Isn't that a gorgeous shade of green? You are looking at the most pristine 1930's bathroom set I have ever seen, in the perfect shade of vintage green. I found the set at ReStore a couple of weeks, ago, $95 for the tub, toilet and sink, complete. Mint. Yes. Mint.

I didn't buy them.

I know many of you will be shocked, especially given the mouthwatering combination of vintage, charming and cheap. But as much as I love the idea of these pieces, they just don't fit into what I'm doing at the moment. For me, by the way, this is the hardest part of thrifting: leaving something fantastic behind.

But when dragging various lost and found objects home, especially big ones like this, it's a good idea to have a handle on what will and won't work for you. If you are a person with innate style and unswerving taste, this is probably not an issue for you. But if you are like me, a person with broad likes and more enthusiasm than good sense, having spent some time figuring this stuff out is probably a good idea.

Here's some examples of what I'm talking about.

What's Your Style?
There's as many styles of cottage as there are cottage-dwellers. Shabby, beachy, modern, retro, English, French... or some mixture. Not everyone knows for sure what their style is. I've been in love with all of these at one time or the other over the years. Right now I'm really in love with the clean lines of farmhouse and the natural influence and bright palette of Scandinavian.

Tolerance for "Character"?
Though we all love to look at magazine photos of houses full of character and individual style, not everyone loves living with the realities of those choices. Are you willing to hand-tighten your vintage porcelain faucet knobs twice a week? Bathe in a very shallow, or chipped tub? Put up with perma-dirt ground into your old barn cabinet? There's no right answer, but know your limits.

How Handy Are You?
Not only is there no guarantee that a vintage fixture will fit into your space, it may or may not use readily-available parts or pieces required to hook up or maintain it. You may have to be clever in solving this problems, and some experience in this area is helpful, or access to a clever (and patient) person who is handy if you're not.

Personal Preference or Resale?
Is this your forever house? Are you living for your own utility? Or do you need to keep one eye on resale? Can you afford to install permanent fixtures that are extremely personal? Or do you need to confine your personalization to your paint and accessories?

What is Appropriate for the Home?
I definitely don't recommend slavish adherence to this, but there are limits. My 1950's ranch is calling for a cleaner line than my 1930's English did, even though everything is still very cottage. But clawfoot tub, though beautiful, isn't really appropriate to this home. Likewise, translucent acrylic room dividers weren't really appropriate for my last, older, home.

For me, the right answer for now is to make neutral, low-maintenance choices for permanent fixtures, and accessorize to personalize. But my next home, who knows?

What about you? How are you approaching these choices in your home today?

May of last year I wrote an article about how to paint, trim and update dated oak kitchen cabinets, featuring the process and progress photos from one of my first friends in blogland, Kim from One Woman's Cottage Life. Well, Kim has been busy, and her kitchen is about finished! It's just beautiful, and (with Kim's kind permission), there are tons of pictures to share with you.

When Kim bought her home, the kitchen was functional but without charm, interest or character. Builder basic oak cabinets, appliances and a popcorn ceiling made for a dreary space.

After her renovations, the kitchen is an airy, light-filled space with a mix of antique and modern sensibilities. Kim and her husband completed most of the work themselves, including a paneled and box-beamed ceiling, crown moulding, oil-rubbed bronze fixtures, a freestanding island, farmhouse furniture, a white-on-white paint palette and a stunning cabinet update, which I wrote about in May 2007.

To achieve the dramatic change on her cabinets, Kim added moulding, trim, beadboard end panels and a multi-step distressed and antiqued paint finish. The saturated red injects the space with color and energy.

The addition of a freestanding island built from architectural salvage not only adds texture, but improved functionality by protecting the kitchen's work core from traffic. As an added benefit, it provides a furniture-like view from the nearby dining area.

Kim also added a drum shade in the dining area, another nod to modern style. The unexpected shape adds a note of sophistication that sharpens the entire design.

By adding both modern displays such as the row of pears on the windowsill, and vintage-inspired charm like the countertop vignette, Kim has made her kitchen both modern in sensibility yet antique in charm. It is the best of both worlds in a kitchen that I find to be extremely inspiring. I hope you do, too!

Woo hoo! We have trim in the living room! Gootz took all day Saturday and totally rocked it out. I had had a fantasy that I would do it myself, and maybe I will for the next project, but with the holidays approaching I wanted to get it done fast. I suppose it seems silly to be renovating my living room right now, but I really wanted one room in my new house that looks pretty for the holidays.

First we added crown molding. We were going to use the corner pieces that Kim suggested, but the ones that we had available locally were so bulky they made the rest of the room look weird. Plus we weren't sure how to deal with our floor-to-ceiling fireplace. Fortunately, figuring out the angles in the corner wasn't too bad.

Next we ripped out the existing door case moldings, which were the skimpy plain ones from the 50's, and added new door trim. It's a simple design using stock molding that looks traditional yet clean.

Here's before:

And here's after:

It still needs another coat of paint or two, but how cool is that?

