Living Room: Some Small Projects

1. From Console Table to Entertainment Center

After the TV shelf that I built three years ago died during the latest move, we decided to use a console table (from World Market, about 10y ago) for the tv instead.  The only problem was, there were no shelves for DVDs and things in it - it was just a big hole:

Nothing a 14" 8' pine shelf board from the hardware store couldn't fix.  I just happened to have a stain that matches perfectly - Rustoleum's "Kona." I cut out a 3" square from each corner to fit around the console uprights, and attached the boards with 1" L-brackets at each corner.  Boom. 

Pro Tip:  make sure the can of stain is completely closed before shaking the living crap out of it. Oops.

2. Candle Fireplace

The fireplace works; but I'm not about to use it for a fire in a rental. You just never know, you know? But, at least now I have an LED candle "fire."  I've always wanted to try this.  

I know, I know - the stuff on the mantel is wonky. Don't look. Not done yet. 

3. An Old Project Re-Purposed

Once upon a time, I played with a Medieval reenactment group. It was swell, but eventually the swelling went down and I moved on to other hobbies.

While I was there, though, I made over a wooden toybox my grandfather built for me when I was two.  It was old and battered, and it made me sad that it only ever saw the inside of my closet.  I made it into a semi-pseudo old-looking chest, then created a lid and painted a little Medieval-looking mural on it. 

Once again, now that I no longer do the Medieval thing, my beloved chest was languishing in storage.  So, the other day I put feet on it (actually blue glass drawer knobs with felt on the ends bottoms) and put it into service as a miniature coffee table.

(L)  glass knobs for feet                                                                            (R) storage! 

4. Ikea RASKOG Cart

This is an Ikea RASKOG cart that I spray-painted to use as sort of a rolling coffee table and art-cart.  The Medieval chest above serves as a coffee table for public things, like remote controls, but the cart is for my personal stuff. I like to sit on the couch and listen to movies, or BBC Earth, while I draw.  

This has it's own post, if you're interested. 

What's next? 

Chairs!  

A New History of Fireplaces

For someone who almost never burns a fire, I sure talk about my fireplace a lot.  The one in the old house went through about 7 transformations over the 12 years that I lived there;  the new house's fireplace recently got it's first (and probably only, tbh) makeover.

New Year's resolution: guitars in every photo (not really)

I actually did the work early in November, while my roommate was out of town visiting her family. I primed and painted the wooden footer pieces to blend in with the brick (not that they're fooling anyone, but I like the way the focus is now on the posts, instead of the odd shapes on the hearth). 

I cleaned and re-painted the brick; and cleaned up the wooden mantel.  I debated whether to actually refinish it - it's not my favorite color, but it matches some of the other wood pieces in the room; and the few white paint splatters on the wood (leftover from its original white paint job) came out with a Magic Eraser.

Did you know the active ingredient in those things in paint stripper? Wear gloves when you use them, please.  Magic can burn your skin.

This is what it looked like before, complete with original floor and wall color.

The posts and the woodwork behind them were painted sort of an admiral-blue.  It was a nice color, but I wanted something a bit more serious. 

BONUS CAT

New Living Room Arrangement FTW

I had great fun over the summer rearranging my living room furniture, and then the other week with the new coffee table.  After living several months with the new floorplan, though, it just wasn't working.  The open space behind the couch was handy for getting around with the vacuum cleaner, but it bugged me that it was wasted.  There wasn't enough floor space in the room for me to dance, hula hoop, or work out with a DVD, and I wasn't digging the little nightstand I had made over into an electronics console - and I wasn't digging the electronics, either, really.  So last weekend, I overhauled the entire room:

Before

Sadly, there must be a "before" picture:

Ignore the blanket over the couch for the moment (slipcover SOON, I swear), and take a look at the arrangement:  couch and wing chair in the center of the room, anchored by the area rug, with at least 3' all around of open space.  There's a console on the wall behind the couch, with the mirror over it.

And the long view...eww, I know.  A true "before', hehe, complete with jackets over the chair and various detritus on the floor as a result of those lazy dogs getting into the trash and strewing random things all over the room.  Mutts.

So:

1. more floor space
2. better use of space
3. pretty couch under the pretty windows
4. new tv console? 

After

Yay!  Okay, so, now there are different blankets on the couch.  Just go with it for the moment.  At least they're the right color, LOL. 

