Neat Features

When my wife and I found out we were going to have a baby we were thrilled. Of course having a baby meant needing a nursery. And the only room available was my freshly decorated / built office. (I’ll let you guess who no longer has an office.) Deciding what to do with the nursery was one of the hardest tests our marriage had yet faced. Fortunately we live in the internet age and were able to use Pinterest as a way to fight a proxy war for decorating the room. And over the course of a few months, we eventually settled into a design.

I firmly believe that without Pinterest, we’d still be arguing over paint colors.

While it all worked out for our family (and our son loves his room, except, of course, at bed time.) What I wished I had seen though was this fun idea for decorating a nursery. For this nursery they had everyone who came to the baby shower bring a different letter – and then used those letters to hang on the wall.

One of the hardest parts of decorating a nursery is finding what to use. Pictures are nice in living rooms and dining rooms. But for a nursery you want things that are more sentimental. Simply hanging a picture to fill a wall just doesn’t feel right.

Plus, kids love looking (and touching) things. So the more texture you can have, the more they’ll enjoy being in their room. And let’s face it, when Junior wakes up at 2 AM, you’ll love just about anything that will keep him in bed!

Question: Why do doors have to be boring?

Answer: They don’t when they’re bright yellow and actually a barn door for your bathroom.

Dana Miller at House * Tweaking shows us that doors can be functional and fun.  (Although I must admit, that’s not really a sentence I ever imagined myself typing!).

She took wood from a fence and recycled it into a sliding door for the master bathroom.  And then painted it a bold yellow.

I know this sounds weird, but this really is one of the coolest doors I’ve seen.  I actually feel inspired by this door.  (Again, weird.)  But hey, what can I say, I love this door!

image by Dana Miller from House * Tweaking

I have a five year old daughter at home.  And that means one thing: a mess.  There is stuff everywhere.  It’s as if she’s genetically designed to leave a wake of destruction behind her.  Clothes on the steps.  Crayons under the table.  Barbie’s on top of the TV (the sacrilege!)  It goes on and on.

At first we thought this would be a never ending battle.  It might even be the equivalent of Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru (an unwinnable test.)  But then we bought a house.  Realizing a house was just a larger place for a mess to develop, we decided our very first DIY project would be to get her room organized and painted.

It was our (apparently foolish) belief that our daughter would want to play more in her room, and therefore bring less of the mess to the rest of the house.

While I think that was a good strategy, it hasn’t completely solved the problem.  And on some days, it hasn’t even made a dent.  The challenge we have is that our house is 101 years old, which means limited storage and play-space in that room.

That’s when I came across this house.

While it has many normal features for a house, there’s one feature that really stands out.  One of the bedrooms has a built-in playroom/fort/cave!

The moment I saw this, I realized it would be perfect for anyone with a young kid.  You could easily turn it into a fort, spaceship, castle, Barbie-ville, or whatever your kid is into.  Plus, this is something I always wanted as a kid.  I forever was planning (or building) tree forts.  I never dreamed I could have one in my own room.  It’s just too cool.

Do you have a Neat Feature of your own? Consider submitting it, and we may post it.

Normally Neat Features focuses on the architecture of rooms or some Do it Yourself project that adds a bit of personality to your house.  Rarely do we talk about furniture.  And of course by “rarely” I mean “never.”  But I can’t help myself.  I feel like we’re living in the future when I look at the Easy Breeze Bed.

It’s a bed that cools you off when you sleep.

Is this the future or what?!

Apparently the bed draws cooler air from under /around your bed (one hopes without the dust bunnies) and once “purified” sends a gentle breeze over you while you sleep.  They claim that it will cut your AC bill by 60%.  And for a price tag of $4500 for the bed, it better!  I have to admit, the idea of being cool, but still getting an outside breeze from an open window does sound nice.

Now the cool thing here (ha ha) isn’t the climate control.  It’s the fact that the BED is doing the controlling!  What a crazy messed up world we live in!  I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the bed that brings me breakfast.

Do you have a Neat Feature of your own? Consider submitting it, and we may post it.

It’s funny how your perception changes.  I’ve seen pictures of painted walls before.  But until I wrote a few weeks ago about “what kid wouldn’t want to sleep and play in this room?” I never really paid attention.  But now, of course, I realize that they are everywhere!  It seems that I can’t help but turn around and see a kids room with playfully painted walls (say that three times fast!).

Take, for instance, this great image of a frog playing.

This particular image is in a Cape Cod house. Now Cape Cod’s tend to feel a little on the small side.  Add the fact that the room itself is only 12×10, and you have a recipe for claustrophobia.  But with the image, and the added sense of depth, it makes the room feel much larger.

I’m starting to wonder if my parents didn’t hold out on me when I was a kid!

Do you have a Neat Feature of your own? Consider submitting it, and we may post it.