Creative Room Makeover {After}

Hey, look!  I am actually following up on an after post on one of our home projects!  As I shared in my 12 in 12 post and in my "before" post we have a room right off our entry way that was made for a home office.  It has two closets, which make for perfect storage for all sorts of stuff, vaulted ceilings and a big window.  We needed the space to function in 4 different ways:

1) As a home office for T's day job.  You know we need some space for filing, tech gear, etc. and it also needed to be a space that was acceptable to be seen in the back ground of skype meetings.

2) As a quiet space away from sleeping babes to play music and hang out.  Since T is a musician he needs space where he can write and play anytime without waking the little bear, especially since most of our free time is after she goes to bed.  

3) As a reading nook and library.  We both own waaaay too many books and love to read.  Having a place to store our books and to curl up with one is a must in our house.  

4) Last but not least I needed a space to be able to sew, blog, scrapbook and edit pictures.  

In addition to these four functions, it also needed to be baby safe for days when either of us needed to wrap up a project while the little miss played.  

I think we were able to make it all happen, so without further ado here's our Creative Room:

We started with taking everything out of the room as I shared in my before post, so we could paint.  We chose Benjamin Moore's Divine White color matched to Behr Premium paint and primer in one.  I chose Divine White for a couple of reasons, first, the furniture is dark and the red accents bright so I wanted to go lighter and brighter.  Divine White is also what we painted the entry way so visually it would make that space seem continual and draw the eye in and make the art wall the focal point. Plus, I had a gallon left over from the entry way project, so bonus!  It took three coats to cover that yellow up.  Each time we tackle a project to cover the yellow I always under-estimate how dark it the yellow really is--ugh!  

Once we finished painting we brought the furniture back in.  And weeded through some of our books.  Some went to half price, some went to the attic and some went to other areas around the house.  But we slimmed it down so we could add some knick knacks and whatnot.  

This little snail vase is one of my favorite little details.  I found him at a florist around the corner from our house in Indy.  I am hoping in the spring when the selection is healthier at the local green house to pick up a little succulent to plant in there.  

I am too much of a nerd to not organize my shelves according to genre even though all the home decor sources say to organize according to color, but I did try a little color clustering on my shelves with in genre and only did it with colors that would compliment the other colors in the room like the red and cream.  My thought was the colors that didn't fit could blend into one another by not being placed by one another and the colors that did go together could pop.  

The wall the bookcases sit on is the tallest, largest expanse of space in the room with no doors or windows along it, so I had an art wall in mind that could capture some of our loves--music, memories, babies, letterpress art work.  

In the corner across from the chair on the other side of the big window I created a little nook for me to blog, craft and do my thing.  I saw the NORBERG desk at Ikea a few months back and thought it might do the trick and be a space saver.  Really there is plenty of room for another full sized desk, but I thought a desk that could fold down would be good at motivating me to tidy up my mess at the end of the day...so far...so good. Also, I wanted whatever desk we chose for this corner to be able to be used else where in the house because I have a little more in store for this room when we can afford certain pieces of furniture.  

The chair was free.  It was left behind at one of T's gigs a few years back and so we drug it home and it sat.  And sat.  It was originally a dusty, pinky, orange and covered in dirt from outdoor and music festival gigs.  I cleaned it off, sanded off the nasty old paint, primed and painted it with a white semi gloss.  The basket is to keep track of current projects and they stay on the chair (away from little hands) when I am not working on them.  

I organized some of my other items in mason jars on the desk.  Thread and ribbon and whatnot.  I wanted to hang three of the FORHOJA cubbies above my little area for more storage, but alas Ikea is sold out.  Which is probably good because it will force me to find something more creative or unique off Craig's list.  

I am pretty happy over all.  The room is cleaned up, organized and meets all our needs. It also is light and airy and feels more like "us" than the dark yellow.  I am hoping to tweak it here and there, add a few more prints to the art wall, and of course the cubbies about the sewing desk.  And the mister digs it and I know the little miss likes it now because she can actually hang out and play.  

So there it is!  Our little project.  

Planter Make Overs

As I mentioned a week or so ago, during morning nap time I have been dashing out to the backyard to tidy things up and work on a few projects.  One of the projects I have been working on is figuring out about the planter situation for our patio.  

Our patio pots look like hell.  There is no way around it.  They are faded and sad looking and to add insult to patio injury we were gifted some second hand planters from the previous owners as well that were equally sad and faded.  Since like most folks we live on a budget round here, new pots and planters just aren't in the budget this year, we have other things higher up on that house to-do list.  But I love planting and gardening and growing things too much.  I also like things to look neat and tidy and not, well, like hell.

So I decided to do a quick makeover of our existing planters until next summer (when it will actually be in the budget).  My idea was to gather up all the different style and colored planters both ours and gifted and spray them all a single color to tie them together and cover the fade and ugly and age. 

Here is a "sort of before" picture.  Why sort of?  Well I got so excited about this project I didn't take a proper "before" picture of the whole ugly collection.  When I realized this I snapped a quick pic of the bases I hadn't sprayed yet so you could see the fade, but this is most definitely not the worst of it!

Although the many color to choose from in the spray paint isle were tempting I decided to go with a white semi-gloss to keep things neat and simple.  My goal was to spray them all nice and evenly with a plastic primer and then the white, do the best I could with my two cans of spray and then hope the plants grew over any imperfections.  Quick, cheap and hopefully a little less ugly.  

Here they are after I sprayed them but before I planted.  To be honest at this point in the project I sort of thought they looks not as bad but close.  Well, maybe that's an overstatement but I was still skeptical of my own project.  

Then I filled each of them with sun friendly plants, following the rule of tall growing, mid-growth or mounding and vines.  

