All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
I bought my first house a few months ago. It was scary and exciting, but the best part was getting to decorate the new house! Thanks to Pinterest, I was able to browse and save my home decor inspirations. ThinkGeek frequently showed up on my credit card bill. Etsy proved to be a great place to hunt for treasure, as always. One thing was sure, after years of having no control over what went in my apartments, I wanted to make my house decorating adventures as environmentally-minded as possible.
With this new endeavor completed, I was extremely curious to see my fellow GeekMoms' houses. It is with great pleasure that I announce our new series: This Geeky House! One of us will periodically showcase our home and the geeky things we put them through. Here's how I geekified mine:
1. Cork flooring
Our first task was to replace the old dirty stained carpet with new flooring. I wanted hardwood floors at first, that is until I found out about cork floors. Cork is environmentally-friendly since it doesn't require cutting down the tree, it is also naturally antibacterial, and bouncy on impact. All very good features when you have a toddler! Moreover, I just like saying I have cork floors. Cork! Who'd have thought?!
2. Mythic Paint
The second item on my to do list was to prime and paint every single ceiling and wall. It was extremely important to me to have a non-toxic paint. I have a kid in the house that I don't want to fume to death, not to mention I had many many hours of painting ahead of me and I didn't want to deal with that terrible paint smell for such a long time. I researched it on the internet and chose Mythic Paint. It's a zero-VOC paint that received good reviews online, so I gave them a try. If you didn't know, VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds included in regular paint, which is estimated to contribute about 10% of ozone depleting substances in the US.
I was very worried that eco-friendly paint wouldn't handle like regular paint, but in fact it handled wonderfully. Yes, it was more expensive than regular paint by a good margin, but it was absolutely worth it to me: no nasty paint smell, non-toxic, extremely good coverage, and I didn't feel one ounce of guilt washing my paintbrush in the sink knowing that stuff was going to the ocean.
3. Great Etsy finds
I was hesitating with a theme for my daughter's bathroom. We wanted it to be for her, while still being not too infantile since it's also the main bathroom for house guests. I was browsing Etsy when I found this little (big!) gem and that's how we ended up with a dragon themed bathroom! This decal was the talk of the party for at my house warming party. Gotta love a princess who can save herself!
4. A Reading nook
While browsing Pinterest, I found this idea for converting a closet into a reading nook. Well, I was moving from a small apartment to a house with a garage (so much storage space!) and I'm a no-junk minimalist at heart, so I suddenly found myself with more closets than stuff to put in them. What better used for an extra closet than creating a little reading nook for the kiddo! Here's the Pinterest inspiration:
Here's my own finished product!
5. Another Pinterest idea come to life: messy art frames!
I love bringing in chaotic elements in room with an otherwise clean design. Inspiration from Pinterest here:
Completed!
6. ThinkGeek and another finds
My geeky master bathroom, complete with periodic table shower curtain from ThinkGeek, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spider-Man towels from Target (I think, they've been with us for a long while), and Invader Zim art!
7. Art, art, art!
I'd be willing to pay very good money for handmade geeky art, alas it is very hard to find. Some of my best tricks for getting geeky art on the walls: cut up pages from comic books (Lucky Luke pictured below), shop from your favorite web comics (in my case xkcd and Penny Arcade), print screenshots of your favorite video games, or visit the network website of your favorite cartoons for free downloadable images!
I hope you liked the tour of my geeky home. I can't wait to see what the other GeekMoms have in store! What are some of your tricks to bringing geeky elements to your home decor?
