Busy-Bees-In-Brooklyn!

I'm not totally sure why, but yesterday morning I was standing in the kitchen, brushing my teeth (obviously) when I thought, "I should really paint the interior of my upper kitchen cabinets." Now normally when someone paints the interior of their kitchen cabinets, they do a bright, popping color to contrast their white dishes and plates. But, of course, there's nothing normal about me-- because I'm the proud owner of about 200 pieces of fiestaware-- so adding another bright pop of color to my kitchen cabinet situation was going to be a major color overload. Instead, I opted for a dark charcoal grey (Benjamin Moore's Gravel Gray) for a couple of reasons... 

1.) The dark charcoal gray ties in nicely with our existing grey formica counter tops. Yes. Formica. Welcome to rental living in New York City. It wouldn't be my first choice, but at least it isn't a faux-granite print in pink... 

Beggars can't be choosers, as they say. 

2.) I have grand aspirations to one day swap out our existing formica countertops for IKEA's perfectly lovely walnut butcher-block counter material. When I do that, I'm thinking I might paint all of my lower cabinets (currently a glorious provincial deep periwinkle color) the same slate grey, so in truth, this is all just planning ahead in preparation for that eventual larger kitchen overhaul. (Which may or may not ever come to fruition, depending on if I ever have more time and more money...) So in the meantime, we re-visit Reason #1 for why I've painted the interior of my cabinets slate grey. 

And I've got to tell you-- I'm loving it! 

Not only did this project take $20.00 to do, but this project literally took about 2 hours to complete, including soaking, washing, and drying all of our dishes; which I did because it kind of felt like slacking to take EVERYTHING DOWN and not give it all a good solid cleaning in the process. If you've ever lived in Brooklyn, you know that everything gets coated in a layer of dust, no matter how frequently you clean, and LET ME TELL YOU. 

Those dishes needed a-soakin'! 

Words of Encouragement.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm not a "Live-Laugh-Laugh" enthusiast. You're never, EVER going to find those words emblazoned on a wall plaque or needle-point pillow in my home. That is not going to happen.

And if it has, I've either moved or been lobotomized. 


However, I just bumped into this F. Scott Fitzgerald quote and I liked it. It makes me want to jump out of my desk chair, shake my whole body up, and then get back to my life and my work-- revitalized and refreshed-- with a new sense of vigor.

We all need to get out there and fight for what we want. There's no free lunch bro. 

Sometimes it's a work in progress...

Okay, so originally I had this vintage clamp-arm light, like a million years ago, sitting on our work-bench desk in our cottage in Sparrowbush. Then we moved to Callicoon, I had it clamped to something, then it fell off, I wanted to attach it to the Freeman's console in our living room, but there was no electrical outlet on that wall, so I gave up on that idea, put the clamp lamp in the attic, and never thought of it again.

Until today! 

So here's what happened: I bought this unbelievably awesome, though very discolored alabaster lamp at a thrift store in Jeffersonville. For $20.00! If you're not familiar with alabaster lamps, maybe you don't know that they typically sell for about $75-$125.00 a pop so you can imagine I was pretty chuffed when I came home with this lamp for a mere $20.00. Albeit, my dad did spend a fair amount of time working on it with a brillo pad to lessen the yellow-ish patina (this is an example of bad patina) which my mom speculated came from years spent in a pro-smoking household.*

But after a fair amount of polishing, the lamp was significantly revitalized, and I was pretty darn sure I wanted to put it in my living room, on that god-damn console. Which still didn't have an electrical outlet behind it. But today, I was not to be deterred. With determination in my eyes, I decided to do the extreme. Let me just make a disclaimer now- this quite possibly falls into the "unrecommended" category, so read this story, laugh at my insan-o photographs, but you probably should not add it to your "to-do" list without consulting a professional (psychological), an electrician, and/or your insurance agent.

