Bedroom Bling

I love my "new" bedroom.  I've been working on redecorating it for two months, and I am absolutely in love with the way it turned out.  There was just one more thing it needed...

I love the gloomy blues and greens in the room, but the black bed frame was a bit heavy and bland.  There's a lot of black in the room - in some of the furniture, in the picture frames - but it's punctuated with little dots of light in gold handles, knobs, and even some of the frames.  I wanted the bed to reflect that, and I've always loved the look of a black metal bed with gold bedknobs and finials.

This scared me, I'll be honest.  This gold metallic spray paint is BRIGHT GOLD, and I was worried that it would be WAY too much.  But at this point, there was no going back.  Especially since getting the headboard and footboard masked off with tape and newspaper took me like three hours. Whew!

It was, however, all worth it.  This is just exactly the amount of shininess this bed needed, and I LOVE the way it looks!  I love the way the gold catches the light, and the way all the little points of light on the bed sort of echo the sparkle of the string lights on the standing screen in the corner.  It pulls in the frames and the drawer knobs - in fact, I feel like I might paint another couple of the picture frames, I just haven't decided which yet.

I finally feel like my bedroom is done.

You know, for now.

Ikea Hack: A Sewing Desk

This was what my sewing corner looked like last week:

The sewing machines are on that same corner desk I've had for ages and never get around to finishing refinishing.  (Also it's missing a leg ever since we moved).  Next to it on the left there are two Ikea Helmer file cabinets which hold sewing and craft supplies.  You saw the new craft room last week; this is the story of the sewing desk.  So far it works really well and I LOVE using it. 

First: a can of Rustoleum's gray automotive primer: 

I used the same auto primer on an Ikea Raskog two years ago, and it came out really well.  The primer is made specifically for metal and metal paint, and that cart came out pretty much indestructible.  I wanted to use the auto primer again for this project because of all the abuse these Helmers take while I'm sewing.  

I also sprayed the handles gold (also R's American Accents): 

Once the primer was cured, I painted both Helmer units in Rustoleum's American Accents matte finish spray paint in Coastal Sage (sort of a blueish chalkboard-green color):

When both Helmers were painted and put back together, I purchased a 2x4' birch project panel at the hardware store and used it to create a desktop to go on top of them.  I raised the height of the desktop by placing a pair of 1" risers cut from an old shelving board on top of the Helmers.  I also used sections of clear Ikea Komplement drawer liner in between the wood pieces to keep them from sliding around.  

 So there's a new desk, for the cost of two cans of spray paint and a $26 piece of wood.  I turned two small pieces of furniture into one functional one, and moved a big, bulky, broken table out of the way.  Now I have a well-organized space that's comfortable and intuitive to use.  

Bonus:  my favorite part about my new sewing desk is the power strip on the right side - see it there, with the cords sticking out?  I have all the sewing machines, the light, the iron, and the pencil sharpener run through that power strip, so that I can turn the ENTIRE workspace on with one button.  Fwoosh! Ready to work.  The power strip even has USB charging ports, so I can charge my phone or whatever while I work.  Sweet!   

Making Over the Craft Room

It was time to do a complete overhaul of the entire craft room.  Here's what it looked like before:

Cluttered, crammed full of small furniture, and with a terrible, dark paint job.  We basically moved in, shoved a bunch of crap into this room, and never touched it again.  Bad. 

This little bookshelf wasn't being put to use very well - it was crammed up against the doorway and stuffed full of random crap that belonged in the closet.  

The closet doors were missing, and nothing in the closet (or out of it, truthfully) was very well organized.

First I set about organizing the room.  There were a couple of boxes which should have been stored in the garage that I moved out there;  everything else in the closet got reorganized and re-stacked, so that it would STAY in the closet.  Surfaces were cleared, things were put into plastic bins and stored on an Ikea Hyllis shelving unit in the closet.

