A Secret Source for Budget Tile

I heard a rumor the other day about a secret budget source offering some of the high-end and high-style tile that I specify for my clients’ homes.

Tile like this:

And this:

The super-hot cement encaustic tile, as well:

Penny tile, even (and note to yourself: a black penny tile floor with black grout looks INCREDIBLE in real life – I just did it in a client’s bathroom):

Also this Greek Key action:

Ready for me to give up the goods? I’m being such a tease . . .

It’s Overstock. Yes, I know. Such a fantastic surprise — and the prices are a huge savings, especially on things like the cement encaustic tile and the penny tile. I’m just starting work on a new Arcadia renovation (in addition to my own) and this Overstock discovery just might come into play. (Tip: order a sample first — even if it means buying one box of tile just to check the color.)

Some of my favorites:

Black and white hex tile in a flower pattern:

Black granite hex tile:

Greek Key:

 

 

 

 

Pennies here:

Cement tile (available in many  patterns and colors):

Even oh-so-trendy chevron-patterned marble:

Which is your favorite? Happy Monday!

By |2015-03-02T07:01:59-07:00March 2nd, 2015|House Renovation|1 Comment
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My four-hour laundry closet makeover (the black paint strikes again)

The reason I had black paint in my life to begin with:  I wanted to makeover my laundry closet with huge black and white stripes. Tyson went out of town . . . again. I got out the black paint . . . again. (Where will I attack next!?)

My hair, apparently:

It’s possible that I put on a baseball cap and went to Target like this. And Ace Hardware. And Home Depot. And the grocery store. And I’d do it again.

Our laundry room/closet sits off an (undecorated) hallway behind these double doors. I liked the idea of the doors opening to a big surprise.

BEFORE: Blah.

DURING: The taping extravaganza occurred on a Saturday night, and Puddinn’ and I went back and forth via text over who was the sorrier soul: she alone in bed watching movies with wine, or me on a romantic date with Kermit the frog tape. I won, because I ordered pizza for dinner so I wouldn’t have to leave the house. #MissPiggy

But in the morning, I woke up to the AFTER:

Isn’t it fun?

I kept walking down the hall, opening the double doors, and pretending to be surprised – like I was on a TV show and there was a big “reveal” and the camera wanted to catch me in a squeal. (I dislike the word “reveal” used as a noun, by the way.)

And clearly, I should not be left at home alone.

THE DETAILS: To accessorize, I dragged out a random assemblage of bits I had tucked in the garage and in cabinets, unused. I hoard strange things. Last weekend, for example, I bought a vintage lucite cowboy hat.

For my equestrian fantasies, I added two horse bit hooks I found on clearance at Anthropologie a few months ago, thinking my clothes closet needed some Polo flair. Much better here: they can suspend things that need to hang dry. The hooks were $32 each, but I paid $8 – and lucky you, they’re still available online. The bamboo hangers were left over from a client’s decor project. They’re from Cost Plus World Market, about $12 for 4-5 hangers.

What, don’t you have pumpkins in your laundry room? I keep OxyClean and Borax in these pretty glass jars – look for these at Hobby Lobby or HomeGoods/T.J. Maxx/Marshalls. I’ve had them for a few years – it’s a good upgrade from store packaging.

My laundry baskets are vintage fishing baskets I dragged home from an antique store on 7th Avenue.  They previously lived in a sad corner of the garage, holding books that I still need to take back to the library.

The silver hook holding the blazer below is an actual boat cleat, inspired by this photo gallery idea I cribbed from the Pottery Barn catalog. In theory, it will hold more line-drying clothing instead of the blazer my sister wore to compete in Miss America.

I unearthed those weird wooden leg forms from my pile of discovered treasures. (Lucite cowboy hat? REALLY?) They’re actually vintage stocking blockers — used once upon a time for knitting stockings, or molding pantyhose, or somesuch. I found them at Grey House Antiques in Tucson. I liked them in the laundry room because they reminded me of walking into my Granna’s lavender bathroom and seeing her pantyhose wrung out and dangling over the shower door.

My Granna was a NUT about laundry.  She folded her sheets to fit perfectly on her shelves and kept her pillowcases in ordered, tri-folded rows. I had lessons in these things, but sometimes, when people come over unexpectedly, I gather  all the piles of clean laundry waiting on my sofa to be folded and shove them back into the dryer to hide.

Probably, she’d consider that inspired.

What do you think of my makeover?

By |2012-09-18T05:30:10-07:00September 18th, 2012|DIY + Projects|5 Comments
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My mother’s pumpkin ode to Jonathan Adler

My mother and I have a penchant for white marble sculpture  — anything that looks like it came off of the David, Venus di Milo, or escaped from the Louvre. Either we have romantic, Renaissance leanings or we think that filling our homes with the ideal human form could help us lay off the chocolate. You decide.

During the Rose girls’ pumpkin fest, I floated the idea  of Jonathan Adler-inspired pumpkins and my mom’s eyes lit up. We went back to the craft store for tall, thin pumpkins and modeling clay, and then she did this:

Inspired by this: Adler’s Misia and Salvador vases, $98 each, at Neiman Marcus.

And also this, the pitcher — lips on one side, mustache on the other:

It is something to be continually impressed by one’s mother.

To make them, procure pumpkins. (If you want to upgrade the stem on faux pumpkins, my tutorial is here.) You also need white modeling clay (from Michaels) and spray paint: Krylon Fusion in Dover White, satin finish.

First, paint the pumpkins. Next, form the clay into a mustache and lips with your fingers. It isn’t as difficult as it looks. Summon your Play-Doh skills.

Press your clay creations against the pumpkin to get the curve right on the back.

Next, dry them out in the oven according to package instructions. (Really simple.) Then, spray paint them the same color as the pumpkin. Using hot glue, attach lips and mustache to the pumpkins.

