Victorian In Bloom

Éminence grise

The other day, I was sitting around, looking at this:

and it just really looked awful. and I thought, to hell with waiting to demolish the kitchen, even though that is exactly what i would like to do right now. unfortunately (or fortunately) we have to wait a few more months before we can begin in order to line up all of our financial sources to begin. we are thinking mid march, but that’s a subject for another post.

I guess I am still in recover from the wedding, as i find it necessary to spend my time doing projects, or just that i am so happy no longer doing crafts for the one day, that i am willing to jump into any other house project. it did not take long to paint the frame with white that we picked out, oh, about a year ago (ahem). then, i remembered that i procured a couple of free cans of paint from a house in the neighborhood that was throwing out supplies post renovation. there was about half a gallon of slay gray porch/outdoor paint left.

the gray is perfect for concealing all the not so perfect cracks around the door — which will have to be dealt with when we redo the kitchen.

the downstairs bathroom also got the same gray treatment. All in all the kitchen wall and the bathroom took about three hours - lots to show for relatively limited time investment.

so what if both the kitchen wall and bathroom walls will be gone in a few months? (more on that here)

I wanted to try out the darker gray color anyway, and per-demolition seemed like the perfect opportunity. the gray looks so good! it makes every other color set against it pop. And the bathroom feels so cozy and enveloping. a note of caution, sergey noticed that the gray also absorbs a lot more light in the bathroom, which makes it a good choice for a small powder room, but may not do so well in a main bathroom, where it is actually nice to see what’s going on.

P.S. for those that noticed, i also painted the kitchen cabinet inserts white. i was touching up a few spots, and decided to just go for it. i guess to test out the white cabinet look that we are leaning strongly towards.

An addition to the family

A bit unexpected, but hey so is life. Otto, the orange kitty, came to live with us this weekend. For reals. He is a year old kitten that came to us via Syracuse University, hence the name. 

in other happenings this weekend, we participated in the DC tweed ride. Great fun, particularly if you normally refuse to get on a bike in the city, because city bike riding scares you (ahem).

wedding colors

as with any decor projects - creating a wedding is really very much a decor project - color is key. We went with red, given our theme of Russian wedding - how the Russian theme came about you can see here.

One of my favorite bits about the planning process was creating a mood board. It was actually the first time that I created one, a skill which afterwards I applied to make my kitchen mood board.

Source: all images came from Snippet and Ink mood boards

An aside: Playing around with color, Sergey showed me some really cool color apps, such as kuler.adobe.com The coolest thing is this feature, which allows to choose a base color and then see shades, complimentary colors, similar colors, etc - amazing! I haven’t fully explored, but this should come in very handy for the house.

After choosing red, the other key decision was to make sure to use it sparingly. At first I was planning on red bridesmaid dresses, but backed away from that idea quite quickly because I did not want red to overwhelming in pictures. So we went with beige to blush pink for the dresses, and red accessories, shoes, and flowers. My maid of honor is wearing red, though :). The guys’ outfits were easy after that, khaki pants and red ties.

photo credit: justin battenfield

We took the same approach to wedding decorations, concentrating on red accents, rather than full on red details.

photo credit: justin battenfield

By far the most time consuming were the tablecloths. It took so.so.long to sponge a stencil decorative border. I think it took about an hour per tablecloth for the whole process. given that there were 14 of them, in the end probably was not worth it. oh well you live and you learn.

photo credit: justin battenfield

and then, there were the pennants. a lot of these, sadly, were never put up, because we decorated on the day of, but some did make it out. many friends participated in our craft days to help out with these (thank you!!) i love how festive these look:

One of my favorite bits of the wedding were the red name/ escort buttons that we made for everyone to facilitate conversation. Sergey was/is super excited about the button maker that we got for this purpose off craigslist, and I suspect buttons will be making a reappearance here and there in our lives.

and we also used matching circles for place settings:

photo credit: justin battenfield

Finally to decorate and light up the tent, dancing pavilion and the park we used christmas lights and led-powered lanterns (that, yep, we assembled ourselves). we were going for the red lantern/ white lantern look, though the lanterns came off more pink than red — which was fine, because we had no singular red but rather many shades:

photo credit: justin battenfield

Overall, I would say pretty close to the mood board!

exciting news

I have blogged about my favorite store in the district multiple times, here, here and then unfortunately here. not sure how we could have ever replaced them, they even have deliver service! well exciting news, Ruff and Read is opening shop again:

Not as convenient as being in logan circle/ u st area, though the shop is still on the busy 14th st corridor, up in Brightwood. The address is: 4722 14th Street NW. Its quite a trek for me, though tll the 50 buses should take you up there from u st, and well with delivery service really no excuse not to visit.