And from the north end of the room:  LOTS more open space.  The last time I was at Ikea I picked up an UPPLEVA (seriously, Ikea product namers?  hehe) swivel/tilt tv bracket; so while the couch is pretty far away from the television, I can pull the tv out from the wall by a foot, and angle it for better viewing.  I don't watch tv anyway; it's basically a video game delivery system.  :)

Here's the console that was behind the couch now serving a new purpose.  I ditched a 20-year-old CD changer and stereo receiver (not ditched, just removed from the setup) in favor of the electronics I actually use: DVD, X-Box, and laptop!  I charge it here, and blog from it on the couch or in the big wing chair, now that I don't have a computer desk anymore (which I love, since it's a piano now).  

I took the opportunity, while I was working, to clean the cuh-rap out of the fireplace, too.  MAN that thing was dusty.  The screen did it's job - I had no idea, hehe.

A little candle arrangement in front of the screen gives me pretty flames when I don't feel like burning a whole fire in the fireplace;  this is that silver "Moroccan" tray I got at Ikea a million years ago that you've seen on this blog as a wall hanging and table top in years past.  

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Bit More Fireplace, and Then We're Done

After taking the mirror down from the fireplace wall, there was one more thing that needed to happen.

Before

Notice anything about the fireplace screen?

...

...wait, do you NOTICE the fireplace screen?  You don't, do you?  That's right.

BAZINGA


That's better.  Nothing a little silver metallic spray paint couldn't take care of.  Now the screen not only shows, it stands out, and it's exactly the right kind of understated "bling" that the fireplace needed to keep it from being just a big, black block,

I have to say, I LOVE this metallic stuff.  I'd never used the new kind before.  Silver-colored paint, sure; but this is the stuff with itty tiny metal particles in it to give it shine and texture when it's dry, and I loooooove the way it comes out.  It really does look like metal.  And it's beautiful.

I sprayed some wall hooks, too, and the outside handle of my storm door, hehe.  Show you later.








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One More Fireplace Tweak + A New Toy

I know I'm like, the LAST person on the planet to find Olioboard (okay, actually, I found it like a year ago, signed up, and then never used it), but I am obsessed with it the last two weeks!  Rather than designing boards from scratch, I've started by uploading pics of my own furniture, and creating boards based around my existing rooms, so that I can tweak them in the design board to see what's working together, what's not, how the colors are functioning, etc.  It's so much fun!




Pared down to basic elements, that's my living room.  Aside from the blue chair, which I COVET.  But anyway.   It seems so simple, but it took me like three days to get this to where I wanted it, and it's full of soooo many ideas - ideas for additions, subtractions, and little fixes...

• I'd been thinking about changing the wooden DVD shelves, but I wasn't sure whether to go with black, or larger shelves, or some other color scheme.  Black and gold has been on my mind a lot lately, but I hadn't even considered it.  Now I know exactly what to do with those shelves.  (And no, I'm not telling. Read the blog. :D )
• Part of my decor is now and always has been about the houseplants.  Every so often, between new acquisitions and deaths, things planticular get out of whack.  At the moment, I have almost no small plants to tuck into places.  I have several large ones, but none are HUGE and fluffy like I want, they're very vertical and stick-like (mostly by nature of the habit of the particular plant, though a couple of them are pretty near dead).  
• I haven't changed my mind about the fabric for the Day Sofa, but I DID decide to do something really cool to it that I hadn't considered before.  
• I'd taken the rug out of the living room to clean it, and then didn't put it back in, because it'd been raining, and the dogs, and the mud, etc.  I've decided to stop obsessing about a rug altogther.  I like how things work together without one.  I'm just a bare floor person.  
• While I didn't change the art over the fireplace, I did change the art over the fireplace. Wait...

Before:

Note the painting in the lower right corner, leaning behind the Buddha .  ("The Soul of a Rose" or "My Sweet Rose" by JW Waterhouse, which is one of my very favorite paintings ever).  

Other issues:  too much BS on the mantel (that wasn't intentional, I just stashed it all there when I painted that gold frame around the sheet mirror a few weeks ago).  

Also the mirror itself.  While I do like a darker, aged-bronze-i-er gold against these gray walls, this soft, champagne-gold is nooooot the right gold at ALL.  And while I love a mirror up here, this one is just too big. 

After: 

Muuuuch better.  Even for a night-time pic, which I keep swearing I'll stop doing.  (Not a photographer, you guys).  

"Rose" is now not only up off the floor and hanging on the wall, but twice the size it was, thanks to one of my other favorite websites, BlockPosters.com.   