Next:

1. I painted the room, in a color I mixed myself by adding some yellow-gold to the SW Silvermist I had on hand leftover from my bedroom. The resulting shade matches up to SW Comfort Gray, if you're interested.  
2. I hung curtains - I moved the white Ikea Matilda semi-sheers from my bedroom into this room, once replacements for the bedroom arrived in the mail (more on that later).  
3. I found the closet doors in the garage, ordered some replacement hardware for them, and re-hung them in the room.  The doors also got a fresh coat of white paint.  
4. I hung the ironing board on the wall behind the entry door, to keep it out of the way
5. I hung a pendant lamp over the sewing table, using an Ikea Hemma light kit and a glass sconce I've had for years.  It and the sewing machines are plugged into a power strip mounted on the side of the desk so that I can turn the entire sewing table on with one button.  
6. I moved a short bookcase from the door of the room over to the corner behind the sewing desk, and moved a small dresser to the door of the room, to hold the printer and printer supplies
7. I hung new art (printed from online) over the bookcase and art table in the rear of the room

Here's the whole room, more or less, in its finished state.  It's lighter and brighter, the windows softer, the furniture balanced and the floorplan open.  I rearranged the furniture and moved that little bookshelf next to the window to balance out the art table on the right side.  I LOVE my new sewing desk, and having doors back on the closet makes a huge difference in how clean and organized the room feels. 

The desk is made from a pair of Ikea Helmer file cabinets, spray painted in "Coastal Sage" (Rustoleum American Accents), with a 2x4' birch project panel across the top - up on 1" shelf risers to make the desk height the correct height.  I've got both sewing machines, the overhead light, and the pencil sharpener and iron plugged into the power strip on the right side of the desk, so I can turn EVERYTHING on at once with the touch of a button.  

Finally, the closet doors.  There's nothing remarkable about them, except that they're finally hung (it took some doing, and I had to buy all new mounting hardware), and they CLOSE and hide all the "organized clutter" inside.  

Tada!   

Third Project: Bathroom Paint

I'm going to stop numbering these posts any time now.

Project #3 in the new house was to paint the bathroom.  Like the bedroom, it was painted a dirty yellow color with a darkish, dusty blue accent wall. The craft room is painted the same way, actually.  I guess someone at some point got some oops paint on sale.  The walls are also dirty and smudged and dinged, and there's this...thing...here, look:

When people don't know how to patch holes correctly. 

Here's the bathroom before:

bleh

And here it is after:

The new color is homemade.  I took some of the Silvermist from the bedroom project and added it to a bucket of white primer, to make this color.  I didn't care what color I came out with, as long as it was pale enough not to clash with our towels and things.  I'll be honest, it doesn't really blow my skirt up, but it's not yellow anymore, and that darker blue wall isn't looming over us anymore, and it's a nice, fresh, clean paint job, which I love to see.


The blob is a little better, too, after I sanded it down most of the way, filled the holes that appeared in it while I was sanding, and painted over it:

Still ugly.  Slightly less blobby.  

Yay.  The end.

New House: First Project

Well, the move is finished and we're busy settling in.  After a few weeks of scurrying around unpacking and figuring out what to do with all of our stuff, everything is  mostly coming together.  We love the place so far: the floor plan is open and comfortable, there's plenty of storage, and there's a nice, big backyard for the dogs to play in.

The First Order of Business

So what's the first thing I did to the house?  I did what you've seen me do a thousand times on this blog: I painted something BLUE.

BEFORE

The walls of my bedroom were painted a dingy butter-yellow with a steel-blue accent wall. The paint job on the walls was old - filled with chips, smudges, dirty areas around light switches, and tons of nail holes. Plus, I despise yellow.  Thankfully, the landpeople said that since they weren't repainting the place before we moved in, that we could paint anything we wanted.  Woohoo!

How old-school-cool is it that there are sinks in the master bedroom?  I'm kind of loving it. 

AFTER

I love this color!!  It's Sherwin Williams' Silvermist, which is a soft, muted, dusky, greenish blue. Truth be told I was hoping to find something paler and grayer than this, but I opted for the right tone rather than the right depth, hoping it would work, and I LOVE the way it turned out.  My bedroom's been white for the last four years (by choice), and as much as I loved it, I'm really digging having color on my walls again.

CAT

I tell you what, as much as I love painting, it's no fun painting walls that go all the way up to the roofline.  I don't have a ladder that tall!  For the trim on the tallest wall, I stood at the very top of my 6' ladder with a 5' extension pole with a 2" foam brush taped to the end of it.  It took forever and it was SCARY.  Thankfully, I did not fall and die.

What's Next? 

1. Paint-wise, the bathroom and craft room are next - both are also painted in the yellow/blue color scheme that my bedroom was, the paint job equally old and battered.  The craft room will be painted with the left over Silvermist;  I'm not sure what color the bathroom will end up.    

2.  Sylvan and I have been hanging a lot of art, but we lack adequate wall space because of all of the large, tall furniture we have in the living room.  Solution?  Gallery wall! More on that very soon.  

