Welcome to the garden, little blue hose

Yes, that is the Water Right hose I lost my mind over featured a while back... I couldn't resist the specially-created Martha Stewart color. I ordered it quickly but we have been holding out for the right hose hook to hang it from since most of the ones sold for this specific purpose are generally a bit, well.. tacky. I think this one from Gempler's is great, but we needed to mount to a post which wasn't wide enough. And this one tracked down by Remodelista is nice but a bit spendy for what it is, and it didn't get me crazy excited. So, the other day we were at a local feed and garden store to get more Hendrikus lawn care products and some organic weed spray, and low and behold I found myself in an aisle filled with all kinds of steel brackets, braces, bolts and other crazy-looking things. I immediately grabbed for one of these:

Super thick and heavy, great finish, and looked like it would just about work for the Martha hose which is quite dainty actually (very narrow and lightweight which I love). At under $20 we decided to go for it. I still have no idea what is supposed to be used for ... I didn't ask. But as you can see it went up quickly and now our sweet blue hose has a permanent home in the garden with the peonies. It may seem strange, but to me it's a little piece of beauty for the garden (and so much better then the giant construction style hoses the husband was using..!). It's so pretty in fact, that if it gets left out, haphazardly strewn across the walkway, I don't even mind :)

Easy, fuss-free style: Guest bath

We were very pleased to give an antique farm table new life in the guest bath of our latest project! With our rough desired dimensions in hand, we scoured the antiques stores for just the right fit. There were a few possible contenders, but this one was just right (we had to look past the chippy pink paint of course... see what it looked like originally below). It was the right size, the drawer with it's original bin pull was totally charming (you may recall we have a thing for bin pulls) and it offered the opportunity to add a slatted shelf below for storage. With the modern square sink and carefully selected fixtures and hardware, I think we achieved a great balance of modern and vintage. The slatted shelf provides storage space for baskets or buckets to store towels and supplies for an easy, fuss-free style. We're super pleased with it and can't wait to rescue some other old piece and do it again  :)

p.s. Isn't the faucet adorable in action??

Punchy doors

We decided to keep two of the existing exterior doors ... one being this lighted door (because I thought with some sanding and a fresh coat, it could be quite charming) and the other being the garage door (because I knew we could tie them together with paint, and it's a fire door). The color turned out perfectly! It adds loads of personality and makes the whole place feel a lot more modern and stylish then plain white doors would. You may recall the outdoor sconces from this post ... yes, we planned to use them indoors from the get go, and they add such amazing modern ambiance and interest. The oversized look is perfect for this space, and throughout the rest of the room (more to come on that). Well-played, sconces! By the way, here is what these doors looked like before:

Introductions

Meet our latest project, in all its freshly completed glory! And I know, I know... the orange rock is still there. While it's definitely not our ideal scenario, sometimes you just have to go with the flow and make it work (like those times when your concrete specialty subcontractor seems to have completely fallen off the face of the earth!). Overall we are really pleased with the new facade, particularly the changes made to the front porch. It looks especially nice on a beautiful sunny day like this one!

The big reveal...

We are absolutely thrilled with the way our latest project has turned out ... we hope you'll stay with us for fresh posts over the next several weeks detailing our design work on this very special (and now quite spectacular) Modern Cottage.