The convolated path to design inspiration

E   very once in a while inspiration strikes. That happened Friday night and it came on so strongly (I think you might have been able to see the light bulb over my head) that even though I was snuggled under the blanket, I jumped up from the couch to run from the basement to grab the object of my inspiration.

But before I tell you what that is, let me tell you the convoluted path my brain took to inspiration. I’m in the middle of what I thought was just a little sprucing up of the kitchen but the other day it occurred to me that this is on the verge of an all-out eating area renovation. I found some lights that I love in this picture on Houzz.

For a week now I’ve been obsessed with those lights, but they are not in the budget. So I’ve been searching the Internet like a Google maniac looking for an acceptable substitute. After a lot of hand-holding by a friend (who has the completely unpleasant job of walking me through these minor home decor-related obsessions), I came to the conclusion that I’m just going to have to adjust the budget to accommodate those lights. And then I made a really bad mistake. I added up how much this “little” project is going to cost. And I felt ill. Even though I’ve impressed myself with my ability to find great deals on this project, it’s still way more than I intended to spend and frankly I wish I hadn’t done that little bit of math.

So that brought me to the “entry” portion of this project. We have no real entryways in our house. Both doors open up smack dab into the middle of a room. There’s not a closet to be found anywhere in either room. Ten dollar coat trees my mother-in-law brought over the day after we bought the house have done a yoeman’s job, but we have the bad habit of loading up the one in the kitchen to the point where it sometimes falls over. Although I yearn for one of those stunning mud rooms with little lockers and a padded bench on a slate floor and oh, dream of all dreams, a place for dogs coming home from a beach play day to lay until I can get around to cleaning them up, the fact of the matter is that it’s just not going to happen at this little cottage. So it’s time to get creative. And at first, I thought something like this from Pottery Barn’s Samantha collection would do the trick.

Well, turns out the area I have isn’t nearly wide enough for that and then there’s the little bit about that budget that I more than blew. So I thought, OK, I can do without the bench. We have kitchen chairs three feet away to sit on if we get so wobbly we can’t get our shoes off without sitting down. So I started searching for a smaller version of the shelf that we could put some oh-so-cute baskets in for mittens, hats and dog leashes. Still looking at $100 or so and nothing was really what I wanted.

Then I started looking for an Ikea hack or something that would work. Maybe I could just put up a Lack shelf with a basket on top, hang some hooks underneath and call it a day. Too modern. Then I thought I could find a small bookshelf and mount it high. Too, well, too bookcase stuck to the wall.

Then I came across this post at Apartment Therapy. Hmm, those boxes are sort of cool. Maybe I could stick those to the wall with hooks underneath. Well not those boxes … they were sold out and too expensive for a wood box anyway.

So I ended up finding this way cool old soap box (a box to display soap, not the kind you stand on to spout off your thoughts).