Another cord/outlet domination

May 11, 2012 17 Comments

If you are anything like me, you hate cords. Like, REALLY hate them. They clutter the look of a space and turn what could be a quiet, pretty vignette into a tangled mess. But sometimes the placement of outlets makes visible cordage an unavoidable necessity. You’ve seen me tackle one problem area here (back in the early days of DG-DIY and bad photography skills), by taping the cord string along the back of a table’s leg to mask it. That one worked like a charm, but we had one other area that couldn’t be helped without some rewiring and drywall patching.

Until we feel brave enough to do some permanent rearranging with the outlet placements, our current television/cable outlet situation in the living room was giving me a massive headache.

I had managed to hide the mess of cables behind the record shelf, but those outlet plates were still screaming for attention.

My temporary solution for the issue was to stack books in front of them – About 100 pounds of books, to be exact. I took a leisurely stroll through the house one afternoon, rounding up all of the biggest and heaviest art books that I owned. I had a bunch and they stacked up nicely (literally and figuratively), but there was still something about it that didn’t look quite right.

I still don’t know how West Elm makes their stacks of art books look so unintentional and home-y…

Not only was the look a bit off, but you could still catch a glimpse of the outlets behind the spines, making the purpose of the arrangement painfully obvious. So I redistributed the stack back into the bookshelves throughout the house and started back at square one. My dream was to find some kind of vintage laundry basket, something tall but relatively thin, to put in front of the outlets. Something like that would serve double duty, covering the nasty imperfection and also acting as throw blanket storage.

As a back up, I also kept my eye out for things like large vessels or a vintage speaker with a woven front ala the ’60s or ’70s – I figured both could work in the event that my laundry basket idea (a) took too long to come to fruition, or (2) failed completely.

Fast forward about a month and a half and a miracle occurred. A family friend (who also happens to have been our fabulous wedding planner) hosted a yard sale at her house – As an event planner, and this being only a few weeks before our wedding, I decided we’d go check out what she was offering in case any of it could be useful at our event. Not only did we find tons of fun stuff for the reception, but we also stumbled upon the perfect solution for my “ugly outlet situation.”

Is that hamper not exactly what I had described in my vision??? In fact, I think it’s even better than perfect – I couldn’t have hoped for a vintage style laundry basket with more style and character. Check out that neat cross weave in the wicker and the buckled belt closure! And just as I’d longed for, it has a great big opening for blankets galore!!

I try to limit my use of exclamation points on this blog, but this find definitely deserves a few…It’s one of those times when patience and waiting for just the right piece really does pay off.

Cbeck out the new yard-saled hamper below taking care of our ugly outlet situation in style. You may also notice a furniture shift…I decided to switch things up in the living room, turning the sofa at an angle and pulling our new yellow chair out into the open edge of the space. I think it opens the room to more flow and certainly better conversation. Seems far more welcoming to me.

Here’s the photo of it again before rearranging, so that you don’t need to scroll back up to the top for reference/comparison.

…And now again with the new arrangement:

So what do you think? Do you guys have any other creative solutions for hiding ugly cords and outlets? I could still use all the help I can get…

Have a great weekend!

Filed Under: Living Room, Simple Fixes, Thrift Store Tell All Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Kitchen drawer reorganization

March 28, 2012 8 Comments

Is there anything more annoying than trying and failing to get your cake spatula to fit into the utensil drawer? Well, yeah…there probably is. Like having to wait more than THREE WEEKS for your sizable tax return (::grumble grumble::) – But that pesky over-filled drawer is still up there on my list of pet peeves.

Our kitchen is, for whatever reason, cursed with the skinniest drawers in the world. They are full-depth, but the width is only about a splayed-hand’s-worth (as you’ll see, literally, in a moment). We couldn’t even fit a standard size silverware organizer in the drawer to nicely separate our knives from forks and forks from spoons. To compensate, we’ve had to put them into plastic boxes meant for pens and pencils – Not ideal, if you ask me. The rest of the kitchen utensil drawers (think garlic press,  spatulas, measuring spoons, etc.) were stuffed willy nilly into the only other two available drawers right next to the oven.

Oh, and would you like to see what I mean by a “splayed-hand’s-worth” of room? Behold the proof:

We needed to come up with a solution and fast. With our wedding right around the corner and the possibility of an influx of kitchen supplies, we needed to be sure that our space could handle it – And as it was, it couldn’t. I had no clue what we could do, though, besides heavily purging. Maybe we could live without the cake spatula? ::dejected sigh::

But then John came to the rescue with another of his brilliant ideas.

You see, we have two massive drawers inside our kitchen island. Like probably THREE-splayed-hand’s-worth. Each. At the moment, they were being used for our laughably large supply of junk – Anything from a label maker and rolls of assorted tape, to an address book and batteries.

I suppose it hadn’t occurred to us to use these drawers for kitchen utensils because they are about three whole steps away from the oven/fridge work area. I’ll sacrifice a tiny bit of convenience in order to have some semblance of order though…Thus, John and I decided to switch the contents of the two big junk drawers with that of the three skinny utensil drawers.

The first step of the transfer was to take everything out of the drawers. While they were empty, I went ahead and brushed out all of the crumbs (P.S. how is it that drawers get so crumby? It’s not as though we eat over them!). I also took the opportunity to lay down some fresh cabinet liner paper – I use a vinyl patterned version that I’ve used and reused throughout three different homes.

