Before & After: New Kitchen Tiles

We moved into our house 6 years ago (no, I can't believe it's been that long, either). We have left all the walls off-white (hanging colourful art on them, for the most part). 

The wall behind the cooker had been getting a little grimy...it turns out that curry, spaghetti sauce, and white walls are not a good combination.

I pinned a few kitchens I liked on Pinterest, and then my mom and I picked out some red tiles when she was here last year. Our neighbour next door is a builder, so we asked him if he could recommend a good tile-guy. He said he wouldn't recommend anyone but would definitely do the tiling for us.

Fast forward a year (um...summer, sailing, our New York trip, Christmas, and a LONG winter got in the way).

Here's the before. Perfectly reasonable, if somewhat uninspired. The counters and cabinet surrounds are "cherry" and the cabinets are a creamy yellow-white. 

Here it is, in progress:

And finished!

And the other side:

We. Love. It.

I think it looks brilliant - it matches the red KitchenAid exactly.

What? You don't decorate around your stand mixer? Why ever not?

The tiles have a little bit of texture - they're not completely flat. It gives really nice depth to the kitchen. We only did the one wall - I think going all the way around the room (or all the way to the ceiling) would have made the wall close in somewhat.

Just in time for my mom to see them in person (she arrives Wednesday for our annual Adventure Week)!

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

In case any of you were under the illusion that our house is perfect, please see Exhibit A, the front hall, below.

This is what happens when you have a very small entryway, 2 adults, one part-time teenage resident, and white carpets. We all wear slippers in the house (because of the carpets and also because we all tend towards chilly feet), so the first thing we do when we arrive is kick off our shoes.

We were looking for some sort of shoe rack at Ikea when we were there last weekend. My thought was to get a smallish one, to go in the living room underneath the coat stand. But then John spotted the PS 2012 bench. And while black would probably have been classier, we both really liked the red. If we get sick of it, we can always paint it black.

The top is being used as our "outbox" at the moment - there's a bit more on there than there should be! I figure that since we're going to have lots of shoes in the front hall anyway, we may as well make it look intentional. (And, a week later, it still looks tidy. SUCCESS!)

Mission: Coatstand. Accomplished.

I've been looking for a coatstand for months. MONTHS. Too expensive, too ugly, too office-y, just plain wrong... you get the idea.

I had Pinterest-ed this Muji coatstand a few months ago, here on Pinterest, but I didn't feel like paying the shipping charges and was kind of secretly hoping that the really amazing 1930s one from Elemental would have a twin appear in their store.

And then, I got tired of the coats on the chair. And so this arrived today.

And has now been put to good use.

So there we go.

Swiss Kitchen

Well. Who knew that so many of my blog readers were such evangelical Kindle fans? Ok, guys, you've converted me. Shiny. (Well, future Shiny...I'm still pondering).

And now for something completely different. 

This is one of my favorite things in our kitchen. It was my grandmother's, and when she bought it, she bought one for herself, one for my mom, and one for my aunt. All three of them always had them hanging in their kitchens, and it has always given me a real feeling of home. After we bought our house (and after my grandma died), my mom gave us "mine." It's not mine, really, it's Grandma's. Our family has always referred to it as "the Swiss kitchen" - I have no idea if they originally came from Switzerland but given the amount of travelling my grandparents did, it seems fairly likely!

End of an era

When my parents were first married, they lived in on Central Park West. Then the call of the suburbs became too strong and in the 70s they bought a house in New Rochelle.

My parents have all kinds of stories about the house when they first bought it - the seller left them with the advice that they "might have heard a mouse last night," which turned out to be several mice, a squirrel or six and a number of raccoons. Mmmm. Also, all of the windows had been painted, although they were all either painted open or shut and were destined to stay as painted until one of my parents un-painted them. They all work now!

Here I am, with my mom, in my nursery. I loved those yellow pjs - they had scritchy-scratchy feet that were warm on the inside and non-slip on the outside.

Over the last 30+ years, we've all moved out a number of times - first to come to England in 1989 (rented to tenants), then I moved out to go to college in 1999, then they moved to Florida (rented to tenants again) in 2003, then I moved to England in 2005, then they moved SOME stuff out in 2007 when they bought the house in Rhode Island.

I've lived all over the place - New Ro, Waterville ME, England (currently in UK location #5), Paris, New York City, but the big yellow house has always felt like 'home'.

Now that my brother and I are settled elsewhere, my parents have sold the house. I totally understand the reasoning behind it: it's way too big for the two of them and Rrufus, it's a ton more maintenance than they want, it costs a fortune to heat in the winter, they love the house in RI, they don't want my brother and me to have to clean it all out in 30 years (they've both cleaned out their parents' houses).

But the Little Kate in me wants to be able to go HOME. Not to go right now, but to know that the big yellow house is there, waiting for me. With my bedroom with the green carpet that doesn't go all the way to the walls (and has long been the TV room), the slippery wood floors, and the saggy but never going to fall down front porch.

They've found awesome buyers - a young-ish couple with a little boy who looks exactly like my brother did at 2 and who already has all the neighbors lining up to babysit.

Oh, and Mom and Dad said that they "might have heard a mouse last night..."

Garden railway

We had such a blast with the trains in the back yard last weekend that we've been plotting the best way to make them permanent. John has a great program called WinRail, where you tell it the scale and brand of your trains (and tracks) and it helps you build a to-scale plan using the tracks available. The current plan is to gravel the top of the garden (where nothing really grows well to begin with) and lay track up there. Ideally we'd also have a 'branch line' coming down the south side of the garden (along a north-facing wall that never gets any light).

Wait, why am I telling you this, when I can show it to you? Here it is, a monument to our epic computer/train geek-ness.

In exchange for the trains, John's agreed that we can also extend the patio so there's room for our chairs and table. There should still be plenty of grass in the middle of the lawn for croquet and we're planning it out so it doesn't foul the clothesline.

The grand master plan is to build a small retaining wall along the right hand side of the garden, as the lawn slopes down a bit more than the train can handle. The grand master plan is to use the dirt cleared from the top to build up the bank on the right. If we ever want to sell the house, we'll just lift the track and all of the train areas can be used for planting.

If nothing else, we're having fun dreaming about it.