A Whole New Dining Room, Sort Of

Welcome back, me.

So, someone, at some time, painted a steel blue accent wall in almost every room of this house.  You saw the one in the bedroom a few months ago.  Here's the one in the dining room:

We'll, um, we'll talk about the burlap-and-ruffles light fixture in a minute.

For now, I wanted to show you this, which took all of an hour to accomplish:

It's nothing special, I just painted the wall white like the rest of the walls in the dining room, kitchen, and living room.  It's boring, but it blends in with the rest of the house, which is what I wanted it to do.

Okay, let's talk about this.  This is a cut-corner rectangle lampshade onto which has been hot-glued burlap and strips of an OFELIA blanket from Ikea (I have the same blanket and recognized it immediately).  It's another hideous artefact of the previous tenant, who left behind other treasures such as ugly, heavy drapes, broken curtain rods, gallons of used paint, and countertop scraps.

I mean...

For some reason - maybe this is an old light fixture thing that I just didn't know about? - I had to un-wire the bulb housing from this light fixture in order to get the shade off the fixture.  So this took a minute longer than I thought it would.  But it was easy - and here's the new shade:

There.  Plain, white, unassuming, boring, blends with everything.  It's also quite a bit brighter, since the bulb isn't having to fight against that burlap to get light out.

So that's the dining room squared away, until we can get a table in there to work at and maybe also eat at.  At the moment I'm working on things in the living room, and I'll have some new bedroom stuff to show you in the next couple of weeks, too.  TTFN.

FÖRHÖJA Cart For Art: Another Ikea Hack

The new MOPPE sideboard that I built replaced this Ikea FÖRHÖJA"kitchen cart," previously used as a kitchen island and more recently as a storage piece in the living room.  It was home to a 10g fishtank (recently updated to a 20g), a potted Benjamina Ficus, four Ikea SNALIS plastic storage bins filled with aquarium supplies and other random items, and a cat scratcher nobody was using anymore.

I loved my FÖRHÖJA, I just wanted to change the color and repurpose it.

So I Did! 

Meet my new art cart/table!  Many, many coats of stain and sanding sessions went into this. People, there were problems with staining this thing.  All told I went through four different stains, who knows how many coats of each, and sanded it all down and started over THREE TIMES.  The end result of all that abuse is a cart that's a bit rustic looking, which I did not want, but it's FINE the way it IS because it's DONE.  HMPH!

Anyway. I actually do love it now that it's finished. :)

This thing has 30+ pieces.  That was a lot of staining and sanding and staining.

So! Much! Storage! 

So many drawers!  Baskets! Stuff!!

I added a two-prong hook to the front for aprons and towels; and a hanging Ikea basket (BYGEL, spray painted gold) to the side to hold large tools and bottles and brushes.


I got the water hyacinth baskets on Amazon, and lemmetellya, they're my favorite thing about this whole piece.  I looooove the way these things smell. 

The MOPPE drawer boxes on top are the ones I made in August.

I also added a 6" board to the top, on a pair of long tension hinges, so that I could extend the table top for a larger work surface, and also have some storage space behind/under the unit for large canvases and boards...but it doesn't work!

Turns out the long hinges aren't strong enough to hold up the extension when you put any weight on it (I think they're made more for holding trunk/chest lids open); so eventually I'll need to get a better holdy-uppy solution so I can use the extension.














As much trouble as the stain and the hinges have been, I LOVE it now that it's finally done!  It's taller than my old art table, which is fantastic - I'm 5'9, I have a tall easel, and I like BIG canvases.  It also takes up significantly less floor space than my old table, which opens up the "art room" behind the couch.  The extra floor space also helps with getting Shelly in and out of the back door - she's weird about her walking clearance, and won't go through anything too narrow, and won't step over, like, a SHOE that's in her path. Weird dog. (She's really old). 

More space in a tiny duplex is always welcome! 

Now I have a great new space to do more stuff like this:

Volcanic Seascape, November 2018, after a USGS photo of Hawaii's coastline back in July when Kileauea erupted

[Funko Pop] Bob Ross, patron saint of aspiring artists ❤

Ikea HEMNES Pantry Cabinet: Part II

BEFORE

Hi.

This is my Ikea  HEMNES cabinet-turned-pantry.  You may remember it from such posts as this one from October.

I'd gone back and forth with the idea of painting it for months before I frosted the glass in October;  but once that was done, I was sure, and I was just waiting for a chance to get to it.

Enter Thanksgiving weekend.  I don't celebrate it, myself, but I had five days off of work, and my roommate was out of town for one of those days, so I prepped and painted this thing in about eight hours.

