art and home by Julie Craigo

Latest news

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Julie

Well…we’ve decided to list our condo! That sounds so weird to say. And I think part of us wonders if we are absolutely bonkers. We aren’t unhappy here. We love our apartment, our neighborhood, being basically downtown and so close to wonderful museums, concert venues, festivals, Eastern Market, the river, interesting people, etc.

But. The decision to list the place was made for a variety of reasons- We have a child now, and hope to have more in the future. Our apartment only has two bedrooms. We want another bedroom, a yard, a garage, a basement, etc. We’re not looking for our dream house, just a little place (without shared walls and parking a block away) we can make our own.

And we’re paying attention to the market. Interest rates are going up, housing values are slowly coming back, and we think it could be the perfect, magical time to sell (and potentially make a decent profit) and buy before things get too crazy. Downtown Detroit is pretty hot right now, and people want to be here. That’s what we’re counting on!

So right now we are in the process of signing the listing agreement with our realtor, and prepping the apartment for the professional photographer to come in and take pics. Basically, cleaning, decluttering, and making it look its best. Thankfully, my two year old is going to stay with her grandparents for a few days, so it will actually be possible to get this place 100% clean and organized! Amazing.

And then after that, the place will be listed, and we’ll wait. We’ll wait to see if there is any interest, any showings, any offers, and we’ll go from there. If all we hear is the sound of crickets chirping we’ll know this isn’t the right time. And we’ll try again next summer. We are in no rush, under no pressure, so I guess that’s a nice position to be in. But really. We hope there is interest. If not, we’ll at least try to enjoy this crazy process.

In the coming days I’ll show you what I’ve done to prep the apartment for pictures/showings. That’s the fun part!

Blue

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Julie

2013 Julie Craigo

24 x 36

Original abstract, acrylic on stretched canvas

Where the magic happens

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Julie

I have an unexplainable aversion to the saying, “Keepin’ it real!”

But, alas…

Painting on a rug is not a good idea. Neither is painting while sitting on your couch. Guilty.

What color for cabinets??

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Julie

There is no doubt that our kitchen is an odd little room. If you remember, our apartment is only a portion of what the original 3,000 sq ft apartment was when it was built back in 1915. It’s now less than half the size of the original. So needless to say it’s been chopped up and reconfigured, probably several times during its lifetime. Who knows what this space looked like before it was “built out” a few years ago. But whoever designed the kitchen a few years ago- whoa. Of course it was a good idea to slam the oven up against the fridge and then slam the fridge up against a wall. Makes perfect sense!

Anyway, that’s really my biggest pet peeve in the space. And it’s a big one. Don’t get me started.

But it is what it is, and I actually don’t dislike the space. It’s a got a big window and door leading out to the balcony, so it’s nice and sunny.

Here is what it looked like right after we bought the apartment, and before we moved in.

Here is what it looked like during its Julie-picked-the-wrong-color phase.

Seriously, I hated that color. In a different space I think I would really like it, but not this space. Felt very cave like. But to be perfectly honest, there is no paint color in the world that could make me dislike those yellow cabinets any less. The floor wouldn’t be my first pick, but it’s staying. The counters? Again, not my taste, but they are granite, so they are staying. The black appliances? They work. They are staying. The yellow cabinets cannot get painted fast enough. But here is my problem. I can’t figure out what color to paint them!!!

Here is the kitchen today: (In progress)

The lighting is weird in there- it’s really hard to photograph. But seriously. Black? white? cream? gray? tan? two tone? Usually I’m pretty decisive, but right now I am truly stumped. Thoughts? Opinions? Love the cabinets as is? Want ‘em?

Why don’t dish towels ever look neat??

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Julie

I got so sick of seeing this (when they even managed to stay up there):

So I got these:

…from Ikea, in case that wasn’t obvious. Pack of two. They are for cabinet doors. Popped them on here:

Now we have this:

One on each side. No more sloppy dishtowels hanging on the door. (I totally just read that last sentence in my head like, “No more monkeys jumpin’ on the bed!” Oh my.)

A view only a Detroiter could love

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Julie

You’re just going to have to trust me when I say that I’ve really come to love our view. We certainly don’t overlook the Detroit River or see the downtown skyline like some lucky people in our building do, but our view definitely has its own personality (and it’s quiet! Ok, I guess that’s relative…) Much like a lot of Detroit, it’s not filled with obvious in-your-face beauty, but if you look for it, it’s there. It has the patina of old age, evolution and grit.