I'm a big fan of leaning large art on top of things, but I opted to hang this one, to keep the fireplace separate from the wall above it.  It makes the fireplace look a bit squatty (it IS squatty), but I feel like now it's a more balanced wall, and less of a giant rectangle of stuff.  

(Again, the accessories on the mantel are just kinda shoved there until I have time to work on it; ditto the stuff on the floor, of which there is far too much in this shot).  

(Nope. Still haven't painted the living room ceilings. Or done anything about that random cord on the floor. Dont' look at those. WIP). 

All hail the internet:

    This post brought to you by: 

Olioboard, my newest favorite toy

Pinterest, my source for inspiration, beauty, and LULZ

                                     and

BlockPosters.com, without which there would be no art in my house.  

Up To Here With Aphorisms

aka Fireplace Makeover

Aw, man, you guys, I looked high and low for a quote from Stargate for this post - Teal'c at one point said something about a proverb about "the futility of enumerating unhatched chickens".  I think we're just going to have to go with "don't judge a book by its cover" on this one, though:

is that not the ugliest crap?  I was so afraid. 

By the same token, let us remember to never, ever judge a wet coat of paint.  We all know that most of the time, paint dries darker. Except when it doesn't. And when it dries to a completely different color.  And we all know that sometimes, the first coat of paint in a 3-step process is just going to look like complete ass, and that you have to accept it and keep going.

This is chalkboard paint.  I could have left it as-is after painting, but I wanted the soft, cloudy appearance of a chalkboard, so I "primed" the tiles the way you do with a new piece of chalkboard slate, or a newly-painted chalkboard using chalkboard paint (rub the side of a piece of chalk all over the surface in big wide strokes, then buff it all off with an eraser or a soft rag. This fills the teeny gaps and pits in this semi-porous surface, so the first marks on the board don't set in so deeply they can't be erased).  I also went back over the grout with a dark gray paint, so it wouldn't be so stark looking.

After chalking the tiles - and yes, I could write on them at this point if I wanted to - they're finally taking on exactly the look I'd envisioned for the fireplace.  After eight years of a fireplace tiled in bland, beige, ceramic tile, I now have a deep charcoal-gray "slate" tile - it's really dark!  It's kind of startling.  And it changes the visual balance of the entire room.

I did this Tuesday night, and I tell you, I was not at ALL sure I was going to like it - in fact, that night was pretty sure I'd made a huge mistake.  But every time I see the "new" tiles, I love them more and more.  I love the color, I love the softness, I love that it feels like slate on my bare feet, I love the way it forms a dark backdrop for everything that surrounds it.  I really love it! Thank goodness!

BEFORE

You know what else I love about it?  It doesn't look like the fireplace is made of leftover floor tiles, which is is. In the "before" picture above?  That's the same beige floor tile in the kitchen, entry, and both bathrooms.  It's gray on the hearth because I painted it a billion years ago, then scraped the paint off the wall tiles and not the floor tiles.

AFTER

Questions:

1. Yes, that's the same mirror.  I scraped off the stamped pattern around the edge, and painted a gold "frame" on it.  And I hate it.  It's going away soon. 
2. The fireplace screen is very soon to be spray-painted silver, which I think will be a nice foil to all the dark "stone."  
3. No, there's no floor molding around the hearth.  It died a while back and I haven't replaced it yet, because I'm effing lazy. 
4. The white cord around the hearth is the TV cable.  We only have one cable jack, so in 2007 when my ex and I put in the flooring, we ran a loooooong cable all the way around the perimeter of the room, under the baseboards and trim molding.  The fireplace floor trim is supposed to cover it. 
5. Idk wtf is going on with the glass on the mantel.  It's just up there because I couldn't think of what to do with all the blue glass I kept a few weeks ago when I sorted it all and gave most of it away.   

The Renovation Monkey. His name is Jacques. 

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Insert One [1] Coffee To Continue

Proof that I'm too tired to be at work today:

As I was scrolling through my Google reader, catching up on all the new entries on all the blogs and websites I follow, I came across this entry from Apartment Therapy.   I thought it said "monkey."  I really did.  In the title, and in the byline.  I went to the website so I could look in the pictures for the monkey, because I didn't get it on first glance.  The Kitchen Renovation Monkey?  You want me to put my monkey where?? Huh?

While it's a well-known fact (to me, anyway) that every time I'm working on a project in the garage, a bee flies in, inspects my work, and then leaves.  For eight years.  I call her the Home Improvement Bee.  But I don't have a Renovation Monkey.

