What Ana Does

The corner of the basement that was hit by all that water is really making progress. The builders were here for the last month, replacing walls and building back the bathroom. And (hooray!) they finished up yesterday. Which means this space is MINE again to work on. I've been dying to get my hands on it and get it ready for our Christmas visitors.  I look some progress shots ...  And this is where I step in. They removed all the chair molding around the entire basement while they were at it, and I'm so excited to see it painted one color.  I ordered new scones to replace the ones on the wall (see them on the right?) and should get them Sunday.  The sofa is uncertain. I checked in on it last month and they said it was coming, but nothing yet.  But, this week I'm on a tight deadline to paint the floor and walls.  Here I go ....  Basement Posts To refresh your memory, here's the plan for this TV watching area .  And the FULL basement vision pos t. 

 I *just* saw this image on Pinterest and I'm in LOVE ....  Link to Pinterest Post Now, let's imagine this super-easy, though, yes, time-consuming, on this wall ...  in place of the white Crate&Barrel shelves. Stocked with my work products in the cabinets and jars of dried beans, flour/sugar, etc. on the shelves. DREAMY! (OMG ... I'll hide the microwave in there!)  OR  Even here, in place of the bench and hooks.  All we're looking at is store-bought upper cabinets, painted, with a butcher block top. Bead board backsplash and some simple hanging shelves with peg hooks below. And painted a deep, rich color. All really simple solutions you can buy at Home Depot. $500 budget?  Yes? Go for it? 

 but ... I painted one anyway.  The black Chalkboard Paint is still drying  I know! I watch HGTV and I'm always yelling at the designers to NOT PAINT that mural. UGH. It's awful. But this little corner of the basement near the bottom of the stairs just NEEDED a little style and I hadn't really thought of the full concept of this whole basement (this was before the water/hurricane Ida catastrophe) and I really wanted to be fun and bold and creative.  Alice I picked the colors and away we went!  Here's the tape ....  And the first coat ...  This corner was going to be the little gym nook, but I decided to squeeze the pool table in here so we could have more space in the media/TV area. So, now, this cool mural will be over that pool table (that we moved with just the four of us and snapped off two legs in the process ... but that's another story).  It will be fun! We'll keep score on the chalkboard and I'll hang a cool light fixture over the whole thing that co

Remember when I made those art ledges in the old dining room? Here's the post to jog your memory .  Of course I wanted them in my new dining room and I wanted them MUCH LONGER than the old house. 8 feet!  Now that I've made a few, they are super speedy to create. 30 minutes accumulative and $70ish at Home Depot -- I used cheaper Select Pine instead of the fancy Oak in the old house.  I LOVE the way it turned out -- though I need to spend a few days styling them out.  Just to take a trip down memory lane ... here's that wall when I started.  This suites are style much better.  I've got two more things planning for this dining room: a new chandelier and installing curtains (need the texture). But those are low on the budget, as I've got the basement and other projects to tackle.  It's never ending. In a good way. 

You gotta have an end goal.  If I've learned one thing in the last decade of home improvement-ing, it's that having/holding that final vision is key to not giving up, not getting frustrated and moving forward.  Will you stick to the exact end goal vision? No way. But you gotta start with some end goal in mind.  For the basement, it took me a few weeks to finalize in my head how I'd want to use each area. What would be most useful for my family. How will we use it? What do we need? What do we have that we need to accommodate.  There's a lot of weird angles, and small areas I needed to work around, too. And I have growing girls, so, "teen hangout" came up a lot.  Well, here's the layout!  At the bottom of the stairs, you've got the pool table to one side, and the kitchenette in the play space/hallway room where guests get beer. Originally, this was where the TV was, but the space was too tight to fit a sofa across from it. So, the room will be storage an

Bruce and I take a walk around the block each morning after we drop Alice off at the bus stop. Bruce is a great walking buddy. He behaves well on the leash, doesn't bark and only stops occasionally to sniff at a clump of leaves or spot in the grass. Meanwhile, Pepper is NOT pleased with that arrangement. She's sweet, but LOUD on walks. And loses her mind if she sees another dog.   Not happy.  She's always watching.  :) 

 You know I love a good closet project!  Our laundry room has this little closet with two wire shelves. You also know how I feel about wire shelving. Ugh!  Here's my SHAME ... after months of living here, that closet looked like this ...  I know.... it's shocking, right?!  After reflecting on what we NEED this space for, I pulled together a very simple plan to add shelving. Yup... Storage by reusing those less-then-classy plastic crates again.  The good news is, I've done this before. ( Evidence here in my old pantry. )  YAY!  Step 1 is to pull off the door (which we don't need), clear out the mess and take down the shelf. I'm leaving that top shelf for several reasons, but mostly as a "just in case." Just in case I need extra coat storage this winter. Here's the cleared out closet:  Notice how the previous owners didn't install baseboards in this closet. WHY?!  So I'll fix that, too.  The next step is to install the cleats that will hold the s

When Hurricane Ida rolled through, it dumped more rain then the gutters could handle, and therefore dumped rain into a window well and that dumped into our basement. So guess what?! I've got to come up with a plan for the basement ... years before I thought I'd need to. But, here where are. Thanks IDA :/ The basement is pretty chopped up, so let's start with the TV-watching area, as that's the most important to my family and where all of the damage took place.  And here's the plan: First, we need to move the 1,000 lb pool table that you can see peeking just around the corner. That's going into the former gym area where I painted the rainbow mural. It's extremely heavy and we're not sure how we're going to move it there.  So, there's that challenge.  Second, I should also mention that our basement was professionally dried and no mold or other nastiness is growing behind the walls. So rest assured. They were pretty sure water has gotten in through

 I just love this picture ...  Princeton in the fall. Dreamy. 