3.  The landscaping at this place was seriously neglected for a very long time.  Technically, my first project in the house was a 6-hour landscaping bender in which I mowed the entire property (which is huge) and pruned back twelve bushes and a small tree which were all so overgrown that they were swallowing the back patio.  Next is the front "garden" under the windows, which is badly overgrown and full of weeds and anthills.  It's got a lovely little stone border, though, that's currently hidden under a battalion of dead Daylilies and "Monkey Grass" - once the dead plants are removed and the stones are washed off, it should be quite lovely.  

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!




.

Whew!

I know, it's been a hot minute since I posted here, but that's because I haven't been working on any projects around the house.  I've been painting, sketching along with the Inktober drawing challenge, and crocheting all the things. I'm also prepping for a Halloween party, which I haven't thrown since 2014!

I started a fish tank, too. Right now, it's devoid of actual fish - I let it sit a couple of weeks to cycle, got a couple of plants (the leafy little Anubias nana and the Marimo moss ball (actually a beneficial algae) above), and have been contemplating getting a bunch more plants and a Betta but not actually doing it. Aside from a bit of mold on the wood (need some snails to eat it) it's coming along beautifully for, you know, not having any fish in it. Because it's a fish tank.  Let's be real: it's a box of water with a log in it. But it'll grow.

I do have several furniture projects planned:

• Refinishing the once-and-forever art table, which I've been "working on" refinishing for over a year now
• Refinishing my nightstand, an antique plant stand/hall table 
• Refinishing a little wooden chowki table that's seen better days
• Frosting the glass on the doors of my Ikea HEMNES pantry cabinet, and painting the rest of the unit. 
• Staining my Ikea FORHOJA kitchen cart, something I've been thinking about for three years and hadn't decided on until recently
• Possibly building a big honking sideboard for the living room from scratch. Sort of. 

Lots of projects to keep me in the garage this winter! 

But this month, I'm mostly focused on the Halloween party: 

• Buy all the spooky things
• Make all the other things spooky
• Don't have a heart attack over established friends base meeting new friends from work at the party
• Spray-paint the dog* 
• Finish crocheting the little pseudo-Victorian boot spats I'm making for my costume, block them, and sew buttons on 

* not really, but Daisy is getting a body paint costume, as soon as I order some dog-safe paint

I'm working on a painting right now, slowly, and I have no idea when I'll be finished.  But here's the last one I made, finished three weeks ago: 

I also painted this little papier-maché skull for Halloween.  It's not shaped much like an actual human skull, but I tried to get it as realistic-looking as I could anyway.  I'm kind of proud of poor Yoric here. As a friend said to me this morning, it's hard to paint dimension and shape onto something that has none.  Rewarding, when you get it right, but hard.  

Anyway, I'm off to Halloween all the things.  See you again soon! 

Time Out For A Shitload of Jewelry

In and amongst the various house projects, I've also been making a whole bunch of jewelry.  I don't know what's got into me lately - I haven't made jewelry in years, but now I can't stop doing it. I guess I caught the bug again while repairing some pieces. Here are some of the pieces I've made lately:

A "let's see if I can still do this" starter piece with metal leaves, and a wrap on a clay scarab. 

Necklace and earrings in Fluorite, amethyst, iolite, and emerald chips. 

The fluorite set (left) was inspired by this lampwork glass set
(right), which I made several years ago. 

Miscellaneous bracelets. From top right:  a silver-colored metal bangle with
stones glued on (don't know what kind of stones);  a "silver" and black faceted
bracelet and earrings, plastic;  and a bracelet with blue faceted glass
and plastic  "metal" beads. 

Faceted carnelian, graduated, with that scarab from the first picture. 

Faux-lapis (dyed howlite, I believe) which broke. I didn't have the right spacer
beads, so I improvised...

...I improvised in a way that left me with enough beads and spacers
to make a matching bracelet. Yay! 

I have two more necklace-and-bracelet/earrings sets going right now, and nothing planned after that.  Whew!  So many projects. 

I also painted this: 

"Atchafalaya", painted from photos I took the last time I was passing
through the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana.   

That's all for now!  I have a new rug I'll show you tomorrow. 

