Q: What’s black and grey and staring you right in the face when you walk up our stairs? A: The linen cabinets! Feast your eyes on THIS! (And ignore the frames—they belong to the prior homeowners as this pic was taken during the first inspection, before we took over.) Yep, this is what they called “the linen closet.” Except it’s not actually a closet. Clearly. I want to say to the real estate agents, “It’s…
Do you paint walls before or after you move into a place? Do you do the work yourselves or hire that work out? In our first house, we did all the painting ourselves before moving in. That took us a lot of time, but we did save money. (That was also 14 years years ago when we were a bit younger and zippier, sans children.) A (before) tour of our downstairs! When we lived in…
If you're just coming to us from our downstairs tour, you'll remember we're now standing in our entryway. Not many people get to come upstairs in our house, but today is your lucky day. (Well, keep in mind that none of our stuff is actually showing in these pics yet...) If you haven't had a chance yet, a (before) tour of our downstairs can be found HERE! Wanna come upstairs? That black banister is beckoning…
When I first wrote the word "downstairs" in this post, it reminded me of "Upstairs, Downstairs" and how that distinguished between the homeowners and the servants. We do not have servants living in this downstairs. This is just a regular old 1980s downstairs. I guess there IS what they deemed a 4th bedroom downstairs, so I guess technically we could have someone living there, but really...it's not the same. With that clarification over, let's begin.…
originally published 2014 Small kitchens need islands. Even if it has to be a kitchen island cart (as it did for us as renters)! You'll have seen in this tour of our favorite flat in New Zealand that the kitchen was on the small side. Check out our California kitchen! That photo shows the whole living space. All of it. The "dining area" is on the right wall next to the door to the garage,…
The (very inexpensive!) indoor and outdoor patio DIY seating projects we came up with in our last flat in New Zealand. You'd think because I'm go-go-go most of the time, I wouldn't get many chances to sit down. Thus, I'm not sure why I love creating cozy seating so much. Maybe it's because once I finally DO sit down, I want it to be AWESOME. I want my body to sigh with sweet ecstasy over…
This is where we 1) lived the longest and 2) did the most! We also had the most outdoor living space here of any of the prior places we'd lived in New Zealand. This granny flat is where we tripled our kitchen counter space, refurbished the most pieces of old furniture, and drank the most of my infamous Lemon Drop Sorbet each summer. First, the tour! It's a quick and easy one. THE FRONT How…
Making a gorgeous DIY pallet coffee table for next to nothing! In our first New Zealand flat, we didn't have a coffee table. We'd been trying to make do with as little as we could. But when we moved into our second flat in New Zealand, it didn't have any room for a dining table. We had to get creative. So we decided to make our own coffee table—and put wheels on it! That way…
Now, lest you think this article is going to give you painstakingly detailed step-by-step how to instructions on reupholstering chair cushions, or how to sew new cushion covers, let me be clear from the start: I am not a seamstress. Yes, I own a sewing machine. Yes, I sew things. But, as I often tell people when they sound impressed I sewed something myself: "I ONLY SEW IN STRAIGHT LINES." (I say that in the…
Organizing storage for small spaces in our new home! (originally published 2014) As this flat was BRAND NEW, to say that we were excited to move into it was an understatement. We'd learned that not many buildings in New Zealand were built to the right standards, so we had high hopes for this new build. It was "a granny flat"—an apartment attached to a larger home. The owners had just built this house and were…
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