Extreme Makeover: Entryway Edition

As I mentioned in my last post, we recently acquired a new bench for our entryway which set off a whole explosion of new ideas for a makeover.  Our bench is so large (I can comfortably lie down on it), it made the hanging shelf thing look so pathetic and measly in comparison and we knew a complete overhaul was necessary.  Going off some inspiration photos found on Pinterest, we decided to install some beadboard and build a wall mounted coat rack/shelf.

First step: hanging shelf thing gets the heave-ho.  More like gets the heck sawed out of it until John was able to rip it off the wall.  A stripped screw forced desperate measures.  As you can see below, John had to take the Dremel Multi-Max to it to first try to cut the head off the screw, and when that didn't work, he just cut the hole to bits until we could pop the shelf off.

Next step: building the wall mounted coat rack/shelf.  We're not carpenters or furniture designers, so it took me a couple months of poking around on the internet before I could find a plan of exactly what I had in mind.  In a stroke of luck, I came across this tutorial through a photo pinned on Pinterest (of course).  Going completely off of that tutorial, we picked up all our supplies at Home Depot and headed home to make our cuts.  Cutting the wood itself was easy peasy, but the crown molding was another story.  John had some difficulties getting the correct angles and our first attempt took approximately four hours... even though our Turkish neighbor's father (who speaks no English) came out to help... Once that first piece of molding had given all it could give, John headed back to Home Depot, found a piece of double-sided crown molding, made the cut, it fit perfectly, and it was all over in a matter of minutes.  I should mention this all happened the weekend before last when it was about 35 degrees and we were all bundled up in our winter coats, hats, and gloves.  After the cuts were made, we nailed on the trim, filled the holes, did some caulking along the seams, and took it downstairs for priming.

My lovely priming/painting station.

My lovely assistant.  He has a weird thing for plastic.

While the shelf was drying, we started in on the beadboard paneling.  Our first step on that was to install a thin piece of stop trim along the right side of the wall as a finishing piece for the paneling (so there wasn't just a weird raw panel edge).  After that was up, we cut the paneling to length (they come in 8' sheets and we decided to go with height of 5') and trimmed the bottom to fit over the baseboard molding.  We then did a dry fitting and used some old lipstick of mine (gotta love the Clinique free samples) to mark the register and outlet holes that would need to be cut out.

Step 1: Apply lipstick!

Step 2: Smoosh board on wall to create an outline!

John used his Dremel Trio to cut out the holes and the panels were ready to be installed.  John first used  paneling adhesive and 16 gauge finishing nails, but discovered the nails went all the way through the panel without securing it.  So, he switched to 18 gauge brad nails and that worked perfectly.  I was at work for the installation, but luckily, our neighbor was able to step in and help.

The paneling goes up!

We then installed a piece of chair rail molding along the top of the beadboard to cap that off.  John used some adhesive and brad nails to hang that, followed by some caulking to hide the seams.

The trim!

After everything was nailed into place, I filled all the holes with some Elmer's Carpenter's Wood Filler (in a little tub, not the squeezy tube which is awful and I would never, ever recommend unless you have a vice-like grip), waited for that to dry overnight, John sanded it down, and then it was time to paint.  Our first attempt went horribly, horribly wrong with the roller leaving a gross speckled/raised texture that was just nasty, so we gave up for the night and decided to take another crack in the morning.  So, I went to town sanding down the first attempt (which probably took an hour) and then painstakingly painted the entire thing with my trusty 1.5" Shur-line paint brush.  Luckily, it only took two coats and the beadboard was done.

In the meantime, I painted the shelf a nice light gray (Bedford Gray by Martha Stewart color matched to Glidden paint so we could just buy a little tester tub).  We had originally planned on painting the shelf white, too, but then realized we'd go from a blob of black to a giant blob of white.  Still wanting to keep it light and airy, we settled on a soft, kitteny gray.  When the shelf was dry, John drilled pilot holes and then counter sink holes so once it was installed, the screws would hide beneath the surface and we could patch over them.  John installed the shelf, patched the holes, and repainted and we were close to done!

Pre-hole filling, but it's getting there!  We picked up that giant cast iron "B" on sale at Restoration Hardware.  woop!