 

 

Clearly, I am a very mature person.

By |2012-09-11T07:43:40-07:00September 11th, 2012|DIY + Projects|2 Comments
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Try it: I painted my living room wall black

When I was an intern at the L.A. Times a dozen years ago, I had an all-white bedroom. I liked to lie on my white bed, beneath white mosquito netting, and consider the fragrance of the white Casablanca lilies I kept ever-present on the nightstand. Often, I played Pavarotti. This all-white room (in my friend Kim’s sweet beach house) felt like all I’d ever need in the world. (I was 22, OK?)

When T and I moved into our new house, the walls were white and I wanted almost everything else to be, too. The result was pretty, but all the furniture was fading together. I needed drama and contrast. And so last weekend, I had black paint on the counter and an encouraging friend on my sofa.  On a wild, gleeful spree, I painted one of the walls black.

 

I love it. My friend loved it. Her event-planner husband pronounced it fantastic. My mom and sisters – ultimate test – all approved.

Tyson is not sure.

I explained to him why it works: the room is large, the ceilings are high, and half of the walls are floor-to-ceiling windows. The place is flooded with light. All the furniture is light and bright. The black makes the shape of the furniture pop.

Am I crazy? Do you like it?

P.S. This weekend at the grocery store I was greeted by a cardboard bin of  pumpkins – real, stacked, orange pumpkins. (I squealed and posted a photo immediately to Instagram — are you following along? I’m @JaimeeRoseStyle) Anyway, another major pumpkin find: pretty silver-leaf pumpkins at Michaels. They come looking like this. And they come in gold, too. You don’t have to do anything but display and pretend you silver-leafed them yourself.

But now really, I want to know: the black walls . . . would you, could you? Am I nuts to be so in love?

 

 

By |2012-09-10T07:18:57-07:00September 10th, 2012|Style|10 Comments
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Black + white + beach

We’re just back from a visit to the beach with my dad, sisters, and their entourage of cute kids. It made me laugh to notice all the black and white stripes in our family beach adventures. We’re consistent in our devotion.

This surf shop — complete with chandelier — rekindled my desire to decorate with surfboards.

Sunset, Carlsbad — yep, my beach towel is black and white striped.

My sister’s beach bag, from Crate & Barrel:

Other sister’s skirt, which she sewed herself:

The shop we were in — Bliss Home, Corona del Mar —  was torture. This seashell anchor was my favorite find. Ahoy, matey.

Babies, striped blankies, puppies:

 

Black and white striped hair? (I love my sisters)

 

And a new shirt from Forever 21 that Heidi (dark haired sister) and I both brought home from our sister shopping trip. $20. Awesome.

P.S. Remember when I decorated my former apartment in homage to the beach? Black and white stripes for days. See it here.

 

By |2012-08-27T07:49:31-07:00August 27th, 2012|Style|0 Comments
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My Greek Key Dresser Makeover

There are three phases of Doing it Yourself. This is the story of those phases and me and a certain IKEA dresser that began life like this:

And needed to look a little more like a mashup of these.

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(If you want to embark, I obeyed Bri’s awesome tutorial. Hers is the turquoise and gold number above, and I would have been on the ledge without her virtual instructions.)

So, let’s begin.

Doing It Yourself Phase One, also known as project hours 1-3: “D-I-Y’s are awesome! Home Depot is awesome! Glue is awesome! Look, Ty, I can totally saw wood myself!”

Phase Two, or project hours 4-6: D-I-WHINE. “I don’t want to go to Home Depot, or ACE Hardware, or Target one more time. Wood glue is a pain. Pleeeeease Ty will you saw these 54 pieces for me?”

Yeah. That’s how many wood pieces I needed to measure, cut at a 45 degree angle and then glue together, to make these greek keys. FIFTY FOUR. It is good that I didn’t figure that out until just now.

Phase Three, also known as project hours 7-15: D-I-WHY did I think this was a good idea again? At this point, I was scraping dry seeped-out wood glue off the fronts of my Greek Keys with a razor blade, then sanding all six of them at every joint. Then painting, and glossing, and cursing because I ran out of paint, super glue and patience. In the end I called my mother. She helped me decide how to place these babies on the dresser.

My dresser — the MALM from Ikea — has sunken spaces in between the drawer fronts so I had to modify the Greek Keys to work with that. They couldn’t be vertical. But . . . .

. . . and please know that this is a really bad picture . . .

. . . the next morning, when I woke up and saw this pretty dresser-turned-buffet in my dining room, I was so pleased with my D-I-Y that I started dreaming of what to do next.

Maybe, I thought, I should reupholster the dining room chairs myself.

For sure, I thought, I’m going to faux-marble those lamps.

Also: OMG! I should totally paint my armoire.

So that’s the fourth phase of D-I-Y that I forgot to mention: Success. It ensures that you will subject yourself to the previous three phases of torture once again. And so the cycle continues . . . and soon, maybe I’ll show you a better picture of the dresser/buffet and how it looks in the room. But first, I have lamps to paint and chairs to reupholster and oh, I gotta do something about the sea of rocks that lives outside the dining room walls. They are all windows, and I need a green lawn.

Dad? Come over?

***** Also, I should mention that the awesome Kittinger Greek Key dresser below  is $5,900 on 1st Dibs. Mine cost $155. The supplies were about $80. (Wood, four tubes super glue, two cans black spray paint, polyurethane gloss, wood glue, clamps, and a saw and mitre box.)  I found the IKEA dresser for $75 on Craigslist — a  new trick of mine. It’s called: If you buy IKEA furniture on Craigslist, someone else has already put it together.

 

By |2011-05-19T07:48:15-07:00May 19th, 2011|DIY + Projects|2 Comments
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