About a year and a half ago (during the heavy renovation) I saw a great blog post on planter boxes made from old file cabinets.  We tried to do the planter boxes then but had bigger projects at that time and our lone file cabinet ended up a rusted mess before we got a chance to transform it.

Our second attempt was much more successful.  We found good solid file cabinets at Community Forklift, removed & recycled the drawers and glides and then brought just the cabinet base home.

We had some trouble deciding what color to paint the file cabinet planters – we started of with grey but then jth felt that was a little too “battleship” – so we switched to the more vibrant green for the second planter.  Jth made a raised pressure treated plywood box inside of the cabinets, then we lined them with filter fabric and they were ready for the bamboo…all of those steps.. while seemingly simple were actually quite complicated and had to be done for two boxes (we have a third that is still in production).

The spray painting of the planter boxes too multiple passes in the yard of Rustoleum Primers and then Rustoleum paint.  I was less successful with the spray paint, often getting too many drips that then had to be sanded out).. but our hope is that once small growy plants start growing down the front of the cabinets those small imperfections will barely be noticeable.

The final and most dramatic alteration to the file cabinets came today with the addition of the bamboo.  Our wonderful real estate agent, Sheryl, let us dig up some of her yard bamboo that she was ready to part with.  Jth spent most of the day chopping out the dense bamboo and using an axe to break up the clumps into manageable sections for the divided planter boxes.

The bamboo is about 5′ high and the planter boxes are about 2′-6″ high so we get a tall shield of bamboo when you look out our living and dining room windows.

Another added benefit is the nice way that the bamboo frames the walkway to the front door and back to the carriage house.   We still have one more box to do (it will be painted green and we may eventually paint the battleship to match the other two)…

I can’t say that we aren’t going to do any more after we finish up (they have a pretty dramatic effect on the walkway and the view from inside the house)… but we’ll at least wait to make sure that the bamboo transports well & does okay in the shade first!

For just a few week, light through the west facing carriage house windows will shine all of the way down our 70′ long front to back dimension – here are photos taken at both ends – from both the warm side and the cool side…. and of course I had to add in a before picture for some shock value before the reveal …

before…

In one of our latest posts we wrote about the recent improvements to the kitchen – new shelves in particular – we mentioned other new additions…  So here I am finally unleashing some shots of the new cooktop…

Sadly, since December of 2010 we have had lived with one plug in electric burner – a plug in – with which to make stovetop items.  We have an oven so we were not totally living in the dark ages  - but the single burner took forever to turn on and seriously challenged the goal of having all items come out warm to the table at the same time (typically user error in my case but nice to have some appliances to blame that on)!

The time finally came to get a cooktop when we were in Bed Bath and Beyond and JTH saw a double burner electric plug in that was the same brand as our single burner…” what if we got this double one and put it next to our single burner and then we would have a three burner – almost a complete cooktop”….. that was a low point.

Being architects we have connections in high places and learned of a few cooktops being replaced from the Hadco Dulles Showroom and arrived at just the right time to check out the options… we didn’t have to look far because we feel in love with the Viking 6 burner gas WHITE cooktop!  Grey grates, white glossyness… we were in love!  With white knobs – it contrasts great with our grey concrete cooktop.  Jth was hoping for something a little smaller, streamlined, slick… but neither of us wanted an electric cooktop so I was able to convince him with the btu output and closed burners (messy cookers cannot drop anything through!).

I had originally wanted to do a downdraft behind the cooktop but JTH won that battle and I easily came around once I saw the clean lines of the Zephyr Duo Hood that we ended up with.  Finishing touches are a tile backsplash on the whole wall behind – we got the large format tiles from Porcelainosa – they are hard to see in any of these photos because it just looks like a glossy white wall.. they are actually white with small grey stripes that are highly reflective and in the end are really subtle… we painted the top header of the window but I’m not happy with it yet.. may need to add some trim on the sides to complete out the dark color boxed around the window but for now.. like everything else.. we are living with it…. and of course everything goes well with a colorful teapot!

Probably over a year ago now I went to our local community building supply resource – community forklift  - I was probably looking for doors, or a cooktop or shelves… or possibly just perusing when I came across this pile of metal scraps – in 4 x 4 sheets water jet cut steel plate…. some as thick as 1/32 of an inch.  I inquired about their cost and found them to be a mere $6.00 each.  Knowing that we had no art large enough to fill the walls of our then empty house I called Jth – texted him a photo and with his okay… purchased away.  The metal scraps quickly found great places in the house to lean against the wall… scraping the paint/ being moved constantly/ but were a great conversation piece and visually over the past year we almost forgot that they were so unusual to have propped up against our wall… with the exception of when someone would inquire….”um… what are those big metal things?”