Here's the whole thing after painting.  *drooool*  I LOVE IT.

There was barely any finish on this thing to begin with, so all it took was deglossing and then sanding very lightly to get a good surface for the paint.

The paint itself is a 50/50 mixture of plain black semi-gloss latex and black latex chalkboard paint.  I guess that makes it quarter-gloss?  I don't know.  But the texture and sheen are really nice.  I love a piece of furniture that feels good.

For the first few hours I worked on this, I was listening to Hamilton, which is one of my favorite things in the world. Every time I look at this picture in particular, I get Wait For It stuck in my head all over again.

I almost painted the inside of this unit a pale muted blue.  I'll be honest with you, the reason I didn't was that I didn't want to go to the store to get blue paint.  There are days when you just don't want to put a bra on, you know?

The knobs and drawer pulls I used on this unit are Ikea's FAGLAVIK, which, sadly, was discontinued about three years ago.  They're so smooth and soft and pretty.  They had a brushed nickel version, a chrome, and a brushed brass - these guys.  I looooove them .

I mean, that's just sexy.

















I love this cabinet.  I love the color.  I love that it didn't become a big black hole like I was worried it would.  I love the way the glass and the black look together.

But wait til you guys see my other Thanksgiving weekend project.  I'm almost done with it, and I'm crazy excited to show it to you!




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How To Make Your Food Blurry in 87 Easy Steps

Here's a fun thing about my 1965 duplex:  there's no pantry.  Like, at all. So my Ikea HEMNES glass-door cabinet is now a food-holder.  It works great!

The problem is, you can see the food. All the time.

Also, my kitchen is full of snakes:

Yes, I forgot to take a "before" picture again.




















Anyway, this is nothing a can of glass frosting spray can't handle.   I copied my design from a window cling film design you can get just about anywhere.


I sketched the pattern onto the front of the glass doors with a sharpie, a yardstick, all the math ever, and about seventy-eight little square templates (okay, 3 of them. But I had to make them over and over again because the Sharpie ink kept making the edges soft, which wasn't remotely helpful).

The next step was to tape off all the lines on the inside of the glass, using the Sharpie lines as a guide.


Frosting the glass on the inside means - I hope - that it'll be less likely to get scratched by people going in and out of the cabinet.  Of course, there's more chance of the food scratching it this way, so, six one half dozen the other?  Time will tell.




















In all it took four rolls of thin Washi tape, for both doors. Man that stuff's handy.

The next step was a Pinterest Fail.  I attempted to do the thing where you spritz water onto an area to be painted (in frosted or silver, from what I've seen) and it comes out looking like *drumrolllll* antique glass, or watered glass, or whatever you want to call the pattern of wibbly woobly melted-looking bits of glass.

However. This is not what happened.

What happened was the water caused the frosting spray not to adhere to the glass at all, and it fell off in big chunks as soon as it was dry. Also, some of the glass outside the squares was not as dry as I thought it was - hence the streakiness you see here.

So,  I had to un-tape and scrape clean an entire door and re-do it from scratch, including taping. So, I guess technically I did three doors this weekend, not two.

However, the end product was worth it:

Can you see the food? Is there soup??  YOU HAVE NO IDEA!  MUAHAHA!!! *ahem*cough*

So it doesn't block out anything.  At best this made the food blurry - but I'm satisfied with it. It's still a little less messy-looking, but this tones down the chaos effect that we had going on here before. The food just sort of fades into the furniture now, instead of sticking out like a sore thumb.



















The full monty.  Sewing machines and stack of grocery bags and all. (Sorry).


Even though I used the thinnest Washi tape I could find for the "lead lines", I still wish I'd tried for something thinner.   Still, I think it works just fine the way it is.  It's not supposed to mimic leaded and frosted glass, only lend the impression of.

Overall, I'm pleased with the way it came out. The food is nice and blurry, and it helps the cabinet, and the kitchen, look a bit more clean and organized. And I like the way the glass pattern works with the style of the cabinet itself.  I'll be honest, I neglected to even consider that when I was picking a design - I just wanted something pretty - but it works!



There are, of course, more things I want to do with this cabinet.  But these doors were the thing I wanted to be sure to have finished before the Halloween party this year, so that people don't have to look at all the disorganized food.  Fait accompli.


See you next time!

FIRA

This is the bank of Ikea MOPPEs that I finished at the beginning of August.  Sort of a card-catalog-y look, to store my art supplies in.