That said, basically I drilled a hole in my living room floor, down into the tiny crawl space that runs under my living room (in my defense-- fully insulated, completely dry, utterly closed to the outside elements), climbed into that tiny crawl space under my living room and then pulled an extension cord (again-- in my defense-- an exterior grade extension cord intended for outdoor use) through the crawl space and plugged it in-- in my basement. Yep. That's right. I now have a lamp plugged in, in my living room, in my basement. That's some bargain-basement electrical work right there. It was also a personal feat, where I had to tell myself not to have a claustrophobia-induced panic attack about fifteen times in the four minutes I was "in the hole". And seriously people. This space is about 20" high, and about as long, deep, and dark as a 20" hole RUNNING THE LENGTH AND DEPTH OF MY LIVING ROOM would be. And by that I mean long, deep, and dark. So obviously, I wore a head lamp. And a balaclava. And gloves. And running shoes. In case I had to run from the rabid squirrel colony I discovered living in the cavernous 20" tall hole under my house.

Can I emphasize again that this is NOT how this should be done? I should hire a PROFESSIONAL electrician to install an outlet in our living room. But that would be the reasonable, typical method and THAT just ain't my style.  : )

So, I drilled a hole in my living room floor, set up my beautiful alabaster lamp, took this gorgeous photograph, and then went upstairs to do some jumping jacks.

Yes. I said jumping jacks. I was doing jumping jacks because I was planning to go to the gym this afternoon, but then I went to this crazy inflatable bouncy castle play-space with Julian instead, which was awesome but not as good for my glutes as the gym...

So--- I went upstairs and while I was doing jumping jacks, I remembered the clamp lamp sitting up in the attic. And I thought, "Actually. I really always wanted that clamp lamp on that Freeman's console table..."

So after finishing my brief stint with exercise (cut short by my desire to test out the clamp lamp ASAP) I came down and moved my brand-new antique alabaster lamp into the dining room, where it also looks fantastic and really lights up my taxidermied fox!

Then, I set the clamp lamp up in the living room, which is where it now resides, delightfully illuminating my stuffed pheasant and my miniature house. Which are both sitting pretty on my Freeman's console... Obviously.

All in a day's work!

Though there's no saying what will happen tomorrow, based on the amount of lamp movement that's happened in the past 24 hours. 

*This really makes me want to take a second. If this is what second-hand smoke does to MARBLE, can you imagine what that person's lungs look like? Yo. That's serious. 

What a day!

We've actually had an incredibly busy weekend already, but for now, 

I'm just going to regale you with these photos of Jules... 

Yeah. He's really this cute. I know. It's even hard for me to believe, and I see him everyday. 

And tomorrow I'll tell you all about what we've been tackling this weekend. And believe me. We've been tackling a lot this weekend.

My first zillow blog is even better now that my face is there!

Yep! Check back now and you can see my first Do-It-Yourself zillow post again but this time, my ultra-dynamic photograph and biography are right where they should be!

I'm pretty excited to be collaborating with zillow on this D-I-Y blog project, so please swing by and click "recommend" so the folks over there will know how much you love hearing from me!

And feel free to comment, especially if you've got something nice to say! 

Hey, hey, hey! Getting a little zillow love...

Alrighty folks! Breaking news on the "Christina Salway Taking Over The World Slowly" Front! 

My ultra-top-secret zillow project just came bursting out of the bag, with the publication of my first (of many) Zillow Do-It-Yourself blog posts! Keep checking back in with Zillow as they'll be posting more of my projects over the next weeks and months (Make no mistake! I've sent them a lot of projects!)

You might be familiar with this project, as I included the final product here on the blog, but that's no reason not to check out the Step-By-Step Post on Zillow's website. And of course, I'm hoping that once you've finished reading the post, you'll scroll down to the bottom of the page and hit the "recommend" button, so the people at Zillow know just how much you love me and my post!

One small side note/ bummer: They posted my D-I-Y blog before they'd loaded up my bio-and-photo, so the photo down at the bottom is not me. However, I've been promised they'll have the correct photo up first thing tomorrow morning, so fear not!

Craig's List score!

As promised, I took a quick tour through Craig's List last night, just in case there was anything new happening in the cheap-and-cheerful world of antique maps. What do you know?! Someone was selling this perfectly reasonable map of Italy, in an already-gold-already-old frame.

It isn't exactly what I'd call SENSATIONAL or a MINDBLOWING FIND, but it's completely nice and at a whopping $25.00, frame and all, I couldn't resist. So I toodled on over to Midtown East this afternoon, traded greenbacks for a plastic bag with a map in it, and off I went-- one more map to add to the "collection"!