With contractors in the house, and at risk of making the walls where they leaned in the living room feel empty, we chose heights & directions for mounting and up they went into the stair hall wall today.  The stair hall windows get great sun through them and that sun washes agains the wall – so we held off the metal panels 2″ from the wall – allowing them to really work the shadows from the incoming sunlight… These photos below are taken at night with light coming only from above.. we will have to add more to the post once we get some sunlight shadows

Heading up the stairs

I love some of the details in these panels – like the broken small pieces, or the footprints from some point when the panels were laying outside and the small amount of rust that the panels gained by sitting outside during the floor finishing

View from the dining room

We have been pretty patient with our kitchen I would say.  No cooktop (besides a glorified camping plug in one burner), no hood, no wall cabinets or shelves… maybe the wait makes all of our recent transformation sweeter but we sure are loving the new functionality of our kitchen… it’s about time!

Last week we wrapped up a great many projects in the kitchen (and by WE I mean the contractors who were recommended by a friend of ours at thirtythreewindows and who have been great to work with).  Wall shelves were the first project to start to come into fruition.

This is what our existing above counter storage situation looked like (yes, I am including all upper shelves, all wall cabinets, anything to hold dishes…) this is it.  This is actually a shelf for above a drafting table that I had in college… I hoarded this away from graduate school years ago not knowing that I would some day be loving it as shelf in my kitchen… well that day is no longer.. thankfully!

After many hours cataloguing images on Pintrest of wood open shelves (some of my favorites here)

we did some sketches and committed to heights for the shelves (probably the hardest part of the whole thing).

We had some large planks that were part of the original house that we demo’d during construction… they were actually siding boards over 100+ years old…. here is a post from over a year ago where we started contemplating what to do with the boards.

We still are not certain of their wood species but with a little sanding and clear coating by our good friend Sal who did our countertops (his website here) and they are looking perfect!  We love the added warmth to the otherwise white and gray kitchen.

The supports for the wall shelves are 5/8″ steel rods welded to a back plate that is screwed into the studs.  There are small nubs on the top of the rods that fit into holes drilled into the bottom of the shelves.. no actual connection between the shelves and the rods the weight of the dishes does the rest.  This gives us the flexibilty to switch out the shelves if we want over time.

In this photoabove they still hadn’t finished the final coat on the drywall around the rods but we love how the rods dye right into the drywall surface so the shelves float cleanly across the wall.  We still will have no wall cabinets (a sacrifice on storage for sure) but we really value being able to display and easily access the dishes.  I am also obsessed with these small ikea canisters that were $7 each – they tie the wood and the white together and house things like dog treats and gold fishes very well!

We will do an appliance garage to the left of the shelves to get the coffee pot and toaster oven out of sight and put a side panel on the end of the fridge to give it a more built in look; the wall still has to be painted behind the shelves and the cover plates for the outlets installed (hence the blue tape). The best part of the whole set up for me is that we are re-using the excess butchers block (that we were using to cover the hole in the countertop before we got a cooktop) as a big prep surface and it can push all the way to the back of the countertop… since I sometimes regret not building in a butchers block surface for quick prep I feel like we now have the best of both worlds!

* Additional Photo after wall plates were put in!

Did I mention that our dog is so adorable.

Does anyone have any thoughts for what to do on the broken rattan on the back of this dumpster dive chair?

I started to feel bad for myself that I didn’t have any nice artwork for our walls… so I bought one piece .. and it got vetoed by a lot of people who’s opinions I value and even those whose I don’t….

Luckily I have a really smart husband who reminded me that we have some really nice work that we have done ourselves and that have great memories attached to them.. sketches from our travels together, wedding photos that we haven’t really displayed but paid a lot for, architecture models, etc…

I have become slightly addicted to Pintrest and so on my pintrest account I accumulated images of walls of frames… some of my favorites are frames all in the same color but of varrying sizes and profiles.  The upstairs hallway on the way to our bedroom seemed the perfect place to start.  I have been collecting frames for a few months.. in whites and silver metals.. I didn’t want somthing too stark on that wall because I love that hallway for it’s length and hate to break that up too much – so white frames kept the wall feeling more continuous…

I amassed a collection of Ikea frames (both white and aluminum with good mats), CB2 frames, target frameless with white mats (which I had from our old apartment and just added new photos/images), a small white glossy frame from Home Rule on 14th street and a glossy metal frame (birthday gift from mom) in white… we also added a few framed sketches in the kitchen.. my favorite is a sketch from jth from the hills above florence that he did without looking at the page… just an exercise but with a good result!

