A HYLLIS Makeover of My Own

After seeing this post from Skreytum Hus (via Apartment Therapy), I suddenly had the solution to all of my "entertainment center" problems!  Sylvan and I wanted a wall-o-shelving around our tv, and had seen many an idea online, but hadn't decided on anything, until we saw what Soffia had done.  What a fantastic idea!

I started with three of Ikea's galvanized steel HYLLIS shelving units - only $14.99 each.  I assembled them before I did anything else, to get a feel for how much space on the wall they'd take up, and exactly what I wanted to do with them.  It was simple enough: remove the bottom row of shelves, leaving the units about 35" high.

It took me three days of searching high and low for two missing hacksaws (the hell??) before I remembered I have a Dremel.  Fail.

I left the shelves fully assembled to do this. I thought about taking them apart to cut the legs off, but I was leery of messing up the measurements.  This way let me "measure" by wrapping a piece of blue painters' tape around each leg, just below what would become the new bottom shelf, and then just cutting off below the tape. Easy.

One.


I'm here to tell you, there's a reason those little round cutoff wheels come in packs of a million.  #%&@#$!@$

Wear your safety glasses, kids.

Three!

Now to paint them!  Oh, no...wait...no metal primer in stock.

I set about working on the top for the unit instead.  It's simple enough - some 4" pine bed slats I wasn't using anymore, pieced to create a 74x13" tabletop that will span all three HYLLIS units when placed side by side, and glu---

Aaaand I'm out of wood glue.  THE HELL??

And so...to be continued, LOL.








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"Scorpio Manor" Lives!

Heehee. That's what all of our friends are calling it (because we're both Scorpios).  :)

Sylvan's all moved in, and we're slowing working our way through mountains of boxes, unpacking and putting things away, rearranging furniture, and getting her settled in.   Her cats and my cats and dogs are getting along astonishingly well!  I've *never* seen a pet merge go as smoothly as this is going, and thank goodness for it. The giant craft room - aka The Room of Requirement - is coming along nicely, but it's not done enough for photos just yet.  I have a big project in the works for the living room, and I'll show you some of that tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are a couple of bits and pieces from the kitchen:

Ikea's BYGEL rail system up, where a wooden shelf used to be.

An old wooden Ikea dish drainer, disassembled and made into a plate rack to display some very old, blue glass Ikea plates.

I love a good, messy, decorated fridge.  ^_^

My old Ikea FIRA chest made over into a coffee station.  It stores k-cups, tea, cider, and cocoa; as well as spoons, filters, and other little Keurig bits.  A tray on top, painted to match, holds sugar and a couple of decorative creamer pitchers (one from Ikea, one an antique Mikasa which I adore).

The dry goods jars are currently labeled "Existential Angst", "Despair," "Rage", and "Rice."  Because...rice.

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Guest Bath No More

Now it's BFF's bathroom!  And it's white no longer:

Here's the before...

That's Olympic "Turquoise Mist", if anybody's wondering.

BONUS FEATURES:

This idea came from Pinterest (really, what doesn't anymore?)  A trash bag tied over the toilet tank - no paint to clean off the porcelain, and the bag doubles as a handy-dandy receptacle for all your painting trash at the end of the job.

Know what I discovered today?  If you flush the toilet while the bag's on the tank, POKE A HOLE IN THE BAG.  It did this crazy thing where it tried to swallow itself because of the air being sucked out of the bag by the retreating water, LOL.  0_0

I like to rock out with my caulk out.











Now the bathroom just needs BFF's stuff!  She moves in in a week and a half! :D


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Another "New" Bathroom Light Fixture

Because seriously, ew:

That's the light fixture that's been in my master bath since 2004.  Came with the house. I *hate* these, and somehow in ten years I've never replaced it. 

In March, I replaced the guest bath fixture with an Italian tole chandlier that I fixed up.  Over this past weekend, I finally got around to putting the one that came out of the guest bath into the master: 

It's a bit dwarfed* by the gigantic sheet mirror that has also been there since the house was built;  but I intend to replace that thing, too, eventually.  For now, I really love the 3-light fixture in here.  I've been using my six-lamp fixture with only three bulbs in it, so there's no change in the amount of light, though this new fixture does change the angle a bit.  I'm perfectly happy with it, though.  It's warm and soft.  Not great for putting on makeup, but I do that at my vanity cabinet, since I can stand directly in front of it instead of having to lean over a counter because of my crappy eyesight, hehe. 