Pretty pleased with myself-- and I already know just where I'm going to hang it! Now I just have to wait until next weekend to go back upstate.

Repeat back: Patience is a virtue. 

The fruits of our labors...

So--- after collecting a zillion frames, a ton of antique maps, a panoply of matting, spray painting all of them and doing LOTS of "patina-ing" this weekend, my instant map collection is really coming together. One could even say, considering how long this project has actually taken (almost five months, with a brief, four month intermission...) that it isn't actually an "instant map collection" anymore, but in fact-- a gen-uine-bonafide actual map collection. I'm still a long way from finished-- I want it to be wall-to-wall map madness up there, but I'm off to a good start...

Crafty D-I-Y Tutorial: Adding Patina

Okay. First things first:

Patina (/ˈpætɨnə/ or /pəˈtiːnə/) is a thin layer that variously forms on the surface of stone; on copper, bronze and similar metals (tarnishproduced by oxidation or other chemical processes);^[1] on wooden furniture (sheen produced by age, wear, and polishing); or any such acquired change of a surface through age and exposure. Patinas can provide a protective covering to materials that would otherwise be damaged by corrosion or weathering. They may also be aesthetically appealing. 

Alrighty, now that we all know what patina IS, let's talk about how to fake it. In my case, I have been collecting assorted frames of all shapes, colors, ages, and sizes for the past six months, with the intention of creating an epic "instant" antique map collection to hang in my upstairs hallway at the farmhouse. Once I'd gathered a decent stack of frames (sometime around September of 2014), I laid them all out in my yard, spray painted them all gold, and then got too busy to finish this project. (I know. I'm the worst. But I was going to France for four months, so there was a lot in the works. Get off my back!) Anyway, fast forward four months, and I'm finally revisiting this project. 

My dad tackled the challenging task of connecting the dots-- figuring out which maps would fit in which frame with which matting, and piecing the whole collection together. However, because I had spray painted most of my frames gold, they still looked unconvincingly bright and new, despite their antique contents. It just wasn't coming together the way I'd envisioned. So I channeled my incredibly talented friend Danny, who is a professional carpenter and ultra-fancy frame maker, and I decided to add patina to them the way he'd recommended to me way back in 2014. 

Adding patina is unbelievably easy and now I kind of want to patina every surface in my house. 


(Though actually, almost everything in my house is already third or fourth hand and usually very used, so there isn't much that doesn't already have an authentic patina on it...) 

First-- lay out a drop cloth or newspaper to work on, as this project gets a little messy. Then, take a set of keys and enthusiastically whack away at your frame, making little dings, scratches, and indentations. 

Then, PUT ON A PAIR OF GLOVES. Latex, rubber-- dealer's choice, but you'll definitely want gloves for this project or you'll be trying to get black paint off your fingers for days. (I'm, like, 90% sure Danny actually mentioned this when he told me how to do this project, but sadly, it only came rushing back to me once I was covered in enamel.) 

Learn from my mistakes!

Now that you're prepared, take a black or dark brown enamel, such as "One-Shot", and using a rag or paper towel, wipe a coat of sure shot uniformly along your frame. Just dip the tip of your rag into the little pot and as more as needed... Less is definitely more in this scenario. Make sure you're paying attention to the sides of the frame too. You don't want to neglect them and then discover that they're still shiny and flawless, nor do you want the enamel to gob up and dry there... 

Do your frame in sections so one area doesn't dry while you're coating another. Pretty much as soon as you've wiped the enamel on, use another clean rag or paper towel to remove the majority of the paint. Remember, you're not meant to pull all of it off-- just the surplus, so that you leave a little bit remaining in the dings and dents you made with your keys. The idea is just to subtley add a little darkness to the otherwise gleaming perfect gold tone, so it looks like it's been around the block a couple of times, and didn't come straight from IKEA. Yes. One of my gold antiqued frames was originally a ultra-sleek modern white Ribba frame from IKEA, but you'd never guess that now, right? 

Once you're finished, let the frame dry for about 30 minutes and you're in like Flynn! 

That's the extent of this tutorial. Now it's time to walk around and see what else I can patina. Danny said you can do this process to pretty much anything-- metal, wood, you name it. 

Go out and make something old! 