Because Poe Wrote on Both*

Another "Finally!" project is complete.  As much as I'd had an enormous Whirlwind of Projects! planned for my holiday break, I ended up sick the entire time and got nothing done (unless you count sitting around binge-watching episodes of The West Wing, at which I excelled).  Before I broke my foot in May 2017. I did two things:  I bought a new bike, and I started refinishing two desks. This is one of them, finally finished, ten months later.

This thing started life as a an unfinished, loosely Mission-style, sofa table. My roommate bought it roughly a thousand years ago, stained it herself, and used it for book and cat storage for many years, before deciding she wanted to use it as a writing table. A blue writing table.

The first task, then, was to make sure the thing was tall enough for her to sit at with an office chair.  It wasn't, but only by an inch:  four slices of a 2x2" stick, my jigsaw and hand planer, some sandpaper, and putty took care of that:

Next was to remove the drawer hardware, mostly-sand the whole thing down, and hit it with some Liquid Sander, which is still one of my favorite substances on the planet:

ready to prime! 

Liquid Sander is a deglosser - essentially a very mild stripper, that breaks down the outermost layer of finish on a piece - clearcoat, stain, paint, whatever.  It's meant to take the place of sanding;  I usually sand a piece first, to break up the clearcoat on the piece, before using the deglosser, so that it breaks down more of the outer layer of clearcoat/stain, and is better able to take primer and paint.

Just don't use it without gloves, unless you like your skin peeling off for the next two days.  Especially don't use it without gloves when you're using red shop rags to wipe it on, or you'll turn your fingers red:

sadtrombone.mp3

Since I suck at remembering to take "before" pictures, I used MS Paint to put the Mission side rails and drawer knobs back on for you, LOL:

This project leveled up in the fun department when I realized
that I could just KICK those side rails out.  BLAM! Hee.

First coat of primer: 

I put another coat of primer over the first, then painted it.  The paint was mixed from a remnant of SW's "Tradewinds" (which is what's on the walls), a little bit of a midnight blue to mute the color without graying it out, and a touch of orange to warm it up just enough to bring it into a "dusky" blue without turning it green. It took a bit of work to get it just right; but I love this shade of pale turquoise - a bit darker, and a lot greener/warmer than the wall color. 

(this looks crammed into a corner because of the angle of the
photo; but there's actually a good six feet of space back there) 

Roomie hasn't found the perfect drawer knobs just yet, so I threw some cheap little brass-finish Ikea knobs on it for the time being:  

(I told you everything I own is blue)

Now my roomie has a dedicated space in the house to work on her novels, when she doesn't feel like going out to a coffee shop to write.  

Next! 

cat tax

*The answer to "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" in case you've ever wondered. 

Shelfy Nook

FINISHED!  Finally.  This was like four days' work, and it took me a month. Whew! Procrastination is hard. 

 

Back to the beginning:

I started working on this nook in December  (see this post):
I  removed rotted and sagging shelves and plastic shelf clips which were painted and caulked into the wall, repaired the resulting wall damage, primed the walls and gave it a first coat of paint. 

When I painted the living room over the holiday break, I also installed these supports (1x1/4" pre-primed trim molding) and painted them in with the wall color when this wall got a second coat of paint.

Like a billion years later, I finally got the wood for the shelves out of the back of my car where it had been since December, cut it to size, and attached more (untreated) trim molding to the fronts.

Wood conditioner ftw.  I've never used it before, but WOW it made a difference. The stain went on so smoothly, only took a single coat, and sanding was minimal.

The stain is Minwax's Deep Walnut.  I'm a Jacobean girl from way back; this time I was looking for something with a little less of a green undertone, but not so warm that it bordered on reddish. This was perfect.

P.S.: stainable wood filler my ass. SO much work covering the nail holes on the fronts and getting them to blend in. Sigh.

I am loving the way these turned out.  I should have used a wider trim facing on the fronts of the shelves, so that they would completely cover the struts on the walls, but, live and learn, right?

The last thing was to deal with this nasty 30yo+ a/c return air cover.  It turned out to be a lot less work than I'd anticipated.  I removed it, banged it back into shape with a hammer (from the back), cleaned the gook off of it with my bike cleaning spray (AWESOME) then hit the whole thing with a couple of coats of plain, white, hi-gloss spray paint.

Hilariously enough, there was no filter behind this cover, and nowhere to fit one - the edges of the wall behind the cover are all crumbled and corroded, and when I tried to wedge a filter in place, it just fell flat.  I ended up zip-tying the filter to the cover to keep it where it belongs. Thankfully, it doesn't show:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


I LOVE the way this all came out. :)