We decided to use one of the big drawers for the small utensils and the silverware (still in their pencil cases, but hope to replace those after the wedding with something a little classier), and the other big drawer was filled up with the larger, long-handled utensils. It has actually worked out really well to have the utensils in the island drawers – Apparently I do a lot more prep work on that counter top than I realized, and it’s nice to be able to grab something quickly when I need it. And the big square footage means that I don’t have to paw through everything to find what I need or practically empty out the drawer to get to something on the bottom.

They might not look super organized and beautiful, but for practicality’s sake, it’s awesome.

As for the other drawers, we did our best to purge or redistribute things from our junk drawers (which always seem to exponentially grow over time). What was left got separated into the three skinny drawers – One for office things (stamps, batteries, notepads, address book, label maker, etc.), one for random honest-to-goodness junk (gum, tape, chalk, sewing kit, spare change, etc.) and the last one is all John (iPod cables and earbuds, checkbook, old Blackberry phone, business cards, CDs, etc.).

It’s taking us a bit of time to get used to things. I probably reach for the old silverware drawer about five times a day only to remember that it has moved…But, once we get the hang of things, I’m sure the practicality will be a huge stress-relief.

So tell me, what sorts of random things do you have in your junk drawer? We’ve all got ‘em – What do you hide in there? Pet stuff? Flashlights? Photos? Hidden stash of candy? Spill the beans!

Filed Under: Kitchen, Simple Fixes Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Pinspiration Monday: Paint it black

January 30, 2012 12 Comments

So I did something a little crazy over the weekend…And it’s all because of this lovely inspiration image I snagged off of Pinterest:

Source: Live Creating Yourself

Yup. That’s right. I painted a wall in our home black. We aren’t talking a charcoaly, deep gray. No, I’m talking blackety black black.

But before we get to that, I must show you the evolution of this event. So I typically try very hard to avoid shooting pictures of the back half of my studio. The elliptical machine killed any chance that this spot in the room could look chic, stylish and cozy. Thus, for the past seven months I’ve been scheming some way to get it out of the room.

I finally came up with a feasible solution for putting it in the basement, and my sweet fiance went along with it. A day or so later, he had his best friend come over and the two of them wrestled it down a flight of stairs, out the front door, down a grassy hill and in through the basement (there was no way to fit it around the doorway to the basement, so they had to go around the house to the back door). Once the dust had settled, I was finally left with the space I needed to rework the studio into a stylish place that bolstered my creative juices.

This also meant that I finally had space for the twin bed I always wanted in the room – I just think having room for guests makes a home feel so much more welcoming. Plus the room was full of hard, wooden furniture so a little softening up with blankets and pillows and a cushy mattress to flop onto was just the ticket. Here’s the space after my parents brought us their extra twin bed - Things were really starting to come together.

But I just could not get that image of the black feature wall out of my head! I know many of you may be floored by this (nearly everyone who takes our house tour says the color in the studio is their favorite overall), but I’ve never been in LOOOOVVEEE with our “Teal Zeal” walls. They just seem so dark and saturated. It needed to be toned down a bit. Although this may sound crazy, I thought incorporating a black feature wall might very well provide the needed contrast.

One trip to Lowe’s later and we were ready to go – I went with Olympic’s “Black Magic.”

After pulling everything away from the wall and taking down the art from my faux gallery wall (another thing I never really was in loooooveeee with), I got down to business. I ended up taking this on by myself since the space was sort of constricted (not conducive to two people wrestling with paint brushes and rollers), and also because it was just one wall. After painting the majority of our kitchen by myself a couple of weeks ago, one wall with no windows and doors to edge around seemed like a piece of cake.

And it was! No more than two hours later (including 30 minutes of lazy time watching it dry before adding the second and final coat), I was done.

And you know that I couldn’t wait very long before I started styling it…Too impatient for that. After about 15 minutes, I grabbed my hammer and nails and got to work adding the art. This was really the part that I had been waiting for. If you noticed my caption on the Pinterest image at the beginning of this post, I talked about how any art on a black wall would pop. So I went with bold colors and patterns that would brighten up that rich black and turn it into the perfect stage for art magic.

Here’s the final product…

I wanted something that would really make a bold statement above the bed, so I rehung the wrapped canvas art (read all about that here - One of my most-read posts thanks to CraftGawker.com).

Here’s that bookshelf we bought from Ikea last weekend – I finally had a chance to put it together and style it up with some colorful books and accessories.

As for the art over the desk, I used the free printed phrase I tucked inside one of my new Ribba frames from Ikea, and for the extra Ribba frame I just put in a piece of scrapbook paper I had on hand. Not sure if it’s there to stay, but I love how it brings over a bit of the teal color from the rest of the walls.

Over all, I am really glad I went with my gut and painted the wall black. I think it transformed the room into a bold, second-floor show-stopper. When dealing with a studio space, I think the traditional conventions of interior design don’t really matter. Do what will inspire you and, if that’s painting a wall black to give your art a special and unique backdrop, then I say go for it – I’m really glad that I did anyway.

Here’s a side-by-side (or above-by-below) “Before and After” shot to show you how far we’ve come in the room.

What bold colors have you been brave enough to try in your house? Did you regret it or jump for joy that it actually worked out??

Hope you have a great start to your week!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiring, Our Influences, Studio, The Big Reveal, Weekly Pinspiration Tagged With: , , , , ,

Kitchen Overhaul Day 1: Sanding/Prep Work

January 11, 2012 8 Comments

Get ready – This post is a doozy of photos…

As revealed Monday, we have finally (and I mean F-I-N-A-L-L-Y) started our long-awaited kitchen overhaul. Goodbye peachy white-washed cabinets that clash so so soooo badly against the tan walls. Goodbye blah hardware. Helloooo to a countertop that finally has some character against newly painted, dark espresso wood cabinets.

