Category Archives: Front Room/ Dining Area
Bad cats
I gave our house a deep cleaning on Sunday. The floors were swept and mopped. I spot cleaned with my handy Spot Bot. The couch and chair slip covers were washed.
And that’s how I found this scratch post under our club chair.
Bad cats. I’ve know they have been doing this for awhile, but I didn’t know how extensive it was. I am so glad I have slip covers on this chair. I taped up the rip with a little duct tape and put on the slip cover.
Enter Sticky Paws. The package says “our transparent medical grade adhesive is odor free and is so easy to apply: simply pull off a strip from the brown backing sheet apply where you don’t want kitty to scratch, then peel off the white “crack-n-peel” to expose the surface that the cats can’t stand.”
So far it seems to be working (??). It peaked Pixel’s curiosity so she sniffed and licked it, but I saw no scratching.
The big question for me is how long the tape lasts. A day, a week? I think its going to take a couple weeks (at least) to correct this behavior. If the tape lasts only a day, this could get pricey.
I’ll check again tonight to see if they tried to scratch and how the tape holds up.
Making a little sunshine
The first weekend of June was rather uneventful on thee ol’ project list at Casa Concrete.
While we watched the rain fall onto our unfinished back porch and in our vacant pool, I got a few things done around the house.
I decided that when the sunny weather finally arrives, our front room will be ready to party. On the queue, some bright colored details and new flowers … maybe a summer scented candle or two. 
First up was making two new yellow pillows for the sofa. They took a little of the rainy weekend doldrums away from me.
I made them out of a pack of cloth napkins and two IKEA pillow inserts. I love the Moorish yellow pattern on these napkins I found at Target a while back. They are a nice compliment to my permanent turquoise accessories in the room.
There are many tutorials on the web for making pillows so I won’t go into one here, but I do have three sewing tips my mom taught me that (if I follow) keep me out of trouble.
#1) Always pre-wash your fabric to avoid the material shrinking afterwards.
This is a surprisingly hard thing (for me) to remember. I get too excited about starting the sewing project that I forgot to throw the fabric into the washer. And trust me, it’s much better to throw the uncut fabric into to the washer than cut pattern pieces. That doesn’t really work out too well.
#2) Once the fabric is dry, take the time to iron it.
Having straight edges is pretty important in sewing – so take the time to iron out your fabric. This just makes every cut that much straighter and every seam that much tighter.
#3) Don’t rush even a simple project.
Spend the time to put your project together correctly. Be present. This is a problem I have all the time with sewing. I have a tendency to try and speed through the project only to realize I just sewed the wrong sides together!
Adding the extra details like a little Velcro to make the pillowcase washable is also worth it. It takes a couple more minutes to execute, but it will come in handy after many evening BBQs.
*****
I think sewing can be very rewarding. I have a checkered past with it, but I really want to get over my hang ups.
The rained out weekend could have been a total bummer, but I think I got a little bit of happiness out of it after all!
Happy Monday All!
Our Front Living Room, February Edition
Ideally, I would have posted this yesterday, but I was having some technical difficulties with my SD card. So instead of calling this my Valentine’s Reveal, I am just calling it a good old February Update.
Our front living room now gets a ton of light from our new picture window so I closed the curtains to try and get a good shot.
For a seasonal spin, I created a very simple collage under the glass of my coffee table.
I cut some pink and turquoise paper hearts out of cover stock I had on hand. Then I laid gold curling ribbon down in a diamond pattern and placed the hearts before laying down the glass.
I love the look. It makes me smile when I arrive home from work every day.
Using some glass heirloom vases and punch cups, I arranged a few blooms from the backyard.
I am really enjoying the added punch of pinks, reds and purples to the room.
I may have to add something a little more permanent like some fuchsia throw pillows, perhaps?
The gnome and I will have to ponder this a bit.
Halloween 2010
Nate gets this look on his face when I start to talk about decorating for the holidays. Its not that he doesn’t like the decoration – he just hates the mess I make putting them up and taking them down. I don’t blame him – my creative process for these kind of projects is not very organized.
Last year I was so overjoyed with the possibilities and I went a little crazy.
… and unfortunately it turned out to look more like a rave party than Halloween.
This year, I decided to keep things simple.
Orange twinkle lights hung above our new picture window with a black and purple pom-pom garland my mother gave me. I set the lights on a timer so that when I got home from work, the lights were already on.
I was at Micheals about a week before Halloween and they already had a bunch of decorations on clearance. I picked up two Martha Stewart window decals. The skeleton one went up into the picture window. I absolutely love it. It looked so cool with the lights at night. I plan on using this next year.
I also put out my crazy cat face I got at Target last year, plus my fake pumpkins I picked up at Michaels. My parents gave me three Cinderella pumpkins from their garden than I plan on roasting, but until then I set them on my porch for decoration.
Inside, I just added little Halloween touches to the current decor.
I poured last year’s candy corn into a square vase and added a tall pillar candle. I also bought a simple and inexpensive berry branch from Michaels that I stuck into a blue vase I thrifted years ago.
Finally, I put out a Slatkin & Co. Leaves Candle. It has a nice aroma apple, cinnamon, mulled cider and berry. Plus it burns forever. I love it.
I am a major candle lover, but I am trying to move to away from cheap candles towards healthier options. The Slatkin ones are a compromise until I find quality soy candles that burn clean.
On Halloween night, we only had ONE trick-or-treater and he was about 17 years old, but I was still glad that my place was decorated. Driving up to the house every night, made me smile and really that’s what it is all about!
Door Install Part 1
Although the new windows were very exciting, Nate and I were both thrilled to finally get in our new working doors. Their installation made an instant visual upgrade to our house.
The most complicated install was our double slider. Its original configuration was not structurally sound so the new door was pre-built with the panes of glass above the actual door to give it as much support as possible.
Now all the windows and doors just need to be framed with trim and we are good to go!
Windows Part Three
Crazy how one change can make the house look so different.
It’s such a relief to see that our dream of opening up the front room not only looks great, but looks right.
The actual opening for the window was not easy. The installers had to cut each side of the concrete block before they could bust out the opening.
Then frame the unfinished concrete with wood and set in the window.
A lot of hard work, buy boy does it look good.
And now we finally have light in the front room.
It is so much more inviting. I love it.
Windows Install Part 2
I think I mentioned that today is the BEGINNING of our entire house window and door install. We have been waiting almost three months for these babies to get placed in our house. Needless to say, as my work day progressed I was more and more nervous to drive home and see what progress had been made.
As I pulled into the driveway, I immediately saw a difference.
All the windows minus the front window next to the door had been replaced.
Because of the cost associated with completely removing the frames from our concrete block construction, our windows are actually retrofitted. This means that the installers removed as much of the original window frame as the could from the opening and then installed the new window on top of the original frame. Basically all the windows are a little smaller to fit and the framing is a little larger.
You can see the extra “frame” on this window compared to the older one.
If we had the resource to remove all the frames, I would have done it. No question, but given our choices I don’t think the larger frame is too bad. Certainly something I can work with!
Our giant panes of glass along the interior patio were also replaced with two paned glass. This was one of the jobs that I did not want to do myself! It was an easy decision to leave the removing and disposal of the glass to the professionals.
The interior framing of all the windows will happen next week when the doors are installed.
Tomorrow the guys will finish the front picture window. This should be our most dramatic change. Stay tuned!!
