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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - General Chat - Pimping the crib, redecorating...take your pick |
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Rydain Sir Kibble Blaze Phoenix Runs with the Dragon Within                    Since: 11-18-05 From: State College, PA Last post: 6470 days Last view: 6466 days |
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| Randy and I have lived in our house for almost four years, and I've finally gotten annoyed with the previous owners' idea of decor. Pink wall-to-wall carpet, stodgy pink drapes mounted all the way up to the ceiling and far beyond the wide windows (thereby bogging down our living/dining room in swathes of stuffy boredom), atrocious home-built shelves and an entertainment center installed over a cheapoid plywood backing on the fireplace wall. BLECH.
Josh, a friend who's skilled at destruction and carpentry, is helping us redo the aforementioned wall. This past weekend, he tore out about half of the shelves, snarking about the shoddy construction the entire time. We'll have the last of it removed this weekend, and then we'll put up a good plywood backing and vertically laid knotty pine panels. Then we'll install good shelves over that. I've picked out some new decorative curtain rods (dark brown burnished metal with ball finials) and sage green curtains with a subtle leaf print (picture here). I have a sample of the fabric, and it looks even better in person. The living room will ultimately be mostly sage green with other nature-inspired accents (like the fall leaf-colored quilt I'll get around to finishing one of these days). We'll replace our mismatched futons with couches from Comfy 1 - probably this style in some tightly woven synthetic green fabric. I like the timeless, basic style, solid construction, and ease of reupholstering. I really like the idea of buying sturdy couches once and keeping them for years and years. The most involved renovation will be replacing the carpets with wood flooring. I really don't like wall to wall carpet because it stains and gets irreversibly worn and traps dust that falls through the pad and never comes out until you remove it. (And Chester scratches it. Though we clip his nails, I am noticing an occasional fiber tuft here and there. Oh well.) Wood is classic and goes with everything, and it will last the life of the house with proper care. I do like lying down in front of the TV, but that's what area rugs are for. (And you can sweep underneath them and chuck them when they look old.) We have another friend who installs hardwood so well that a contractor offered him a job after seeing what he'd done in his parents' house, and he's said he would cut us a deal on the labor, so maybe this can happen sooner rather than later. 
It's strange...when I was little, I liked interior design, but when I got my own space, there was always something of higher priority than making it look good. This year, the various fugliness left by the previous owners just chafed my ass all at once, and now I can't wait to get rid of it all. |
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Skreename Giant Red Paratroopa  Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6471 days Last view: 6465 days |
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| PINK? Oh my god... I can see why you wanted to change it...
Wood floors can be nice, definitely. My house (the one I live at, meaning... my parents' house) has wood floors in the front room, covered by blue carpet (not wall-to-wall)... Works pretty well, even if it is rather sad hearing the dogs scampering across the bare portions, slipping the whole way... |
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Rydain Sir Kibble Blaze Phoenix Runs with the Dragon Within Since: 11-18-05 From: State College, PA Last post: 6470 days Last view: 6466 days |
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| Yeah. The living/dining room is a Pepto-Bismol explosion. I forgot to say that our house is a ranch house with one story, and except for the kitchen and bathroom, all of our living space has that damned pink floor. My office and the bedroom have white curtains (which are actually okay, so I'm going to see if I can rehang them on decorative rods) with really boring rectangular valances (read: the fabric that goes across the top of a window) in some country print. The print itself is actually not ugly, but the styling of the valances is. It'll be great to make them go the way of the dodo. I'm not looking forward to spackling all the holes in the wall from the existing hung way too high curtain rod brackets, but eh, what can you do?
The cats are used to sliding on concrete when rampaging around the basement, so I think they should be fine on wood.  |
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Iori Yagami Hardhat Beetle  Since: 11-18-05 From: Hell's keeper Last post: 6672 days Last view: 6672 days |
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| I would have not waited that long to renovate your house. *shudders* Too pink for wall-to-wall carpet for me. | |||
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Skreename Giant Red Paratroopa Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6471 days Last view: 6465 days |
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| Be a bit careful with the area rugs (if they're small enough) and the cats. I know a couple of mine like to sharpen their claws on the rugs just enough to scrunch them up, then lie down on them... Or to basically dash off and have the rugs scrunch up underfoot. It's amusing, if a bit irritating.