We had a slight delay in obtaining the hooks we had chosen to finish off the project.  Our Old Town Alexandria Restoration Hardware is sadly closing (boo), but we did score that giant "B" for 60% off.  The Tysons Corner Restoration Hardware was doing inventory the day I went in and wouldn't sell me the hooks (still don't understand that), so we had to order them and wait patiently for 4.5 days until they arrived this afternoon!  On the upside, they were on sale, so we saved about $36.  In case you're curious, we went with the Vintage Hooks.  After powering up with some Panda Express tonight, we came home and screwed those puppies in.

There's a tiny photo-taking John in the hook!

Bam!  It's done!

Don't you think the scale looks so much better?  And it's so much brighter!  Here's a side shot for you...

But how will it look all full o' coats and such??  Have a look!

We're still working on the shelf decor, so we just threw some stuff up there for photos.  Doesn't look half bad, though.  So, all in all, it took us about a week and half, with a lot of time spent on the crown molding and waiting for caulk/wood filler/primer/paint to dry.  I'd like to get a new appropriately sized rug for the entry way, add some pillows to the bench, and find some more or less permanent junk for the top of the shelf.  For now, though, we're happy... that it looks good and it's done.

Just another picture of Elliot because he's so darn cute.

Merry Elfa-mas To Me!

Back at Overlook, we were enormously spoiled with a cavernous walk-in closet complete with shelving units and lighting.  Here at 64 year old Grafton, our master bedroom closets are minuscule in comparison.  I've been able to make it work, but since we moved in, I've been dreaming about adding an Elfa storage system.  Since most of our readers are Michiganders, you may not be familiar with the heaven-on-earth that is the Container Store (sadly, it looks like the nearest store location is Chicago).  Just another reason to abandon the Mitten and join us here in NoVa (obvious hint-hint, Mom and Dad).  Once a year, Container Store has their 30% off Elfa Sale and I just so happened to have a bit o' cash in my pocket from a Christmas bonus and thought: 2012 is the year my dreams come true.

So, you can go online and enter the measurements of your space and the closet wizard will suggest some designs based on the info you provide.  That is what I did.  Here is what the wizard and I decided on:

It's pretty great because it breaks down every component of your design and you can make all sorts of adjustments and it'll give you the exact price, so there aren't any surprises at check-out.  Once you're done, you can submit your design to your nearest store and they'll put together all the pieces in a cart for easy and quick check-out!  Amazing!  I didn't quite get that at first, so I just printed out my design and brought it into the store and a helpful employee still pulled all the pieces whilst we browsed the store.

Back at home with all the parts, I had to pull out all my junk and then remove the existing shelf and bar... and patch up the wall where our demolition caused some minor damage.

Before Elfa.  The horror! 

My handsome assistant demo'ing the existing shelf brace.

Post-spackle.

The walls of my closet were pretty banged up from me repeatedly throwing my shoes in there.  I thought, why not paint in there?  We have bought paint for our master bathroom and bedroom (months and months ago, as usual), so I brought out the lighter shade designated for the bathroom and went to town on the closet.

Freshly painted!

I'm not sure if you can really get a feel of the color, but it's a soft gray that looks so much better than the flat, banged up white and infinitely better than the nasty old yellowed paper color of our bedroom walls.  I'm glad I love it since our bathroom will one day be that color.  FYI, it's Benjamin Moore's "Big Bend Beige" color matched to Behr's Premium Plus Ultra base.

Once the paint was dried, we installed the Elfa.  You can pay Container Store to install it for you, which would have cost us an additional $180, but we were able to do it in about 30 minutes... which half of that was peeling off all the stupid price tags and opening assorted packaging.  I finally got my Elfa and I love it.  I'm still working on complete organization, but here's a sorta-after for you:

Doesn't that look so much better already??  If you can't tell, there's a top shelf that runs the entire width of the closet which is currently empty.  One thing I'd note for women, buying a couple solid shelves might be better than the wire ones I went with.  I found some of my skinnier-heeled shoes have a hard time balancing on the wires, so we might return one or two for the solid shelves.  I'm just hoping one day when we're ready to leave Grafton, it might help someone realize how much you can shove in a small space and not be scared off by our tiny closets.  In the meantime, I love my newly organized closet and am slightly afraid of how happy organization makes me...

