A little no-cost makeover

Anyone else out there relieved to pack away the holidays?  The house always looks so large once the tree is down, and the holiday decor is safely packed away and out of sight for another year.  However, the large space always leaves me feeling the urge for a change, and a fresh room.  It'd be easy, given all the money in the world, to plan out a fresh new space.  The trick though is to try a no cost makeover.

Our room has pretty good bones.  The couches are neutral, there's a brick fireplace, white slatted blinds, hardwood floors, etc.  I couldn't picture the room pulled together though (for our no-cost makeover) until the other day that I sat on the opposite couch in the room and it came to me.

Our makeover will be based on this color scheme:

 

So, the execution plan will consist of the following:

Paint ladder shelf black (I showed you this shelf before here)

Recover couch throw pillows in white fabric (I've done that once before, here)

Add series of four Black and White NY City prints to the room (from the office, that's not being used)

Reorganize picture frame ledges (see them before, here)

Add white cylinder lamp shade to current lamp, plus add another lamp (this room is dark at night!)

Re-arrange furniture

Here's the room now (right after Christmas decor was removed).  

NOTE: This is not for the faint of heart... I'm not proud, and I wouldn't consider this room pulled or put together in any way... ok, disclaimer over, now you can see the photos.  :)

How on earth do you decorate/stage a fireplace like this?!

The tree (9ft this year!) was in that back corner

Anywho, I hope to work on this room this weekend.  Our adorable baby boy though is so cute, that I just love hanging with him, so I'm not sure how much I'll get done!

Just thought I'd share.  Now, to get this done, and be excited over our room again!

Initial Artwork: Letter C

I suppose initial artwork, or lettering in the nursery is nothing new.  It's nice to stamp a nursery, or a kids room with their name to make it more personal.  (Heck, I've even talked about my love of monograms before too!)  When we settled on a name for our baby boy, I was able to purchase a white letter "C" to try to attempt a project along these lines.

So, here's what I did.

First I took an $8 clearance frame from Home Goods (regularly $25!).  Of course, the butterfly motif wasn't going to quite cut it with the baby boats bedding.  :)  It was all wrong!

The white frame stayed, but the green mat was painted blue.  I painted this with acrylics, and I think it looked like wood when I was done.  I just loved that the mat was cut to fit the square frame already, plus the cut out/lined details were great.

Because of the depth of the frame, I was able to adhere the C to the board, and still have room to close the frame down.  First though, I needed to cover the cardboard backing with green houndstooth fabric, that matches the curtains.  I used spray adhesive and adhered a piece of fabric to the top of the cardboard.  Since the mat was going to cover the edges of the cardboard backing, I didn't fold it around the back edges... just simply adhered to the top.

Then, after a failed hot glue gun attempt at putting the C on the fabric, I checked out my E6000 glue for it's specs... turns out it adheres fabric to wood with a 3 smiley face rating (I guess that's good?!)  So I dabbed it on the backing of my MDF "C" and placed it in the middle of the fabric (I had lined up the mat as a guide.)

Then, just cleaned and reassembled!  Oh, I just L-O-V-E it, but am even more excited to see it on the wall in baby boy's room!

It's amazing what a little vision and paint will do!

What do you think about the transformation, and colors?

More to come on the nursery progress.  Labor Day Weekend brought a lot of progress that I can't wait to share!

Recovering a Glider Ottoman: Polka Dots

I was excited to have energy this weekend, but I'm disapointed at how fleeting that little bit really is...  Sunday became the day to do some of our first nursery projects (9 weeks now, we should get moving!)

My first project- one to really dig in and finish wasn't small- well, the piece itself is small, but the project wasn't!  Today I recovered the ottoman that matches the glider I purchased for the nursery:

I've recovered furniture before... in fact, these two projects, Tiny Footstool, and the Grey bench should have given me the practice I needed for this project.  I should tell you though, that Dutalier, the manufacturer of our glider, really makes quality product, which made the initial dismantling more difficult than expected!

The blue fabric was the victim of a horrible recovering job (I purchased the glider chair and ottoman at a garage sale in a nice neighborhood by our house).  They just stapled blue fabric OVER the existing dirty upholstery!  So while the first layer of fabric came off easy, the second did not.  Using the best tools I knew, I pried about 150 staples out of the cushion until there was a clean (enough) layer to work with.

(yikes!  The fabric was just trying to JUMP off this ottoman because it had been done so poorly!)

(surprise!  There's another layer of fabric under there!)

Turning it upside down allowed me to remove the cushion much easier

Conveniently, the black mesh covering had holes cut out for where the screws held the top to the bottom

Take a look at all those staples!

Then, finally was the *easy* part: laying the fabric out, cutting to size, and stapling the new fabric around.  The corners were tricky, but I did them the same way I have on my other pieces (they have two folds rather than the typical "professional" way of having one fold on each corner.)

I left the black mesh backing on so that the screw holes would remain visible, thus making screwing it back together easier.  And also, I left a small amount of the old fabric and staple lines on the underside.  It just wasn't worth prying them ALL out.

(picture with flash...)

(picture without flash... in a poorly lit room...)

