The Foyer Rug and Problems with Perspective

I have a history of ordering things online and expecting them to be much bigger than they actually are. One time I ordered a bunch of stuff for the kids for Christmas, thinking confidently that I had ordered them so much stuff; it was going to look like TEN Christmases when it got here. I wouldn't need to buy another thing! And then the box arrived, and I was like, "oh, they must be sending it in.....SEVEN boxes. This box is far too small for all of the amazing things I ordered." Only then I opened up the box and there were all the toys...miniature versions of what I was sure I had ordered.

Mind you, no one had been dishonest or tricked me in any way. I just don't pay attention when they tell you what sizes things are. This has been going on pretty much since ordering things off the internet was first invented, and I have NEVER learned to stop doing it.

I've made a helpful graphic to illustrate this problem I have, using Abe's toys:

Okay, so! I actually DID know exactly how big the rug I ordered for the foyer was. And I had measured the foyer, so I knew how big a space it was supposed to occupy, too. But somehow, getting these two numbers to meld together in my head did not work very well.

But let's back up.

A little while ago, I presented some of my finalists for the coveted position of New Foyer Rug and asked you guys to help me pick one. I'm not even sure which one won, because a lot of you mentioned your top two or three instead of just picking one, and then some of you said, "the purple one," and there were TWO purple ones. I think you probably meant the purple one that I didn't actually buy, though. Also the vote was fairly evenly split, it seemed like.

So that part wasn't really all that helpful, although I know everybody tried their best. What WAS super helpful, though, was how a few people pointed out, either directly or indirectly, that this rug was going to be right by my front door, for everyone who came in or out of the house to trample over. This was something that seriously had not even occurred to me in my "ooh! pretty rugs!" fervor. I eliminated the popular but mostly white Moroccan dhurrie right then and there. And then I went ahead and tossed out the wool choices, hoping that the cotton ones would stand up better to being tossed in the washing machine (I'm not sure if you're really supposed to toss your cotton rug in the washing machine, but I think I'm probably going to give it a try whether you are or not).

Maybe at this point I should mention which rug I bought?

I went with......


The Zig Cotton Dhurrie from Serena and Lily!

Once I decided on cotton, there weren't many choices left, but this one had originally been my and Dave's favorite anyway. I found a coupon code online, and it was already marked way down, so it also wound up being one of the cheapest (after shipping, I think we paid just under $70). And since the original price made it one of the MOST expensive choices, I felt like I was getting a FANCY rug. And you know I loves me some fancy.

So my rug got here, and I eagerly unwrapped it, and....it was....small.

To be precise, it was exactly what size it was supposed to be. Only that was smaller than I had pictured.

Well, here, take a look (child and beagle shown for size comparison purposes. And because they wouldn't get out of the way):

That's not a rug! That's an overgrown door mat!

The good news is, it turns out the rug is exactly the right size for the space between the bench and the stairs. Which is great, because maybe you'll be sitting on that bench with your feet on the floor? And they would be cold? Only they're NOT because of the rug! Yay!

But that still leaves the problem of my rugless other half of the foyer.

But the good news THERE is that layering rugs is totally trendy right now. I know because I read it on Apartment Therapy.

So that's what I'm thinking now. ANOTHER rug! This time bigger. Like all the way to 5 by 7 (that one is only 3 by 5). Overlapping with rug #1.

Who wants to help me out with rug shopping again? Rug layering good or bad? What kind of pattern/color/etc. would you go with there?

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The World is Too Full of Rugs

I feel like I'm referencing a poem with that title, but, if I am, I don't know which one it is.

(a ha! I googled. I knew it sounded familiar! Wordsworth:

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Yeah, buying a rug is not really much like that. Well, maybe. I feel like I have laid waste my powers with online rug shopping. A little. I still have some powers. And I haven't given my heart away to any particular rug yet. That's what this post is for!)

Where was I?

Ah yes.

Last time I bought a rug, I bought it out of weariness and desperation. It worked out okay; I still like my weariness and desperation rug:

But, as I mentioned the other day, I've been thinking my foyer is looking a little rugless....and this time I thought it might be better to approach rug buying with a bit more intentionality than last time.

To that end, I have taken the extraordinary steps of thinking about what kind of rug I might want and spending some time narrowing down my options. It's been sort of a revolutionary day for me.