MOPPE is Ikea's answer to all the crafty people who are and will forever be upset that they discontinued the FIRA.  Looking back, I wish I'd bought a bazillion FIRAs to play with; but at least I have one.

It started life as this jewelry box, stained, painted, and lined with fabric.

I don't know when this was, maybe 2009? 2011?

It got a makeover in 2012, in which I painted it white, papered the insides of the drawers, and attached little knobs to the drawers and painted wooden candlesticks to use as feet.

In 2014 it became a coffee station organizer.  Painted brown and decorated with label holders from some cardboard Ikea photo boxes similar to the FJALLA they have now. In this pic there's a little tray on top that I painted to match.

Four years later it's looking a little crappy. The label holders keep coming off, and the labels don't stay in place anymore. The finish is chipped and scratched, and let's face it, brown paint is NOT stain.

It was time for an upgrade.

FIRA getting stripped;                     holes in the fronts from the label holders;            tearing paper off the insides. 

I stripped the whole thing down and re-stained it.   I re-papered the drawers, but first I repainted the insides using the same Rustoleum "Chalky" spray paint that I used to makeover the Ikea RASKOG cart in the living room.  I also put little corner feet on the box, and used white paper covered with Washi tape for the labels.

♥ ♥ ♥

My coffee and tea rest secure once again. The FIRA now sort of matches the MOPPEs, and makes a much more attractive coffee-stuff organizer.  I love the feet! They mean that we can store fewer little odds-n-ends on top of the FIRA (less clutter is good!), but I've always loved how raised furniture makes a space feel bigger and more open than it is - even if it's only a 12x16" piece of mini-furniture on a counter.

Random papers in the drawers, and you can sort of see the taupe ("mink") Chalky paint inside

The entire coffee center, next to the kitchen sink. 

Because I know there's at least one of you who's noticed this:  yes, the feet prevent the two side drawers on the bottom row from opening.  You can get to them by removing the center drawer and sliding the corner drawers to the center to pull out.  I have things in those side drawers that we won't need very often, like filters for the Keurig, and tea accessories we almost never use, because neither of us is a huge tea drinker.  I love these little feet, and I'm okay with the sacrifice they required, hehe.

Also, yes, I will be writing on those labels, just as soon as I get a new Sharpie with a good, chiseled point. All the sharpies at home are dulled from writing on cardboard in the move.

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A Small Kitchen Project, and An Art

Q:  What do you do when your oven mitts are falling apart?

A:  Buy new ones.



Q: What do you do when your oven mitts are falling apart and you've been binge-watching Good Eats with your roommate all weekend?

A: 

MAKE YEAST PUPPETS!   If you're not familiar with these things from Alton Brown's show, here's a clip: 

Those things are just the best EVER. They're little gray socks with googly eyes, pipe cleaner "antlers", and big, red mouths - they pop up, belching and farting all over the kitchen, every time Alton talks about yeast producing gas to make your bread dough rise.  Yes, the pipe cleaner "antlers" on my mitts are a fire hazard when reaching into a hot oven, and they don't fit in the drawer where the hot mitts and towels are kept without being smashed.  These things are just for fun, for "whimsy" in the kitchen.  I bought a second set of mitts for actual use.  

They do crack me and my roommate up, though, and that's what's important. 

*GIGGLE*

Meanwhile, though work on the craft room continues, I don't have anything to show you yet, and I'm still busy with the little, dirty details - and with finding the right size doors to replace the missing ones.  Ever take your car seats apart to fit a pair of doors into the car, and drive home with them literally pressed up against your face (ow), only to get home and realize you bought the wrong size?  Yeah.  *sad trombone*  

I did also manage to finish this drawing over the weekend, of a tulip I bought to decorate my new office at work: 

Anyway.  More actual house stuff soon, including, hopefully, some big craft room updates, and a BIG whole-house update.  Stay tuned.  You know, I mean, if you want to. You don't have to. It's your life. But I'll be sad if you don't. 

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Finally: The Kitchen

Finally, a post!  Hi, I'm Laura, and it has been 152 days since my last post. Life got a little weird there for a while, and I sure as heck wasn't working on the house.  But I'm back at it, and since (a) people always congregate in kitchen at parties, and (b) my roommate's 40th birthday party is this coming weekend, I painted the kitchen*:

Here's the "breakfast nook" side of the kitchen, after painting.  The color is Glidden's "Fresh Thyme Green," matched to a broken shard of a beloved bowl, which served as the color inspiration.

Here's the old color - kind of a baby-duck-yellow, which is pretty, but I'm not a yellow person at all.

