front range mercantile!

hot or not?

too late, i already bought it.  last weekend, i was wandering around my favorite little slice of heaven, the front range mercantile*, and i happened upon this little bassett number priced at $119.  i took a couple of pictures of it so that i could think it over, but as soon as i left the booth this woman started pulling open the drawers and stepping back to appraise it.  so that did it for me.  i was like, "bitch, step off." 

i have this inconvenient situation (called marriage) that requires me to at least check with my husband before i bring home a big-ass piece of furniture.  so i tried calling and calling and calling, to no avail.  with mounting panic, i went to the front of the store and somehow managed to convince the shopkeep to put the dresser on hold.  then i drove home well above the speed limit and burst through the door, screaming at the top of my lungs.

after i bought it, i realized it was probably 30% about liking it and 70% about not wanting someone else to buy it.  but, whatever.  it was going to take forever to save up for this and the rest of the bedroom is a hot mess that needs to be completely revamped.  and it came with a huge mirror and i love the drawer pulls.

anyway, here it is in its present location.  it's a little scuffed up, but it's better that things enter this house in rough shape because the cats ruin everything anyway.

what do you think of that lamp?  i spent the rest of saturday and all day sunday trying to find a modern white lamp i could afford.  i really want the west elm branch table lamp, but unless i can find a time machine to take me back to 2008, i'm out of luck. (although a time machine would probably be better spent going back to the sixties and buying an ass-ton of mid-century furniture, because i still might be able to find the branch lamp on craigslist if i put a little effort into it.)  here are two relatively acceptable interpretations, but a) i couldn't afford them and b) i thought i could probably find something i liked better if i could get my mind off the branch lamp.  finally, i just got lazy and went to marshalls.  but i can still take it back.

*longmont is no pasadena, ca, but we have this great indoor flea market called the front range mercantile.  to love it you have to first accept its limitations.  it has an inordinate amount of cowboy and western memorabilia, glass insulators and pyrex bakeware, and janky new furniture pretending to be vintage.  nevertheless, i go every week.  other than my house, it's my favorite place in the world.  the best part of the front range mercantile, however, is its jingle:

                it's more than just shopping
                it's an experience!

               front range mercantile!

               something for everyone
               friendly and full of fun

               front range mercantile!
               it feels good here!

blue friday

check out this gorgeous before and after on design*sponge.  drool.  i desperately wanted to order our sofa in blue velvet but everyone acted like i was crazy.  now they're all over the place and i could have been a tastemaker but instead i let the room and board salesperson make me feel like a half-wit.

i'm trying to concurrently finish three projects to post on the blog, but nothing is in blog-worthy condition right now.  so instead i'll give you this happy friday image, taken at our old apartment in boulder.

part of an elaborate dance routine they've choreographed to "grease lightnin'"

happy friday!  i'm going to paint my ass off this weekend.

primed

arguably the most dated room in this dated prefab is the sunroom.  which is strange, because the house was built in 1976 and the sunroom wasn't added until the '80s.

we didn't touch the sunroom for the first year we lived here.  it was home only to the litter box and a kitchen table we were no longer using.  oh, and three dead plants that came with the house.

more previous-owner glamour shots.  my husband just said, "uh, look at that f**king nightmare."

the room faces south and, as you can imagine, it gets hot as hell in there.  presumably that gorgeous rock wall serves to hold heat for the house.  it's also a filthy, filthy dust magnet. 

the room is two stories tall, with windows spanning the whole southern wall.  there's a balcony on the second floor that opens from the office. the day we closed, we took down those dowdy little curtains.  and then we didn't touch anything, including those sad plants.  i desperately wanted to paint the paneling.  but there was SO MUCH WOOD in there it was hard to know where to even start (that's what she said).  i called in a couple of painters, who each wanted 400 dollars (!) just to paint the large window frames.  which was obviously a little out of my budget for the project.

in march, after living with it for almost a year, i finally bought some wood filler and started filling in all the knot holes.  i had read a post on young house love that optimistically claimed that we could paint the paneling in an afternoon.  which might be applicable if the wood had been even remotely in good shape, but this paneling was awful.  the finish was gummy from decades of baking in the sun. 


extreme close-up.  yikes.

