and a few in between.  Based on your likes and dislikes or loves and hates, depending on how strongly you feel, it will sum up your style in a few words.  It's super fun and pretty quick.  

So take the quiz HERE and let us know what style you are! It'll be fun to compare notes and see how accurate we think the test is. 

I ended up getting a resounding Cottage Chic as my style, with Nantucket Style as a second option and French Eclectic in third.  I think it's dead on!  These rooms are totally my style ... with the first making me swoon the most.  

Cottage Chic

Nantucket Style

French Eclectic

Sproost is a super cool site, as well!  If you sign up (they promise no spam - woo hoo!), you can create rooms with different elements and layouts and with a budget in mind.  How fun is that?

What about you? Please share your results of the quiz!  Happy Thursday!

See you swoon,

{note: all photos courtesy of Sproost, which did not sponsor or comp us for featuring their site: we just {heart} it}

Jamie's House: Little kitchen upgrade

Last weekend Lowe's had a sale on cabinet pulls by Gatehouse.  I have disliked mine for some time, they were here when we moved in and are just not my style.  I was in Lowe's getting paint samples as usual, as I flipped through the sale ad I stumbled on a set of 10 cabinet pulls for $24.00 and change.  I needed more than 10 but $24.00 sounded like a good price to me!

This is what they look like on their own:

Here are the cabinet pulls on my cabinets before:  

The best part about these pulls besides their sleek design is that they are 3" so no filling of holes and re-drilling is needed to get these babies to fit (thank goodness, that actually made me a little nervous).  The cabinets are dated so I plan on painting them when the weather is consistently warm so I can keep windows open and paint outside.  For now this small upgrade will have to hold me over until I can do the cabinet overhaul. 

This is what they looked like midway through:

At first I was going to go with the cup pulls for the drawers.  I tried them out and I felt like they looked a bit heavy for the small drawers so they are going back to Lowe's.  This is what they looked like when I tested them, I also noticed how crooked some of the pulls were so there will be some hole filling and new holes made to straighten them out after all. 

And here is what I switched them to:





And then the unthinkable happened.  The last pull to be replaced put up a fight, so much so that after yelling, grinding my teeth, and stomping my feet all while under the sink I had to call in reinforcements to try and help.  Enter husband:

Even Kelly could not get this pull off so I am either going to have to come up with another plan or just wait until we replace this board all together with a lovely apron sink!!  That is down the road a bit but it may keep me from losing my mind staring at the last cabinet pull that got the best of me!

Any thoughts on how to get this guy off please send them my way!  What do you think about the cabinet upgrade?  If this were your kitchen, what changes would you make?

See you swoon,