 We were long time New Jersey residents, so it's been fun to be back and taking time to re-explore places we used to spend a lot of time in.  Here's a few photos from two recent trips; to Hoboken and Princeton.  We lived in Hoboken for about 10 years. WOW. So it was exciting to drive the almost-two-hour ride to walk around and remember about all the crazy 20-year-old-just-out-of-college times we had.  Then there was an afternoon in Princeton catching up with friends. We all decided we're going to study at Princeton. It's magical. Kinda like Hogwarts. Sign me up!   How lucky to be back in familiar ground again. I just love living here. 

I am loving this view. Three rooms, all lined up, freshly painted in coordinating colors. And the cutest little dog.  Dining room: Village Green by Behr Hallway: Gossamer Veil by Sherwin Williams Living room: English Channel by Behr  I'm not great at a lot of things. But I'm darn good at picking colors. 

Between the neighborhood walks with Bruce and being alone in my house during the day when Dave is at the office and the girls are at school, I've been consuming a lot more podcasts than usual. And I've learned quite a LOT of interesting stuff.  Here are three podcasts that are on heavy rotation ...  Feel Better Live More from Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a new discovery that I've been consuming a lot of, going into the archives to catch up on older conversations. He interviews interesting people and asks a lot of good questions. I just finished a long conversation about immunity, one on running, the myth of calories was excellent and the short sum-up on the Blue Zones, which I find crazy fascinating. It's great listening.  Smartless is a weekly favorite. I can almost get in the whole interview on my 20 minute walk with Bruce in the mornings. Or I'll finish the tail end while eating breakfast. It's silly and thoughtful. I like the banter between the guys -- Jason Bat

Light lime green isn't my color. And as of last week, it was the last not-my-color color in the house. But we had to wait a few months before the painter had an opening -- because I certainly was not getting on a ladder to paint the two-story foyer.  Here's the before photos, from the listing and a look at the ceiling ...  It's important to me that the colors in this house all coordinate, so I choose Gossamer Veil from Sherwin Williams -- that was a nice natural against the gray-green of the dining room and blue of the morning room. I think it turned out quite nice!  It feels more tranquil, serene and not as dirty or jarring when walking through this hallway now. And the best part ... I didn't get full of paint getting it done. Another thing done on our long list of updates for this lovely house.  Of course, my next thought is to replace the two chandelier lights with more modern colonial of my overall design plan. The smaller will be much easier, and less expensive, t

Our kitchen is a bit old and dated. The cabinets are dark and not in perfect shape. The oven is a disaster. I'm pretty sure the stove heats unevenly and the floor looks perpetually dingy.  Mostly, there's not much I can do about that. We'll likely remodel, but not for at least a year, possibly two. So I have to find little things I can do to make micro-improvements.  Enter the competing backsplash vs. counters.  The backsplash is a tumbled stone/travertine tile that's pink, salmon, orange, beige. And the counters are salmon, pink, beige marbled maybe-stone (?). Possibly granite circa early 1990? I can see how maybe someone thought they'd compliment but in reality they just fight for attention. In today's design, you usually pattern up one or the other. NOT BOTH.  Here's what we're working with...  I watched a number of quick youtube videos from DIYs are how SIMPLE it is to paint a backsplash. And cheap. Counters are less simple and cheap. So I went with

I love painting rooms ... until I have to do a bathroom. Sure, it's usually less wall area to paint, but I'm not a fan of obstacles. And contorting around a toilet or over a shower isn't my idea of a good time. Suffice it to say, I've been avoiding painting the girls' green bathroom because of this. Well, no more!  I needed a WIN this weekend and knew that bathroom was just the thing to get my home-project-heart pumping again.  Here's what we started with ... green and dirty walls, an old and ugly light fixtures and a mirror no one liked.  By the end of the day, we had creamy (yup, Swiss Coffee by Behr) walls and two new scones not covered in dust and grime.  I even hung some shelves, so they have more room to hang all their products (they love shopping at Ulta or Sephora).  I just need to incorporate more hooks for towels and hang the new/old mirror. They're taking the Target mirror I got a few years ago that's currently hanging in my bedroom -- a bit o

First, I'll admit that it took me WAY TOO LONG to rename our weekend Golden Girls. So I'll be using that a lot to make amends.  Our sister-in-law had a great idea last year while languishing away through COVID quarantine -- we need to get the ladies together. My three sisters, Mom and her ... let's go away! We settled on Denver so we could see a Brandi Carlilie concert at Red Rocks. Got tickets last winter and pulled it all together little by little. We were not surprised when ALL the sisters confirmed they could go. We love being all together.  I found a brand-new hotel (I love a new hotel) that just opened in Golden, and that brought the whole thing together. Cities are great to explore, but smaller nearby towns are way more managable for a weekend. So we booked it and that was that.  Here are some details and recommendations from our trip:  We stayed at the Eddy Hotel in Golden. We all shared a large room for the weekend but spend most of our time in the lobby. Lobbies