Posts made in October, 2009

New Windows: Part 2

Posted by Lindsay on Oct 23, 2009 in DIY, eco-friendly, Featured Articles, windows | 0 comments

And here they are!  I can’t wait to paint them.  Or take the sticker off of the bathroom window.  You know how that goes…just haven’t had a chance to get the gooey stuff off yet!  But the sticker has some useful info:  We purchased them from our local Ace Hardware and the brand is MI Windows and Doors (the company is in Pennsylvania).  They are Energy Star Qualified in all U.S. zones.  They are vinyl windows, double paned low-e glass.  It lists the energy performance ratings, beginning with the U-Factor, which is 0.34.  The Solar Heat Gain Coefficient is 0.31, and the Visible Transmittance is 0.59.  The +DP is 30.0 and the -DP is 30.0.  What does this all mean?  If you click over to EnergySavers.gov you can find out all of this handy information.

The U-Factor is the rate at which a window, door or skylight conducts non-solar heat flow.  The lower the U-Factor, the more energy efficient the window (ours is 0.34, which is pretty low).

The solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) is the fraction of solar radiation admitted through a window, door or skylight.  The lower the SHGC, the less solar heat it transmits and the greater its shading ability.  This means that it won’t fade your furniture.  Ours is 0.31.

Visible transmittance is a fraction of the visible spectrum of sunlight (380 to 720 nanometers), weighted by the sensitivity of the human eye, that is transmitted through a window’s, door’s, or skylight’s glazing. A product with a higher VT transmits more visible light. VT is expressed as a number between 0 and 1.  Ours is 0.59, so it transmits more than half of the visible light through the window.

DP stands for design pressure and are rated by testing the window to pressures equal to 1.5 times the DP requirement. So if a window is rated to DP40, then it is tested to 60psf. If a window is rated to DP20, then it is tested to 30psf.  Ours are rated DP30, so they are tested to 45psf.  Design pressure actually applies to wind speed, and a DP15 can withstand wind speeds up to 95 mph, so I think that DP30 is pretty good!  {Info. via replacement-windows.com}

The brand new pine trim is very pretty, but we can’t wait to get painting! Check back with me next week to see how our painting went over the weekend…or how it didn’t go. Have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend! xo, L.

{Info. via EnergySavers.gov and Replacement-Windows.com}

{Color Therapy} She’s a Brick House

Posted by Lindsay C on Oct 22, 2009 in Color Therapy Thursdays, Exterior, Featured Articles | 2 comments

Okay, so I know that I promised to post pictures of our remaining new windows today, but I need to wait until tonight to take photos.  I didn’t take any last night and I didn’t like how they turned out in the morning light, so I’ll post it tomorrow.  Plus I can’t stop thinking about what I’m going to post about today instead!!  In my blogroll you’ll see a link to Urban Grace Interiors.  It is a blog by a Florida Interior Designer named Ericka, who is also a new mommy, and she has the most beautiful taste I have ever seen {it reminds me of the designer I did my internship with, actually}.  Plus she can write a super short post about Purex Sheets for laundry and receive 144 comments.  Anyway, if you haven’t headed over there before, you have to take a look.  But that is not what this post is about.  See, Ericka has an identical twin sister named Darby who also has a blog {Fly Through Our Window} that I recently discovered.  She blogs about her kids, their family, crafts, recipes, God, life, their remodel, etc.  She lives in Alabama.  After reading through the first couple pages of the blog, I came across her post on Exterior House Details.  Their house was so ugly when they bought it two years ago.  Scary ugly (I’ve seen a couple of Ericka’s posts about Darby’s house on Ericka’s blog – am I confusing you yet? – and the house was crazy, crazy ugly.  But all homes have potential, don’t you think?).  Okay, I’ll just show you what I mean.

I really love the color orange, but this freaks me out.  But amazingly, she turned the bathroom above, into this:

So that is just a glimpse into her talents.  And remember, Darby is the non-interior designer twin!  Anyway, back to what this post is really supposed to be about: her Exterior House Details and how much I am drooling over her paint job.  Her house (like mine) is brick.  Multi-colored brick.  With a lot of wrought iron.  We’ve talked about painting our brick, but part of the beauty of brick is that it never, ever, ever has to be painted.  So we’re a little torn.  I could talk about the pros and cons of painting my house, but that is for another day!  Well after seeing Darby’s before and after, I’m very, very tempted.  I love her colors.  Here it is before said paint job.

And here it is today.  Don’t you love it?