And, it turns out, this is a fun thing to do! Particularly when you're not in a rush to buy a rug before your baby learns to crawl. So excited am I by my potential foyer rugs that I've decided to share them right here on my blog and solicit opinions.

This is the what the foyer looks like with a naked floor:

I measured that space between the door and the wall and then over to where the stairs start, and it's around 6 by 7 feet. So I've been looking at 4x6 and 3x5 rugs, mostly.

I didn't really have much sense of what kind of rug I wanted going in to my search. Something fairly flat since the door will have to open over it. But I was pretty open as far as style, color, etc. I just kind of went through different sites and bookmarked things that appealed to me that I thought might work well in the space.

I bookmarked one million rugs, then showed them all to Dave when he got home, and we narrowed it down a bit. I present, in no particular order, the frontrunners!

Urban Bungalow: Rugs USA

I was a little surprised to find myself gravitating toward black and white rugs. This is a wool flatweave rug, 3'6" by 5'6". After the 50% discount code, it would be $103.50. 

Hand woven Moroccan Dhurrie: Overstock.com

This one's a bit of an outlier because it's green! Also might be too similar to the rug in the sunroom, pattern wise. It's another wool flatweave (I think they're all flatweave). $65.99, 3x5.

Amethyst Avira: World Market

I kind of thought I'd wind up going purple when I first started looking. Another 3x5 wool flatweave. I just realized this one is $149, though, which makes it considerably pricier than any other option. But World Market has a lot of sales.

Plum&Bow Amelia: Urban Outfitters

This is one that I like, but no one else in my house does. Because they're all BOYS! Anyway. Only $44. This one's cotton.

Zig Cotton Dhurrie: Serena and Lily

Also cotton. It's clearance priced right now at $78.99.

I won't reveal my favorite. Or my current favorite, anyway. I go back and forth. Which would you pick?

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A More or Less Free Mirror for the Foyer

We're still kind of finding our groove with getting projects done now that Dave is back at work, so I just have a tiny one for you today. But free! Or, well, upcycled? That's what you say, right? I did not leave my house for any of the materials used in this project, is what I'm getting at.

Background: after I Sharpied squirrels all over my foyer, I hung up some thrift store pictures I had, but I was never really happy with them:

Those are Joan Walsh Anglund prints that remind me of my childhood, but still don't look good with silver squirrels, no matter how much nostalgia they evoke (I used to draw mouths on all the people in my Joan Walsh Anglund books with crayon when I was a kid. Because Joan Walsh Anglund doesn't believe in mouths, and apparently I thought this was a little creepy. And maybe I still do. No mouths?! Why?! The stuff of horror movies.)

I wanted a mirror there. And at one point I bought one that I was going to paint and hang up there, only I wound up hanging it up in my bedroom, over The Most Beautiful Chair in the World Instead:

But! Back when we redid Ari's desk, we saved the mirror that we took off it and stuffed it in our laundry room closet:

So, when I was looking for a quick, cheap project the other day, I whipped the mirror back out to make over for the foyer.

First I leaned it up against the foyer dresser so Abe could look at himself in it:

Then I took off those little knob things that used to connect it to the desk (although they're sort of cool; I like the shape. I wish I could think of something to do with them. To make my upcycling even more complete!)

Then I taped up the glass while Abe played with my frog tape:

A coat of primer:

For some reason, I decided that the perfect place for this project was right in the middle of the kitchen floor, blocking the doorway to the dining room.

I'm all about finding places to use up paint samples, so I whipped out the Gray Owl that we rejected for the kitchen (and seeing how very close to white it looks on the mirror very much reassured me that we'd made the right choice. It would not have worked in the kitchen at all, I don't think).

A coat of Gray Owl:

...and then I put a layer of finishing wax on it (also already in my house!)

It didn't have a hanger on the back, of course, since it had been attached to the desk, so Dave broke out our seemingly bottomless picture hanging kit (seriously; we've had that thing for a decade now, I think, and it's never run low), and strung a wire across the back:

And then we hung it up!

It makes the foyer look very bright. Of course, the foyer IS very bright.

I got so into taking the pictures that I had to open the front door and go outside to take some so that I could get the whole dreser in there. The resulting pictures really make it clear how much we need to paint that hallway back there. And also I think the foyer needs a rug.