Spackling... no fun. White curtains are rather nice, though. |
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Tarale    2710 Affected by 'Princess Bitch-Face Syndrome' ++++!! Persona non grata Since: 11-17-05 From: Adelaide, Australia Last post: 6465 days Last view: 6465 days |
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| I rent, so there's little that I can do to the actual structure of my place. I can't install shelving to walls, I can't paint, etc.
That said, I'm in the middle of redecorating to some extent. Most of my furniture sucks. So, I've been saving up for new furniture. I've bought a bed, which cost me $1999, and is VERY comfortable. I'm very happy with it, but it being good only seems to serve to highlight how crap the other furniture / lack of furniture is in the room. My next major project I'm saving for is a couch. I'm also saving for shelving and such so that I can store a whole heap of my junk. |
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Snow Tomato Snap Dragon  Since: 12-31-05 From: NYC Last post: 6486 days Last view: 6471 days |
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| I live in a ranch to... and we have these tiny ass basement-like windows that can only have ugly poofy valence curtains on them. So in my room I opted to not have curtains... at all.. because the poofy valence thing makes me want to stab an old lady or something. I'm looking for other styles that fit my small windows but that's about it.. and I have wood flooring in basically my whole house.. and I need to get a carpet thing for my room.. I was gonna go with something green and pink, because my walls are a deep spunky green and my sheets and lamp and stuff are spunky hot pink.
So yeah that's my room. Woo. My family's not big on decorating though.. our house is like always messy and for some housework to be done like decorating and such.. it's like a once in a lifetime event. We do that stuff like once every 10 years. |
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Rydain Sir Kibble Blaze Phoenix Runs with the Dragon Within Since: 11-18-05 From: State College, PA Last post: 6470 days Last view: 6466 days |
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Originally posted by Iori YagamiHeh, I wish. The problem is that we have about 1000 square feet of pink carpet over the entire house, and replacing it with hardwood is no simple task. I'm talking about $10,000 worth of labor and materials, and we have to keep shoving furniture out of the way, find some way to keep the cats safe, etc. Even if our friend gives us a good deal on the labor, it's still expensive and time-consuming. At least all the crappy shelves are gone, and we're ready to put up wood. We discoverd some boneheaded construction mistakes along the way. The previous owners cut into support beams to make room for their crappoid entertainment center. We can reinforce them, and they're only holding up closet walls...but still, that was just an incredibly stupid thing to do. And the fireplace doors are completely half-assed. They don't fit. They're just shoved onto the opening with pink insulation around them. I only wish I were kidding. I tugged at the door the wrong way and wound up yanking the entire assemblage a few inches away from the brick. I don't think that complies with the fire code. They're boring '70s style doors anyway, so I have no qualms about replacing them, but it irritates me that someone would do such a shitty job at installing them to begin with. I should also mention that the fireplace takes up half the wall. The raised hearth takes up the entire wall, thereby making it a pain in the ass to put any furniture there. And it extends into the drywall, so I don't think it would be very easy to remove. AAARGGGGH. Again, what the hell were people smoking when they designed the fireplace? I'm thinking about calling a mason to see how much it would cost to have the superfluous half of the hearth broken out, but it will probably be easiest to just build some sort of platform so we have a level surface for our TV stand. Alternatively, if anyone has a free LCD TV, I'm all ears. 
Snow Tomato - I share your anti-valance sentiments. There are very few styles of valances that I like. All the ones in our house are either stodgy droopy or blah and square. For the record, the previous owners of the house were old, and I think the lady was the one who came up with the decor. Feel free to stab at will.  |
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Blades Micro-Goomba Used to be Admin; I still rock Since: 01-03-06 From: Pr�vost, Qu�bec, Canada Last post: 6516 days Last view: 6516 days |
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| You know the saying ....
a photo is like a thousand words. |
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Rydain Sir Kibble Blaze Phoenix Runs with the Dragon Within Since: 11-18-05 From: State College, PA Last post: 6470 days Last view: 6466 days |
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| HOLY CRAP I SUMMONED BLADES
I WON AN INTERNETS ... Seriously, you need to drop in more. Umkay?
