Design Loves - Round Mirrors

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We've been talking a lot about books and travel on here lately, so as Monty Python would say - now for something completely different! We moved into our house over a year ago and I've been meaning to buy a mirror to put over my dresser. I still haven't gotten around to it, which means I have to walk into the bathroom whenever I need to put on my makeup or check if I have food stuck in my teeth. (Insert sarcastic "oh no, what a nightmare!") It's not a big deal except when my husband is using the bathroom and then...well I'd rather not. So I really would like to get a mirror. I've held off buying one partly because of laziness and partly because I just didn't know what I wanted. However, I'm sort of in love with these round mirrors. Slightly retro, slightly modern, and super simple. I think I might be on the lookout for one of these in the future.

Home Tour - Before Pictures

 I've had a few friends and family back in the midwest ask for photos of my house after we moved in, and I realized that I never really posted any. I'm not sure if they read my blog (if you do, hi!!) but since I'm prepping the photos for Facebook, I figured I'd post them here as well. This way I/you can see the changes as we make them. Things already look a bit different in some of the rooms, but here's what the house looked like before we started attacking it with paint and decorations.

The Kitchen:

I know I just said that these pictures were going to be after our stuff was in it, but our kitchen is always such a disaster that you get the empty pre-move in photos instead. You've got your standard tile floors for down here, nice granite counter tops, and terrible oak cabinets with no hardware. At some point I'd like to either stain or paint the cabinets and add hardware. I can't even tell you how many times I've accidentally bent my nail back to excruciating pain trying to open the cabinets. 

The Living Room:

Here was our living room before we painted it and rearranged the furniture. As you'll see, this is our second attempt at changing that brown paint color that covers the entire house. You'll also see how Sitka still won't let me move her couch. 

The "Library":

This is the random room that connects the living room and the kitchen. We think it was originally supposed to be a dining room but it's carpeted. And I'm certainly not going to tempt the carpet cleaning gods by eating in there every night. Instead we're planning on turning it into our books and booze room. It already looks different than when I took these photos, and I'd like to make it look more complete at some point this year. 

The Master Bedroom:

This is a bit embarrassing, but this is still exactly what our master bedroom looks like. With limited time and funds we chose to focus on rooms that others would see instead of our own bedroom. And while I'd love to turn this room into a sort of sanctuary that I love to escape to after a busy day, honestly it's probably going to stay like this for a while. I don't even know how I want to decorate it.  But seriously, get a mirror for your dresser, girl! Or at least a bedskirt. Maybe a headboard? Sheesh. 

The Master Bath:

Ah, the first thing we changed in the house! You can see the after photos here. The gray is SO MUCH BETTER than the tan it originally was. I still want to paint the cabinets white, add silver hardware, frame in the mirror, and get a new lighting fixture but that's in the distant future. I've got other fish to fry before that. 

The Craft Room/Future Office:

Another embarrassing room that I just close off so no one can see it. Right now, this room is storage for stuff we don't know what to do with/things we haven't organized yet. Someday this will become my office & craft/sewing room and it will be glorious. This might be the next room on my list. 

The Guest Bathroom:

This is the bathroom between the two guest rooms. It is what it is. Again, more ugly oak that I want to stain or paint some day, but that's not even on the radar at this point. 

The Guest Room:

Also a work in progress (we actually have a bed skirt on the bed now!) but still needs a long way to go until it becomes the comfy, welcoming guest room that I envision. Right now, it's a hodgepodge of storage, a bed, and Kacey's stuff.  

So that is/was how our house looked after we moved all of our stuff in. It's funny looking back at these pictures because the house already looks fairly different. I can't wait to keep making the house more "us" and turn this tract home into something that fits our personalities. Basically I want the library from Beauty and the Beast and the wine cellar from The Parent Trap, is that too much to ask? Probably. But I'm still pretty excited to see how different the house will look once we're done with it!

Fun Reading Nook Update

Quick fun fact for today - I was featured with a few other bloggers on an article by One Kings Lane featuring reading nooks! By the way, did you know they had a whole section devoted to articles on decor and furniture? They discuss the history of furniture, how to guides, and decor inspiration. How fun is that?! I may have spent a few hours indulging the history nerd in me and reading up on the background of sofa styles.

DIY Rustic Wooden Fence Board Headboard

I fell in love with all those reclaimed wood projects on Pinterest -especially the headboards. However, having moved from the land of barns to the land of cacti I no longer have access to any perfectly weathered gray barn boards to make fun projects. So instead, I decided to make our headboard a little more tailored looking, but still retain the rustic feel that you get from the reclaimed wood. Enter the cedar fence slats. They're light, the perfect thickness, and easily cut down to size by your handy Home Depot or Lowe's worker (or yourself if you can work a saw. We don't have one, hence the help from employees). 