What a lovely Valentine!

I'm pretty sure that home improvement is one of my favorite romantic gestures.

Nothing says, "I love you" quite like John spending most of his Saturday jerry-rigging a pair of antique (hardware-less) sconces to hang properly in my guest room without electrocuting someone.

That's some romance, yo.

But then, as if that wasn't already enough, John even installed that salvaged brass ceiling fixture! It's possible he may have said something like, "This looks like a giant doorbell" while he was doing it, but that made me laugh so hard that I could overlook his pedestrian opinion. Once it was up we both agreed that it looks significantly better than the school house light fixture dangling down inside the canopy bed, which was just down-right weird looking, though I think we'd both agree that it does actually look A LOT  like a giant doorbell too. That is probably going to continue to make me laugh every time I think about it.

In fact, it's making me laugh again, right now. 

The finishing touch: I unrolled the orange-and-blue oriental rug that I just brought up from the city (remember-- it was replaced by that fantastic jute rug?) and honestly-- the whole guest room was rejuvenated! The rug colors are almost bizarrely perfect for that room-- like the throw pillows and curtains have been waiting for the rug to show up for months. This room is finally getting close to finished-- I just have that bloody chimney to address... John wants to knock the whole freaking thing out-- I want to drywall it so it's like a little eave, or even frame out a closet in that corner and just absorb the stupid chimney inside the closet--- but mainly- we both wish it would just be DONE ALREADY so we didn't have to address it at all.

Alas. That is definitely not how home improvement works when you're dealing with a budget of our size (zero). To be addressed at a later date...

A Girl After My Own Heart

Someone just showed me an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about another designer who decorated her home with Craig's List finds...

While our styles aren't exactly similar, our ethos and our thriftiness definitely are! And her article came along with some great "How-To-Shop Craig's List" hints that are terrific, so take a gander...


(Weirdly, I can't find the tips on the Star Tribune website, so you're just going to have to find a magnifying glass to read them in the photo at left...)

I'm going to channel her tomorrow night, while trolling my local Craig's List for more vintage maps to add to my hallway collection... 

My map collection has made a massive step toward completion recently-- my dad has been working on matting and framing them, I just did a snazzy project to add patina to all of the mix-and-match frames I'd spray-painted gold, and I should have them all up and hanging by this evening. I'll post photos tomorrow of the maps as well as all of the other projects we're tackling this weekend. But here's one hint: those antique brass sconces are going up-- AS WE SPEAK! 

Another peek at our bedroom in Brooklyn...

I've pretty much completely re-fallen-in-love with our bedroom in Brooklyn. The combination of our new IKEA jute rug, my lovely Serena & Lily duvet cover (actually two flat sheets sewn together by my diligent mother!) the fantastic Jonathan Adler euro shams peeking out in front of our antique brass headboard, the weird and wonderful abstract landscape that I just brought back from France... Good things are going on in there. But I'm tellin' you-- that jute rug really pulled it all together. 

Thank you IKEA. 

Ta-da! Golden Delicious Hallway!

Alright. So we painted like the wind yesterday morning-- trying to get everything finished before Jules returned home from his "Dinosaur Extravaganza" adventure-- and managed to burn it out with plenty of time to spare. And so, because I'm a firm believer in never sitting down, ever-- we also touched up the paint throughout the apartment. Okay, maybe I'm not quite as nutty as all that, but every once in a while, I get started painting and the momentum carries me through the entire house-- cleaning up smudge marks and dings-- until the whole joint is bright and shining. This is also a good reason to keep touch-up paint on hand, in case you get the itch to paint your entire apartment on a Sunday.

John loves it when that happens. 

Remarkably, that was only Sunday morning, so after Julian's nap (it's possible we snoozed too...) we all got gussied up and headed over to our local IKEA to pick up that jute rug I mentioned yesterday.                                                           SIDE NOTE: We had a RECORD-BREAKING trip to IKEA. If only someone had been timing us! Not kidding, it took us longer to park than it did for us to whip in there, grab my jute rug, pick up a life-sized stuffed dog for Julian and zoom through the "3 Items or Less" line. In and out in under 15 minutes. We didn't even have to wait in the crazy line for the elevator. I am ONLY going to IKEA on Sunday evenings from now. And am only buying three items or less. DONE. MANIFESTO WRITTEN. End of discussion. 

