Tag: decorating

1970s Shore Home, DIY and Decor

Window Treatments Are The Worst

Kelly

Guys can we talk about window treatments for a minute? Most of the aluminum / vinyl mini blinds that were in the shore house were in pretty rough shape. And the curtains were not to my taste. So now that the house is painted and nice looking I’ve started to turn my attention towards window treatments. At home in the bedrooms we have cordless cellular shades (which came with the house) and then curtains hung over the window. This way it can be super duper dark in the bedroom even with the sun decides to rise at 5:30 or some horrible hour. This has been essential in getting my kid to sleep past dawn, and it works great.

Shopping for curtains is sort of fun, and not too intimidating. There are a good number of inexpensive options at Target and Lowes, so it doesn’t feel like that much of a life commitment. I even snagged some from Woot.com that like.

I find these totally acceptable at $20/pair
I find these totally acceptable at $20/pair

Aside from needing to hem the ones for the upstairs (damn you, not-even-eight-foot ceilings) curtain shopping went pretty well. Until today.

For some reason I am in curtain limbo. I set out this morning in search of curtains for the 2 downstairs bedrooms, and came up empty handed. Since the downstairs have colored walls (upstairs is gray) I wanted to see stuff in person to make sure the color looked good. Everything I found that I liked was mysteriously out of stock. Target was super weird: none of the display curtains seemed to be anywhere on the shelf. But I made a note of the styles I liked and figured I’d order them online. Except my notes must not be good enough because I can’t find any of them online. So now I’m just curtain-less.  Good luck keeping up with the glaring summer sun, new AC system!

Next I went to Lowes to look at shades/blinds. Holy shit you guys, those cordless cellular shades I love cost a fortune, it turns out! Thanks, person who we bought our house from, for buying nice things I am way too cheap to ever purchase on my own. I mean I guess if I was doing one or two windows I could stomach the cost, but I have ten. Then I looked at vinyl/aluminum mini blinds, which are cheap. And ugly. So ugly. I hemmed and hawed for about 10 minutes before turning to the display of disposable stick-on paper accordion shades. And bought ten. That’s right, I bailed on this decision. I’ll return to it in 6 months when the paper shades start falling down.

The other thorn in my side is the sliding glass doors. They’re problematic for a number of reasons. First, the seal is busted. Water is trapped inside, and the only way to really fix that is to get new doors. They are also really hard to open and close. And also I hate pretty much every window treatment option available for sliding glass doors. Curtains are bulky and annoying, vertical blinds are ugly, and a nice multi-layer drape system is too expensive to spend on a door that has to be replaced in the next year anyway.

Not convinced this is an improvement over the vinyl ones
Not convinced this is an improvement over the vinyl ones

So don’t be surprised if you come to visit and find that all my curtains just have a sheet tacked up over them, college style, because I am incapable of making any decisions about window treatments.

1970s Shore Home, DIY and Decor

Beds! Beds! Beds!

Kelly

Kitchen stuff at the shore house is mostly back on track. The inspector is coming out on Tuesday, which should clear us to get the hot water heater installed (!!!!) later that week or early the week after. Chris and I got the fridge cabinet raised to the correct height, and in theory someone will call me next week with an install date for the counter tops. The front bedroom is making an OK spray booth for the cabinet doors. I can’t fit nearly as many in there as I could fit in the backyard, so I’ll have to do it in more stages, but no bugs landed in my paint job so that’s nice. Ikea is still out of stock on my damned parts but in theory they’re getting a shit-ton this weekend. FINGERS CROSSED I can start cutting down my Ikea trips to like… bi-monthly.

Now I can move on to more fun stuff… beds!

Right now the plan is to have two twin beds, one trundle, a double bed, two queen beds, and a twin daybed that pulls out into something sort of resembling a short king bed (or a wide full bed, depending on how you look at it). The double we already have, the rest we still need to accumulate. I’ve been scouring thrift stores / yard sales and coming up empty, so we’ll probably end up buying them new.

I got two of this bed, one with a trundle and one with storage, for the "kids room" at the shore house.
I got two of this bed, one with a trundle and one with storage, for the “kids room” at the shore house.

At the same time we are also upgrading the toddler’s crib at home to a “big girl bed.” After a failed trip to a “real” furniture store she picked out an Ikea bed that honestly I think is pretty ugly, but it’s one of the cheapest beds so whatever. At that price you can have whatever ugly bed you want, kiddo. It comes with an optional trundle which we’re planning on getting… but is out of stock until next week. WHY DO YOU HATE ME IKEA STOCK GODS?

It has that cozy, mental institution vibe.
It has that cozy, mental institution vibe.

It also occurred to me yesterday that between the two twin beds, Leona’s bed, and two trundles… I am in the market for five twin mattresses. That is a lot of twin mattresses, and mattresses really aren’t the sort of thing you want to pick up secondhand unless you know the person. Even then… kids mattresses… probably best to buy new. Thankfully because these mattresses are for kid / guest use I can get away with the cheaper options. Right now I’m planning to get the cheaper-but-not-cheapest Ikea models unless anyone has suggestions.

For one of the queen mattresses I decided to give Tuft and Needle a try. They sell a 10 inch foam mattress and are apparently “disrupting” the mattress industry… whatever that means. They are comparatively inexpensive, made in the USA, and have a solid return policy. They have lots of promo photos of hipster-looking people unboxing their mattresses. I hope this mattress turns my small sloped-ceiling room into a magnificent brick loft with original hardwood floors.

When all is said and done we will be able to sleep 4 couples and 3 singles in the house on real mattresses. There aren’t any immediate plans for pull-out couches but down the road we could potentially expand the number of non-air-mattress guests even further. WE WILL BE MATTRESS BARONS.

BTW if anyone sees good deals on bed linens, let me know!