In the middle of our tin-ceilinged living room is a tin medallion. It’s pressed into an ornate pattern, an imitation of the fancy plaster medallions you might find crumbling in the parlor floors of…
About a month ago we painted our deeply honeyed kitchen cabinets white. This is not the first rental apartment I’ve lived in with truly lackluster cabinets. But it’s the first time I ever plucked…
When I decided to recover our couch in engineer stripe denim, I did not list among my reasons its ability to withstand human excrement, but here we are. In this little loveseat’s first 12…
There’s a cardboard box in our kitchen filled with sandpaper and paintbrushes, scrapers, screw drivers, putty, primer and paint. It’s topped with a folded up drop cloth and every day for the last week,…
If you’ve been reading these tea leaves for any length of time, you might recall that our family currently uses a small, high loveseat as a couch. It’s a simple piece of furniture made…
We have a new table in our kitchen. It’s not really a table and it’s decidedly not new, but it’s a surface we’ve recently unearthed and put back to use. James and I exhumed…
In old house stewardship and making slow progress, sometimes it really just feels like I’m waiting for the stars to align. And then sometimes they do. I was struck by a bit of restlessness…
I’m puzzling through window treatments at the moment. Window treatments is such a funny and stuffy term, but useful, too, covering the range of shutters and curtains and blinds and shades and other things…
This post is sponsored by Brooklinen. Carving out a second bedroom in this new apartment has been one of the most restorative projects of the past year. Before we moved in September, it had…
In a very vintage bathroom, my motto is to leave well enough alone. If you’ve ever looked for a rental apartment in an old building you’ll know this is not everyone’s motto. Partially renovated…