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Craigslist Dresser and Calling the Foyer Finished

Foyers are kind of weird. Our old house didn't have one; you just walked right on into the living room. I've talked before about how one of my qualms with colonials is that they tend not to use space as efficiently as they might, what with their hallways and such (we have a super wide hallway upstairs, which I intend to eventually get around to making pull its weight somehow or another). Our foyer is as big as a decent sized kid bedroom, so it's important to me that it not be just dead space. One redeeming feature is that the big arches make it feel very open to the library and the dining room on either side...visually at least it's kind of like one big long room.

So anyway, one of the ways the foyer is making itself useful these days is by housing its new bench and coat rack. Here is it all beautiful and posed for pictures:

....and this is how it looks now:

Not so bad, I've got to say. Of course, come winter it will fill up a lot more with coats again, but it's a HUGE improvement over before.

Okay, so then I drew squirrels on the wall opposite the door.

And my plan for after that was to take a dresser that was sitting unused up in the guest room and paint it with chalkboard paint. Because I've never painted anything with chalkboard paint, and I feel left out. Also, I thought it would be fun to be able to write on the drawers. Like a welcome message for visitors. Or labels telling the kids what to put in each drawer (nerf guns here! hats and gloves up here!). Or for the kids to draw on.

We bought the chalkboard paint and started carrying the drawers from the dresser downstairs.

And then Dave called me over to show me that....the hardware doesn't come off! I was horrified. Why would someone do such a thing? There are no screws or nails coming out on the inside of the drawers. I'm still not exactly sure what the deal is....I'm guessing it's somehow INSIDE the front panel? I've never liked this dresser. It LOOKS pretty, but it's really poorly made, and the drawers don't open and close easily. So, my plan thwarted, I gave it back to my mom (who gave it to us when we first moved back down here for Ari's room) to sell at her shop to someone who wants a red dresser.

I suppose we could have tried a little harder to either get the hardware off somehow or carefully paint around it. But I was mad at the dresser and didn't want to.

Okay! Plan B!

I know that the way you're supposed to get good deals on Craigslist is to stalk it faithfully for weeks or months until you find just what you're looking for. But what I usually do is say, "hey! we need a new dresser!" and then go check it right then and there. This actually works pretty well if you want something very pedestrian like a dresser, because there are gazillians on there at any given time. I found one I liked the looks of about 20 minutes away for $65, and Dave called to get the address and went to get it right then.

I love my little impulse buy dresser. It has a curvy top drawer and fun mid-century-ish legs and original hardware. In the Craigslist picture, it looked like it also had a really nice, shiny, lacquered finish. But it doesn't. The guy selling it refinishes lots of furniture, I guess. He appears to have done a nice job repairing it, but his paint job consisted of spraying it with flat white paint and....that's it. No kind of protective coating at all, and up close it looks less than perfect. So I don't know if I'll leave it that way forever. I don't want to chalkboard paint it, though. Anyway, it's good enough for now.

Those pictures up there are Joan Walsh Anglund prints I picked up at a thrift store awhile back (and spray painted the frames). Not sure about them here. I'm thinking maybe just one big print centered would be better--something more modern. Or a mirror. Or nothing! The squirrels could speak for themselves. I am taking votes: please tell me what to do!

I don't know yet what's going in all those drawers, but I'm thinking the aforementioned nerf guns (which wind up all over my house) and hats and gloves for starters.

So there you go--a functional foyer! Earning its keep! Here's the whole thing at once:

Do you notice anything still a little...unfinished about our foyer?

Yeah....that line between the blue and yellow was our brilliant solution when we realized there was no way we could paint the stairwell ourselves. That's when we started to understand why that yellow paint was EVERYWHERE when we moved in: once you start painting one color, it's pretty hard to stop.

And here's how it typically looks: count the living creatures sneaking into the picture!

Oh, you can also see our foyer light fixture for the first time ever in that one. I kind of like it. I should clean it sometime. All those little prisms...sigh.

Things have been kind of slow going lately with house stuff. The school year's wrapping up for Dave, so he's crazy busy. And Abe has taken a liking to a 3 or 4 fifteen minute naps a day schedule. But Dave will be home for the summer in a couple of weeks (or not. Things are a little up in the air there. For reasons I cannot yet divulge, but if anything interesting comes of them, I will).