(Oh, please try to ignore that one drawer without his “front” – We detached it and took it with us to Lowe’s so that their paint experts could look at it and recommend primer and paint, etc. He has since been redressed, if you will.)

A year has quickly come and gone and upon realizing that our anniversary is in two weeks, John and I decided to knock this mega project out. Armed with an incredibly detailed plan laid out by day (put together by John, which I will definitely share on Friday because it’s just too precious) and motivated by plans to make a fancy meal in our brand new kitchen for our anniversary, we got down to business.

Be prepared though. I wasn’t lying when I said this post was going to be picture-laden. I think to the tune of about 24 or so. But I’m a visual learner, and for all of you out there like me I wanted to be nothing if not thorough in my use of visuals as we journey through this project.

First step: Remove the doors. A few turns of my screwdriver, and we had one door at a time laid out and ready for prepping. As I took each door down, I marked two tiny pieces of masking tape with a number and then stuck one to the door’s hinge and the other just inside the frame. This is my way of telling where the doors go when it’s time to rehang them.

You can see the pile of detached doors I made in the middle of the kitchen in the photo above (to the right of the island). Once done, John carried them down to the garage where we planned to sand, prep, prime and paint them over the next week and a half.

Next, it was time for sanding. This step ended up being a bit of a doozy and the part where John almost threw his hands up in the air and gave up (I don’t blame him).

The cunundrum? Sanding involves particles and debris. Lots of it. It’s a big ole’ mess. And when you are working in a kitchen on a frame that is not removable, things get even trickier because no one wants sanding dust in their crackers, cereal, water glass or dinner plate. So we had two choices: Remove everything from the cabinets or do our best to cover everything with a sheet or towel to mask it from the dust. In the end, we decided upon the former option and took everything out of the cabinets.

It wasn’t a walk in the park since we were essentially moving entirely out of our kitchen, but it did make things simpler in the long run – I did not relish the idea of wrestling with sheets and drop cloths which may still douse our food and dishes with debris when removed. Plus, I had the perfect opportunity to lay down nice cabinet paper on the shelves and purge the expired stuff lurking in the back of cabinets going unnoticed.

So where did it all go? We packed it on top of and underneath the kitchen table (covering that with a big sheet), in the laundry room, down the hallway to the living room and also into the living room itself.

Once we got to the final two cabinets, both on ground level, we sort of ran out of juice…We didn’t have any more boxes to cart stuff into other rooms and who really cares about dusty cleaning products anyway?? So we did end up covering those two with drop cloths. But after cleaning up, all is well and mostly dust free.

So close to being ready to sand…But not yet.

Before we got to that point, we needed to remove all of the hardware from the doors and drawer fronts and then putty the holes in the drawer fronts with wood filler. We decided not to fill the holes in the cabinet doors because we can use the existing holes for the new hardware. We’ll just drill an extra hole for the new pulls since they have two “arms” whereas the old pulls only had one. But the old pulls on the drawer fronts were centered – Not good. The best way I can think of to explain this is to say that the old hole situation was more like a cyclops with one centered eye, but we needed two eyes. Thus, we filled the holes in the drawers and will drill two fresh holes later on after painting.

To do the wood filling, I squeezed a bit of wood filler int0 the vacant hole and then troweled it on a few times with a…well a trowel. I left a bit of access over the hole to be sanded down once it was dried (recommended drying time was about twenty minutes but I think we waited more like an hour to make sure it was good and dry).

We picked up a tube of tinted wood filler (“golden oak” if you’re curious), but we didn’t really need it to be tinted since it was going to be painted over. There was no difference in cost between the tinted vs. non-tinted, so we just grabbed the first one we saw.

NOW we were finally ready for sanding. John did the bulk of the work here. Well, he really did all of it. But in my defense, we only had one Mouse hand sander and this is more of a man’s job anyway. Don’t worry, I got my payback because most of the painting phase has fallen to me. Look at that boy go to town on the cabinets!!! In his hillbilly camo hat and $2 t-shirt from Wal Mart…Just have to smile.

After a couple hours of listening to the blare of the sander go on and off, the damage was finally done. Time for clean up! As you can see, we had quite a mess to deal with on the counters.

It was as good a time as any for a deep clean of the kitchen anyway, so we vaccummed, scrubbed, disinfected and swept until all was sparkly again.

The very last thing we needed to do that day was get rid of the grit on the wood left behind from the sander. We don’t want all of the sanding debris getting mixed up in our paint. So we picked up four packages of tack cloths at Lowe’s and I simply followed the directions on the packet (unfold cloth entirely and then bunch up) and proceeded to wipe down every nook and cranny on the frame/casing and doors.

Like I said, I initially bought four packs of the tack cloths (each came with two cloths), but only used one of the packs. I had no clue how much I’d use so I over-bought, thinking I would later save myself the trip back out when I needed more. I actually did that with the primer too, picking up two gallons of it. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to return, which is good news! I plan on giving a full budget/cost breakdown sometime next week.

I have to say that, despite all the tedious priming I did Sunday (to be shared in detail on Friday) the tack cloth is so far my least favorite part of this project. The cloth is so sticky and yucky, it was hard to even muster the will to finish that phase. Thank goodness it’s all done and I can happily return those extra tack cloths with a big smile on my face.

