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!  

Bücher

Some of you will be horrified by this confession, but, when we moved in, we didn't organize the books. We just threw them onto any old shelf willy-nilly, just wherever they would fit.  CHAOS.  The house was still under construction, schedules were weird, the Shelfy Nook was still a hole in the wall.  You know how it is when you move into a place - no matter how well-laid your organizational plans, priorities shift on the fly. Plus, if you're doing any DIY in the process, there's always a good deal of Scope Creep to handle. 

Last weekend, once the Shelfy Nook was complete, the house underwent a weird transformation: suddenly the floors were covered in books, as if there had been some horrible library explosion.  It was terribly confusing for the one cat and one dog who absolutely abhor any environmental disruption, and a playground for everybody else.  My roommate is the resident bibliophile (I prefer e-readers, myself; though I do adore really old books), and she quickly took charge of the sorting and categorizing, handing armloads to me to shelve when she was done.

We are now officially surrounded by books - organized books. Whew! That only took three months.  See:

The aforementioned Shelfy Nook, on the west side of the living room.

A bookcase by the windows in the living room, on the east side. 

To the south, behind the primary seating area, is just about my favorite piece of furniture - also filled with books.  Here is where we put the nifty old stuff, and small collections/series.

On the north side of the room is the shelving unit that houses all the DVDs...and there are books there, too.  We're surrounded! (Which is okay by me). 

Two narrow shelves in the "dining room" (don't eat bikes, kids).  You'll see these again, soon - this room is one of the next items on my to-do list.

Yet another cabinet full of books, this one in the breakfast nook, full of cookbooks (Roommate Sylvan is also a fabulous vegan cook and pastry chef, and has even written a couple of cookbooks of her own). 

This is another room on my to-do list, by the way.  So much to do!

















Not shown: yet another shelf full of books in Sylvan's room, a couple of boxes of music books and costuming books in the craft room, and the few selections I keep in my room because I like looking at them (a boxed complete works of Jane Austen, and a set of tiny Yale Library Shakespeare study books bound in fabric, which I adore).


Everybody have a great weekend! 

Stuff and Things

I think it's a good sign that

• I'm not knocking jars off my new spice rack every time I grab one of them, and 
• I'm still grinning from ear to ear and sighing, "ahhh" every time I walk into my pink sewing room.  

Right decisions, yay.  :) 

Meanwhile...

I've been puttering, not working on a whole lot of things.  Mostly small stuff.  I decided after the SCA event last week (which I'd been sewing for for weeks), that I would turn my attention to my landscaping...and then we started this freeze/warm cycle all over again.  It was 70º earlier this week, two days after a freeze;  today it's freezing and about to start sleeting and raining; and next week it's supposed to be in the 60s, but then it'll freeze and rain again.  Freaking winter.  

Instead, then, I've been doing some indoor gardening, which has ended up branching out into shelving and lighting.  I've been picking at my art room some, rearranging furniture and getting ready to gut the closet and re-do it so that I can start getting the room together.  (I have my painting space, but it's kind of a clearing in a junk forest at the moment).  

I put up a window shelf in my art room,  upon which now sits some Pothos and Philodendron cuttings in pretty jars, and below which is a simple wooden rod with dark copper rings and a plain, white, bit of muslin fabric as a café curtain.  There's a funky, paisley, linen sheer over one side of the window over it all in reds and browns, and a trio of brightly-colored glass "Moroccan" lanterns hung in the corner over the window as well.  

I'm going to be doing some more work in the room, bit by bit;  I've decided that since I have two big art projects to do for other people and the space isn't really conducive to working comfortably in, that I'll work on the paintings and the room simultaneously.  Mostly it's going to be dealing with the closet, and organizing the whole room better.  I've also decided that since I love Moroccan, Indian, and "boho" design elements, but that they're too much for my main living space, that I'll make my art room my brightly-colored and deeply-layered "boho" space - a little artsy, creative refuge.  

For the time being, though, I'm going to be taking on a second job soon, in order to take care of some debt and get myself a little bit ahead.  I've been struggling lately, and I'm tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I'm not going to have much time to work around the house, or for anything resembling a social life for a few months, so there may not be many new entries here; but I'll keep you guys apprised of what's going on.  

Wish me luck! 