I think my favorite part is the doors.  Good news for us, she was kind enough to note what the colors are!  The body is called Clarksville Gray, the trim is called Texas Leather, and the doors are a custom mix {all colors are by Benjamin Moore}.  For the doors, she wanted a darker and richer version of the Texas Leather trim, so she asked for double the formula of Texas Leather, plus some black.  Pretty smart, right?  I really love black/gray/almost black exteriors, and this house really makes me swoon.  And I love the contrast of the gray against the green in the trees.  Plus her roof color (it looks like dark gray shingles) is my favorite as well – when we re-shingle our roof we’ve already decided on dark gray or black.

What do you have to do to paint a brick house?  First you have to power wash the brick.  When you start to consider finishes, you have to know that masonry ‘breathes’ so you need a special masonry sealer (she used a product called Loxon by Sherwin Williams, which primes and seals brick).  Any large cracks or gaps should be caulked after this step so that no moisture gets in under the paint.  Then you can simply paint the house with regular old latex or oil based exterior paint.  There are other coatings out there that you can use, but this way sounds the most simple to me.

Another option, which we’ve considered, is whitewashing the brick instead.  This is an inexpensive brick coating that can easily be applied, can last 20 to 30 years, but doesn’t start the vicious cycle of maintenance that you start if you paint the brick.  It gives your house a faded look, but it can be a completely different look than naked brick.  Think of an ‘English cottage’ look.  Or how E.T. looks when he’s really sick in the movie.    There seem to be a few different ways to create a whitewash solution, but you basically start out by mixing ivory hydrated lime and table salt then add water.  You can paint it on as thin or as thick as you want, leaving as much or as little exposed to give it the look you’re going for.  (Info via Ask the Builder.)  Here are some examples of what a whitewashed house might look like.

{Image via flickr, linked}

{image via flickr, linked}

You can whitewash interior bricks, too.  Oh yeah.

{image via Apartment Therapy, linked}

As you can probably tell, I really love Darby’s exterior color scheme.  And I think it would work with our house whether it was painted, unpainted, or even whitewashed.  If you look really closely at our pink brick, it has flecks of taupey gray and dark gray/black material in it, so that is what I’ve been studying to pick paint colors for our trim, doors and accents.  I just haven’t made up my mind yet.  But I’m liking this a lot.

I bet Glenn never thought that we’d live in a pink house!  Are any of you out there brick dwellers?  Have you painted? Or even whitewashed??? Let me know!!

Great inspiration here.  I even love her garage. What do you think of her exterior?  Or her orange bathroom!  I hope you enjoyed this little bit of color therapy this Thursday!!  I know I did…and I just had to save it here.  xo, L.

{images via Darby at Fly Through Our Window, linked to sources}

New Windows: Part 1

Posted by Lindsay on Oct 21, 2009 in DIY, Featured Articles, windows | 2 comments

Hallelujah!  All I have to say is…I love hiring other people to do the work around here, ha!  We’ve never hired a professional until now, and I am so glad that we did.  I wish we had A LOT more moolah so that we could just sit back and let others do the big jobs that we have planned around here.  Don’t get me wrong, we love to do a lot of the work ourselves, but sometimes it’s nice to save the headaches and the cursing, and hire a professional.

I’m sure some of you are saying “It’s just new windows…why the heck didn’t you guys tackle this project yourselves?”  I know a lot of people who have installed their own windows, and it can be a fairly easy DIY if you know what you’re doing.  Well…we actually hired someone this time because our house is brick.  And our single-pane, metal frame original-to-the-1963-house windows were mortared in.  Not installed in a nice wooden frame like most windows; they were in there for good.  Anyway, our favorite contractor figured out the easiest way to get it done right away, and we think they look great!

As you can see, the metal frame, single-pane windows cause a lot of moisture and condensation, and that means mold. Yuck. Bye-bye mold.

For the breakdown, we have a total of 10 windows in our house. I am so grateful that the two eight-foot windows in the living room are already updated, and our sliding glass door to the backyard is nice as well. I don’t know if we would have even bought the house if those needed replacing. Anyway, our room and Harper’s room both have two windows that needed to be replaced, there is one in the main bathroom, one in the office, one in the kitchen and one in the laundry room. We decided to prioritize the window-replacing based on how last winter went. We knew that the two bedrooms were a priority, especially because Harper sleeps in her own room now (she slept in the bassinet in our room last winter), and we wanted to make sure that her room stayed warm. There are four windows right there that were a priority. The window in the bathroom is also a priority, in my opinion, plus it is the smallest so I knew it would be inexpensive – it’s only 2′ x 2′. I hate stepping out of a hot shower into a FREEZING bathroom. So there are the five windows that we are getting replaced today. We’re going to wait on the office, the kitchen, and the laundry room windows. There is also a window in the garage, but I doubt we’ll ever replace that one.