And of course, because the simplicity of the "plug and play" aspect of changing light fixtures is often just too good to be true, it took me two hours to get this thing in place, because the old six-lamp fixture was screwed directly into the wall - not mounted on a bracket.  Luckily, I had a bracket, threaded rod, and a large assortment of nuts and washers and screws to choose from, in order to get this thing mounted correctly and securely.  

* "Dwarf" is one of those words I can never type correctly on the first try.  I touch-type (without looking at the keyboard) at nearly 100wpm, and yet every time, it comes out "drawf."  Sigh. 

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The Tacky Cat Statue Gets A Starry Makeover

So, I've had this silly ceramic cat since I was like 17.   She guards my house. Hee.  She's been many colors - last year she underwent some serious structural repairs, and went pink and gold:

Today I gave her a new makeover:

It doesn't show well in the picture, but all the stars and highlights are silver, not white, so she's all shimmery and sparkly.  I had every intention of painting the entire cat blue and starry, but then the nighttime-forest thing happened at the bottom, and the clouds, and she became an entire night scene. 

The highlights along her angles would NOT come out with a brush, or a pen (that got painted over like three times, actually), so I ended up just rubbing silver paint onto the edges with my fingers.  When in doubt:  fingerpainting!  LOL.  

A New, Two-Day Bedroom

When last we met my sewing/craft room, it looked like this:

And that was pretty cool.  But...  

Yesterday I began a "Trading Spaces" -style two-day whirlwind makeover.



I painted the ceiling, a wide band around the lower baseboards, window, and doorways, patched holes and primed over them, and then went to work in the garage mixing paint.

Sherwin Williams' "Distance"

While I had had every intention of actually purchasing paint for this project, my recent layoff meant that I couldn't - and it turns out I didn't need to:  I had a blue that was close enough to the color I wanted that it took very little adjustment to make it work.










AND THEN...

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Lesson 1:  this color is a bitch to photograph.  sigh.  

These curtains, and the pendant lamp over the nigtstand, are the only things that stayed - both
were part of the ex-sewing room.

Had to lay down on my bed to take this shot.  Almost didn't get up. 

I'll note here that (a) this pic (above) is the truest representation of this color in photos so far.  It's really hard to photograph!  And also (b) you can see here why I painted a thick band of white around all of the molding.  Such a tiny room in such a dark color needs all the highlighting it can get, in order to bounce around a bit of extra light, shrink the dark expanses a bit, and give structure to a plain, boxy room.  I like how the overall effect is kinda bungalow-y.  :)

A silver-plated serving tray given to me by a friend last year, for my jewelry.  Yay! 

The only thing left to do in the room is to hang my jewelry cabinet, but at the moment it's kind of buried in the old bedroom under a mountain of craft crap (crapft).  Guess what I'm doing tomorrow?  :D

Two Rooms (Both Alike In Dignity)

As much as I change my home - paint colors, furniture arrangement, the furniture itself, art and display - certain things never change.  My bedroom has been my bedroom for a decade.  My craft room has been my craft room for nearly as long.  I've mentioned that I was planning to swap the two spaces...it's begun.

I began with the closets: 

1.   First, I emptied my bedroom closet:

Ikea's STOLMEN post as closet rod:  great for a long wall;

although the rod is just a tad too wide for hangers to slide

comfortably. 

2.  Next, I started filling it, in order to clear out the closet in the sewing room.  I managed to get the ENTIRE contents of my sewing room closet into the bedroom closet, as well as the ENTIRE fabric wall, and, well, pretty much everything but my current sewing-in-progress and furniture.  Holy cow, this is a big closet!

Once the STOLMEN "rod" was down, I moved in the shelves

that once held fabric in my soon-to-be-ex-sewing-room.
(This closet is simply packed full;  actual organization
to occur at a later date). 

3.   That left me with an empty sewing room closet full of shelves that needed to be removed:

4.  Which was then fitted with a regular closet rod and wall brackets, and all of my clothing (which, despite this closet being the same length as my big now-ex-bedroom-closet, fits my clothes better somehow. It's a TARDIS.