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Annual Sewing Room Refit

Do I really do this every December/January?  I do, don't I?  Weird.

Anyway, the gray and white that I did last year was boring the heck out of me.  This is a creative space.  Grayscale?  Really?  I have no idea.

Before (last year)

Beige linen curtain (love), fabric boxes on wall shelves,
white above, grey below with grey trim. 

Closet shelves.  Grey and white and grey and white. 

What has turned out to be an awesome fabric storage idea, 

What's happening now... 

Fabric bins moved into the newly-pink closet

Doors back on.  The curtain was always a pain in the rear;
I ended up taking it down, and then the closet was
just this great big gaping hole.  

Last week and over the weekend I did a LOT of painting, refinishing, spray-painting, and re-arranging.  I'm not quite done yet; but by way of a preview, the whole room is going in somewhat this direction:

made using Olioboard

Update soon!


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IT BEGINS.

Typos are hilarious.  IT BEINGS doesn't have nearly the same ring to it.

So.  Kress is all moved out, and my house is all mine once more.  The move went well, and we said tearful but happy goodbyes to each other and to each other's pets, hehe.  It all ends on a happy note, for both of us.  On to bigger and brighter things!

And then I began the complete reorganization of my entire house, which will end up taking me all summer.  I started by cleaning.  Hoo boy, moving raises SO much dust!  I was on my feet all day and evening both Saturday and Sunday, and I have a LOT to show you.  But we'll start where I started, after the place was clean:  with the closets in the master bedroom.

My closet has always been the one in the bathroom, on the bottom of the picture.  You saw the makeover for that one back in  December.  The other closet, up on the left, was Kress' closet.  I spent the whole weekend cleaning both, and re-distributing items and furniture.



In my closet...

While I loved the shoe shelves, back in December I got in a little over my head - literally.  I could barely reach the towels on the top shelf, and have been dumping them on my head for months, and I was TIRED OF IT.

So I removed the shelving and installed it lower, so that the tall boots are on the ground, and the tallest shelf (now housing stuffed dinosaurs, manatees, and alligators with big floppy aardvark ears), is about forehead level.

I also moved my dresser out into the bedroom, to take the place of some large bookcases that moved out of the room.  The two plastic bins on these shelves are for my unmentionables.  I like having them in the closet, but not in the dresser.

Since the dresser was gone, I got a set of two café curtain rods from the dollar store (for all of $1.29, seriously), and used them to hang my collection of scarves.

They're within easy reach, not taking up hanger-space on the clothing bar, and I really like the way they look hanging like this.

With the dresser out, and the shoe shelf lowered, the closet feels a ton more open.










The other closet...

...is now both my linen closet and my SCA closet!  About 10/90%, too - you can see the towels there.  Everything else in the closet is SCA:  long, heavy dresses, shoes, underlayers, and drawers and baskets full of hats, sleeves, scarves, snoods, and all sorts of other accessories.

There's still some renovation to be done in here:  there's carpeting on the floor that's original to the house.  It's in good shape, but it and another closet elsewhere in the house are the only pieces of carpet left.  And, believe it or not, the walls in here have never been painted. Also, you know how I detest that wire shelving.  So, updates on all that forthcoming.

Meanwhile, ALL THIS was in my other closet!  And the dresser was in there! That's too much stuff!  So this helps a lot.








Later this week I'll show you what I did with the dresser in the bedroom, as well as some work going on in the living room, some furniture painting, and some furniture building!  WHEW.


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$1 Kitsch

Ever since I saw this on Pinterest:

And this...

And this...

And about fourteen other, similar pins, on my kitchen board, I've wanted to do something similar with the wee stretch of wall near my sink, under which I have my dish drainer.  And so I did, with Ikea's help:

(catbomb)

That's

• two fifty-cent brackets from Ikea
• $1.99 clock from Ikea
• a scrap board I had in the garage, already stained AND the perfect size
• four screws I had sitting around
• and some little glass and ceramic tchotchkes I had sitting nearby on the bar (two avocado pits and a handful of Oregano I'm trying to get to root).  

Whole project:  $2.99 (plus tax).   Yay! 