Materials for a queen size bed:

6 cedar fence slats from Home Depot - have them cut to 63" long

2 two by fours for the legs - have them cut to 48" long

1 one by four cut to 32 inches for the center brace (or 1 inch shorter than the total height of the boards)

nails

wood glue 

Minwax Water Based Pre Stain Wood Conditioner

Minwax Water Based Stain in Toffee

Ploycrylic Protective Finish

Rags for wiping stain on and off

Paint/foam brushes

 Start with the boards cut to the size you need. For a queen size bed, the length of my boards was 63 inches. We sanded them all down to remove any splinters. This can either take a few hours if you have an electric hand sander, or a few weeks if your husband won't let you buy one and promises to sand them all himself and then keeps forgetting. Ahem. Three weeks later I took a hammer to some of boards to give them that beaten, weathered look that you just don't get from new cuts of lumber.

Note - the boards I used are cedar fence slats. Cedar smells. I happen to love that smell but if you don't, you might want to think about using a different type of wood. It's been in our house for 6 months now and every time you enter the room you can still detect a faint woodsy cedar scent. Like I said, I love it because it makes me think of forests and the outdoors. But it doesn't go away quickly, so make sure you're ok with that!

I used a water based stain for this project since I have a fear of mineral spirits and don't want to use it to clean up regular wood stain. Minwax has a water based stain that comes as a clear tint and you add the color like you would a regular can of paint. I think it worked great and I had no trouble using it. I used the Pre-Stain Wood conditioner on the wood first to give it an even finish. I didn't use this on the headboard legs since they wouldn't be seen, and you can definitely tell the difference between the boards where I used the pre-stain and where I didn't. The boards had a much cleaner and even coloration when I used the conditioner first. 

I used 2 coats front and back of the "Toffee" color. After everything dried I finished it with a topcoat of Ploycrylic to protect and seal everything. Stain the slats and the 2 boards for the legs. I also stained the center brace because why not? This was my first time staining anything and I just followed the instructions on the cans. It worked beautifully.

Once everything dries it's time to assemble. Lay the boards out how you want them to go. Mine didn't line up perfectly, but I liked the warping and thought it added character. If you want yours to lay perfectly, check how the boards fit at the store before you buy them. 

Once everything is lined up, flip each of the boards over so the back of the headboard is facing up. Run a line of wood glue along the center brace and place perpendicular to the slats in the center of the board. Stack something heavy on top to weigh it down until the glue dries. See the photo below? The brace is under the middle bag of charcoal. My husband we have a lot of charcoal. Also, random dumbbells. 

Here's where it gets tricky. I wanted to nail the boards to the legs from the front so I could line up the nail heads. To do that, before I flipped the board back over, I lined up the legs and marked with chalk where I wanted the lowest board to land and made sure everything was level. Then I turned the whole thing over and slid the legs underneath, lining up the lowest board with the chalk marks. 

Note - I measured my bed frame and figured out exactly how far apart the holes were to screw in a headboard. If you don't want to screw the board directly to your frame, it's less important where the legs of the headboard go. 

Once I had the boards lined up, I nailed each of them to both the legs and the center brace. Then all that's left to do is screw it into your bed frame or attach it to the wall!

I absolutely love how it turned out, and I think I'm going to do it all over again to make a headboard for our new bed. It'll probably only take me another year or so.

Little Library Nook

While we're on the topic of seating areas, I wanted to set up a little temporary reading nook until we can get the library done. (Again, it's not so much an actual library as a carpeted dining room that we're converting. Seriously, who puts carpeting in a dining room?) My grand dreams include a built in floor to ceiling bookshelf system, a few comfy chair, a side table, and a fully stocked bar. But in the meantime (and until we figure out how to build bookshelves and win the lottery) this little corner will do nicely. 

Originally I wasn't sure what kind of chairs I wanted for the library. My first instinct was a comfy lazy-boy style recliner, even if it's not the prettiest piece of furniture. But we have an old one that was handed down to us and I hate that thing with the fire of a thousand suns. Dramatic much? But seriously, the leather squeaks at every miniscule movement you make while sitting on it, it sticks to your thighs in summer, and is freezing in the winter. Plus I always feel like I'm sliding off it. So I poked around online a little bit to see what was out there, checked out the Chair Style Guide on One King's Lane, and realized that I kept being drawn to chairs with a bit more tailoring. 

I really like the Parsons chair style (and someday dream of having an actual dining room - with hardwood floors!- with Parsons chairs around the table) but I just didn't think that worked for a cozy little reading nook. Because above all else, comfort is my number one requirement when it comes to my furniture. It can be the prettiest/stylish/most trendy sofa or chair in the world, but if I can't curl up on it for hours then no thank you. This especially holds true for reading furniture. I take my reading furniture probably too seriously. 

