We’ve got a one-level pillbox ranch house, so any dreams I had about lovely Newell posts, grand staircases, and whatever else are pretty much out. However! I do have one set to put my mark on, and that’s the stairs going into the basement.

even Saffron is a little creeped out standing on them

Up until very recently, I mostly tried to ignore them. They were rickety things, covered in the same shit-colored carpeting as the rest of the house, and always a little too shallow for my comfort. It was honestly an area of the house that I tried to ignore as much as possible. Vacuuming them never made them look any better/cleaner. They always gave just a little too much whenever you’d walk down them, too, and whenever I’d be carrying laundry down, I’d try to push the story about how Kevin’s mother fell through one of the steps out of my head. I had to work even harder at not thinking about them when Kevin took a good look at the underbelly of the staircase and found that the treads were basically just flimsy boards held in place with nails on either side, and no supporting brackets or boards or whatever you’re supposed to use to keep your stairs from cracking under the pressure of anything that weighs more than a hot dog.

Sigh.

I was at clinicals (the nursing school kind) a few weeks ago, and Kevin sent me a blurry cameraphone shot of something indiscernible, although I thought it looked like carpeting. It was basically a crappy version of this picture:

Gross. And now, we’ve got this:

The improvement is obvious, although the amount that the stairs give when you’re walking down them is ALSO quite obvious now. And scary. Eventually, these stairs will be replaced with sturdy ones that we’ll never have to worry about falling through. Yay! As for design, Anna over at Door Sixteen has done a couple of posts (1, 2) on staircases from which I’m going to draw heavy inspiration. I’ll have to keep my eye on Ferm Living for the next time they’re having a wallpaper sale. Oooh, or Minimoderns (yum).

This is probably what we’ll end up doing in the room. Somewhat boring tile floors that are readily available at the hardware store here in town, with grey or black grout (we learned our lesson with bright white grout in the upstairs bath, that no matter how clean it is, it shows EVERY FLAW and EVERY SPECK OF EVERYTHING, cripes), shallow pedestal and toilet, corner shower stall, and white walls. We’re going simple on the lighting fixture, and there will be a little nook alongside the shower where I want to hang bare pine board shelving for towels and toilet paper. We’ll also need a hook for the hand towel (I love this octopus one), and I’d like to go with a wooden bathmat to carry over the shelving theme. Cute, but a little boring.

If I had my choice, I’d go with a nice punch of color on the floor, like these vivid Mexican cement tiles in a bold graphical pattern. Sigh. Kevin will veto, I’m sure of it.

Also, I’d like to do a large, interestingly-framed mirror that’ll run the length of the space behind the sink and toilet, so I’d better start junk shopping for one. Brand new will be outrageous.

You see this pile of cabinets? We’ve been hoarding them since January of last year (well, most of them anyway), paying to store them off-site until we’re ready to remodel our gross-but-mostly-usable  kitchen. We had grand plans for these babies, to strip the disgusting paint, rust, and goo off of them and repaint them a glorious, gleaming bright white. We even bought a vintage 50s Chambers stove to match the theme, one without a pilot light and with an oven compartment so tiny that I would have had to buy all new tiny baking sheets to fit inside, and which we recently sold to a very stylish barber from Riverside because we just couldn’t reconcile ourselves to the idea of eventually using it on a daily basis. That was a sad day, giving up that gorgeous hunk of porcelain and chrome, but it had to go.

It’s time for this pile of cabinets to go, too. With so many pressing items on our list of shit to do with this house, the kitchen is pretty far from even being considered ready to renovate, and the monthly expense of housing these supplies has really stacked up. We finally came to the conclusion last night that, once we’re ready to gut and remodel, we’ll either find another set of metal cabinets (in better condition, hopefully), or else we’ll buy new from somewhere (this is starting to become my preference, due to the customizability).

With this decision in place, I’m allowed to start fantasizing in earnest about IKEA kitchens, which is my current favorite in the running for new kitchens.

My friend Alice's new kitchen makes me swoon

via flickr

mmm, shiny red! via flickr

via flickr, love the whitewhitewhite

Anna from Door Sixteen's ikea kitchen, which I love

In the meantime, I need to go through the room and decide what I can do to it to make it less depressing. Sigh.

I’ve got this dream, you see. I want to buy up a few acres of land in Colorado, where when you get far enough from Denver it’s VERY CHEAP (we’re talking around $1,000/acre), and stick a camper or non-trashy trailer on it, and have it be my home-away-from-home, my vacation haven, where I can escape to and avoid modern society and get dizzy from high altitudes and be peaceful. Is that too much to ask?

The current carpeting has been in place in the house since somewhere around 1988, and in the intervening 22 years, it’s been exposed to who-knows-what, including dangerously toxic mold/mildew levels, pet dander, dead skin cells, and whatever has been spilled on it over the years. The result is that I’ve had to start taking my allergy medicine year-round, and most of the time while he is home, Kevin can’t breathe without a very heavy, wheezing crackle. It’s scary, and it needs to be resolved. And if it’s something other than the cruddy carpeting? Well, we’ll move on to the next possible solution with glorious new flooring.

Here is where the herringbone comes in: I’m obsessed with hardwood floors in this pattern. Lookie here, and you will be, too:

Our lounge really isn’t a bad size, considering the fact that we live in a pillbox rancher from the 1950s. This bookcase, as you can see, makes the room look quite a bit smaller and more crowded. Also, it really limits the layout of the room, because it’s impossible to put it on any other wall. And sure, we’ve got cool stuff, and we like to showcase the REALLY cool stuff, but it doesn’t need to be out on display at all times. We want to streamline.

Over the weekend, I came across the shelter blog The Brick House (via Anna from Door Sixteen) for the first time, and I became smitten with her DIY shelving wall unit project. I’m talking deep smit. I love the very minimalist lines, with lots of wall white-space visible. Kevin’s into the idea, although he thinks it might be a little too “industrial” for his taste. Any ideas on keeping the same general concept, but making it a little foofier?

I wonder if I could convince Kevin to help me set this up if I promise we can do one for him in the garage, too. Hmm?

I know what you’re thinking.

“Wait wait wait, the kitchen? It’s usable! What about finishing the bathroom? What about working on the lounge area in the basement? What about what about what about?!”

We’re both pretty sick of the kitchen, and if we’re going to be trapped inside over the winter, the season during which we do our most labor-intensive and creative work at the stove, we’d might as well be in a room that we like to look at and use, am I right? I think I am.

Anyway, before I get to a few inspirational photos that I’ve collected lately, I want to ask you readers a couple of questions:

1. What is your favorite thing about your kitchen?
2. What do you wish you had in your kitchen?

On with the pictures:

From Retro Renovation

Pam's Kitchen from Retro Renovation

From Design*Sponge

From Design*Sponge, I love the FermLiving wallpaper and black countertops

From Decor8

Alice's kitchen from bread&honey, I love the green cabinet interiors

From Apartment Therapy, I love the shelves around the window

From Apartment Therapy, I think I want a tile backsplash

From Apartment Therapy

From Apartment Therapy

From Apartment Therapy, we're definitely doing black and white checkered floor tiles