I went and visited myself before the grand opening, which is set for October 1, because i just could not wait. looks so good!

Considerably less ‘junky’ than the innards of the previous RnR. I wonder what that will do to the prices. Curated collections obviously usually start at higher price points. And half the fun at the old RnR was the thrill of the find. But I am still very much looking forward to the occasional trip to Brightwood.

If you don’t live close enough to just ‘drop by’ to see if they are open yet, you can give them a call: 202.726.2600 (they still had to get their formal occupancy papers when I was there this weekend).

letting go & catching up

one of the promises that Sergey and I made to each other in the run up to the wedding is that we would take it easy in October. Let go of busy schedules and always having something to do, and catch up on doing nothing. 

sergey relaxing in aillac, france on our honeymoon.

so far so good, though its harder than it sounds. there are so many things i want to do - the allure of a paint can is not lost on me - and a couple - like thank you cards - that we’ve got to. 

our save-the-date and thank you cards for the wedding

while we aren’t actively undertaking any projects ate the VIB, this will be a good time to catch up here on the blog. I figured I would share some of our projects from the wedding, some of out accomplishments from this summer (we repointed 2 back walls!), maybe some day to day musings, all of course at a leisurely pace.

married!

annnd we are back! thank you to all wonderful friends and family for an awesome, epic wedding celebration. our photographer posted some pics here, which were also featured here.

after 8 months of incredible amount of work (and at times stress) i am looking forward to return to normal life here at VIB :)

sourcing for the kitchen

ok, so our walls and floors aren’t that great, but do we really need to redo the kitchen? especially if to do it right we need to do a gut. after all, right when we moved in, we made our kitchen work with some paint, fabric and craigslist purchases. it may not be the most comfortable or pretty, but really it works. for now.

and yet, the odds actually aren’t looking all too good. first there was the fridge. Last summer we found out that it could not compete with DC summer heat. So, instead of a new fridge, we got ac - you know to keep it cool until we know what kind of fridge to get for a new kitchen. This summer, I looked under one of our cabinets, and here’s what I saw:

i am no expert, but i say this cabinet got about a year, maybe two, tops. and of course we can replace this one cabinet. but, i am not sure how much longer anything in our kitchen will last.

so what’s going into our new kitchen:

ikea cabinets: when it comes to house projects or any other projects (ahem, wedding) I usually do tons and tons of research, to find the best and least expensive options. This is how Ikea really entered the picture here. Praise for Ikea just kept coming up again, and again, and again. Also, Consumer Reports rates Ikea cabinets as better than off the shelf lines offered by Home Depot or Lowes.

Ikea satisfies major points - quality, price, and looks. All these are Ikea:

images: ikea hack, atticmag, carrol reed design, living etc

And Ikea kitchens have an important bonus point - its customizable.

We will be doing some, and potentially all of this:

• custom door panels for cabinets and pantry:

An Ikea pantry customized with new panels and housing a fridge on the left side. source: willy marshall

ikea cabinets with custom doors from scherrs (you can read more about that here) source: AT

• spray painting cabinets a custom color (most likely white or gray):  

source: sarah richardson painted ikea kitchens found via decor happy

I am not a big fan of Ikea’s white cabinet selection and also I don’t really like the feel of whatever clear coat they put over paint. i see more of a glossy lacquer paint. see more here.

• hardware: this one is by far the easiest and least expensive option. one source that I recently found ansaldi & sons - i particularly like the bin pulls that have the feel of library catalog.

See more on various ways to make ikea kitchen bespoke here.

appliances: In terms of searching for appliances, I have to admit, I give in to looks, specifications (extra tall fridge vs standard height - since we are big on vertical space), and price over a quality rating. AJ Madison website is very helpful - the search function is amazing for plugging in specifications for sizes, prices, brands, etc.

Though I do find that once i have picked out several choices by the above method, the consumer review magazine and googling specific models helps.

Some of the appliances will come from Ikea, which contracts Whirlpool for the job. The panel dishwasher, for example, makes sense.  Btw, these typically also score pretty high on consumer reviews.

R&R Closing Shop

Probably old news to most people, but Ruff and Ready is closing up shop on 14th Street. This one is by far my favorite old stuff junk unique finds store in the district.

photo: Washington Times

They have to be out by 31 August, though I am not sure if that means that 28 August, Sunday will be the last day. Typically the store is only open on weekends 11 am to 6 pm.

