The Interior DIYer

Baby

Lately

Trigger warning: this blog post is about a very recent miscarriage.

Today we would have been 13 weeks pregnant. At 11 weeks and 5 days we miscarried unexpectedly. Over the past few days I’ve focused on the idea that my body knew something wasn’t right with the pregnancy and did what was best.

The past few months have been rough to begin with; morning sickness, vomiting and blase hormones meant I didn’t want to do anything. I was on the couch for weeks before this self isolation began.

The horrible truth is I feel better now. I have energy. I want to do things. I want to play with Cora. I want to cook and I want to eat things other than instant noodles. I’m trying to be kind to myself [easier said than done] by not feeling guilty about wanting to work on projects again.

I don’t think anyone will disagree when I say 2020 has fucking sucked so far. Here’s to the rest of the year looking a whole hell of a lot better 🖤

Dining room

Slow design – curtain rods

If your first reaction to reading the headline of this post was, “wow, it must be a slow news day if you’re writing about curtain rods”, then you wouldn’t be far off.

There are so many little projects I want to start on our house, but I never know where to start. I am not afraid to admit I don’t have a clear design plan yet for our home, and for some reason I feel guilty. Maybe from seeing bloggers move into a home and within a month, their whole house is redesigned. No thank you, that’s not me, and I’m learning it’s okay to be doing design slowly. One of those slow design decisions recently was looking for a beautiful set of curtain rods for our dining room.

By this point you will probably not be surprised to hear that I first looked for a long time for some curtain rods secondhand online. I searched and searched, but I gave up because the secondhand curtain rods I did find online were …

  • Cheap, low quality or made of plastic
  • Wildly overpriced [some people need their heads checked]
  • Didn’t fit our window dimensions
  • Couldn’t find more than one of the same style
  • Straight up fugly

I tried my best, I did. But I gave up and started looking online for some alternatives. If I was going to buy new curtain rods, I wanted them to be sleek and really lovely. I found the brass finish Umbra Cappa [which sounds like a fraternity from Monsters University] curtain rods from Home Depot at $30. I took a chance and ordered two rods; one for each window in our dining room.

We collected them from our local Home Depot and I immediately hung one set up by our basement door. I hung our IKEA curtains [I don’t think they sell them anymore so I won’t try and link to them] and I think they look so perfect. It’s a really subtle addition having brass curtain rods in our dining room, but a detail I completely love.

I will conclude this post with a quote from Robert:

“You’re going to hang curtains? But we already have blinds on the windows … Isn’t that enough?”

Bless.

Environmental Resolution

Secondhand tufted office chair – before

As soon as I started working from home in October I was on the lookout for a proper office chair to use. I started off using one of our secondhand IKEA Tobias dining chairs [as seen here], which yes, I can physically sit in, but thanks to hip issues after having Cora, sitting in a hard chair all day wasn’t doing me any good. So, I took to Kijiji to see what I could find.

This was a search where my patience definitely paid off. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted so I kept an open mind, but at the very least I knew I wanted something padded [hello, hip separation], sturdy and if I’m honest, something that kind of looked amazing.

I was completely open to the idea of a typical ergonomic office chair, but of that type of chair I found, they were either in my budget, worn down and needed repair, or they were amazing ergonomic chairs but were way outside of what I’d be willing to pay for a chair. So I kept looking. Until I found this chair! It of course immediately got my attention aesthetically.

I arranged to view [and sit in] the chair last weekend and it was perfect and exactly what I’ve been looking for; comfortable and unusual. Much like myself I guess you could say.

I know I may not get a great response to this, but I am planning on updating it. Hold on, let me explain! The wood has a very orangey stain and has sloppy faux-aging technique added to it using a darker paint [you can see this in the first photo along the groove on the arm]. The shape is really beautiful and I’ve already tried sanding the finish off, which has me really excited.

Please, trust me. It’s going to look beautiful.