This would have been a fight waiting to happen if we attempted this ourselves! I decided that paying a contractor would be a lot cheaper than a divorce. Just kidding!!

My favorite part is the new wood trim around the windows. Our house has no architectural details whatsoever, and so this made me very happy.

Now to paint!

Isn’t it pretty? Note to self: buy Glenn a router for Christmas so he can make me lots of pretty (and finished) things like this.

I’m so excited to put Harper’s shades back up tonight…her room was so bright this morning, she was up at the crack of dawn!

Nice view, huh? That’s the neighbor’s green house, their red kerosene tank, and a little shed next to our house that we plan to rip out and replace with a gate someday.

We got ours back up last night, along with the blackout shade, so our room was like a cave this morning! It blocks the light even better than before with the new trim because there are no gaps! It is so nice, because this window faces east, and the sun will shine right into our room in the morning. Talk about a wake up call! Our contractor said that the light shining through shouldn’t be that bad anymore, though, because he chose low-e windows for us (i.e. it protects furniture from fading as well as saving energy, so it filters some light). Gotta love our new, energy efficient windows!

The next step is putting a coat of exterior primer on the framing that is on the outside of the house before it gets too rainy and cold. We’ve been talking about putting up some paintable trim on the outside of the windows, to inject some color and detail to our ho-hum exterior. I’m wondering if this would be a good excuse to get it done!

Bye bye, nasty old windows! Stay tuned tomorrow for how the rest of Harper’s windows turned out, and for the new bathroom window! I am so excited for that one. We’ll be doing a lot of painting this weekend. And catching flies…with the open windows there are everywhere in our house today! Nice, right?

I also can’t wait to share the rest of the projects that our new windows have inspired.  Isn’t that funny?  Getting a long awaited project finished gives you the motivation to start the next one!  Does that happen to any of you??

Thank You to My Advertisers!

Posted by Lindsay on Oct 20, 2009 in Advertising, Blogging, Etsy Finds, Featured Articles | 0 comments

Just a little note, reminding everyone to check out the advertiser bar on the right side of the page!  You’ll find some great treasures over there, and I want to thank all of them for their support.

First up is Mahogany Ridge Guest Ranch, a quaint (and beautifully decorated) guest house in beautiful Jess Valley, California.  It is a great vacation spot if you’re looking for nothing but peace, quiet and relaxation.  They have 3 rooms, 2 bathrooms, a gorgeous deck and hot tub, and all of the comforts of home and more!  Be sure to visit their website for lots more information.

If you’re in the market for a new home in California, be sure to get in touch with Jennifer Enz, a Sales Associate of United Country Stevenson Realty and Auction Services.  She is very professional, and will definitely take care of your needs as a seller or a buyer!

Have you checked out the CalFinder website and blog yet?  This is a handy nationwide service connecting homeowners and contractors, which are all reviewed by the CalFinder team!  You simply choose your service that you need from the drop-down menu, put in your zip code and they’ll connect you with right contractor, or they can give you FREE estimates!  Pretty sweet, right?  They also have a great remodeling guide, along with a blog and links to some other helpful sites.  Check them out today!

That cute little yellow guy in the bunch clicks over to B’s Wig Shoppe!  A blog authored by Hannah B., who is a talented graphic designer, and an Etsy shop owner!  Right now she’s blogging about Disney cartoons, their characters, their music and why Disney is so successful, which is a fabulous read, so you have to click over there and check out her stuff! But sadly, she does not sell wigs. 

Raise your hand if you’re interested in learning about becoming a better photographer.  That’s what I thought!  If you’re reading this blog, then you’re most likely interested in creative things, and how else do you learn about or chronicle creative things than through beautiful photographs?  And taking beautiful photographs isn’t something that you can just do; it takes practice and direction.  That is where sites like Rachel B.’s Bloom: A Photo E-Course come in.  She takes GORGEOUS photographs (like the one below, from her Etsy shop), and can teach you how to as well.  Come on…I know you want to check it out!

I love, love, love Etsy.  If you hadn’t noticed.  I love that anyone who creates anything can open up their shop and offer their products to anyone around the world.  Like this handcrafted jewelry shop, Kasia Blue.  So beautiful!  I also love that she’s offering a special in her shop for Breast Cancer Awareness Month:

“October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and in honor of that all items marked “Think Pink” will be on sale for 20% off (reductions already taken) with a 10% donation towards the Etsy Project Embrace Campaign (through the American Cancer Society)for your total purchase. Now you can look good and support a means to an end! Remember…THINK PINK!”