Lucky for everyone, the owner is looking to move to a new location and not go out of business (contrary to what the sign above the store might say). We actually saw the owner in Bloomingdale (!!). Not hugely optimistic that our neighborhood will be chosen — not enough foot traffic probably. but hey, who knows. i am just happy I will be able to continue to shop at RR.

ps - i got a beautiful crystal decanter this weekend for $10 at RR and what’s even cooler i got to shop at 9 am, because the owner thought that i had been there enough times to browse while the store is not officially open.

to gut or not to gut

that’s a trick question, because the answer is yes. We are planning to do a complete gut of the kitchen - because its necessary (and maybe because we want to, a little bit too).

walls: Currently, the drywall on the right hand side of the kitchen (where all of the appliances are) is actually about 7 inches from the actual brick wall - half a foot! in an urban house! so obviously that’s coming down to make room for valuable floorspace.

(a scientific method of inserting a skewer into drywall - in several places - was used to determine this fact)

The drywall covering exterior wall was just poorly put up and also needs to be redone, while the window will be raised in order to make way for the sink and more counter space. And the left hand side wall - right now we are thinking of taking down drywall for exposed brick look. Maybe white washed like this?

image from Atticmag

half-bath: We also plan to demolition a wall and rearrange a half-bath next to the kitchen, in order to open up the kitchen to the rest of the first floor (see here for more detailed overview). More light in the living room, better flow for hosting friends and family — which is what this is all about anyway.

the new kitchen opening that will match pocket door size in living & dining room

floors and ceiling: I can already guarantee that no matter what we put in our kitchen, my favorite part will be the heated ceramic floors (swapping the giant ugly tiles with huge grout lines for a ceramic black and white mosaic floors). i have wanted these since i was probably 8 or 9 years old, and my best friend got them in her newly renovated apartment in Russia. They are energy efficient too (that helps to justify it, right?)

As for the ceiling, we scored vintage ceiling tile from the Brass Knob Warehouse when it was still around and plan on installing that in the kitchen.

So with major changes like this, we thought (correctly, in hindsight) that we should get professional opinion on what is feasible or not. Now, a licensed general contractor should provide sound enough assessment. But, I want to know all my options and best approach - not just what the guy who will be doing the work says is feasible or how he thinks its best way to do it. Naturally, an architect, who has no stake in actually completing the work should give us a less biased opinion.

We are very lucky to have friends who happen to be architects, who generously agreed to help us think through possibilities. Among other neat facts, we learned about how placement of joists should indicate whether the wall is load bearing before thinking about demo (yay, its not!) and also came up with a few rearranging solutions that we did not think about on our own. Also having a professional verify your measurements helps when you actually get to the store to talk cabinets (more on that in the next post). You can see the plans that we came up with here. The short of it is, if you have the option to talk to an architect not associated with the actual work, I would highly recommend.

Next up, the sourcing of our future kitchen.

Register this!

Its getting down to six or seven weeks before Sergey and I are done with wedding time suck have a lovely ceremony and celebration with our families and friends. (The house hasn’t been totally neglected this summer - we are tackling a big ‘to do’ project, though its only thanks to Nikita, Sergey’s brother who is staying with us, and hired help - more on that later.) 

VIB is getting a pretty sweet deal out of all this anyway. In lieu of traditional registry, we have decided to do a dream kitchen registry. Not the stuff that we would put in the kitchen, but rather an actual kitchen. Besides the fact that we have lived together for a bit and have our basics covered, the more pertinent thing is that as lovely as our house might be, it is in a need of a total revamp. We currently have three Ikea bookshelves, one of which is serving its duty as a make do pantry. And as embarrassing as it is, we still have a box or two that we haven’t unpacked since we moved.  Which means we have zero storage space for more stuff (as much as I love it and all).

We have been thinking about the layout and what we want for a bit, and actually recently sat down with our architect friends - who are in the later stages of their own fabulous renovation in Shaw - to figure out what’s feasible and what’s not.

We are starting out with this:

Here’s what we came up with with our Ikea graph paper, cut outs (and coffee) - there is more description of the plans here:

And the lovely plans that Colleen put together:

Layout A: similar to what we originally had in mind and the option we are leaning towards. On the left side we would have a fridge, followed by a high bench with seating and an island, and a pantry.

Layout B: envisions swapping door and window, which would give us a better flow of the room. The stove/sink combo would also switch sides with the fridge and island/bench. This one is lovely, but probably quite a bit more, cost wise.

Layout C: Keeps our appliances placement pretty much as is, which is the least likely option for us, due to the fact that there is very little counter space.

And I have put together an inspiration board of how we want our future kitchen to look and feel:

Images from (decor pad, garden web, urbangraceinteriors, elle decor, ingrid abramovitch, TOH, Design sponge, decorpad, AT).