The color was old, as well - the walls were covered in weird little scrapes and mars, years of grime and spatters, and over two dozen various holes and gouges in the walls that had to be filled.

The tile guys never finished out the baseboards in the house when they installed them, either; so every room in this house has started with filling and caulking in all the baseboards and trim, and priming and painting it all, too.

There was also this little section of a gold/ochre colored paint on one side of the kitchen window.

Hmm.

Eventually, I need to clean and repaint the soffits above the kitchen cabinets, too. I'd remove them entirely and open up the room, but the soffits above the stove and sink contain pipes!  Oh, well.

I absolutely love this color.  All of our kitchen accessories were already this color, so just by changing the wall color, the entire room is transformed and brought together.  I also LOVE the way it looks with all the different wood tones in the room.

This is Bob.  Bob almost got squished because I thought he was a drop of paint.

My favorite view of the kitchen:  The coffee bar on a metal baker's rack, and the Ikea cabinet given to me by a friend a couple of years ago (I traded her for my old cabinet, actually, and we're both better off!).





















* I wavered, for a while, over whether to tackle the kitchen or the master bathroom first.  I opted for the kitchen, since I know people will be cycling through it all evening.  But then the toilet in the guest bath broke.  I had to order a specialty part from The Internet, which was supposed to arrive last week, but now isn't going to show up until the day before the party.  Can I get it fixed in time, or will our guests have to use the ugly, cramped, dingy master bathroom in the crowded, crappy master bedroom (craft room) instead? 

Bit By Bit

We're still deep in the throes of unpacking and trying to find places for things; but we've reached the point where along the way, some spaces are beginning to come together.

The "breakfast nook" area is now an open storage/pantry area.

It's not done yet, but it's a good start.

The yellow will be going away VERY soon.  We hates yellow, Precious! 

The baker's rack on the right side is now a coffee bar. 
It's so fun to use!  No more giant coffee machine taking up counter space.

This baker's rack originally had a wooden work surface on the top of it, which I chopped up and made into cutting boards, oh, six or seven years ago.  And guess what it needs now?  A wooden work top.  One of about a frillion items on my to-do list.

*

The entryway is blue!  Or is it?  Maybe it's green.  No, no, definitely blue.  Wait...it's green!  WHAT COLOR IS THIS PAINT?! (Sherwin Williams' Comfort Gray:  for your Mood Hallway) 

Now, if I can just locate the box that has all the entry stuff in it...

Just for comparison's sake, here's a shot of the old paint job, in the process of being primed.  You can also see a bit of the old entry way tile in this pic. 

The gray wood-look ceramic tile in the pics above goes throughout the entire house.  I wasn't sure if I'd like it, but it definitely makes a good, neutral background for everything.



More soon!



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The @#$%@#!! Living Room Ceiling

Well, guys, I finally did it.  I painted the goddamned living room ceiling.

I started the ceiling project in 2012 - three years ago - with my then-master bedroom, followed by the dining room, kitchen, hallways, and eventually the guest bath and two small bedrooms as I re-made them a year ago when Sylvan moved in.  By the time that I got to the living room, I was out of steam, out of paint, out of time in which to work, and injured, to boot.  (I'm still injured, but fuck it).

The holiday weekend past gave me a much-needed break from working two jobs and filling every spare second of time with sleep, depression, and sewing projects (my Very Last Commission Ever is going up on the SCA blog shortly - it's a doozy).  What'd I do for Thanksgiving?  I painted the goddamned living room ceiling!  Yay!

Halfway there. Bye-bye, stupid blue ceiling that turned the whole house
into a cave. The paint is [two coats of] a self-priming latex interior which
I mixed to match the other ceilings in the house ("White Clay" by Behr).
The kitchen cabinets are the same color).

The "clean end" of the room (the other end still had paint stuff
all over it).  I love the feeling of height this gives the room.

And I adore this little corner.  Corner windows: check. 
Table fulla plants: check. Dog sleeping under the table:
heehee. 

YAY!

Okay, so, technically there IS still one room I haven't gotten around to yet, ceiling-wise: the master bath.  But I have plans for the entire master suite (which is now a gigantic craft room), and I'm not touching ANYTHING in there until I'm ready to do the whole room (and have time, and money, and my arm's not trying to fall off, and I'm no longer working two jobs, which I still am at present. Ugh).  

Shelly, the Biggest Derp.

P.S.:  Oh!  Idk if you noticed (does anybody even read this horrible blog? Probably not, but it's still fun to do), but I also rearranged all the furniture.  Pics of all very soon, I promise.

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