Like this necklace here.  Enjoy!

Now who out there thought that mobiles were just for babies?  I did.  But I want one of these for me – not for Harper!!  Check out this Etsy shop called “Salty & Sweet,” which sells mobiles made for anyone.  Like fishing?  There’s a mobile of a fisherman catching a whale in her shop!  Like roller derby?  Go check out the mobile of roller girls skating around in mid-air!  Need a little inspiration for your yoga practice?  You can find a mobile of meditators made just for you!  My favorite is the mid-century modern chairs mobile…but that’s just me!   They would make great Christmas gifts!  And they would be perfect for any space that needs a little dimension and movement, don’t you think?

Next up is an online shop called Rocket Assembly that sells postcards with a little quirkiness – and you know how I am attracted to all things a little quirky!  Cat’s 2009 collection of sketches are so unique, you can’t help but want to buy a pack to give away.  Or I would even frame them!  They also sell original paintings that you HAVE to see!  You should also follow Cat on Twitter because her tweets crack me up!

And last but not least, you’ll notice the long advertising banner below (which is featured on all post pages), which will take you to the website for “Hella Handmade.”  Hella Handmade is a San Francisco Bay Area Craft Fair which will be featuring many of the crafty folks in that area on December 6th.  Ana behind the blog Rearranged Design is heading it up and it is sure to be a complete treasure trove of all things crafty.  I wish I lived closer.  Until then I’ll just have to keep clicking over to the Hella Handmade website and the Rearranged Design blog to stay updated and see what they’ve got going on!  If you live in the area and are interested in participating, then please get ahold of Ana!

These wonderful Likely Design blog sponsors will be featured in their advertising spots until November 15th, 2009.  Please visit my Advertising in Likely page if you’re interested in advertising  here!  Likely Design offers very affordable advertising options for websites, independent business owners, blog authors, shop owners, special events etc.  Your link will be featured in a post once during the month that you advertise with me – such as this post today!

Would you like to offer a giveaway to my readers instead?  Or I can review your product and write a post on it (but it will be clear that I am reviewing your product honestly, and sponsored by you.)  I love to support those who support me.  Feel free to e-mail me at lindsay@lindsaychristensendesign.com if you have any questions, or would like to reserve your ad space.  And please check out the links above – you guys rock!!  xo, L.

Safety First…

Posted by Lindsay on Oct 19, 2009 in Baby Stuff, Featured Articles, Likely Solutions, Living Room | 0 comments

…and unfortunately, style comes second in this case.  Last week we ordered a hearth gate to surround our wood stove because our little Harper LOVES to climb on the hearth, and she is fascinated by the ceramic medallion on the wood stove.  It’s been alright during the warmer months, but now that we’re burning fires we knew we had to protect her.  It isn’t the prettiest thing (I actually really like the look of our stove and hearth), but it is necessary, and we knew it would just be a matter of time before she fell on the hearth or before she snuck past us and got burned.  Not something that a parent wants to think about!

Adjusting the gate angles.

What we purchased is a KidCo Fireplace Hearth Gate, and I bought it on eBay. I love a good eBay deal!  It is nice because it is made to fit around a standard 2′ x 6′ rectangular hearth with 5 – 2-foot sections and a gate in the middle, but if you need extensions you can find them in many different sizes.  The standard 10′ gate set made a nice semi-circle around our corner hearth, and Glenn got it assembled in about half an hour…with me looking on as supervisor, of course!

Still adjusting…

The 2′ gate sections are adjustable to any angle, and it comes with all of the required hardware to attach it to the walls, and secure it to the floor if needed so that it can’t be moved. The gate is very easy to open, if you’re not a baby of course.

Attached, but testing out the gate!

We simply popped the caps off of the end bars, slid on the mounting plates and then screwed them to the wall. There were 4 plates (2 for each end bar). Then you just pop the caps back on, and there are also screws included to attach the gate to the floor.

We had to play with the angles a little to get the gate centered in front of the wood stove, and I was worried that we’d need some extensions when I bought it, but after a little manipulation we got it to work.

And as you can see it’s already doing it’s job!

Let me in!

The gate itself is far enough away, which is made of steel and in a heat resistant finish, so that it won’t heat up hot enough to burn when touched. You can also use these for pets, or to guard a barbecue outdoors. Read more information on the KidCo website here.

Mommy doesn’t have to worry anymore!

Nice Halloween decorations in the background, right?   I’m sure Harper will find them scary next Halloween, but for now she thinks they’re funny and gives them kisses!