I am taking pictures throughout this entire process. I'm also beginning to feel like Sisyphus and his rock. I thought that replacing the curtain hardware would be a matter of removing the old stuff, filling in the screw holes, touching up the paint, and putting up the new rods. Not quite. First off, it took me two hours, a lot of swearing, and help from Rando to get one set down. The previous homeowners painted over their old hardware, so there are bare spots on the wall, and they also used metal anchors for some of the screws. Those have to be dug out and they leave a hole that must be spackled and then painted. Trying to match paint on patches of wall is a very difficult endeavor. To top that all off, there are multiple shades of white paint on at least one wall of the dining room. Thus, I really think we're best off repainting the entire room. I was hoping that wouldn't be necessary. Buuuut...I've decided that I'd rather drywall the fireplace wall to turn it into a "normal" wall. From what I've read, the cost savings from doing drywall yourself is supposedly not worth the aggravation (especially because it gets dust everywhere, and contractors have all manner of spiffy equipment to prevent that from happening). I have a recommendation for an awesome contractor (who put an extension on a friend's parents' house), so I figure that they could do the drywall and the annoying wall patching, and it might be worthwhile to get them to paint the walls as well. I don't mind doing the new wall myself - I want to make it into an accent wall with an interesting variegated color - but the prep work required to paint a large room takes forever, and we have a bunch of baseboard heaters that need painted, too. We will have to leave the windows bare until the patching and painting are finished, but this is a good time of year for that because temperatures are moderate, so we don't have to worry about losing heat or cold through the windows. (There are four, and the largest is 130" wide.) We came up with a new furniture arrangement (playing Tetris with shapes representing furniture in a vector graphics editor = teh win). It includes two full-size couches, which I didn't think would fit, and it even has an open area for lounging in front of the TV and fireplace. (Before anyone asks, yes, we did leave enough room for walking around and stretching out legs.) I have fabric and wood samples for the couches arriving soonish. So hooray for that. |
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Blades Micro-Goomba Used to be Admin; I still rock Since: 01-03-06 From: Pr�vost, Qu�bec, Canada Last post: 6516 days Last view: 6516 days |
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| I do my own home renovations and if you're not on a tight schedule, it's always cheaper. (If you know how to do it right the first time)
Otherwise, it's easier to hire someone. |
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Simon Belmont Except I'm totally fucking hyped about Dracula X: Chronicles.  Since: 11-18-05 From: Pittsburgh Last post: 6465 days Last view: 6465 days |
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| ohshit, itsablades. =O !
rydain: that's way too much for me to read right now, but if you feel you need a kitten, my cat's still a whore. Good luck with all the knocking down walls and stuff, too. [edit] Also, drywall is piss easy and not nearly as messy as it sounds, but if you're sloppy with the mud it can be a pain to do some angles  .(edited by setz on 05-22-06 04:10 AM) |
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Skreename Giant Red Paratroopa Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6471 days Last view: 6465 days |
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| Extra credit for mentioning (and citing!) mythology.
Anyway... I've never messed with drywall (or much home improvement, actually, but I've seen people do other things). Two couches is rather impressive, at least to me... must be a pretty good-sized room. |
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Rydain Sir Kibble Blaze Phoenix Runs with the Dragon Within Since: 11-18-05 From: State College, PA Last post: 6470 days Last view: 6466 days |
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Originally posted by BladesWe have no idea how to deal with drywall, so it would take us forever and make a monstrous mess. (Even if we rented a contractor-grade dust-eating sander and a shop vac to hook it up to, I'm sure I'd manage to get white dust all over the house somehow...) Painting, on the other hand, is a feasible DIY project, especially because it's the sort of thing you can easily split up among a group of friends. From what I've been reading, as long as you prep the room properly (mask off all the trim, lay drop cloths everywhere, etc.), the actual painting goes by very quickly. And taking your friends out to dinner as payment is probably cheaper than hiring a contractor.
Skreename - It's a 14' x 17.5' living area (one end of an open living/dining room). The couches are 83" x 33.5", so they fit pretty easily. The room is going to be rather cozy when we're done with it, though. |
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