More blue chairs, more blue shopping

We've sort of dropped the chair thing as our house budget has had other plans (new AC...), but recently we stumbled into an unexpected choice: Room & Board. For anyone familiar with this store, you'll know that they make really fabulous wood furniture in the USA, but their price reflects their quality. We often oogle the furniture but alas, it is not meant to be for our price level.

So imagine my surprise when we wandering into a store to discover that the chairs there are in the same price range as the ones at Crate and Barrel and only slightly more than West Elm. And they come in dozens of colors!

We sat on one or two that we liked and then created a list from their online selection that would definitely prompt a revisit to test in person. Quinn, Braden, Abbott, and Cole all had the clean lines and not overly-stuffed look we are going for.

I was delighted to see that swatches were free and you could order up to some huge number like 20, so I picked all my favorite blues and waited.

They arrived and I was so excited to check which one matched best...

Only to discover that, yet again, my taste is apparently unique. They aren't bad, they are just blah. (I forgot to photograph them on the same pillow I did last time, but the blues are kinda the same.)

Oh well, I'll keep looking until we find the perfect match. West Elm just got some new colors in, plus I'm sure we'll find some other good candidates at other stores where we never expected to find them.

Strapping improvements (toddler proofing part 1)

When we installed our new shelves in the basement we took the precaution of attaching each one to the wall. We did not do that for the furniture in the brave new baby's room. Which is stupid because the wardrobes are large, heavy, and have drawers which may eventually prove to be tempting climbing steps. In our defense, she is still showing no interest in climbing. But who knows when that will change. So I spent an afternoon strapping her wardrobes to the wall.

I did order some Ikea straps through their just-announced recall program, but they hadn't arrived yet and we already had some generic wall straps.

The process was fairly straightforward. Find stud.

Attach one set of straps to the stud.

Attach other strap to furniture.

Do it in pairs.

Attach together.

Pull out as much slack as possible. One of the straps is just slightly visible on the tallest wardrobe, because the studs were in inconvenient positions, but otherwise the whole setup is invisible.

Randomness on a Saturday

I've been gathering up little tidbits that don't quite add up to a blog post, so I thought I'd dump them here more for my own ability to keep track of things, rather than for you, dear reader(s). And so, without further adieu or any ability to turn these into a single theme, here goes:

1. Mouser kitty caught a tiny little mouse this week. Usually they only seem to come in during the colder weather, so this tiny toddler-of-a-mouse was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2. Our own mouse-of-a-toddler now has free rein on the main floor, because we took down the gate:

She seems to know she's not allowed to go down to the basement alone (made easier by her laziness at doing stairs, so she usually demands mommy or daddy carry her down), and she more or less responsibly colors on her own in the office. We'd been leaving it open for a few months now, and after she tripped over the threshold the other day, we decided its time was up. Leaving the sticky cups up for now in case of a potential child #2 (or even just a party with lots of children).

3. We've been treating our hawthorn tree all year for rust to avoid the orange spots of last year. We have been less than diligent but it's much better than last year, though still seems to have traces of rust on the leaves. I'm a little disappointed because we selected a hawthorn because we thought they were supposed to be pretty hardy, and spraying it with chemicals weekly is not ideal.

 It has grown a little bit, as has the toddler in whose honor it was planted.

4. Reconsidering my love of sycamores after seeing how much bark they shed in my neighbor's yard, though a friend who has several says that they easily mulch into the ground when mowing. Still not sure what (or even where) to plant after we take our oak down this fall.

As I said, very random. Some longer posts on the way, but it's been a pretty lazy summer housewise, so don't get your hopes up for too much.

I see you!

It's a minor change, but our relatively newly revamped basement has some new wall decor.

I can finally run on the treadmill and not be snuck up upon (that's not quite a grammatical English phrase, but you get the idea).

Target made these mercifully easy to hang by making the packaging include a template, to know where to put the screws.

Here's the longer view. We are still really enjoying our pantry redesign and the purple wall, though the room still needs serious work to not feel like a basement (or maybe we just have to live with it). It doesn't help that the little one never tires of unloading the lower shelves of the pantry and dragging groceries all around the room. Why yes, I would love to enjoy a can of chilis in adobo sauce on the futon, thank you. And a jar of herbs de provence while going for a run? Perfect! (Did I mention we stock some pretty random things?)

On the to-do list to make this place little more polished? Spray paint this wine rack white, which definitely will have to wait until at least fall, since I don't spend more than a few minutes outside doing manual labor during the hottest months of the year.

 Get a new grate for the fireplace:

We debated painting the inside white and putting something decorative inside, but the jury is still out on whether this fireplace is useable (home was sold with this fireplace "as is" - the inspector agreed that we shouldn't use it but our chimney guy said it was fine) and we don't want to make it definitely unusable without more information.

 And maybe, one day, do something about the eyesore on this side of the room.

But at least I don't have to look at it when I'm on the treadmill.

Oh, a cool random find at Target when we went looking for the mirrors:

Back when we were searching for a solution for a nightstand in the bedroom that was compatible for our under-bed drawers and our cat-tunnel headboard, these would have been nice to have. They're little shelves that clamp onto the very top of the bed frame.

Neat, right?