I think the purple and yellow sweet potato vines will hide any imperfection and I already think its a nice improvement.  And for the cost of two cans of spray paint ($3.95 each), I think its not too bad!

What projects are you hoping to tackle on the cheap this summer?  

Mirror, Mirror

Remember my to do list last week?  My list included plans to re-do the mirror we bought at the McKinney, Texas Trade Days last month.  I already shared that I had plans to paint it Behr's Steam White.  I already had a quart of the Steam White that I purchased when we bought the paint for our master, as I have a plan to do a tone on tone mural. I want the mirror in the lighter, whiter tone because I thought it would go nicely hanging on the wall opposite the mural over our dresser.  

Here's what the mirror looked like before:

It had a sort of teal base with a white wash over it to create a shabby chic look.  But it didn't really work for our house because the white wasn't crisp, it was more yellowed.  You can see what I mean in the above picture.  

So I set up a little painting area in the garage and taped off the mirror.  This actually took longer and was much harder and took more time that I had thought because of the curves in the mirror.  As you can see I ended up using small pieces of tape overlapping.  

After I taped it off I painted the first coat on the top and sides (but not the bottom, as it would have stuck.  With each new coat I rotated the mirror and skipped painting the bottom edge.  Eventually everything got two coats.  If I had to do it over again I would have laid the mirror flat on something slightly smaller so that I could paint each coat all at once.  Ah well, you live you learn.  

After my final coat had dried, I pealed the tape off and then touched up the edges where the tape wasn't applied smoothly (oops!).  Once the touch ups were dried I took a paint scraper to the mirror to clean off any excess paint.  

After placing the hanging wire on the back (it already had mounting hardware on the back) I hung it above our dresser in our master bedroom.  And let me tell you this sucker is heavy (obviously, it is after all a giant piece of glass).  I nearly squashed myself under it trying to get it on the wall!  But after a few tries I got it up there and I am proud to say it is safely up there.  

Here the mirror is above our dresser in the master bedroom. It turned out to be the perfect size--large enough to hold its own on this large wall, but small enough to not overwhelm our short-for-a-long-six-drawer dresser.  

This was a great find and an easy (and cheap) way to add a little personality and depth to our room.  

This Old House

We did a lot of cosmetic work in our old house. I wasn't blogging at the time and so did a horrible job snapping before pictures so now that I have afters, they are sort of out of context.  I learned my lesson and took TONS of before of the new house the day we closed, so I could document the journey of making this new place ours.  But since 1) I may not have any other reason to post some of my favorite shots of our old house 2) I hope to already have a few before and afters of the new house to post soon and 3) I am pretty proud of what we did, I thought I would share.

This was an area of our dining room.  Our dining room was originally yellow.  I used to describe it as "tuscan yellow" until I was standing outdoors one day talking to a friend about the paint color and saw a school bus drive by and realized it was the perfect color match.  Since I like light and airy, I went with Behr's Chocolate Froth above the chair rail and Behr's Wheat Bread below the chair rail.  Not only did it double the size of the room, but going with the two tones in a lighter color really lifted the ceiling of the room and made it seem taller--a welcomed trick in a 1923 bungalow! 

I am not going to lie, we bought this house for the kitchen.  We wanted to live in a historic neighborhood, but I just didn't have the budget of the patience for the full kitchen gut most of these house require and or need.  And it was just perfect.  The floor tile was a terra cotta with a one inch cement grout.  The first thing our realtor said when he saw it was "this will really limit you on the resale--not everyone likes this look."  Let's just say that it was the first thing people complimented us on in the kitchen, even before the lead glass cabinets or granite counter tops.  Can you tell I just loved it?  The one thing we did do was find appropriate fitting furniture for the space.  The previous owner had this round table there with three chairs--it was really crowded and didn't suit the true "nook" feel (and square footage) of the space.  The print came from Hatch Show Print's store in Nashville and was a limited run they did for a winery that they designed and print the labels for that we actually really love.  

This was the room off our living room.  Technically a "third bedroom" because anything with a closet counts in historic homes in our neighborhood, it was accessed off the main living through french doors.  We used it as an office, crafting space and general hang out space.  part of what we wanted to accomplish with this room was to keep it nice and open because when we kept the french doors open (which was always) it made the living room seem larger.  

I have to confess I debated posting these pics because while this is the room that my little sis and T painted for my birthday I am still not convinced that I picked the right paint color.  Ah well, live to paint another house, right? 

This is just one of my favorite little areas of art found in our dining room.  Sorry the picture is not that great--I was still figuring out my camera.  The one on the left I ordered off etsy (sorry can't remember where) and the one on the right is a framed copy of our wedding vows that T had laid out by a friend and graphic designer for our first wedding anniversary.  I added the birds, which were originally Christmas ornaments made of recycled paper, that I turned towards each other to look like over birds and hung above the frame.  

Another favorite area of mine was our bar.  A friend of mine was retiring and so was downsizing into a condo.  He had a entire book box full of all the match books he had collected traveling all over the world from the 60's through the 90's.  They were so cool I couldn't pass them up.  I then got the hurricanes from West Elm and while I was playing around with them, I got the idea to use the vintage matchbooks as part of our bar decor!  The funniest part of this little display is that for about a month this winter we did light any candles because we had run out of matches in the junk drawer--until we realized that we actually had tons of matches--right out there as part of our decor!  Sheesh!  

The owl is actually part of a pair of bookends that I found of all places shopping with my aunt at Coldwater Creek back in the fall!  I saw them and knew I wanted them for the nursery even while my aunt was insisting that the owls would scare the baby!  But since the nursery was in progress I set one out here on the bar and made it a temporary home in the fall and just ended up staying through winter. 

Hope you liked the quick home tour of our old place.  There are still a couple of other projects and such that we did that I never got good pics of--but like I said we live to re-do another house!