*  I would like to thank, personally, both the inventor of the wheel, and my friend Debi for the use of her convertible dolly/cart, without which this job would have taken daaaays, and much back-breaking and expletive-flinging. 

And yes, that green box IS full of actual rocks. 

So now, both rooms are a shambles.  I can't sew until this job is done, but at least I have a space in which to sleep.  I admit, this project is so huge that it's been prohibitively daunting, but I feel good about it now that I've started.  Moving closets was a HUGE first step, and a necessary one.  You guys have seen my craft room - it was organized, but it was full.  Now there's room to move, and to slide things around in order to work on the room itself.

And I am somewhat pleased to report that during this process, I only walked into the wrong closet four times.

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So This Happened.

I had every intention springing a freshly-painted guest bathroom on you today, but alas, instead of painting last night (after weather and traffic and the thing I'm about to share with you kept me from going to do a craft night thing with some buddies last night, argh), I came home to find this:



...Wait, wait, lemme back up.  Remember this pic from the other day?

I'm dyeing the Surya rug that I won a couple of years ago.  Same process as I used for the black wing chair, which came out really well.  That job was fast, easy, and the color has never once rubbed off.

This time, however, instead of Rit dye, I'm using a brand called Jacquard (because a friend gave it to me, so I've been playing with all the colors).  It's meant for protein fibers like wool and silk, and is also supposed to do a great job on nylon and polyester - and this rug is wool and poly.

I'm not sure why the dye is coming out;  I suspect because I just WAY oversaturated it in an effort to make sure it soaked all the way through the fibers.  But anyhow, though I placed a bunch of random furniture on it yesterday while I was at work to keep the animals off of it, just in case, I came home to this:

Daisy was really confused as to what I thought was so funny.  And then she got a bit annoyed with me for taking so many pictures of her (these were the only two that weren't just a total blur).

One no wait, two, THREE dog baths later - because after I washed Daisy, I discovered that Shelly's face was blue, so I washed her, too; and then I washed Raven because even though he's black and I couldn't see any dye, I figured he must be covered, too - and he was - I threw a tarp over the rug and then filled it with furniture and plastic tubs to keep it in place, so that I won't find blue animals in my house again this evening.

I'm going to borrow that carpet cleaner from that friend again this evening, and use it to wash the excess dye out of the rug.

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending.  In the meantime, please laugh at my blue dog.  I bust out laughing every time I look at the pictures, hehe.


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NEXT!

Okay, so, the costumery-blitz leading up to last weekend is FINALLY OVER, and it's time to PUT YOUR FOOT ON IT AND STAND!!!

Oh, no, wait - that's 13th Warrior.  Which is like my favorite movie ever.  But I digress. 

It is seriously time to get crackin' on the housey stuff again.  BFF Sylvan is moving in in just 39 DAYS.   I have a loooooot to get done in that time.  

In the last couple of months I've been cleaning and clearing space almost nonstop, in between working on like a bajillion sewing commissions for the SCA and prepping (and cleaning up after) the Halloween party.  (I swear, the people at the Goodwill donation site must know me by name by now).  The next step is to start actually preparing rooms.  To wit: 

• paint the guest bath
• move all the stuff from my sewing room into my bedroom
• demo the sewing closet, and turn it back into a "regular" closet
• paint the sewing new bedroom and closet, and then bring all of my bedroom things into it'
• organize and arrange the master bedroom new giant craft room (hereafter known as The Room of Requirement)
• build my master closet into a new awesome craft supply storage room

And and and and and.  I mean, SO much to do.   I was going to start last night, except that at the SCA event over the weekend, I managed to pull a partial dislocation on BOTH of my shoulders, so I've kinda been sitting around with noodle arms for a few days.  

But last night, I did manage to do this: 

Yes, it's a terrible, terrible phone pic. Because it's not done.  

But you'll get to see the finished result, and a whole bunch more, very soon.  I promise. :) 

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Halloween Highlights

The 2014 Halloween party is dead. Long live the 2014 Halloween party.  *waves tiny flag*  #threedayhangover #notreally

So I didn't go all-out for Halloween this year - the usual decorations, for the most part, plus too much food, too much booze, lol.  I managed to throw my back out Saturday afternoon while getting ready for the party, and I still can't walk fully upright. It's fun.