I could show you a full-room view of the space post-sand-down, but honestly…You wouldn’t see a difference. Since the cabinets were already light colored, the sanding didn’t really do anything to the look of the cabinets besides take down the sheen. But it did what it needed to in order to prep the surface for paint. Everything was rough and matte to the touch – Perfect for paint to “grab” onto.

So there you have it! An entire day’s labor to prep the space. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that this project has been easy, but having already put two coats of the final dark brown color on the island, I KNOW that the payoff and hard work will be worth it in the end. I have no doubt that one day soon John will come in from walking the dog and find me sitting on the kitchen floor just gazing at our rich, dark cabinets in happiness…

Come back on Friday for a rundown on the priming process! We’ll be painting the second coat of brown on the cabinet doors tonight after work…Wish us luck and strength to get through it!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Kitchen Overhaul Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Furniture crawl

December 21, 2011 6 Comments

So you know how sometimes you arrange a room, but if just doesn’t feel quite right (it happened in the studio a few months ago)? Well I was struck with this very conundrum over the weekend with our master bedroom. Last month, I took a leap and switched the bed to a different wall – I thought I liked it, but after living with the arrangement for several weeks things just weren’t working.

Here was the original original placement of the bed:

Then the next arrangement from the same camera angle:

And now, here’s the latest changeroo from, yet again, the same angle:

All I did was move the bed to the opposite wall beneath the window. Usually I don’t like putting a bed in front of a window, but our bed is a very low platform frame so it hardly blocks any of the view (not that the curtains are ever open to show said view – I prefer the soft white light shining through the linen rather than seeing the row of townhouses behind our house).

The biggest improvement was in the flow of the space. Both positions of the bed chop the room in half, but its the placement of that little cut through by the foot of the frame that counts. Before, I had to swing around the bed to get to the closet and the bathroom. But now, I just flow right and then left with easy movement and no sudden shifting. I know it seems like a few harsh turns wouldn’t make much of a difference, but when you’re in a hurry and need to grab a sweater or brush your teeth as you’re rushing to get out of the house, that extra moment really counts.

For a bird’s-eye-view to help you picture things, here’s a top level floor plan – The bedroom is at the back of the house:

Here’s the view from the bedroom door (all previous shots were taken from the closet door frame):

And since we are at it and the afternoon was so shiny and warm, perfect for a good photo shoot, here are several more details of the master bedroom as it stands today. We are loving the grey walls and pops of color and pattern throughout. It’s really a dream space for me and I think John adores it just as much as I do.

I think it’s kind of neat how the bright light streaming through the white textured linen almost gives the bed this hugely regal and angelic head-board.

For more photos of rooms as they stand today, check out our recently updated  house tour!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, House Tour, Moving!, Simple Fixes Tagged With: , , , , ,

Twisty Tie (and a little elbow grease) to the Rescue

November 9, 2011 4 Comments

Before I get into today’s main project, which uses absolutely nothing but this little household gem:

I wanted to show you a quick bit of rearranging we did in our upstairs master bedroom! Sometimes I just get to the point where I need to move furniture around…There’s something really energizing about waking up to a new perspective each morning – Call me crazy, but it literally makes me excited for the day to know that I have a newly arranged room in the house. Can’t explain it, but maybe some of you other OCD ladies/men can agree with me!! Here’s hoping at least :)

Anyway, originally the bed sat against this wall here:

But now, here’s a new photo from the same perspective – We switched the bed with a little seating area I had set up alongside the bed.

To orient you a bit, here’s an older photo of the seating area as it was before the switch:

And now, here’s that same wall today: (although the camera is now angled towards the right rather than the left…sorry if this is totally confusing)

My revamped night stand also went along with the rearrangement, ending up on my side of the bed again. See that project unfold here!

My sister once told me that your bed should never be the first thing you see when you walk into the room. As you can see from the photo below, the newly situated seating area is now the main focal point from the staircase – I guess we are now following proper bedroom arrangement etiquette! Phew :) (feel free to ignore Luna-the-cat’s toy fish on the carpet)

But back to this little guy…

So here’s the issue…Arrant, deadly blinds strings are driving me up a wall! Now you may be thinking to yourself “Deadly? Isn’t that a bit dramatic?” but if you have kids (or “kids” in quotes, i.e. pets) you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

As you can see, I’ve rigged the long thin strings into the curve of the curtain rod hardware so as to keep them out of the way. If I were to let them fall loose, like so…

This is what happens…

One of our three animals is bound to get curious and start batting around the loose strings. This to a paranoid “mother” of two cats and one dog is enough to lose sleep over. So, until now, the blinds strings have been living in an unsightly mass at the end of the curtain rod in every single room of our house.

All I did to fix this problem was wrap the strings around my hand until there was no slack left. Then I gently slid my hand out, clamped the clean, untangled loop of strings together in the middle and twisted on a white twisty tie that I stole from our loaf of bread – Easy as that!

I’ve only done this trick to the one window in our house (gotta get more loaves of bread to collect the ties), but you can bet your bippy that I’m going to go through the entire house to make sure all the strings are put up and away from curious paws and guests’ eyes.