Anyway... About that rug: I'm pretty sure this particular jute rug is essentially the best bargain ever. It's big-- 6'7" X 9'10"-- and at $129.00, I'd say that's a heck of a steal. It also has the look of something far fancier than IKEA-- if you keep your eyes peeled, you'll see similar jute rugs in Elle Decor and House Beautiful all the time. 

                

However, those guys are paying about 10 times my IKEA price tag, so I'm feeling rather smug right about now. 

Lots of Sunny Progress in Brooklyn!

Check out my action shot! 

Well, it's officially the 49th day of this unending, grey, and dismal winter-- BUT things just got a little sunnier up in Brooklyn! After many months of complaint, I've finally seized the day and re-painted our bedroom hallway. It's funny too, no one else seemed to be the least bit disturbed by the situation, but one day I looked around our apartment and I was like,

"Whoa. Everything in this house is blue." 

Granted-- many different shades of blue-- but once I noticed, I was almost embarrassed by HOW BLUE EVERYTHING WAS. Kitchen cabinets: Provincial Blue. Bedroom Hallway: Colonial Blue. Living Room Rug: Slate blue. Reupholstered Eames Chair: IKAT blue. Vintage dining chairs: same IKAT blue! Bedroom sheets: blue! Towels? Slate Blue again! My god-- it was almost pathological! Did I have some deep-seated trauma involving the color blue that I was unaware of? Or was I just that partial to blue? I mean seriously. 

 Anyway-- between that and my insatiable desire to constantly repaint my apartment-- it seemed only logical that I would use the two-and-a-half baby free hours I was going to have this Sunday morning* to repaint my hallway. I was just totally over that colonial blue. Out, damned spot! Out, I say! 

So I trotted over to my local Benjamin Moore store and picked up the sunniest-most-un-blue color I could find-- Golden Delicious (Benjamin Moore: #390). It also happens to match the chartreuse linen drapes hanging in our bedroom, so it's not completely "out of the blue." (Come on. I HAD to make that joke. I HAD TO!) Jokes aside, you get a nice layering of color-- the walls framing the drapes hanging in the distance-- it all looks very cheery and distinctly NOT blue.

Of course, this has now inspired me to tackle the next "problem area"... Our bedroom. I'm thinking I'm going to zip over to IKEA with Jules post-nap to pick up one of their tried-and-true jute rugs to replace the oriental rug in our bedroom, and then that rug can head upstate where I've got just the place for it! 

One thing always leads to another... 

I'll post our "after" photos tomorrow morning, so you can experience the glorious sun coming through our bedroom windows, and in the interim, I've got to persuade John that we should spend our Sunday afternoon-evening trolling through IKEA. Never an easy case to make... 

*My parents have taken Jules to a zanny dinosaur exhibit in the city!! Freedom!!

Delicious Family Weekend Dinner

As I mentioned earlier, a large majority of my family (we're not a big operation-- but we are hard to pin down! All four of us have convened in the same place for the first time in almost three years!) And of course, because we are who we are, we are focused primarily on what food we're going to be eating.

**Although, let's be honest, I'm also planning to sneak in some home improvement projects while I have so many extra bodies to keep an eye on Julian... 

But first, we EAT!

My mom whipped up this short rib recipe and arrived, ribs in hand, as only a Salway will do. They were tremendous, and come highly recommended.

Ingredients

4 pounds beef short ribs, trimmed (about 10 ribs)

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

4 cups unsalted beef stock

1/4 cup olive oil

1 3/4 cups red wine

1/4 cup brandy or sherry

1 cup drained canned whole tomatoes, chopped

3 celery ribs, chopped

2 medium-size carrots, chopped

1 medium-size yellow onion, chopped

1 small garlic bulb, cut in half crosswise

1 bay leaf

3 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs

3 fresh thyme sprigs

2 fresh rosemary sprigs

2 tablespoons butter

Preparation

1. Sprinkle ribs on all sides with salt and pepper; cover and chill 12 to 24 hours.

2. Preheat oven to 300°. Let ribs stand at room temperature 30 minutes. Bring stock to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium, and simmer 8 to 10 minutes or until reduced to 2 cups.