 i thought we might be able to tackle it in a week, but we hated working on it.  we started with a quarter-sheet sander, which was totally ineffective on the sticky, bowed wood.  we then moved on to an orbital sander.  once we started sanding, the room became so sawdusty it was totally unusable.  so, for eight months we completely avoided it.  which is humiliating to even write because, otherwise, my house is very, very clean.

at any rate, we got our shit together and made a commitment to at least get it cleaned up before the end of the year.  over christmas break, we spent a whole day filling in the last of the holes and finishing the sanding.  then we spent another whole day cleaning everything.  every square inch of that room had to be vacuumed and wiped with wet, soapy rags.  then we primed with kilz oil-based primer.  after two hours, we realized we were both totally high and that we ought to open the windows.  oops. 

at any rate, we finally finished priming yesterday!

i am so thrilled.  it was totally worth killing all those brain cells.

i know all of my (three) beloved readers are worried about how i managed to paint those upper window frames.  slow your racing hearts, my loves.  i made my husband do it.  on an extension ladder. 

here are the next steps:

1. pick another grey for the main walls; buy in a uv-resistant paint
2. buy more of the paint we've used for trim (benjamin moore's simply white) in a uv-resistant semi-gloss
3. pick a darker grey for the three steps leading down into the main floor
4. paint the main walls grey
5. paint the trim white
6. paint the balcony and railing (white?)
7. paint the three steps dark grey
8. wash the windows
9. replace kitty litter box (hopefully with the uber-sexy modkat litter box)

whiteout

i loved this little house call in november, and i really love this house tour.

i love white walls.  when we bought our house, it was kinda nuts inside.

i'm keeping these pictures on the smaller side for your benefit

gaggy.  i mean, those rooms are adjoining!  and the walls that appear to be white in these photos are actually peach.  peach!  peach and mustard yellow and cornflower blue!  duuuuuudes, noooooooooo!

people always lament renter's white walls on apartment therapy, but at least it isn't customary to paint rentals peach.

that wood stove is still in the house, by the way.  some guests find it charming, but those are usually guests who haven't heated their homes with a wood stove.  i grew up in the country, folks.  i'm never lighting a fire in a wood stove again in my life, if i can help it.

most of my favorite house tours have white walls.  i've posted this hot little number onto my facebook page twice.

unplanned day off

by 9:45 this morning i found myself unexpectedly at home.  it's a rare pleasure to have a weekday off to spend lying on the couch.  i love to watch the light move through the different rooms of my house.  during the middle of the day, the dining room is filled with sunlight.

oh god, that light fixture.  ugh.

the book in the foreground is "vintage style" by piet swimberghe, with photographs by jan verlinde.  i ordered it on a whim after christmas.  buying design books sight unseen is almost always a terrible idea, but this one is amazing.  gorgeous, lush, modern homes filled with gorgeous modern furniture.  the photography is exceptional, but that's likely not a priority to you if you're reading this blog.

the dogs are like little old ladies who are always cold.  they follow the sun around the house. 

sophia rolled in the kitty litter again and she's filthy and sleeping on the back of the sofa.  i'm going to drink a throwback pepsi, watch a little martha, and take a hot shower.  it's a happy day around here.

by the way, i know that the carpet looks truly awful in these pictures. it looks even worse in real life.  i swear that it was ruined before we even moved here.  lumber liquidator fliers are gazed upon more lustfully than porn in this house.

an introduction

my name is misa.  i'm 28 years old.  i live with my husband, three cats, and two dogs in longmont, which is twelve miles northeast of boulder.

welcome to our house.

luckily, the cat has an mfa from the pratt institute

we bought our house in april, 2009.  it was built in 1976, largely in a factory a few blocks away.  the factory is now a ymca that is teeming with old men in tennis shoes and dress socks.

it's not an amazing house.

i have no time, no money, and no diy skills.  i have only ever kept one houseplant alive.  but i have a lot of enthusiasm, an ace rewards card, and about ten years' worth of design magazine tear sheets.

she could be a great editor, but she's always drunk

i can't guarantee that my house will ever approximate this, or that i have the aptitude to do something amazing like this, but i promise to share embarrassing pictures of my tiny, ramshackle kitchen that will make you feel great about your own homes. 

i covet everything you own

michael mundy is my secret boyfriend.  which is to say that even he is not aware of this. 

have you seen this?  like whoa.  further proof that people with cool names are destined to be cool.




that chair on the left makes me regret every chair i've ever purchased.

how does one become a prop stylist? 

image: michael mundy, from an afternoon with...