But we aren’t done yet…Since I was already up and intimate with the bedroom window curtain rod, I went ahead and tackled one other to-do item that’s been high on my list. For whatever reason, the curtain rod was initially hung with a distinct upward trend towards the right side. Since that day of careless hardware install (don’t know where my mind was when we hung them), the obviously uneven curtains have been bugging me to no end. It’s probably not easy to see in this TERRIBLY-lit photo (someone please remind me not to take photos of a window treatment in direct afternoon sunlight!) but the rod is definitely “off.”

I should show you just how badly askew the curtain rod was…Here’s the “bad” side, hung a bit too high and a bit too far from the window frame:

And here’s the “good” side at a nice, reasonable high-and-wide distance from the window:

All it took for this project was a screw driver and some elbow grease! Unfortunately, I uncovered some unsightly anchor hardware…Still need to take care of that. But the right-hand rod hardware is now nice and even with the opposite side. Hallelujah!!!

MUCH straighter…(And no more unsightly wad of stringage to look at on the right thanks to Mr. Twisty Tie!!)

The heavenly glow of the afternoon sun through the white curtains is pretty much exactly how joyful I am now that the curtains are straight and our pets are safe from harm’s way…It’s the little things in life.

What were you guys up to this weekend? Take care of any projects you’ve been meaning to get done like us? We’d love to hear from you!

Filed Under: The Big Reveal, Simple Fixes, Moving!, Product Review, House Tour Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Balancing Act

September 2, 2011 2 Comments

Have you ever had a space that didn’t feel exactly “right” to you? A room that you walked into but kind of wanted to walk right out of? It very well could be the arrangement of your furniture – Something that I learned recently when dealing with my studio. For the most part, I only went in there to work out or grab a supply from the closet. It wasn’t much of a “come and relax!” room.

So a couple of days ago, I decided to take a few minutes to rearrange it. Rearranging furniture is my go-to solution for any room that doesn’t feel perfect – When I finished and took a step back from my “new” space, I instantly knew what the issue had been all along:

Balance.

Allow me to (try to) explain. This is what the studio looked like before its quick makeover – The drafting table was between the windows and was the first thing you saw when you walked into the room. Next to it on the same plane of view was the big paper shelving unit.

(Try to ignore the fallen curtains…Two pesky felines pulled them down during a wrestling match that got out of control between them. John fixed it halfway through the photos below, so we’ll just pretend they are perfect and that this image never happened…)

Flip around and look to the left and you’ll see the desk under the shelving unit John hung for me and also the ugly-but-necessary elliptical machine.

Now that I think about it, I might have forgotten to show you the desk in place since I moved in! The whole “Move is DONE” post never actually came to fruition…Mostly because I was so over moving that I couldn’t stomach the idea of chatting about it. And also because it was so progressive that there weren’t many “updates” to show. But the desk being in place was definitely an update of sorts, so I apologize if I left anyone hanging. Here it is though!

But before you get TOO excited about its placement, I must tell you that it has since shifted to the opposite wall (thus the point of this post).

It’s hard to tell from the photos but it suddenly dawned on me why I felt this inexplicable need to shift things around in the room – The balance was COMPLETELY off.

If you look back a few photos, you may be able to see how the two bulkiest pieces were along the same wall. By switching the desk and drafting table, we were able to displace all of that visual weight into a more diagonal line. Now you walk into the room and focus on the thin desk with its patterned chair (details of which are below) instead of the meaty table and shelving unit together – It all feels much more airy. Plus, the extra color and pattern in the desk chair give it a little more style that the plain bar stool simply didn’t have.

See how the heaviness is all diagonal to one another from the angle below? I know it’s hard to tell from the photos, but I promise it feels much better now in person.

The “pretty” corner of the room…

This is where all of the DreamGreenDIY blogging magic happens!

Still so in love with the fabric on this chair :)

I had to remove one of the shelves from the wall unit because of the drafting table’s top – Its angle is actually adjustable so that, if I had left all three shelves up on the wall, the table top would have banged into it. Here it is down flat:

And here it is pulled up for easier drawing capabilities:

Oh and did you notice our HUGE empty wall? It’s just sccrrreeaammmmiing for some love. I am waiting for our trip to Ikea (which we keep putting off in fear of highway traffic near the store) to pick up a couple arm-loads of white frames. Stay tuned!

One last look at the sweet, light side of the room before we go…

Again, I know it’s hard to see in the photos, but balance is truly one of the best ways to make a room feel finished. I am constantly rearranging furniture until I get the right feeling from it. Apartment Therapy taught me all about flow in a room – Balance is one of the many great consequences of a well “flowed” room.

I dare you to play around with the placement of furniture in a room you feel isn’t quite perfect. If you walk into a room and don’t feel like sitting down and relaxing, something probably isn’t right. Try sitting somewhere in your house that you’ve never sat before – Don’t bring a book or cell phone or anything, just sit quietly and take it all in. In about a minute or two, this entirely new prospective on the space could reveal a few possible changes that could make things jjjuuuusssstt right.

Have a great weekend :)

(Photo credit for “Good Flow”/”Bad Flow”: here - Pretty good information there too if you feel like clicking over!)

Filed Under: Simple Fixes Tagged With: , , , , ,

Dorm living

August 24, 2011 4 Comments

I recently received a reader question that I just had to share – As you can probably tell from the title of this post, it involves dorm room decor! Given the time of year (back to school!), I figured it was the perfect thing to chat about today.

Read on:

“Hi, I remember reading something you wrote a while back about how you have always been very decorative even back when you had to decorate your dorm room. Well, I’m entering my second year of college and I really want to spruce up my dorm and make it feel more like home. I want to start searching thrift stores for some more affordable things to decorate my room but I don’t know exactly where to start. Do you have any key tips that I could use to help decorate my small space? Thank you!”

