Modern Fabrics

A great online source for discounted fabric is Modern Fabrics. A friend gave me these danish modern chairs and I had new cushions made for them. Modern Fabrics "rescues" leftover designer fabric and resells it at a steep discount. As you don't need a lot of yardage to make cushions, this was the perfect place for me to find upholstery fabric. The website lists how many yards they have and offers free swatches. And best of all, they have a variety of modern designs that are usually only available to the trade.

Ideas - Pendant Lights

These pendant lights cost about $7 each from Ikea. They actually came with a plug on the end of the wire, and were meant to be plugged-in and hung from a hook. I bought white ceiling escutcheons from Home Depot, and our electrician wired the lights directly to the electrical box.

Ikea always has a large variety of inexpensive light fixtures, and a lot of times they can be modified or combined to create something unique. Check out Ikea Hackers for more inspiration.

This ceiling fixture also came from Ikea. It's almost identical to a much more expensive fixture I wanted to buy.

Ideas - Kitchen Bar

I had the different parts of this bar fabricated, and we installed it ourselves. I designed the brackets and had them made by a local metal fabricator. We painted them silver to match the bar stools. The top is fireslate. We screwed the brackets to the back panel of the cabinets, and then glued the top down with construction adhesive.

When designing a bar you just have to remember that bar stools come in two seat heights - for counters and bars. Kitchen counters are usually 36" high and bars are around 42" high.

These bar stools are from Design Within Reach.

Ideas - More Display Shelves

We only have a few overhead cabinets in our kitchen, mainly because I added three windows where most people would probably put more cabinets. I wanted to bring the outside into the house as much as possible, and the view of the woods behind our house is really nice. To create more storage space, I had a glass company make curved shelves from 3/8" glass - the kind you would use for the top of a coffee table. I mounted these just above eye-level in front of the windows on brackets I bought at Ikea. It's a handy storage area for stuff that's nice to look at.

Ideas - Display Shelves

These display shelves (holding my 8-year-old daughter, Ella's, fantastic artwork) are made from steel angles. Before the drywall was installed, we notched a groove into the studs to receive the vertical leg of the steel angle. Then, the drywall went up around the angles, leaving the horizontal leg exposed to create a small ledge. I coated the exposed steel with a clear finish so it wouldn't rust.

I thumbtack the artwork to black foam core, which let's us easily change things around when she brings home new stuff










We use this room as a Den/TV Room, but it was our bedroom until we took over the second floor apartment.

Before Gallery - First Renovation - 1st Floor

Below is a view of the Dining Room & Kitchen from the Living Room. The back wall of the house - with the sliding doors and kitchen windows - will move 13 feet to enlarge the kitchen and create a new Family Room. We plan to reuse the sliding door and kitchen windows, as we installed these during the first renovation.

A view through the Kitchen to the side entrance from the Dining Room.

We did a lot of the work ourselves on the first renovation. My husband, Tim, and our friend, Jeff, did all of the rough framing. We sub-contracted the plumbing, electrical, and drywall.  I put together the Ikea kitchen cabinets, and we installed them and the Fireslate counter tops ourselves. I designed the brackets for the bar top and had a local metal shop fabricate them. We did some of the finish carpentry ourselves, and hired others to do the rest. We did all of the painting, and it felt like we painted every weekend for months!

Dining Room

Looking back at the Living Room from the Kitchen.

The arched doorway to the Foyer had been covered up when we bought the house. We restored the opening, and the archway worked perfectly with the rest of the design.

Living Room