I think this chair fits the bill for now, it's streamlined and has that modern look, but it's actually very soft and comfy. I'm really into the woodsy meets western look right now (it reminds me that it's winter in the rest of the country even though it's like 70 here and I just had coffee on my patio. Yeah you can hate me now...) and I like how the herringbone pattern goes with the rug and the simple style of the table. We'll see how it holds up after a several hour reading marathon. And while we're talking about decor, you know how in magazines and styled home photos everyone's bookshelves are half empty and styled beautifully with photos and trinkets? Yeah, this is my bookshelf - full to the brim with books and then some. No pretty styling here, and I wouldn't change that for anything. 

(Also, I may have overused parentheses in this post.) 

(PARENTHESES!!!)

Bathroom Redo Stage 1 - Stressful to Serene

Oh hey, remember that house we moved into and I was so excited about redoing? And then I never really ever said anything about it again? Well we have been (sloooowly) changing things to personalize our home. And one room is finally complete and I'm so excited to share it! Go figure that the first room we decorated was the bathroom. But I LOVE the difference! That ugly brownish tan completely covers the entire house. The gross tan sheen was irrationally stressing me out and I desperately wanted something calming and serene for the bathroom. Luckily Kacey was on board with the gray color. But let's take a closer look at the before pictures, shall we? 

She's a really beauty, isn't she? Nice shiny tan walls, half of a towel rack since the bar fell off (gotta love builder grade hardware), and ugly cabinets. Ok, so the cabinets are still ugly brown, but I have plans to eventually paint them white and add knobs.

The thing is, this bathroom has pretty good bones. Nice tile floors, white countertops and tub, and silver fixtures. But everything else needed to change. We started with Benjamin Moore paint in Stonington Gray in a flat sheen. (No more shiny walls here!!) Then I ripped out the remaining towel rack fixtures and the toilet paper holder. We added hooks from Target instead of a towel rack since you can fit more and it looks pretty. We also added a prettier toilet paper holder from Homegoods because why not? And the old one fell off anyway. Figures.

Did I ever mention that this house doesn't have a linen closet? Ok it does, but it's tiny. Like a hobbit couldn't even fit towels in it. Remind me to show you it sometime. Anyway, we added a shelf above the toilet to hold extra towels since there's nowhere else to put them. We finished with some decorations and called it a day!

So you might be wondering about the "Stage 1" part of the title. Or not, but I'm going to tell you anyway. We have more plans for this room, but lack of time (and money) caused us to break it into 2 parts. The second half is pushed off until late 2014/early 2015 but I'd like to paint the cabinets white, add silver hardware, possibly frame in the mirror, get a new light fixture, and get some fancy shutters for window coverings. Yeah, about that money thing.

But in the meantime, can I just say how much I love our bathroom? It makes me so happy that I want to hug kittens and dance on rainbows with unicorns through the power of fairy dust. Or, you know, take a nice long bubble bath while reading a good book.

DIY Stemware Rack

This little DIY wine glass shelf came from a complete lack of storage space in the kitchen and our crazy collection of glasses. I wanted a fun way to display our stemware, and what's better than a stemware shelf? The few wine glass racks I could find that were also shelves were super expensive, so I decided to make one myself.  It was fairly easy to make, although it did get me locked out of the house for 2 hours one night. So watch out for that, these things are tricky little buggers.

Materials:
Stemware rack from Crate and Barrel
Thin sheet of wood (Home Depot will cut it to size for free!)
Paint - Glidden in "Softest Juniper"
8" decorative wall brackets from Menards
4 screws

I started with this unfinished stemware rack from Crate and Barrel and the thinnest piece of wood that I could find at Home Depot. I think it's actually meant to be a bottom of a drawer. Home Depot will cut the wood for free, so I had them cut it to the exact measurements of the shelf. 

I then painted it Glidden's "Softest Juniper" which is a great minty green. Both pieces of the wood were unfinished, so I applied 2 coats and sanded the edges just a bit to give it a worn look. 

Once everything was dry, I used wood glue to attach the top of the shelf to the rack. (This was where I got locked out. It was a long day.) 

Once the glue had dried, Kacey and I measured and marked where the brackets would screw into the shelf. Note - make sure the screws are long enough to go into the wood, but not stick out the other side since it will impede the bottom of the glasses from sliding into the racks. 

And that was it! Then we just flipped it over and attached it to the wall. 

I love how this shelf now displays both our stemware as well as our stemless glasses and Kacey's beer mugs. And it's also a fun decoration in our new place!

I want to go to the seaside

Does anyone else dream of someday owning a little white beach house full of rustic and nautical themed antiques? Or maybe that's just me. But if that ever does happen, I'd want it to look exactly like this house featured on Country Living (via Automatism).