Pinterest Challenge: Squirrel Wall! Or, Okay Whimsy: Simmer Down Now

Is it just me, or was the last Pinterest Challenge like a week ago?

Pinterest challenge hosted by: Katie at BowerPower, Sherry at Young House Love, Emily at Sparkle Meets Pop, and Renee at Red Bird Blue

At any rate, for the last Pinterest Challenge I redid Ari's desk. Everything went very smoothly, I was very pleased with the end result--whoo hoo! I'm awesome at Pinterest Challenges! Or....beginner's luck? Things were a little different this time.

This time around, I again knew exactly what I wanted to do. Ever since I saw the sheep wall that Cassie at Primitive and Proper made:

Primitive and Proper's Baa Baa Black Sheep Wall

....I've been completely in love with it and longed for sharpie-d animals of my own. 

Then I realized that I'd never actually pinned the sheep wall. I guess I loved it SO much that I knew I would never forget about it and need Pinterest to remind me. So, I, umm....pinned it real quick like once I saw the Pinterest Challenge announcement. That counts, right?

In case it doesn't, I DID pin this great round up of Sharpie projects from Owen's Olivia, including her very cool Sharpie "wallpaper:"

Sharpie Wall at Owen's Olivia

And I didn't pin this, either, but Stephanie at Sandpaper and Glue was another inspiration, with her recent sharpie wall project:

Sandpaper and Glue's Sharpie Wall

So, basically, I wanted to draw stuff on my wall with a sharpie. An animal of some sort, preferably. 

I ran through a list of animals in my head. I thought whales would be nice, but Dave thought ANOTHER whale room would put our house into whale overload. Chickens? Chickens are nice. But squirrels are kind of my fallback cute animal, so squirrels were our winner. 

I ordered some stencil paper from Amazon (I think it was about $6 and came with two sheets: one big, one little). And then I took a look at some squirrels on the internet and came up with a sketch:

Then I had to make him bigger, because it would have taken 4,000 years to fill the wall with squirrels that small. 

So once I had my bigger sketch, I turned it over on the stencil paper and rubbed the back all over with pencil to transfer the image. Then I realized we couldn't find an exacto knife anywhere. So I decided to just cut the squirrel out with scissors and do kind of a reverse stencil, tracing around the outside of it. 

Tragically, he lost his acorn at this point, because I couldn't cut out that little triangle shaped area. I'm sure he can find another one somewhere.

Here is the wall in the foyer where I decided to put the squirrels:

In the past, it has sported seasonal wall hangings, like the vintage wrapping paper from Christmas and the silhouette bunny and chicken from Easter, but it's never had any permanent adornment.

So then I started tracing squirrels. I had originally wanted a dark gray sharpie, but I couldn't find one. So I went with purple. "I love purple!" I thought to myself.

Dave got out the level and made little marks for me so I'd know where to put the squirrels. This is why Dave and I are the perfect DIY team. The idea of using that level and trying to figure out the perfect squirrel pattern sounds terrible to me. The idea of doing the actual squirrel tracing sounds equally terrible to Dave. Thank goodness I didn't accidentally marry another level-hater.

I put masking tape on the back of the stencil (is it okay to still call it a stencil when it's a backwards stencil?)

After a while, I had a wall full of squirrels:

I tried to love them, I really did. 

But it was just....too.much.whimsy. 

It looked like I'd drawn squirrels all over my wall with a sharpie.

Which I had. But I had been going for something a little more....classy. Subtle.

For awhile I figured I'd just go ahead and post about them and then paint over them in the near future.

Then I decided I could fix it. I could fix my squirrels! I could tone down the whimsy. I ran out to Michaels and bought a silver oil based Sharpie paint pen. And, yes, I drew over every single one of the damn squirrels. Twice, because the purple showed through too much otherwise. And now I am happier.

Ahh.....bearable whimsy!

Ignore that super cute dresser for now. I'm going to talk about it later.

Also, I know I move that globe around for every "styling" opportunity that comes along, but I think it's actually staying here.

And don't worry, orangey oak bannister: I'll deal with you later.

Oh, and don't stare at the squirrels for too long, or you'll start seeing weird swans instead. Optical illusion wall!

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