I keep this one at the window – I love that it is clear where there would normally be matting which allows it to float in front of the view…. (notice our small soap dispenser on sale from Crate and Barrel – the kitchen has definitely evolved with a green theme..)

So here is a not so good photo of the frames in the hall… there is a rough line at 62″ high that I worked above and below… some straddling that line – I tried to keep the aluminum frames away from the other aluminum frames and the frameless worked well at the tops and bottoms – there is even a model pined to the wall which lived in a box sadly before it’s new honored position on the wall

This is my favorite shot below… it was taken through the mirrored old door that we have leaning up against the wall still looking for a home… but I love the depth that we are getting through this view of a hallway.

Jth and I are often labeled as hoarders.  I think that people just underestimate the time that it takes to take something from looking like junk (or basement furniture) into something newer.  A few years ago we hauled two pieces of furniture home – the first one was from my boss’s basement… a waterlogged pine bookshelf… made with lots of love for sure but covered with cobwebs and a little mold… it was something that jth chided me for bringing into our apartment.  We cleaned it off and it became one of our best bookshelves.  Perfect 12 x 12 x 12 cubes which fit most books very well.

The bookshelf has since been oriented both vertically & horizontally, held clothes in our temporary construction space, tools in our early days in the house, and eventually has evolved back into a display/ bookshelf area.

Here it is moving out of our old apartment – and then into the drywall oasis of our new home…

As a tool shed…

And then as a bookshelf

I have been dying to paint the bookshelf but there were always more pressing tasks… then one afternoon while jth has gone out for a few hours (that’s always when the trouble begins.. he should stop leaving me alone)… I decided that I could probably paint that whole bookshelf in an hour or two.  Four hours later of sitting on the floor with my head in those 12 x 12 x 12 cubes I barely had one and a half coats done….

We eventually finished… scrap that.. i eventually finished (jth DOES NOT PAINT as a rule) – and so the bookshelf sat on the floor looking much better but still not done.

I guess I still kept thinking of this more as a credenza then a bookshelf… it sits in I guess what you could call our “entry hall” which is really the space between the stairs and the dining room table.. and is still in the same room and practically in spitting distance of every other area on the whole downstairs.. (two cheers for open floor plans).. so the “credenza” seemed to need more… whalah… legs… from ikea… cheap… and installed by yours truly…

The mirror is vintage that was one of the first pieces that I ever bought (when I was in 8th grade and still liked traditional furniture).. but it is a nice piece that right now I do not have a home for… and having a mirror there is nice for putting on makeup as you run out the door.  Notice the dog crate is gone.. Tucker is an out of the crate all day dog… hence the swipe of jth’s snack of gold fishfrom the counter today… but that means that I don’t have to look at the grate in the middle of the “entry hall” every day!

I think that this piece will keep changing.. someday it may have kids toys in it…maybe tools once again…. that back of the shelves may get painted or even turned vertical again… but it will almost always certainly stay with us… until of course I forget how long it took me to paint it and then I may be able to part with it someday.

(note the paint can on the top… that’s my next project in the little bedroom).

It is cold and so we got some heat.  A lot of heat actually.

Through a chance mis order and a spur of the moment splurg and a not so quick trip to the eastern shore we came across a brand new stainless steel vent free sparks fireplace… yes… it is awesome…. you can see the link here where jth is actually pictured along with one of my clients dogs (that was before we got tucker, next year he will be featured with our fireplace… I have the scene all set… snow outside.. tucker fresh from a walk slowly dozing off… blazing fire… new sofa…spiked hot chocolate… you can tell that this is more than just a fireplace…!).

While the fireplace itself is an expense (that maybe should have been further down the list… like after a cooktop or doors), what is more costly is the surround and built-in shelves that make the fireplace a real show stopper…. like this image here from my first project ever…

(photo by Julia Heine of McInturff Architects)

Unfortunately we had just finished staining and putting together this whole set of shelves – which were sitting right where the fireplace was stubbed up to go

Since the shelves are a ways out we figured that we should just hook up the fireplace, move the shelves to the side, and plan around it… at least we can enjoy it for now; and since the fireplace has a black front it goes just fine with the decor.  (with the exception of the hideous blue poang that I cannot wait to get rid of)

Eventually we will do some shelves with steel supports and probably wood horizontal shelves – along with a way to integrate or leave room for a projector surface or screen… but for now everyone is just enjoying the warmth!

We had a a pumpkin carving party.  It was messy, and sloppy, and i’m not just talking about the drinking.  This photo above was before we sliced into all of the pumpkins to make really awesome glowing lanters with mean faces (well one or two had smiling faces and one was a thumbs up).

All that work and only four trick or treaters!