Apr 202016
 
 April 20, 2016  Living Room 8 Responses »
Revisiting the Living Room

This past weekend I took a break from working on the stairwell to put the finishing touches on the built-in hutch in the living room. I thought the built-in was finished months ago, but a few weeks after it was installed, resin from the pine casing and drawer fronts began to leach into the white continue reading

Jun 182015
 
 June 18, 2015  Living Room 17 Responses »
Installing the Living Room Built-in

When I decided to install a built-in hutch in the living room, I only had a few goals for the project – first and foremost, I wanted a spot to hang the tv without having to deal with a bunch of cables running down the wall; I figured some extra storage space and a few continue reading

May 062015
 
 May 6, 2015  Living Room 7 Responses »
Solving the TV Dilemma

A few months ago, we got a new tv. After years of living in tiny apartments and watching tv primarily on our computers, we were ready to watch tv and movies on the big screen – well, a bigger screen anyway. And since we now had plenty of space in the living room, we chose a continue reading

Jan 072015
 
 January 7, 2015  Dining Room, Living Room 16 Responses »
New Windows!

Up until a week ago the windows in my dining room weren’t really functional. They were old aluminum windows that had exceeded their intended lifespan. Although they were double-paned, the seal between the panes had broken, leaving the windows cloudy and effectively uninsulated. Aside from being drafty and hard to see through, the windows were continue reading

Nov 212014
 
 November 21, 2014  Living Room 9 Responses »
Refurbishing the Chandelier

I had just finished putting the final coat of spray paint on my new, antique chandelier frame when I felt the first raindrop. I looked down at the disassembled chandelier parts, still glistening with wet paint, spread out on sheets of newspaper under the magnolia tree in front of my building. I had spent the continue reading

Oct 132014
 
 October 13, 2014  Living Room 2 Responses »
A Chandelier for the Living Room

About halfway through the kitchen renovation, my electrician added an outlet and an overhead light to the pantry closet. I had gutted the pantry down to the studs and lath, and as he worked, the electrician noticed that there was a small gap along the top of the pantry’s back wall. Through the gap, he continue reading

Sep 052014
 
 September 5, 2014  Living Room 6 Responses »
Pressed Flowers

A few years ago, in her final semester of college, Mara took an intro studio art course. As part of the course she visited the Nature Lab at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design. The RISD Nature Lab is chock full of the kind of stuff you’d expect to find in a natural history continue reading

Aug 012014
 
 August 1, 2014  Living Room 7 Responses »
Living Room Update

I started working on my building’s front door fully intending to finish painting the door and the surrounding trim over the course of a few weekends. But now, a month later, the door remains completely unpainted. There are a number of good and not-so-good reasons for the snail-like pace of this project. Earlier this month, some continue reading

Apr 262014
 
Reclaimed Closets

There are seven closets squeezed into my condo’s 960 square feet. None of these seven closets are particularly big – the biggest of them, the closet that I converted to a pantry during the kitchen renovation, just barely qualifies as a walk-in. But still, it’s a lot of closet space for a relatively small condo. continue reading

Apr 112014
 
 April 11, 2014  Living Room 7 Responses »
Introducing the Living Room

My apartment now stretches across the entire second floor of my building, but when I first moved in almost two years ago, the front room was sealed off. I was renting at the time, and my landlady was using the room for storage. The only access to the room was through a locked door in the continue reading