Before & After: Craft Room Whoopass

I opened up a HUGE can of whoopass on my craft room over the long holiday weekend!  I'm tired, and sore, and at this particular moment I pretty much never want to paint anything ever again - but the room is 99% finished, and I'm SO excited about that!  Check it out:

Before:

 Loooong sewing table. Stained plywood top (ok, but the finish was wearing off), on black wire shelves for legs (wobbly, ugly, cramped legroom).

Gray walls.  Soft and relaxing, but boring.

Green painted concrete floor. (Hey, the paint was free, and at the time it was better than bare concrete).

3 of 4 wood plank shelves, fabric s l o w l y  being moved from bins on the floor underneath to "neatly" "folded" stacks, pending storage box decision.

Closet packed to bursting, half-assed, mis-matched carboard and paper boxes, and big plastic bins.


The bottom shelf was supposed to be an extra work surface for me to roll my chair up to. Do YOU see any place to work??

<-- 8yo carpet




After:
After a loooong four-day weekend of taking shelves down and re-painting them, painting the walls, sorting and organizing until I thought I'd die from it, and making some furniture changes:

I painted the top 2/3 of the walls a fresh, crisp white.

The wooden shelves were painted a cool, charcoal gray - kinda reminds me of the color of those old, metal, Steelcase desks.

The closet, formerly a weird, too-light blue, got the same treatment:  white walls (top and bottom), and "Steelcase" gray on the shelves.

I like the gray "frame" around the closet opening.






<-- the carpet's been removed in here, as well. Finally.

The sewing table top also got painted gray;  the shelf  "legs" were replaced by Ikea's CURRY legs, in silver.

While the dimensions of the top haven't changed, the table itself is about 3" shorter than it was - which I was REALLY worried about doing, but it actually turned out to be exactly what this table needed. No more shoulder strain!

A LOT of art went into this room, much of it my own.  These four are actually the very first "real paintings" I ever did.

The black bulletin board that used to sit behind the sewing machine on the right is now hanging vertically at the end of the desk. Less looming, and more space for art! :)

<-- Ikea's HELMER  file cabinet.  SO cute, and SO incredibly perfect for all of my sewing things.  No more shelves full of random boxes of loose stuff! :D

ALL of the shelves and fabric boxes are now in place! The boxes still need labels.

There's a gray "frame" around the window, too - since the walls were already gray, I just taped off everything I wanted to refrain from painting. The inside of the window casing is still gray, too, and I really like the effect.

Look, a ceiling fan!!!  Belive it or not, this is nearly my favorite part of the room.  This room is ridiculously hot in the summers.  Now I don't have to wheel in a big ugly box fan to keep me cool in here.

Note the gray border around the top of the walls.  There's a nifty ceiling thing that hasn't happened in this room quite yet, so I left space. :)







That's a lot of change, for a LOT of work - but really, not so much.  Really, all that happened in this room was:

• painting
• changing the table legs
• installing a ceiling fan
• bringing in that little Ikea file cabinet

But it took four days to do.  Four days of nearly non-stop work - Saturday and Monday were like 14-hour days.  I'm actually looking forward to going back to work this week, so I can sit still, hehe. 

There are a couple more things in this room to show you, which will happen in their own post - like curtains, plants, and other "soft" things, to break up all this gray-and-white, which, in these pictures, seems a bit stark. The fabric boxes still need labels, and I have a nifty idea about that to experiment with.  Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be finishing up the ceiling, too.  

The next big thing, though, will be putting real flooring down in this room, and its neighbor.  If things go the way I'd like them to, that'll happen this next weekend.  Woohoo! 

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Before & After: Tableshelf Printerstand Badkitty

Many moons ago (many, many moons), I bought one of those Southwestern-y looking square trunk tables. You know: rustic pine wood, pre-dinged for your battered furnishing convenience, with rusted iron hardware (because mmm, tetanus*).  Shortly thereafter, I realized I had been smoking crack when I bought it.

I refinished it a number of times, and eventually just painted it black, but it was still a big, flat, clunky table, and I'm WAY too clumsy for large, low-to-the-ground furniture. I have the broken toes to prove it.

"cabinet"

 Eventually, as unwanted furniture in my house is wont to do, it ended up in my sewing room, upended, as a "cabinet."  Yuh-huh.  I wasn't even keeping anything in it, just piling crap on top of it. (As I am wont to do).

