The Great Indoor Container Store

We are spending a lot of time and energy on designing our dream house but we are now also starting to look at how we are going to live in it, in other words, what do we want in the house and how do we want it.

Our interior designer assigned to us by our builder suggested we check out two stores in Columbus (about 2hrs from us):

1. The Container Store
2. The Great Indoors

The Container Store can be described as an upscale IKEA. Very nice items, very useful, but its recommended to save up a bit so you don't get floored by the prices. Don't get me wrong, they are not THAT expensive (Crate & Barrel and Pier 1 are way worse...) but intelligently designed and quality made storage isn't cheap. Still, highly recommended for the organizer bunnies among us!

Here are a few of Jen's favorite things:

Really, really cool bungee cord chair for the command center. Now, which color...

Really cool--really pricey--closet organization by Elfa. We especially love the mesh drawers and I like the pant holders.

Jen likes the purple example better.

It'd be nice to have those drawers in the pantry, too.

This might be cheaper.

Or this.

Jen loves this idea for the her new chef's knife.

This would be a great way to organize D's toys.

Jen loves this idea for upstairs trash and recycling...

...but this one is way better for our budget!

Cool catch-all for the mudroom.

The Great Indoors is part of the Sears brands and can best be described as THE one-stop-shop for indoor home ideas. Not always the cheapest either, but I think we found our floor tile winner, the Emser Strands line. It has really nice lines in it. The cool thing, actually one of the cheapest tile we've liked so far. Under $5/sf. We found a blog that shows some pictures of this tile in a bathroom. And another one that uses the 12' x 24' tile. Pretty cool.

We like the 12x24 tiles.

Emser Strands display.

We're thinking the dark one on the bottom for the mudroom and foyer, and a lighter one for the bathrooms.

We also saw a very nice backsplash, Solistone Mardi-Gras (either the Carrolton or Metaire) that sky-rocketed into Jen's top 3. It looked splendid with the dark chocolate cabinetry and the lighter countertops but seems to be about 20% more expensive so hopefully our builder can score a nice discount for us... One can always hope.

wide view: the tile is green than it appears here, we like  the way it's subtle, but still adds color  to our chocolate and white kitchen.

close up: the glass tiles have little lines in them that give the subtle color variances.

** Rant alert **
I also saw one other thing I cannot understand, the built-in refrigerators. Think of the GE Monograms, Viking designers and the like with > 36" and barely over 20 cu ft of space but costing well over $5000... Why in the world would you pay a $3500 premium JUST to have a fridge even with your cabinets while having LESS space??? Doesn't make any sense to me, but hey, to each their own. It's a free country and apparently there are plenty of people that are willing to buy them... Plenty minus 2... ;-)
** End of Rant **

We topped the day off with a visit to our number 1 fast-food place, 'Culvers'. Go there, get the butter burger and frozen custard any you know why. By the way Culvers, there is room for you in North East Ohio...