I was always REALLY excited about decorating my dorm rooms in college. I went through three different colleges before I finally settled on the last one as the “right” college for me – So as you can imagine, I had my fair share of dorm rooms.

The first one I inhabited was with my best friend and we had a BLAST being out of our parent’s houses for the first time. We ended up pushing ours beds together so that we had this gigantic double bed, and we put black light tubes up in the florescent ceiling fixtures. We thought it was the coolest thing when, from the ground looking up, you could tell which room was ours because of the purple glow. We covered the walls with music posters and glow-in-the-dark stars and moons, and brought in handpainted cabinets for storage.

Pretty chaotic right? It was definitely a little manic in there and I wouldn’t exactly recommend this type of design (if you can call it “design”) to a stylish college student. I think Beth and I were just so excited to be on our own that we went a little crazy.

When I moved on to my next college, things honestly didn’t get much better. My first dorm room was actually a converted Econo Lodge Motel…The kind where the the sink area of the bathroom is inside the room (not behind a door) and the front of the room opened onto a metal exterior walkway. I hear they’ve since demolished the building and built something new and fancy, but I actually enjoyed that little room!

My roommate only lasted about two weeks before she high tailed it to a room on campus – I don’t think many students wanted to live in the college dump, as it was known. So I had the place to myself :) The university left all of the extra furniture (we had two twin beds, two armoires, two desks and two chairs between us) thinking I’d get a replacement, but that never happened.

So industrious younger Carrie took it upon herself to make do! I took the bed frames apart, hid the metal and wood pieces behind the desks and stacked the mattresses on top of one another for a platform look. I then went home one weekend and stapled some fabric to a piece of plywood to create an upholstered head board and tucked that behind the head area of the two mattresses. It looked MUCH less “dormy” that way. Of course a photo of this (my first ever DIY project) is nowhere to be found…But I’m sure you guys are imaginative enough to picture it…

For the rest of the extra furniture, I just did the best I could. The extra desk became my entertainment center, holding my television and stereo, and the extra bed (before I transformed it into an extra cushy twin bed by stacking the mattresses) was used as a couch of sorts or just a second place for me to collapse on after a grueling hours-long session in the art studios.

As you can see, I was still following the same punk-inspired crazy wall art, but I tried to group them into graphic squares on the wall thinking they looked a little less chaotic. Of course now looking at these photos six years later, I’m about to have a corinary – Wayyyyyyyyyyy too much going on. But boy-oh-boy did I think it was “cool” back then…

Anyway, when I moved into an apartment my Junior year, I finally started to calm down with the posters and random colors…I was so happy to finally have real furniture and a space that looked unique – Not filled with old ratty furniture totally cookie-cutter-similar to my neighbor’s or roommate’s. The townhome that I moved into with two friends was definitely a step up from dorm living with a kitchen, dining area, living room and a bedroom on each floor with a private bathroom each.

I used fresh, clean white double bed linens in my new space and hung an old shelf that I painted white in the bathroom for my toiletries. I was REALLY into my art history studies at this point, so for the walls, I bought a few clearance art prints from Michael’s and put them in inexpensive black mats for a clean framed look without the high cost of wood and glass. I used an old thrifted white night stand by my bed and topped it with a modern lamp I found in the clearance section at Lowe’s.

As you can see in some of the few good photos I found of the room below, at one point I also used framed scrapbook paper as wall art and a little white shelf as a nightstand of sorts. I also brought a glass lamp from my parent’s house that seemed a little more grown up then the plastic bendable desk lamp I used in my other dorm rooms.

Sorry I can’t help it…Look at how adorable my baby kitty was back then!!! This was four years ago, right after I adopted Luna – She loved my socks.

In short (or rather “long” since this post is now over 1,500 words) how you decorate your dorm room is COMPETELY up to you, but my advice for someone looking to infuse their dorm room with a feeling of “home” is to avoid the made-for-dorm accessories that stock pile places like Bed Bath & Beyond or Target every summer. I can’t deny that there are some SUPER cute thing in those collections (I definitely went hog-wild with them in my first couple of years as a college student), but re-read the words “stock pile” in the previous sentence…Do you really want to follow the trend and buy things you know millions of other girls (or guys!) are snatching up? Maybe pick out a couple of things and then fill in with your own! Pieces like art, lamps and storage shelves can easily be found in places other then big box stores. If you like a lamp from home, ask your parents – Maybe you can bring it with you! Or you can always comb through your local thrift store for special finds uniquely “you”.

Here are a couple of awesome looks I discovered while trolling the internet…

See how using a subdued color palate makes your dorm room a little more sophisticated? By going with earthy colors the dorm room below looks like a cozy room in any house – Yet, if you look closely, you’ll see the white -painted cinderblock walls, bad 70′s tile floor and the window air unit. You probably won’t be able to fit two arm chairs in your real-life dorm room, but you could definitely find a similar floor lamp and style your bookshelves and bedding with this image as inspiration!

I pulled this one because, if you luck out with a room in an older building, you might be able to play up the architecture – Like these AMAZING wood floors.

