bb99's Profile

A giant ugh. Hollywood chic anyone? The original was so beautiful, the face had been so perfectly detailed. Now, hideous. This is the kind of thing I see banged up in thrift stores and think it would be too much work to make it right.

Instead of paint maybe facing the sides of the brick box with the same wood at the railing. The color of the spindles is lovely.

I just went thru the thinking this thru part of your puzzle. I haven't actually acted on the sorting. I made a list of things I felt I couldn't replace (some antique furniture, some artwork) and then kept winnowing till I reached a standstill. I still haven't made any final decisions. There are obvious things you can replace, it's the emotional and expense driven decisions that are the tricky ones. I guess my first suggestion is to list everything you think you want to take and then start subtracting. I found that some items I subtracted gave me serious pause and some I just felt relief when I considered giving them away or selling them. Maybe start with a list and work from there. You might find you have a manageable amount to send. It's does feel nice to have some pieces of your life come along with you.

I'd also switch out the floor lamp with something hanging. Then you could pull the hanging lamp to the right, over the sofa, and balance the remaining space with art. It would also free up the space in front of the shelves. Right now it feels like the floor lamp is blocking that view.

no. elmo would have been grover. and grover is waaay cooler than elmo. i mean, supergrover? no contest.

but the chest of drawers is pretty nice, in spite of elmo. ;-)

some friends papered a wall with rice paper (well, probably not truly rice paper but the point is that they put it up with watered down elmer's glue. i'm in the states and i don't know what other names it goes by but i'm talking about the white liquid glue that is, even when undiluted, really only for kids crafts. it's very easy to remove. they did a stairway with torn pieces of rice paper and dilute glue and a couple years later, when getting ready to sell their house they just soaked it all with sponges and the stuff all came off. it took a lot of elbow grease but just water to remove it. since you're putting stuff on metal it will probably be even easier to remove. they were dealing with drywall.

when i was a kid a friend's family had a large wooden table their dad had made. he was an artist, a painter, and his goal was to make a table that was well made and would stand up to whatever the family threw at it. there were gouges, paint stains, stains of who knows what and all the vagaries of family of with three kids and two artist parents could throw at it. i remember the corners were these cool sloping downward curves that really softened the bang when you bumped into them. when they had what they called a "fancy meal" ie. guests who cared about nice tables, they just covered it with a heavy linen tablecloth and all the bruises were hidden. i always thought it was brilliant cause i grew up in the home of antiques that required more care than most humans. they were tedious and restrictive. don't know what you ultimately want your table to be, but perhaps letting go of anything too pricey till your kids are older and go for a solid second hand table from a thrift store or craigslist.

if you're very handy build a radiator cover. if not, find out the cost. they can hide the heaviness of the rad without impeding the heat and it additionally provides a small landing space on top via the shelf. you could put baskets on the shelf for mail, gloves, hats.put a few decorative hooks on the wall above for keys, make it the spot for the little things.

i think casters sound best. maybe you can find some in a bright color or paint them a bright color. alternatively find a luggage rack at a thrift store and you can set it up high. just make sure the luggage rack is sturdy enough.

living in an APARTMENT means you don't always have a choice about how you cool your space and if you live in a climate where heat and humidity conspire to nearly kill everyone believe me, you wouldn't be so snooty about window units. as to the original design, blech. it's ugly. regardless of which of the many solutions one chose, this one is really at the bottom of the pile. gotta agree that this post reads like a fill-in on a really slow post day. the only useful bit for me was the reflective aspect and the alternate suggestions. love the plexi idea with the clay as a stopper.