Return to the Slanty Bathroom

Way back in January and as one of our very first Grafton projects, John and I painted our upstairs guest bathroom.  When we moved in, it was a horrible mint color and we thought we'd tone it down with a creamy chocolate brown on the walls and a soft blue-green on the ceiling.  At first, we were thrilled with the results, but looking back, I think we were just happy to have the mint gone and would have been happy with any other color.  A few months down the road with our new color scheme, we were sad to discover it made the room feel small and dark.  So, until we can figure out how to bust out walls and install windows... it was back to the drawing board/paint chip aisle.

Inspired by this bathroom, found on House Beautiful's website in the slideshow "Beautiful Designer Bathrooms", I convinced John to let me try out stripes.  Since it's such a small, plain room, I hoped some bright stripes might help jazz it up and provide some height to the room.  As an aside, aren't those little hexagonal tiles adorable?  Again, I am a little saddened on how modern they went with our home remodel.  Maybe one day we can help bring it back to its roots.

I'm not quite as brave as the designer of this bathroom, so to soften up the stripes, I decided to go with a warm yellow and creamy white, so we have the contrast, but it's not too in-your-face.  I browsed around on Benjamin Moore's website for a bit and sent John out to collect some paint chips before finally deciding on Sundance for the yellow and Creme Brulee for the creamy white (on the same paint chip, just two colors apart).  We headed over to Home Depot with our chips in hand (yes, we're still cheapos who steal Benjamin Moore's amazing selection of chips and get them color matched to cheaper Behr paint) and got our paint.  Thanks to the mistake of a carleless Orange Vest, we ended up getting a gallon each for the price of a quart, so yay for extra free paint!

Our first step to actually implementing our redesign was to paint over everything (well, just the walls) with the Sundance.  Even with our "paint and primer in one", this took maybe three or four coats and forever.  Literally, it was so frustrating and then we got side tracked by several other things, just getting the yellow up took me almost two months.  Shame on me.  After that, it was time for the Creme Brulee stripes which was even more horrible.  OK, it probably wouldn't have been that bad if our room wasn't teeny and our weeks-long heatwave didn't turn the bathroom into an oven.  So, don't be scared of stripes.  Be scared of being trapped in a teeny oven (or I suppose any size oven). 

To do our stripes, I first measured the length of the wall and tried to come up with a stripe width that would give me an even number of stripes that weren't too wide or too skinny.  The wall is 70 inches long, so 5 inches would give me 14 nicely sized stripes.  I went along measuring every 5 inches and putting down a small square of Frog Tape to mark it off.  The trickiest part was to remember what would be painted white and what was left yellow.  The white bits had to have 5 inches of exposed wall while the yellow bits were partially covered by tape.  Then I had to actually tape off the stripes.  I did this using our suction cup laser level, by crouching on the floor, beaming up the laser to match up with my tape squares, and then making sure it was level for straight stripes... in the dark so I could see the beam line. 

Laser level in action!

Good times, crouching in the dark in the oven bathroom... I then carefully applied the tape in a single strip, placing the edge along the laser beam.  John was merciful enough to help me with the ceiling stripes, with his amazing height and monkey-like long and strong arms.

With the tape finally up after months and months, it was time to paint the stripes.  Since some of the tape stripes had been on for a while, I made sure to run my thumb over the edges to make sure they were still stuck on well.  Frog Tape says it'll stick for up to 21 days, but it seemed to do well for us for over a month.  I didn't have a small roller, so I painted all my stripes with my Purdy Cub paintbrush.  Definitely tedious, but I think it gives me the most control.  After crouching around the toilet, crawling around on the floor, going up and down my step ladder, and doing a few ninja moves on the vanity (while being cooked by our two sun-like light fixtures... on the brighside, I think my face got a little tan...), the paint was up and John took down the tape and we were done.  Sidenote: taking down the tape ASAP is a good practice to avoid the paint drying and peeling off as well as providing some inspiration to keep going.

Our stripes are done and I love them so much, even though the process was painful.  They're like my little stripe children.  Here's our almost-complete bathroom.  I'm pretty sure we have the worst house ever for photographs, with our tiny rooms and poor lighting.  These photos don't really do the colors justice and that makes me sad.

So, next steps?  Definitely need to do some decorating in there.  I'm thinking of some watercolor bird prints by dimdi on Etsy.  Maybe like this robin, the state bird of Michigan and frequent backyard visitor of ours.  Simple and whimsical, right?  Plus, we could brag about our imported Italian art.  Molto di fantasia!