What I DO have is a pretty cool update to my fireplace façade.  I even took pictures.  AND I remembered to bring the camera into the office with me so I could upload said pictures.   I did not, however, remember to bring the cable that connects the camera to the computer.  Sigh.

So tomorrow, I shall bring you both a pretty cool fireplace update, and a Renovation Monkey.


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Plans of Many Things

So, to give my brains a rest from obsessing about getting ready for our trip in two weeks 9 days, I'm thinking about what I might want to do with the house after we get back.  Because I'm seriously not going to work on SCA stuff for a while.  I want to play with my house!

The storm door is first, obviously.  It'll be a quick project.  I'm contemplating doing a nifty frosted design on the glass with some frosting spray, since the glass isn't tinted.  Haven't decided yet.

The backyard also needs some serious work.  I'd planned to build a pergola over the back patio in like, September, and it never got done.  And there's a garden bed that was empty in the Fall, now full of weeds, that I wanted to have planted by now.

I'm also thinking of painting the fireplace wall in the living room because, well, let's face it - not enough things in my house are blue, LOL.  Riiiight.  But look:

oh, and that tree is dead now, too. 

This is the fireplace wall now.  It's the same color as the rest of the walls in the living room, hallways, dining room, and kitchen (all connected).

the miracle of Photoshop

This is what it would look like blue, and trimmed in the same white paint that I used to make a fake "crown molding" around the top of the room.

I kinda like the way it sets off the tiles, and the wood on the mantel.

Of course, it would also throw into obvious relief the fact that the blue ceilings are totally the WRONG BLUE.

Maybe I should do it all at once. Hm.

OOH!  Or what if the tiles were turquoise??






Is my vacation over yet...


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Fireplace: A History

My fireplace is one of my favorite toys.  I love playing with the decor, paint colors - I've built a new mantel for it, painted it as an accent wall, done murals above and around it, and painted the tiles around it about a million times.

Past incarnations?  Glad you asked:

This is how it looked in 2004, shortly after I moved in.  The walls were painted ice-blue, and the fireplace wall was a sort of mushroom-y-taupe color.  The mantel...was...a windowsill and some molding?  Whathafah...? This is what happens when you try to combine "architecture" with cheap, cookie-cutter housing.

(Click to enlarge, and to read snarky comments
pasted onto the picture six years ago).

In 2006 I finally took down the mantel windowsill and replaced it with this nifty salvaged-lumber railroad-tie tree-trunk thing...which is totally a hollow box that I built out of plain old 6" boards, stained, and beat to hell with hammers and sanders,  and subjected to various abuses by my trusty Dremel tool.  :D


The green is Sherwin Williams' "Edamame", which I still adore; it also appears inside my pantry and the closets in both my sewing room and my boyfriend's music room.  I love a little color surprise inside of things.  [/dork]

Know what's awesome?  Floor tile on the fireplace! NOT!  At least, not when it's the same boring, ugly tile you have in your kitchen, entryway, and both bathrooms, making it pretty obvious that you live in a cheap house.

Paint and faux-tiles to the rescue! Oh, dear...that gray looks awful with that green wall.

But then, I was tired of the green anyway.  And I love blue, so - hey, here we go!  Also tried my hand at adding a faux-bois painted surround to go with the mantel...

...which you can see, if you enlarge the picture, looks like complete ass.  Which is why it only lasted about two days before I just said to hell with it and scrubbed ALL the paint off the tiles.

Except for the floor, which I had sealed well so that it wouldn't scratch...and therefore cannot be removed by conventional methods (which include sandblasting, jackhammering, and nuking from orbit).

When I painted the "Matagorda" sand color on the walls late in 2008, I decided to try not having an accent wall, which I was surprised to learn I liked very much.



 

...for a minute, anyway.  'Round about last summer I doodled a henna-esque design on the wall; and stenciled the tiles with the leftover wall paint to see how I felt about patterns up there instead of colors.

If the design looks familiar, it's because I adapted it from one that David Bromstad did on an episode of Color Splash that I can no longer locate online (HGTV, I fucking hate your website). 

I heart David Bromstad.  And Danielle, his painter. The two of them are the reason I became an artist.  Not "inspired by" so much as, "Hell, if THEY can do that, so could I."

A closer shot of the stenciling on the tiles.
Please to be ignoring the glue smears from a previous [failed] project about which we will not speak. 










 And the fireplace today?  Will have to wait for another day - maybe tomorrow, if I can get a picture to come out tonight when I get home.  Fifteenth time's the charm, right?


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