This was the biggest hit of the entire party - and I have to say, I enjoyed hearing people howl with laughter after they went down the hall to the restroom, at both this "melted witch" (I got the idea from Pinterest), and at the artwork in the bathroom - I replaced the botanical prints in the frames on the walls with print-outs of funny s-rays, including Kermit the Frog with a hand skeleton, heehee).


Hint: no matter how clean the tub is, the water still looks kinda dirty...2-3 drops of blue food coloring made it look crystal-clear and clean.

My personal favorite Thing:  my spider-arium, filled with polyester "cobwebbing", some "mummy gauze", and a TON of hot-glue strings; as well as two large plastic-and-felt tarantulas, and a few packages of little plastic spideys (some of which escaped and were crawling up the dining room walls away from the tank).

This year I draped all the furniture in white curtains and sheets, as if the house was all shut up and vacant - it was pretty neat looking, if I do say so myself; and it saved my couch from a pretty bad drink spill, hehe.

( I was a biker dude for Halloween this year, complete with makeup-goatee and 5:00 shadow - that's my jacket on the chair in the pic).

This pic is mostly to say, "Hey, look at this awesome giant Ficus tree!"  it's seven feet tall;  I purchased it and all of the white curtains that I used for the furniture (98" white RITVA curtains from Ikea) from my old dance studio which went out of business recently.

THE AFTERMATH.

Good lord, that's a lot of cleanup.

I may or may not be personally responsible for the empty tequila and whiskey bottles.    0:)








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Brainstorming the New Bedroom

I just finished redecorating my sewing room in January. 10 months ago, LOL.

This is what it looks like now (if you remove all the clutter and piles of fabric and five zillion projects going at once):

And this is where I think I'm gonna go with it.  I've loved the pale blues in my master suite, but I've recently fallen in love with a Sherwin Williams color called "Distance," and I can't help but think I'm going to end up sleeping here:

(made with Olioboard

Hm.  

Just thinking. 

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Got My Colors Did, Part II

THE COLORS

MASTER BEDROOM

Oddly enough, the color in the master bedroom didn't have an exact match; but it's about midway between SW's "Comfort Gray" and "Rainwashed" - Rainwashed is a tad greener and lighter than Comfort Gray.  It usually looks more like the second picture here.

"Comfort Gray" via Pinterest

"Rainwashed", Pinterest

My master bedroom.  

MASTER BATH, LAUNDRY ROOM

It's always bugged me that the master bath and master bedroom are different colors. The laundry was painted with the leftovers from the master bath.  SW's "Krypton", which is just an *awesome* name.  :) 

Pinterest

My laundry room

My master bath

SEWING ROOM

Another color I mixed from scratch, just to use up this gallon of a very weird pink that I had sitting around, not being used.  I mixed a LOT of "White Clay"/"Aesthetic White" into it, plus a bit of yellow to peach it up a bit - the result is a very ballet-slipper color that I like.  Not quite peach, not quite pink; color, but not something so eye-catching that it distracts me from my work, which is exactly what I need in my work room. SW's "Abalone Shell"...

Zillow

My sewing room, which is usually much more cluttered.

So what now? 

I haven't mentioned it yet, but in December my BFF is going to be moving in with me!  YAY!  It's a move we've been talking about for months now - we could both use a hand financially, and, though my own space was ALL I wanted two years ago, I've decided that for myself, living alone is for the freaking birds.  Now I'll have a friend around!  I'm so excited!  

So, given that change, there's going to be a LOT of work going into the house in the next couple of months before Sylvan moves in.  I still haven't painted the living room ceiling, which I meant to do back in 2012!!! when I did EVERY OTHER CEILING IN THE HOUSE.  Talk about procrastination, jeez.   

I'll also be painting Sylvan's room (formerly my room-of-all-trades, which has been a guest room, art studio, and very large closet, over the years); as well as doing a loooot of fix-it jobs that I've been putting off all year.  

The biggest change - deep breath, here goes nothing - is that I've decided to move, too:  into my sewing room!  I'll be swapping the sewing room and my master bedroom; the master will become ONE CRAFT ROOM TO RULE THEM ALL - a gigantic craft space that we can both share, with it's own bathroom and washroom facilities, and a humongous closet for supplies and fabric.  

LOTS more to come in the next few weeks; though I've also got a lot of SCA on my plate, so I'll be staggering posts on that blog and this one.  

See you soon! 

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