I'm also working on a handmade (by me and my sad sewing skillz) shower curtain, using this tutorial I found on Design*Sponge, but with just two fabrics with a solid band at the top and bottom, surrounding a subtle floral fabric in the middle.

We'll see.  At my current rate of project completion, I just might do all this by December!  erf.

Spray Painting More Stuff!

This past weekend I had high hopes of moving on to Phase Two of our built-in project (finally cutting the boards), but Mother Nature had other plans for us, which included storms both days.  Not wanting to end up with a bunch of soggy boards or be electrocuted, we were forced to move onto other projects.  Sure, I could have worked on some existing projects, like finishing up the slanty bathroom re-do, sewing the shower curtain for the same slanty bathroom, or heck, even clean something, but none of that sounded any fun.  I'm not entirely sure how I defined "fun" in hindsight of my adventures...

Somehow I ended up with a bunch of things I did not like in their current state and thought spray painting them would be an easy fix.  First up: IKEA lantern.  We bought the lantern months ago and stuck it on top of our too-small-for-the-wall entry way shelf thing.  Unfortunately, it became another black-on-black situation and just seemed to disappear on the shelf.  So, I thought, how could I make it pop?  Paint it red!  Poor Buddha is our only bit of red and I thought it would help him feel at home among our blue and yellow accents.  Blue, yellow, and red?  Maybe it's all too primary colors, but I like it think of it more as... modern cottage awesomeness.  So, out to the yard it went and after a couple coats of red spray paint, the lantern is now, well, red and much more visible.  I forgot "before" pictures, but I'm sure you can imagine it as black.

Next up: (now this is an exciting one) plant saucer!  I bought an awesome pot months(?) ago at Campbell & Ferrara's for my amazingly still alive violet, but they didn't have any matching saucers.  Dumb.... which reminds me of this commercial...

We bought a plain terra cotta saucer with the intention of painting it to match and like everything else, it sat untouched for months.  After a few shots of spray paint, I now have a sort of matching tray for my pot.  Although the can promises a reflective, metallic finish, I did not find this to be so.  It is metallic-ish, but not reflective and shiny like the pot.  Oh well.  It's close enough and not terra cotta anymore.

Next victim: picture frame!  I think the only room in our house that hasn't been featured in any projects is our guest bedroom which is too bad because it's probably the nicest room in our house.  We only ever go in there to retrieve extra toilet paper, paper towels, etc. from the closet (since our house has no linen closets... darn you house from 1948!), so I guess it's not on our minds much.  I have been thinking about it lately, though, and have decided I'll try for a apple green and navy blue color scheme and stick with our weird collection of illustrations from old books.  We have our apple green comforter, so to bring in the first touch of navy blue, I decided to spray paint a frame we have holding our awesome bison print.  I also added a "mat" consisting of some fun scrapbooking paper that I just cut down to size and stuck the print on top of.

Final project: Frappuccino bottles!  I was scrolling through Pinterest (another site designed specifically to distract me from doing anything productive) the other day and saw some cute little white bottles/vases and I thought to myself, those look like Frappuccino bottles (as I actually had a Frappuccino bottle in hand).  I washed out two bottles, removed the labels (which took a bit of Goo Gone-ing), washed off the Goo Gone, and headed out to the yard with some matte white spray paint.  I thought, how do I spray paint these bottles easily?  Solution: shove sticks in the dirt, place bottles on top, spray.  However, our "dirt" should just be called "concrete" and I could not penetrate the "dirt" at all.  John suggested using an empty flower pot (the final home of our poor bleeding heart before it met its maker), so I put two plastic shopping bags over the pot to prevent that from becoming white, stuck my sticks through the bags and into the dirt, and placed the bottles on the sticks.  That worked wonderfully and now I have two little vases that look more like ceramic than glass because of the matte finish!  Lovely!

Before!

Nakey!

Gettin' sprayed!

On a shelf!  Looks kind of pathetic...

PS, don't the spray painted bottles kind of sort of look like these vases from West Elm?  The little jug sells for $19!  All four bottles only cost me about $5 and I got to enjoy some delicious coffee treats!

In the end, I now have a "new" lantern, picture frame, and two vases thanks to the miracle of spray paint.  Oh, and enough mosquito bites to make me look like I have some sort of pox.  I think Virginia mosquitoes must be craftier than Michigan mosquitoes because I was completely eaten up before I even realized I was being feasted upon.  Maybe that's why I felt lightheaded and not because of the paint fumes...

