Happy holidays!  We hope that you’ve all been having a wonderful holiday season and are gearing up for an amazing 2015.  We feel especially blessed this year, being able to spend it in our new home and make the first of many holiday memories in this crazy place.  We’re at the point in cleaning and fixing where we finally felt OK having family over to celebrate the holidays here, so we were thrilled to get the chance to use all of our old original appliances for what they were really meant to do — entertain!  (Yes, I just realized we owe y’all a kitchen post.  Next on our to-do list!)

We were especially thankful that Santa came early this year, in the form of a Craigslist post for dining room furniture!  We really thought our dining room was going to stay empty for a long time, because we were holding out for MCM furniture but didn’t have much of a budget for it.  Then I was poking around Craigslist last weekend, and found a set of chairs that made my heart stop.  They were super funky, unlike anything I’d seen before, in amazing shape, and were in our budget!  AND, not only were the chairs gorgeous, but there was a coordinating table available too!  We road-tripped out towards Lancaster the next day to check them out at Blockhead Furnishings, and had an absolute blast…  seriously, that place is a wonderland of MCM furniture.  Two floors packed to the gills with beautifully restored and so-good-it-doesn’t-need-restoring stuff…  we wanted to just move in!  Not only did they give us a great deal since we were getting multiple pieces, they rushed to deliver them the next afternoon so we’d be able to use our dining room for our Christmas celebration with family.  Yay!  (Thanks Scott and your team!)

The saucy chairs with caned backs:

The coordinating table:

Yay to having a usable dining room!  (And Skunk likes it too!)

As we decorated the house for the holidays, we also found a pleasant surprise in the attic: the previous owners had left us their Christmas tree!  We’re not sure how old it is, but it’s old enough that the design is something we haven’t seen before — all of the branches hang down in long strands from the top, instead of sticking out like spokes of a wheel.

It was in pretty good shape — we spent several hours picking old tinsel strands out of the branches (a big no-no since we have cats), other than that it was good to go.  So glad we had something else from the house that we were able to use!

From us at Biohazard Manor to all of you, may you enjoy the rest of your holidays and have an amazing New Year.  We’ve been having so much fun sharing our craziness with you as we go, and we can’t wait to have you along on the journey as we keep going!

Has it really been 3 weeks since our last post?  Nothing major has been happening at Biohazard Manor, just ongoing little fix-y and tweak-y things each day.  Today we kicked into cleaning and fixing overdrive though, because we’re hosting Xmas at our place for my family.  If you’re anything like us, inviting people over is usually the kick in the pants we need to actually straighten the house up, so yay for the holidays!

As we worked on cleaning and (still) unpacking today, Jack was able to put the finishing touches on one space in the house that makes it the OFFICIAL first part of the house to be completely decorated!  *thunderous applause*  are you ready for the big reveal?  That space is…

MY CLOSET!!!!

*crickets*

Yes, it’s not as exciting as a full room, but for me I’m in heaven.  I’ve been getting dressed out of suitcases for the last 3 months while waiting for the closet to get an overhaul, so to have everything DONE is glorious.

Let’s first go back to the original look, shall we?

My closet is a small walk-in (yay!), but was of course completely nicotine-stained (boo).

It had originally been painted pale pink to go with the pink marble in the vanity area, but years of cigarette smoke left it sort of a dirty mauve.  In this shot, you can see the original vs aged/nicotined shades of pink, where we peeled off some big faded flower stickers.

The 2 things I actually liked about the closet:  1. the funky ceiling light fixture…

And 2. the linoleum floor, inlaid with cutouts of navy blue glitter butterflies.

Given the nicotine damage, we were going to have to prime every inch of the inside of the closet and start with a blank slate — the walls are a bit textured (probably paint over textured wallpaper), and so scrubbing the brown stains out was going to be near impossible.  So for the colors, I figured we’d match the walls to the cream linoleum floor…  And for the trim, I decided to play off of those navy glitter butterflies in the linoleum, and do all of the shelves and trim in navy metallic paint.

I love how it came out in the end!

Given the size of the closet, the wall space gave me the opportunity to hang some old photos from Vogue that I’d had framed a million years ago.

And even though the original light fixture was cool*, I just couldn’t resist swapping it out for something a little girly and glam — a mini crystal sputnik chandelier!

Woo-hoo!  So, yay for one teeny bit of the house being complete *checking off the box*, and yay to what is hopefully continued momentum to keep feathering our nest!

*if you like that light fixture, we actually have it up for sale on our Etsy page — you’re welcome to it!