Curb Appeal: The Block

We totally made the cut. We are going to be on Season 2 of Curb Appeal: The Block! It's the Atlanta version of HGTV's Curb Appeal. And while I know that lots of vintage-minded people are dubious about the makeovers that HGTV does, we think this is going to be wonderful. The designer who does the Atlanta episodes is named John Gidding and he is really awesome. Also, we get $20,000 (aaah!) worth of work done to the outside of our house! And for the record, we think that doesn't include most of the labor on the project, which is mostly covered by HGTV staff. We mentioned in our audition tape that we love Mid-Century Modern design, so even though our brick will get painted, which we have reservations about, we are confident that the overall design will be really modern and awesome. I'm not sure yet how soon this is happening, since I just got the call this afternoon that we were picked, but I'll keep everyone posted. We are so incredibly excited, and feel like we won the lottery. We would never in a million years have been able to pay that much money to fix up the outside of our house. We would have had wonkey stoop, the cracked driveway, and the dried blood color siding for years and years to come... Yay!

I won the chairs!

Hmmm, now I'm getting four scuffed chairs. But I've been reading up on some websites (The Brick House, and Chairfag.com, which I realize is kind of an offensive title, but a great chair blog nonetheless) about how to fix them up. I'm so excited I can't stand it! They were definitely more than I wanted to spend, but they are exactly what we wanted, and I saw a similar set (same bases, almost the same color) but that were all shiny and fixed up, sell for literally double what mine cost on eBay. I'm pretty sure the only people bidding on mine were pretty die-hard furniture people who saw their true potential... But thanks to eSnipe and their bid-in-the-last-six-seconds magic, I won them! I feel like kind of a jerk bidding like that, since it keeps the price pretty low, but whatever. The chair still went from 3 to 17 bids in the last hour or so of bidding. Whew!

That alienating thing where I don't post for a long time and then post WAY too much

So, Justin had the day off work today, and called a plumber I found on Kudzu. His company is called The Plumbing Detectives, which I find quirky and charming. He had lots of lovely reviews on Kudzu and is very very local, so it seemed like a good way to go. Justin called him this morning and he showed up at 12:45pm (after originally saying he could come at 2:00pm; that's right, an EARLY contractor...). He was able to fix our funky smelling kitchen problem for $80, which apparently consisted of some kind of rag or steel wool being tangled up in the disposal. This would have happened before we moved in, and explains why it smelled so funky in there... So now, our dishwasher and disposal work, although the plumber says they are "temperamental," which I'm guessing translates to "cheap." We plan to use the disposal next to never and the dishwasher seldom. At some point, we want to re-do the kitchen, so we'll hopefully be able to replace those appliances anyways. I'm already dreaming about finding some mid-century metal cabinets somewhere... Maybe some white Youngstown cabinets??? Lovely.

In other news, we've picked up a few odds and ends since my last post. We haven't done any substantial work on anything, since we've been busy doing things like dealing with our terrible two year old and her tantrums, and I've been trying to finish up my graduate school application (barf). I'm posting some photos below of the new-ish additions.
The newest items are Roxanne's Heywood Wakefield school chairs. We bought them as a pair for $30 at a local antique shop, which I think is a great deal. They are a super cute dark orange color and they weight a million pounds and are virtually indestructible. I looked around a little online to see about getting another pair to make an even set of four, but the only ones I could find were $135 a piece. Stupid. I realize this first photo is oppressively dark, but the flash just makes everything look awful, as you can see by the second photo. In any case, we love these chairs. Now we just need to find the perfect dining room chairs. I e-sniped some cheap Eames shell chairs on ebay, but the auction ends in the middle of the night tonight, and I'm pretty sure the price will go insane before then, so I'm not hopeful. But it would be nice... Those chairs are just WAY TOO EXPENSIVE considering most dealers find them in dumpsters or in random closets of institutional buildings...
Below is the print I found at Value Village in Roswell for $6. I really love it, although I have no idea what or who the print is of/by. Justin thinks the frame looks too 70's, but it doesn't bother me. I was just excited to find something that was the right size for that spot that wasn't a million dollars... And I genuinely do love this print. I'm not sure why though. It just speaks to me...
To fill another awkward spot on the wall, I painted some thrift store frames red, filled them with shiny red wrapping paper and some super fun images from 1960's Coca-Cola "magazines" my mom handed down to me. They are basically advertisements, but veiled as guides on entertaining, with each "issue" featuring a special flower arranging section. My favorite is the one with the graceful lady who used a plant stand as a food display. As always, you can click the image to make it larger. Our camera is so bad...

My mom handed me down this super cute bear bank. He's now part of the kitchen display that is still looking weird. But he's so cute.
Our friends Jesse and Jacquelyn gave us this fabulous IKEA kitchen cart for a super generous and thoughtful house-warming gift. It is insanely practical, and I think it looks perfect under this wall cabinet. I have pipe dreams of painting the bottom part of it, but that will probably happen in like five years...
And here's where my infamous photo ended up. The hallway. It looks nice there though. I won't grumble about it too much. And you can see it from the kitchen, where the photo was taken from...
In context, here's the view looking down the hall from Roxanne's door into the living room. Sorry for the dog booty. She's always trying to sneak it into photos. Oh Katie.
And last but not least, here's a photo of the newest member of our family, Boo Boo. She was a barn cat living with my parents, but now she's ours and we are going to spoil her rotten. She's perfect. Please note the extraordinary restraint I displayed in not saying "purr-fect." Proud? I thought so.

It almost looks fancy...

We've had some snow since last Thursday. It's not enough to really make much of a difference, but it's pretty. And it almost makes the house look pretty. Aside from the weird landscaping...

We are on the hunt for dining room chairs, but with a teensy budget, we haven't had any luck. We found some we liked at West Elm, but after going there today and trying them out, it was obvious that they were in our price range because they were awful. Note to retail furniture stores, please make sure that your floor models aren't wonky. It doesn't speak well of the merchandise... But I guess we should just be thankful that it was so obvious that they were cheaply made. I guess we'll just keep hunting for the Eames shell chairs that we would really like for the table. They are just so expensive! I keep hoping to find some kind of fluke great deal on them. I'd also like to find a side table for the space between our sofa and wall. We looked some today while looking for chairs, but we don't want to spend any money on a table until we find the chairs... Of course, if I found one at the thrift store, I'd be set. I found some serious jewels last week at the Goodwill, but nothing that I was looking for. They had an AMAZING mid-century stereo cabinet with the record player still in tact, but it was pretty scratched up, and I'm fairly sure the wiring would need some work. Too much of a project for me, but it was only $20. They also had a lovely 1940's deco dresser in a really dark wood with cove drawer pulls. If I had a car that I could jam these things into, I probably would have bought it. But it was still $40... At Kudzu Antiques today, I saw a vintage cookie jar displayed in a booth that I saw at Goodwill last week, and it furthered my aspirations to someday open a booth myself. In the mean time, we are holding steady and not doing much very exciting. Oh, but look at this ADORABLE 1950's Marx dollhouse we gave Roxanne for her birthday. My mom found it in an antique shop in Roswell. I just love it. We aren't really letting her play with it yet because it's made out of tin and the interior is lithographed on, and would probably scratch easily. But she has PLENTY of other toys... (you'll probably need to click the image below to actually see the dollhouse, but I assure you, it's worth it)