Home Sweet Home- New Patio Doors

The patio doors have been broken ever since I was a little kid. It never seemed to be a big deal, since we never used the patio. However, now that we are fixing up the patio ( pictures still to come) and having the other windows in the house replaced (yet more pictures to come), it was imperative to have new patio doors. We went through Home Depot for the windows. Using Home Depot has been nothing short of a disaster, but I need to hold off on a blog rant until the window job is completed. Home Depot used two different contractors, one for the patio sliders and one for the other windows. The patio sliders were done by a company called Adan construction and although they did a good job, I felt very much slighted by the head builder, who would direct everything towards Dan. I was also upset that they did not bother to cover any of the work area with tarp to minimize the dust. The head guy basically told me that it would be very messy and it was. A fine layer of dust covered the entire master bedroom. Every other contractor that has worked on the house has placed plastic coverings to lessen the mess. I expect there to be some clean up on my part, but I thought the mess that Adan construction left was unacceptable and unprofessional. If they were not going to make efforts to cover the work area, I wish that we had been warned when the appointment had been set up. Ridiculous. Here is a picture taken mid construction.

I do think that the new sliders look great and I am happy the job is done. Here are some pictures of the 1970's sliders that were original to the house. One is located at the top of the stairs and the other is in the master bedroom.

A close-up of the really old door handle from inside the master bedroom.

The old sliders were ugly, old and didn't even lock! We also had vertical blinds and decided to go with horizontal blinds that are between two panes of glass. This means no more cleaning blinds, a big win in my book. The new sliders are not only practical, but look so much better in the space. They have thick, white molding that frames the sliders and makes it look modern and pretty. Here are pictures of the new windows.

Home Sweet Home - New Dining Room

In prep for Dan's parent's visiting, we did a remodel of the dining room. Previously, I had a huge Oak table that belonged to my mom. It was nice, but not my taste. Dark wood and old fashion looking, Dan and I saw a pretty light wood picnic table at Ikea and decided that it would be perfect for us. Here is a picture of the space prior to the new furniture.

Dan put together all of the furniture and took all of these pictures of the progress.

The first big piece of furniture was a sideboard. It's has three deep shelves and a wine rack. Dan also bought pretty brown cloth boxes for extra storage.

The new dining room table.

The table and sideboard looked plain until we decorated it.

A closer view of the pretty table setting.

Home Sweet Home- One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Three if by Air???

The British are coming! Dan's parents are currently on a British Airlines' flight coming to visit us and we are frantically cleaning the house in preparation for their arrival. In fact, I am frantically writing this blog post in order to get back to doing more cleaning. We have made major, major improvements to the townhouse in the last couple of weeks and I wanted to share one of them. Unfortunately, I don't have any before pictures of this one. It used to be my childhood bedroom and then my mom turned it into a guest bedroom when I left home. My mom had zero design taste. Zero. She favored blue painted walls, dark wood, brown carpet and pictures of ships. As she aged, she lightened up and had speckled office carpet and walls a lighter blue, but still with the damn ship pictures. My own design taste is better, but I defer to Dan's ideas. He has great taste and always makes the house look great. He has ideas that never occur to me.

When I inherited the townhouse, I turned the room into an office and junk catch-all. Dan and I moved in last April and kept it an office. Dan's office furniture was nice, but the room lacked design. It was still a bit of a junk room.

With Dan's parent's coming, we decided to get the spare bed out of storage and turn it back into a guest room. It looks leaps and bounds better than our master bedroom, which is now on the top of the list for some decorating! Here is the new guest bedroom.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the bed skirt, but it still looks good with the Calvin Klein sheets. We added the multicolor decorative pillow from Ikea. Ikea sucked us dry this weekend! The art on the walls is also from Ikea.

Here is my old dresser and chimp lamp. We picked up the vase with potpourri from Ikea. It smells great and picks up the lavender color in the room. The little bedside table was in the gardening section of Ikea and we found the clip lamps in lighting.

More Ikea,,a mirror with butterfly etchings and a chair. It's always good to have a chair when getting reading in the morning.

We found a cute laundry basket and a butterfly print to match the other one. The owl picture was another Ikea purchase. We laughed about it in the store, but it actually looks great in the space. It picks up on the existing colors and is bright. It was only ten dollars, can't beat that. We were in a mega time crunch, so we went with the cheap Ikea art, but it pulls the room together. I hope his parents will like their bedroom!

I have lots to blog, mostly with home improvements. Hopefully I will find time to do a bit over the next few weeks, in between work and visiting with Dan's parents. We are so exciting to have them visit and have many fun things planned. Vacation begins now...or as soon as I am finished cleaning the kitchen. Cheers!