I wanted to do the same treatment around the big window, but we are planning to replace the windows maybe next year and I didn't want to have to rip it all out again. But the window looked so naked. Amazingly, though, I had a plate rail in the dining room that I had planned to take down because it was blocking the passageway, and it turned out to be exactly the right length, so we put that above the window. Yes, it was also painted coral. I fixed that. The best part is that now I have the perfect spot to start using Rhoda's awesome suggestions for decorating with plates!

Finally we added a small piece of half-round about an inch above the existing baseboards. Originally I was going to rip out and replace the baseboards completely, again because they are so plain and skimpy, but the cost was just not worth it. I think this will look nice once it's painted and it was a fraction of the cost.

I'll post a tutorial after the holidays for all of these projects, but meanwhile, I've got to figure out my paint!

This kitchen is from my old English Cottage, a 1930's home that I renovated and then put on the market in fall of 2007. Our objective was to create a charming, cottage style kitchen with modern amenities, durable, easy-care surfaces and a warm but bright color palette. Because the home was put on the market soon after these renovations were completed, there is a minimum of accessories, which I would change if I had stayed in the house.

The original kitchen seemed bright, but it had a frustrating layout, a lack of storage space and an appalling lack of counter space. In addition, the eating area was too small for a standard table and required that everyone shoehorn in. Gootz was always annoyed because he sat at the end of the table and had to fetch anything anyone wanted because no one else could get up and leave the table. The reason for this was that the eating nook was actually a converted back porch that had been enclosed in the 1970's.

One of the first things we did was to add trim around the opening between the main kitchen and the eating nook. Next we converted the peninsula to an island, using the same cabinets to keep costs down. We also:

• Installed wainscoting throughout the kitchen
  
• Had the counters and backsplash tiled (counters in 12" granite tile and backsplash in 2" ceramic mosaic)


• Replaced the pendants in the dining area and switched the flourescent monsters over the main kitchen to vintage-looking track lighting


• Painted the walls, trim, ceilings and cabinets


• Added cabinet and drawer pulls


• Tiled the floor with laminate tile


• Installed all new stainless-steel appliances and a new farm-style sink with faucet

Here's what it looked like when we bought the house (previous owner's decor):

And here's what it looked like afterwards:

(Note: These were all taken a day or two before the final, final details were done, so in these pictures the cabinets don't all have pulls.)

Looking the opposite direction, before:

And after:

Here's another shot of the island:

And the tile backsplash:

While we were living there, one of my favorite spots in the whole house was the dining nook, even when it was under construction, just because of the windows:

And the view to the backyard:

We managed to pull of this renovation for a very small sum. We had originally planned to spend under $5,000, but in the time crunch had to hire out a couple of the bigger jobs, which put us over budget. The breakdown looked like this:

Materials
Stainless steel appliances (fridge, stove, dishwasher): $2600
Tile & materials (caulk, grout, etc) for counters and backsplash: $980
Sink & faucet: $300
Two additional cabinets to fill in after layout change: $250
Construction materials (lumber, wire, etc.): $100
Stock moldings & beadboard: $205
Cabinet hardware (pulls): $200
Lighting: $240
Paint: $100
Materials Total: $4975

Labor
Tile installation: $1500
Painting Cabinets: $500
Labor Total: $2000

Grand Total: $6945

Not bad, eh?

Since we are selling our house, we're upgrading the kitchen. I wish we had done this sooner, but at least we're going to be able to have brand-new granite tile counters for the listing. The tile installers are coming on Thursday and Friday of this week to install the tile backsplash and granite tile countertops. Thank goodness we finally found a tile that worked within our budget!

I have to admit, I needed help with this. We knew we wanted granite tile (still granite but less expensive than slabs), so we went shopping, put together some ceramic tile for the backsplash, found some hardware, and chose a granite tile, like so:

It's beautiful. But at $12 a square foot, plus installation, it was outside of our price range. Even with the drastic discount from slab granite ($80 a square foot, installed), we couldn't get the price low enough. Everything else that we looked at that was in the price range was ugly.

So I got a referral to a staging expert, Cheryl Petrie of Petrie Productions, and man, she's awesome.

Cheryl, our amazing decorator, went shopping for us (which, more impressively, she did it for free) and found this:

It's porcelain tile, beautiful color, and it's only $3.50 a square foot. Brilliant. Except that it wouldn't have a good edge and we would lose the whole "G-word" factor. So we resigned ourself to the expensive stuff. But Cheryl, ever vigilant, went shopping for us again (also for free) and found this:

Granite tile, in our color palette, only $6.25 a square foot! Excellent! So that's what they're putting in Thursday and Friday.

Oh yeah, and here's the best part of all. While she was here, I showed her our kitchen lights, which are hideous:

She agreed that they were hideous. But I explained that we'd looked and the boxes were in exactly the wrong spot for putting in a different fixture (off center and out of alignment) and that we couldn't afford to redo wiring to move them and put pendants over the island (the ideal choice) and that we didn't have the headroom for recessed lighting. So we were stuck with them.

And what did Cheryl say?

Track lighting.

Of course, my respone was fairly predictible: Are you kidding me?

No, she wasn't kidding. She told me to go to a couple of the big box stores and look because there's new track lighting that's affordable and charming. This is what I found:

Is she a genius or is she a genius?