Or maybe it's because I feasted my eyes upon these handsome boys...

Apologies for grainy pet photos.  The threat of a flash makes Dexter go:

Updating Mirrors with Spray Paint!

I was hard at work hardly working the other day and started thinking about possible new projects and what I didn't like about our house and solutions to those things.  One thing that stuck out was the mirror situation on our first floor.  We hung one old mirror I've had since my freshman year in college that I bought at the antique mall that used to be in the Lansing Factory Outlet Mall (right in between the period between when it used to be an outlet mall and its current state of ghost town) above our awesome pie safe in the living room.  It helps bounce light around from the window, but I realized I had grown weary of its dirty goldish frame.

The mirror in its home.

I decided it was time to update the mirror, help it tie into the room better, and serve as a fun splash of color by spray painting the frame a warm yellow to match our end table pet bed.  First, we took it off the wall to prep it for painting...

Here you can see the color a bit better.

And then I used some pages from one of my thousands of catalogs that arrive daily (seriously, I think we could re-side our house in catalog pages...) and my beloved Frog Tape to cover up the mirror itself.  Of course, Elliot was there to provide quality assurance...

The spray paint we went with for this project was Rust-oleum's glossy "Warm Yellow".  It's not quite as mustardy as our end table, but it was that or frightening neon yellow.

Seriously, he's always there...

Then it was out to the backyard to get a-sprayin'.  The trick is shake it up a ton (at least a minute to get started) and once you start, keep your arm moving and never just blast in one spot, or you'll end up with nasty runs and drips.  Here's the mirror after one coat:

Honestly, two coats doesn't look much different, so let's just skip to the grand reveal!

He's on the floor now since we haven't finished painting the wall where he usually lives, but look how nice it pops on the blue wall.  It looks so bright and happy!  However, as you may be able to tell, I didn't think to tape down the middle of the sheets (as you can see it lifts slightly on the previous picture) and now there's a slight dusting of yellow in places on the glass, but we'll just scrape that off gently.  Live and learn.

So, following the relative success of that project, we moved onto our second target.  We have this large guy leaning up against a wall in the hallway by our bedroom that I like to use to check myself out before heading to work, since our bedroom is too small to have one.  This mirror is a relic of Overlook and used to live in our master bathroom where the bright white trim popped against the gray walls, but for some reason, it just wasn't doing much for me here.

I hauled him over to the living room and did the same taping up (this time with packing paper to save time) and, of course, remember to tape all the seams to avoid a similar misting as the yellow mirror received.

And of course, I couldn't have done it without the assistance of three petsons.

It was back to the yard to spray him... this time with the assistance of our brand new sawhorses and a can of Rust-oleum " Lagoon".

Much easier than crouching in the dirt... and check out our bits of grass!

After one coat, we had this:

Then with another coat and some little touch-up spurts:

So shiny!

Since the Lagoon only came in a satin finish and I wanted a finish as shiny and glossy as possible, we also picked up a can of the Crystal Clear Enamel for both protection and shine.  You can't really tell much of a difference in photos, but we're so happy with the results.  It looks super bold, vivid and shiny.  Definitely an upgrade from the boring ol' white.

I absolutely love the vibrant blue and it looks awesome up against the Gossamer walls.  I think we're going to go ahead and mount it on the wall, so there's no risk of pups or kitties knocking it over.

So, we're really happy with our results and the fun pops of color they add to our house.  In case anyone out there wants to go spraying up their junk, I'd definitely recommend gloves of some sort unless you want to go to work the next day with slightly speckled blue hands.  Like I said, shaking a bunch beforehand and throughout the spraying is crucial, as is swaying the can to avoid drips.  As you'd expect, the Frog Tape worked wonderfully on the glass and pealed off nice and easy without leaving any sort of gunk behind.  We had rain here, so the mirrors couldn't sit outside to dry, but I'd also recommend leaving any spray painted pieces outside at least overnight unless you like a nice fog of VOCs lingering in your house.  Overall, it was a quick and easy project and only cost about $12 to give us two practically new mirrors.  Win!

And now for the obligatory adorable Dexter photo:

He was our little helper as we worked outside... and by "helper" I mean "dirt and moss eater", as evidenced by his little grimy beard and dogstache.  That's our baby bichon for you.  :)