3. Cook half of ribs in 2 Tbsp. hot oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat 3 minutes on each side or until browned. Repeat with remaining oil and ribs. Remove from heat, discard drippings, and wipe skillet clean.

4. Pour wine and brandy into skillet, and return to medium heat. Bring wine and brandy to a boil; boil 5 minutes or until reduced to 1 cup. Stir wine mixture into reduced stock.

5. Place ribs in a large Dutch oven. Add tomatoes and next 5 ingredients, nestling them around the ribs; add parsley, thyme, and rosemary sprigs. Pour stock mixture into Dutch oven; simmer over high heat. Place a piece of parchment paper directly on beef, and cover Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid.

6. Bake at 300° for 3 1/2 to 4 hours or until meat is tender and pulls away from bone. Let ribs stand in Dutch oven, covered with parchment and lid, at room temperature 30 minutes.

7. Remove parchment paper. Transfer ribs to a serving platter, and cover with foil. Skim fat from cooking liquid, and pour liquid through a fine wire-mesh strainer into a large saucepan; discard solids. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Simmer, whisking occasionally, 5 minutes or until sauce reduces slightly. Remove from heat. Add butter, and whisk until butter melts and sauce is smooth. Serve sauce with ribs.

*Notes from Mummy: 

• I didn't marinate the ribs because I hadn't read that part of the recipe until I was ready to cook them, and then I didn't have enough time to marinate.

• My short ribs fell completely off the bone and looked more like stew.  But that was probably because I cooked them a little longer than recommended in the recipe... 

• Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly!!

Now, to focus on my next project... We're going to paint our hallway tomorrow, so check back in to see our progress!!

I can't wait to get rid of all that blue! 

A break from the winter "blues"...

I'm either getting cabin fever or I'm losing my grip because I've got the ol' "repaint-and-reupholster" itch and I just can't get it out of my mind. 

It's funny how you can live with something one way for a while--years even-- and suddenly! You're over it and it's just GOT TO GO. That's how I'm feeling about our hallway paint color right now. I'm like literally oppressed by the color. Cheerful, lovely colonial blue. Three years without a problem. We loved it, it loved us. And now suddenly, I can barely stand to look at it. Which seems irrational, I realize. (Don't you judge me!) So I think I'm going to coerce my parents into a field trip to the Natural History Museum with Jules this weekend, and I'm going to re-paint. Oddly, I'm between colors at the moment. Late last night I jumped up and said, "What about baby-sh#t bronze?" which initially made John laugh very hard, but then elicited a fairly firm, "No." I'm sure he could be persuaded if I tried a little harder, but I'm not sure I want to waste my bargaining power on "baby sh#t bronze." I think I'll save that for something more important, wouldn't you say?

Other contenders are... Celadon, a medium taupe, or maybe even... beige. I know. I can't believe I'm suggesting beige either. What happened to the "Don't be afraid of color" queen?? I suspect that I've fall into a cavern of winter-despair, and that I'm desperately craving bright days and a little sunshine. Weirdly, I think that's translating into "Let's make everything as neutral and bright as possible..." I'm yearning for  a little minimalism, a little simplicity, a little summer serenity, and if I can't have that, maybe I can recreate it by making my hallway can be a little more airy. Or at least a little less blue. I'll report back on a final color decision, and then you can catch me in action, actually painting the walls, this weekend.

Transformation in the making, people! 

*I confess, now that I'm looking at these celadon tones, I'm wondering if it's not neutrality I seek, but just a break from the blue...

Another great find-- if I didn't already own these...

Just in case someone else is on the hunt, I just encountered another fantastic pair of brass sconces up for auction at the Columbus Avenue Housing Works... These bad-boys were made for Urban Archeology, so you know that they're coming from somewhere fancy! (According to Houzz, they're selling for $665.00 new, so someone is gonna get a hell of a steal!) If I hadn't just picked up an almost identical pair at Build-It-Green last week, I'd definitely be placing a bid, make no mistake.

I even briefly contemplated if there wasn't somewhere else I could consider installing them, but the conclusion was that maybe a girl really can have too many brass sconces, so I'm going to hold off.

All the better for some other lucky shopper, who won't have to bid against me...                           I'm vicious!