I know I keep saying that subdued colors are the way to go, but that doesn’t mean you have to cut out color if you’re all for it! The vibrant colors in this room give it TONS of life and personality – But by using patterns and fabrics with a more mature edge, you bring your dorm room from “college student” to “young adult”. LOVE that old redone desk chair by the way…

This one is my all time favorite…The desk chair? The simple, geographic wall art? Refurbished mirror? Yes, PLEASE! The lighting is beautiful (and totally attainable if you can make it to your nearest Ikea) and the bedding is neutral and clean. Adore that leaning, fabric-covered board for jewelry storage too…If you can’t tell from the horrific photos of my rooms as a freshman and sophomore (yes, I now think they are “horrific” after doing my research on today’s dorm room styles) I had an issue with storage – I think we ALL do when trying to live in a small space. Major props to the stylish girls who put this together…

The truth and point is, for someone creative and unique, dorm life is one of the most fabulous times of your youth – You have control over your own space out from under the watchful eye of your parents. Take advantage of this time and infuse your OWN style into the space. You like bright orange? Pick up a retro orange lamp from a thrift store! You want to DIY some wall art? Throw some paint at a canvas and hang it on the wall for next to NOTHING in terms of cost. This is your time to make mistakes (in life and in decorating) so enjoy it and learn learn learn…Your next home will thank you for it :)

(Photo credit for dorm room image #1: here; image #2: here; #3: here; #4: here)

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiring Tagged With: , , , ,

Taste the Rainbow: My Crazy Colorful Art Wall

July 8, 2011 Leave a Comment

TGIF!!!!!!!!!! Or in my case TGITEOTCWW (i.e. “Thank God it’s the end of this crazy work week!”) – Yup today is the last day of my current HR position. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a wonderful experience and I will sorely miss the amazing ladies in our small 4-person department. But it’s time for me to move on…I am FINALLY moving into a more creative-based journalism position with our local newspaper and, although it’s a risk and basically starting over, I’m excited to see where this new opportunity takes me. My first day at the newspaper is Monday, so I will be sure to let all of you who actually care (and I guess those of you who don’t too) how it went!

But back to DreamGreenDIY projects…So as promised on Tuesday (namely involving a strange drawing of a moose and a rhino), it’s time to unveil a little art project that we tackled in the upstairs hallway.

Here’s a reminder of its state before we got down to business on the revamp:

As an artist, I have a “thing” for wall art, which I don’t think too many people can blame me for. I’ve got pieces from fellow artists whom I met during my college years in the art department of CNU, I’ve got my own work, and a bunch of other random pieces from thrift stores, big box stores and everything in between.

Unfortunately, because of my random collection from all walks of life, I have amassed a rather eclectic pile of art – NOTHING really goes together and there’s not much of a theme, but I love each and every piece and don’t really want to part with any.

Solution? Create an art wall! In my mind, this is essentially a wall covered in art that is MEANT to look scattered and purposefully has tons of variety. I’m not sure that this is a technical manner of decorating a wall, but I thought “Why not?”. Plus, we have that big ole’ blank wall upstairs in the hallway just SCREAMING for color.

Well color it GOT!

To begin John helped me pull my unused art from the studio closet. I had them stored in tupperware, behind the shelving units, ON the shelving units and slipped between boxes. Anywhere I could fit them basically.

Once we got them all out, I simply laid them across the carpet in the studio and got to work coming up with an arrangement. I anticipated a very tight and random configuration and I think we succeeded:

(Don’t worry, I will explain some of the most interesting pieces in a sec)

As in the plate wall project in the kitchen, I used the photo above to help me align everything on the wall. I truly commend those who have the patience to make templates from newspaper or painters tape to get everything EXACT exact on their walls, but I just can’t do it…For me, I just refer back to my photograph of the collection on the floor (ex. the drawing of the three women should hang about halfway to the right of the “Kodak” New York painting). Oh and my “measuring” involves these simple steps:

  1. Hold the art by keeping your middle finger on the hanging wire/metal hardware/etc. that will line up with the nail
  2. With finger still in place, bring up to the wall placing it where you’d like it to hang
  3. Flick fingernail to the wall which will be an approximation of where the hanging apparatus should be for the nail
  4. Keeping your finger up against the wall, use your other hand to set the art down and have your incredibly sweet boyfriend/fiance/husband hand you a nail
  5. Place the nail under your finger place holder
  6. Remove finger from the wall and take the hammer from the outstretched hand of aforementioned sweet man
  7. Hammer in place and hang the art!

My measurements aren’t ALWAYS perfect, but they are usually pretty darn close. And it takes about half the time (even WITH a few redos). Sure I probably have a few extra holes in my wall then the more precise DIY-ers, but I like the “quick” approach. Let’s just say that Spackle and I are close friends :)

How’s this for validation of my elementary hanging process though:

We ended up moving a few things around because the configuration got a little too crowded with the wall vent and the table and lamp that I forgot to factor in, but I think it looks pretty good!

I am entirely aware that this type of thing is not for everyone. Like I said, nothing matches and there is no theme (other than being random). But each and every one of those pieces of art is special to me and I like being able to see them in plain view rather than cluttering up an already-full closet.

There’s a fairly good chance that I will get some of the pieces out of my system after a year or so hanging in our hallway, but I bet there’s an even bigger chance that I’ll find something newly sentimental to replace them with. I like the versatility of the collection and of course I love having a gallery wall to do whatever I want with! Since it’s not in a very conspicuous area being upstairs in a pass-through hallway, I don’t think we’ll get too sick of its jarring color palate.

Now to explain some of the highlights!