I'm pretty happy with the results, and glad that the chair/glider itself just needs the cushions recovered, which should be made quick work of with the sewing machine.

A full shot of the glider, which is next:

Until then, I leave you with a few more progress sneak peaks of the nursery-to-be.  Oh, and let me just tell you that we DID purchased the following today:

-  40 ft of beadboard
-  Chair-rail to cap beadboard
-  Baseboards (for the 3 carpeted bedrooms!)
-  Olympic NO VOC paint in PPG color "Lime Green":

Z filled holes, sanded, and painted the ceiling today.  Now we're really on our way!  I'll be hitting that green (in more ways than one!) paint up this week.  :)

Tons of small holes were filled, and the closet doors were removed...

...which left some really hefty holes that required wood fill, not even spackle would do the trick on those bad boys!

Baby steps to the finish line, but it feels like we're on our way now.  I can't wait to see the paint up!

Thanks for stopping by :)

Flooring Project(s) Part 1

It's here, it's here!

Tomorrow morning our floor installers arrive to strip out our Fun-kay carpet, and replace with the awesome flooring we purchased last November.  :)

This project has been on my list of House To-Do's since I started this blog, if you can believe it.  So, that's why I'm beside myself to see it get going.

To recap, we're having around 600 sq ft of Armstrong Rustics Premium, Homestead Plank flooring in Prairie Brown installed in the common areas of the house.  Here's a color sample:

It's dark brown, with grey undertones.  We're also having the baseboards replaced too, so the crisp white boards constrasting the dark wood is going to be awesome!

Just so that I remember how BAD the carpet was, I went through the house after the first round of furniture was moved the other day and took these horrific photos:

Front room had a rug down, but with the dogs, you can see how dir-tay it got.  Gross!

Another front room shot, with our nursery glider to be re-covered (that I mentioned in this post the other day)

The small bit of laminate flooring at the entry way is also being ripped out.  We'll have our dark flooring flow right from the door to the back of the house, and everywhere in between!

Hallway will also have the new flooring, and WHITE baseboards!

This shot is looking away from the dining room back to the hall.

Another benefit of this project is getting to reorganize, and re-decorate the place once we see what the new flooring looks like!  So, we'll get to put the house back together (ok, Z will get to put the furniture back since I can't lift it when I'm pregnant) and refresh the place!  Then, we'll get to do the nursery.  This is so exciting!

That Magic Red Lamp

ok, Ok, OK.  I finally got up the courage to finish my Milk Jug Lamp.  Yes, yes, I posted about him weeks back.

What do you think?

This baby took a while, because through the process: 1. I changed my mind (shocker), 2. dealt with rain and bad weather (CA has seen some bad storms lately) and 3. I had to re-sand him down after the first coats due to paint drips.  What can I say, I was over zealous with the spray paint in a few areas.  :)

Another thing I learned?  Red is hard to paint with.  To get full coverage, no streaks, and no white spots (on the first try) takes talent I sure don't have.  I understand the art of painting a car now.  Plus I was once told that red is the most difficult color to match.

Anyway, I digress.

I started with this lamp, and these two main inspiration photos (one from Pottery Barn, and the other from Shades of Light)

 

 My $10 thrift store find

  

Pottery Barn, $189

 

Shades of Light, price unknown, but over $200...

What, you say?  My lamp looks nothing like either of those?  Refer to point #1 above.  After getting the primer on the lamp, and choosing an off white called "Ivory" (Rustoleum Heirloom white would have been 1000 times better) the lamp base started to look more like the original version from the store!  Totally not what I was going for.  In fact, very far off, from what I was going for.  Sigh.

 

 

Z suggested some color (love him!) and so, I took out my colonial red spray paint, and proceeded to cover the horrible ivory.

Now, as I mentioned in point 3 above, I had drips all over!  I guess I wasn't patient enough to do many light coats this time, which could have helped on that front.  It seemed like after the third light coat though that it wasn't covering so I kept it on some areas longer than spray paint should be.  And got drips.  Sigh.

So, I sanded it down last weekend in the areas where I could really address the drips, and started fresh.

And here, today, with the lamp shade I purchased at Target:

 

...not the greatest photo of the color, because it nearly looks the same color as my new orange drapes.

I'm done.  Finished.  Finito!  I'm putting this lamp somewhere.  I swear. Yep.  All finished, and no home.  Maybe that's because he started hissing when I plugged him back in tonight.  Notice I'm referring to the lamp as a him?  That's because it was an annoying project, and sometimes men are annoying projects.  Teehee.  Just kidding.

All in all, I really do like the color, and the shape, and the drum shade I found ($10 at Target and it's linen).  Just have to find a home.  And a cure for the light buzz he has.  Any idea on how to get rid of that annoying noise?  I don't think it's a lightbulb issue because it has an CFL in it.

For now, that's all.  Laters!

PS: do you think it looks unfinished?  Like it needs a fleur-de-lis stencil, or a number (say our anniversary date) on it?  I was contemplating roughing it up a bit and using paint glaze for the first time.  Thoughts?  Like it the way it is?  Horribly ugly?  Tell me!