What If…: a house log
By now everyone’s likely aware that there is a $5,000 bonus up for grabs for the person who earns the most votes on their project over on BHG.com (remember we did this to our porch?). And although we are holding steady at second place, a bunch of people have commented and emailed us to ask what we would do with BHG’s $5,000 bonus if we were lucky sufficient to take it home. Of course our initial reaction is consistently “well, we hate to count our chickens… especially since the competition is so fierce and we certainly have some ground to make up…” but since you folks are quite (quite) persistent we figured we’d indulge you (and ourselves) and let our home-improvement-loving imaginations wander.
After all, $5,000 is ten times the amount of money that we had for the challenge (!) and although we would donate some of it to one of our go-to housing charity here in Richmond, we’d certainly put the rest right back into the house (no shopping sprees at Bloomies or fabulous vacations for us). Of course your votes would assist that become a bit closer to a reality (if everyone who read this post voted once a day until June 12th we’d certainly be contenders). So without further ado, here is what we’d do:
#1. Retile the hearth of the living room fireplace (it is in fact simply old red terra cotta tile that we painted white and then sealed with about a hundred coats of water-based polyurethane). We’d enjoy to do something with white river rocks, glass mosaic tile or even white marble so here is hoping…
#2. Replace the boring builder light fixtures in both of our guest bedrooms. But they both will not simply be something off the shelf. That would be too straightforward. We are thinking we’d enjoy to Hands-on a large drum shade with little cascading tabs of white felt, or even something woven or rattan (perhaps made from a repurposed runner or a few woven placemats).
#3. Fully overhaul the 50-year-old bathroom. We are talking tile work, perhaps some wainscotting, a new vanity/sink, etc. We did our best to salvage our vintage tile, but there are cracks and discolorations everywhere we look, so one day we’d enjoy a complete redo. And that day would certainly come sooner with a little extra cash in our wallets (and you know John’s itching to pick up the sledgehammer, right?)…
#4. Add a lounging area to the patio. We’d bring in some planters, some posh West Elm-ish lounge chairs, a few accent tables and even an all-weather rug to make our little table-only patio into a bona fide outdoor room. Perhaps even build a stone fire pit. That would be cool, right?
#5. Introduce a bit of layered, textural interest in the half bathroom. This one’s gonna be a surprise so that is all you get.
#6. Transform our secret room. Yeah, we in fact have a separate entry basement under the sunroom that right now looks like this. Fairly nasty, eh? But we have dealt with some fairly bad befores and we in fact have a plan for this mindnumbingly terrible cinder block prison.
You may be asking yourself if we are confused and think that the BHG bonus is $50,000 and not $5,000, but we are low-cost little buggers and a few of these projects would only run us around $100 which would leave a lot more bank for a few of the more major tasks on our dream to-do list.
And of course we have to say that we are extremely thankful simply to have been included in the challenge and to be among such fabulous fellow bloggers! And if the extra moolah is not in the cards we still have big plans here at Casa Petersik. This is simply what happens when we let our imaginations wander… we get all hyper and sweaty. Thanks for the lively!