I’ve tried really hard to create a space inside our apartment that is beautiful, and I’ve come to really like the sharp contrast between the soft and comfortable colorful inside with the rather old industrial urban outside. If you don’t embrace the old and the new, the beauty and the brokenness, the light and the dark, you just won’t appreciate or love Detroit. I love Detroit even though I also can’t stand a lot of things about it.

It’s grown on me, this dichotomy, and even though I don’t typically use photographs in my decor (other than family pictures) I’m obsessed with these photographs I took a couple years ago of the old Detroit Boat Club on Belle Isle. I would love to blow one up and put it in our bedroom. Is that weird? I think it would be unexpected and perfect. My husband calls it ruin porn (but I know he loves these pictures too.) I call it love.

“A country without a past has the emptiness of a barren continent; and a city without old buildings is like a man without a memory.” -Graeme Shankland

“There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”
-John Kenneth Galbraith

Balcony Gardening

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Julie

We made the annual trip to Block’s Nursery yesterday. It’s about twenty five minutes outside of Detroit, and totally worth the hassle. I’m not sure why, but the one day a year we go it’s always smoking hot. It’s so mobbed on the weekends that it’s hard to find a parking spot, hard to find a cart, and unbelievably hard to maneuver said cart through the throngs of people who just want to get their 50,000 petunias and tomato plants, for heaven’s sake! Add a two year old to that and it’s a recipe for misery, stress, and a lot of sweat. But it’s still totally worth it!

Block’s is huge. Their greenhouses go on and on and on. We never ever make it to the end, but as we were driving away I think I saw a cashier with no line waiting at the end like a reward for the small few who actually complete the labyrinth. I think they were also fanning those costumers with palm branches and cheering praises. Or I was just having hallucinations from heat stroke.

Either way, they have an amazing selection of everything you could want for your garden. And the prices are extremely reasonable. (And they have the most gorgeous ferns I’ve ever seen!) We spent maybe $30 on fifteen flowers/plants for our little balcony. Not bad. Not bad at all.

We put our two year old to work and before you know it we had ourselves a pretty little city “garden.”

Seeing that all summer long? Priceless.

*We’ve discovered over the years that it’s best to stick to flowers on our balcony, with the exception of the strawberry plant. We get a ton of direct sun in the morning, but that isn’t enough to make vegetables grow past the pygmy stage, as evidenced by this picture from a couple summers ago. It’s hard to tell, but to give you a sense of scale the tomatoes were about the size of mini marshmallows. Haha!

Bird is the word

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Julie

My daughter loves birds. Loves birds. Before she was born my husband and I picked up two whimsical prints by a local artist of birds playing musical instruments to hang in her nursery. It was like we knew.

Yes. Most toddlers like birds, you say. But can’t I just pretend that we had some sort of strong parental intuition going on??

Anyway, a while back I picked up a little cut out of a bird cage at Michaels. They have a ton of these unfinished cut outs in all different sizes, and I think this one was like $2 or something. I spray painted it white and it’s been hanging randomly in Ada’s window ever since.

The randomness has been driving me crazy, so I have plans for a little gallery wall in her room. Gallery walls happen in my world when I start collecting too much random crap that I can’t get rid of because it means something to me.

I liked the little bird and knew I wanted to use it in the eventual gallery wall, but needed to frame it somehow so it could stop looking so ~~cheap~~ random.

Enter- scrap wood and stain. I had a single piece of scrap wood left over from a new bench seat I made a while back (ok, that makes me sound way handier than I actually am) and I actually saved it. I almost didn’t because, um, who saves scrap wood in an apartment? I did. In my coat closet. And it was just the right size. Yee haw.

I sanded down the rough edges and stained the board at the same time I was redoing the kitchen island/cart…kill two birds with one stone, you know? I had to.

I just hammered a tiny nail in the back to loop the string around, and I’ll eventually add a picture hanger to the back when I’m ready to hang it.

Tweet tweet.

You could do some many variations on this- paint the board a fun color, or paint the cut out a fun color and paint the board white. We always tend to have a ton of color going on around here so sometimes going neutral/natural with a few elements in our decor is refreshing.

Ok, time for me to go get ready to look at a house tonight! I know. What is happening???