This one is a movie poster from an old Audrey Hepburn/Shirley MacLaine movie that I ADORE (disclaimer: REALLY intense and not a “feel good” movie, but some of the most superb acting I’ve ever seen):

This is the very first painting I ever did in art school. It’s of one of my favorite places in the entire world, New York City (which ended up being the only vague theme of this collection):

It’s a terrible painting, but it’s definitely sentimental!

This next one is one of my more recent paintings – I’m not a painter, but it’s fun to splash color at a canvas every now and then!

This is a fun piece I picked up at a thrift store for a buck or two – They are mushrooms made out of fingerprints. Totally weird, but TOTALLY fantastic:

These next two are from art students I met and befriended in school. I fell in love with the gritty, graffiti influences in their work and feel like we’ll be seeing them rise in the art world.

Here’s the infamous moose/rhino portrait that my sister’s roommate drew for John – John has a weird thing for these animals, so what could be more fitting then one sitting on the other’s antlers? Sorry for the cigarette, the artist is a little crass…We are a non-smoking household! But it definitely adds to the moose’s character.

And finally, you know I had to throw an owl in there too…

I wonder if he would look fun with a coat of red spray paint to bring him into a more modern, Urban Outfitters-esque era?

So that’s it! That’s my crazy new art wall…Hope you enjoyed it and feel inspired to hang or start your own art collection!

Have a great weekend :)

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiring, Moving!, The Big Reveal Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A Little Kitchen Organization

July 5, 2011 2 Comments

It’s a no-brainer that combining two households is going to yield a lot of stuff…Although I should probably admit that most of the “stuff” packed into the house right now is from “yours truly”. I have NO idea why I have so much stuff (well, maybe my “Thrift Store SCORE” posts each and every Thursday is a hint as to why) but I am definitely paying for that now.

Storage is a hot commodity in the “W” household so this past weekend we did a few things to contain the clutter, starting in the kitchen.

The first item on the list was the pots and pans…I ended up giving most of my pots and pans to my little sister who is ALSO moving and needed a supply of her own. But John’s collection had to be squished together with the addition of my fondu maker (not pictured below but in the right-hand side of the same cabinet).

We plan on either registering or purchasing a hanging metal pot rack (anyone know where we can get a good one? Or is it possible to DIY one??) so the pots and pans are temporarily nested within one another. But the tops are a different story…

Luckily, we hit the jackpot walking through Wal Mart the other day when we found this little contraption!

We had unknowingly stumbled upon a GENIUS way to store those pesky little lids (does anyone else feel like they MUST be procreating? There’s no way that we should have 7 pot lids!!!)  – And for less then $5, it was an easy decision to toss it into the cart.

After getting home, ripping off the label and taking a seat on the kitchen floor, our errant pot tops went from looking like this…

…to this in under a minute flat…

So simple and SO practical!! Now I can’t wait to get those cluttered-looking pots and pans taken care of…Might start researching a hanging system soon just to see what our options are.

The next project we tackled was our refrigerator. It’s not an overly cluttered surface, but it could use a little paring down…Between magnets, business cards, weekly dinner menus, a dry erase board and other random things, it was starting to put my obsessive-compulsive need for cleanliness into overdrive.

That’s when a little Pinterest inspiration gave me the push to do something about it.

Here’s an image (via YoungHouseLove.com) that I pinned to my board a few months ago. It’s a simple project involving the inside of your kitchen cabinet doors, some tape and a few squares of cork board.

I have had a sheet of cork board in my desk since college, seemingly just WAITING for this moment of inspiration and motivation. So I grabbed that along with my other small amount of supplies and got to work.

There was actually only one cabinet door that this 12×12 inch cork board would work on (most of the doors are pretty tall and skinny) so we didn’t really have much trouble deciding where to put it – I sort of love when decisions are made for us…

(Please try to ignore the less-than-glamorous interior of our cup cabinet…)

(Pssst…Did you catch a glimpse of our new kitchen curtains in the photos above?? More on that soon!)

The process DEFINITELY wasn’t rocket science so I’m not going to bore you with the two to three lines of explanation on how to adhere the cork board to the cabinet. Instead, I’ll just show you the photos I took from which you can probably deduce the process :)

Time to fill ‘er up!!!

I put our weekly meal planning list and recipe sheet up there (a product I plan to post about very soon) as well as a phone number list for both of our family members and an engraved bottle top opener that was a gift from my best friend at her wedding. Since this message/paper cork board is on the inside of our drinking glass cabinet, it seemed like a fitting place for a bottle opener.

Just FYI, the slip of paper isn’t really blank…I just blurred out the phone numbers for privacy reasons!

Oh and what about all the other stuff on the fridge that didn’t fit on the new cork board? The dry erase board stayed in place because that’s our main message board for notes and running lists, but the business cards went into my organization binder, the random coupons went into a coupon file I keep in my purse and the drawing of the moose and rhino (something my sister’s roommate did for John) went into an upstairs redo I plan to unveil later this week. I forgot to take an “After” shot of the decluttered fridge, but just picture clean white ::happy sigh::

Two simple yet effective reorganization projects for the kitchen! I’m sure there will be many more to come, but just getting some of the menial things out of the way helps to get us excited to do bigger projects. Speaking of, our kitchen is going to change a LOT in the next few months…We’ve got the paint picked out for the cabinets and the hardware is sitting in a bag in the laundry room just waiting for our big project weekend. We just have to get our courage and patience meters up to par because this will EASILY be the biggest project we’ve ever tackled. Stay tuned for all of that craziness at the end of the Summer…

Until tomorrow, folks!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Simple Fixes, Moving!, Product Review Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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