I thought about knocking it completely apart and actually building something out of the sides, but I gave up after realizing I could really only make...a big square table with it.  (I've had a serious creativity cramp the last few months, around the house).

"table"

Not to be defeated by a table, I finally decided to just remove the table-y parts and use it as a big square shelf.  You can never have enough big square shelves, after all.

I dragged it out to the garage, removed the feet, the doors, and the center top piece that didn't open (why, exactly...?), and all the trim molding around the bottom edge.

a good start

I wrestled with what to do with the finish.

Leave it, and claim that it was beautiful in its curbside-find simplicity? Paint it a bright, snazzy, eye-catching color?  Nope, don't have any of those, don't feel like buying new paint for this.  Touch up with more black?  Nope, don't have any of that, either.

In the end I settled on using this table shelf to use up the leftover gray paint from the guest bath.

heyloogidat!

There!  Waaay better than the ex-coffee table that used to sit in this corner, which was constantly piled with books and papers, and which invited A Very Bad Cat to sit on the scanner whenever the hell he felt like it.  Something missing, though...

Now the top of the table shelf is full, which means there's no room for the aforementioned Very Bad Cat to hop up there and screw with the printer, or the curtains. Or the plant (which is an Elephant's Foot Palm, related to the Ponytail Palm (Baucarnia recurvata), both of which apparently taste really good to cats).

everything needs a plant on it (in my house)

Vertical magazine and file organizers courtesy of Ikea. Five of them for two bucks. Aw, yeah.

P.S.:

Before. Yowza. 

* And, because I said that, I have to say this, because it's an odd pet peeve of mine:  you don't really get tetanus from rusty metal. The condition of tetanus, aka lockjaw,  (which is actually quite serious, by the way) is caused by any one of a number of tetanus bacteria, which are soil-borne, anaerobic bacteria, and which die when in contact with oxygen. A rusty nail buried in the ground? Sure, maybe (boots and gloves in the garden, people). A rusty nail sticking out of a table in your house? No way. Certainly not a clean sewing needle in a sewing machine, Dr. Guy Who Made Me Get That Horrible Shot For No Reason). 

Craft Room Shelves, Take III

Craft Room Shelves 

I don't think I've ever, in my life, taken THIS long to put up one damned set of shelves.  I keep finding myself one bracket short (and cue Peanut Gallery).

three out of four ain't bad?

The good news is, I'm one bracket away from putting up the fourth and final shelf, and then I can go get some plastic boxes from Ikea to store all that fabric in, to keep dust off of them.  I also need to re-organize the closet a bit so I can fit those last two gray bins into it: they're both full of old costumes, and upholstery fabric, none of which I want to put out on the shelves.

before: stacks of tubs, ack! 

I also moved all the cat boxes from the guest bath cabinet into this room.  They're on the floor under the shelves, for now, until I can get some sort of enclosure built around them to keep the litter dust from flying, and to camouflage the, er, boxes of turds and sand.  º~º   So, building stuff YAY.

To be [perennially] continued...

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Pseudo-Update

Wow, I'm doing a great job updating this week, aren't I?  

I'm really doing the stuff I said I was gonna do, too.  I just keep forgetting to take pictures!  So far this week, I have:

1. Planted a rose bush in the front garden, and cleaned up the area around it in preparation for some changes I plan to make next week
2. Planted a bush in the backyard (and scolded a dog who tried to dig it up, even though I'd put fencing around it, then put the sprinkler next to it to keep him away, because he's terrified of the sprinkler).
3. Put up some of the shelves in the craft room, and began organizing my fabric onto it, in order to (a) start getting the floor cleared of giant plastic bins, and (b) free up a couple of the bins so I can pack camping stuff into them
4. Taken a gigantic truckload of clothes and items to Goodwill, after having mercilessly purged my wardrobe recently to make space for (a) clothes that actually fit me and (b) costumes! 

Speaking of costumes...

I started that costume blog that I was telling you about the other day. Good news on two fronts:  YOU don't have to be bothered reading my costume stuff if you're only here for the plants and houses; and *I* have a shiny new toy.  Hee!  If you're interested, my costume blog is here:

http://clothofstars.blogspot.com

 


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For My Closet...FML

Ugh.  My closet.

Remember this, from September?   Yeah, me either.

Actually, I did get rid of the step-shelf.  And I moved the heavy wood shelf in, on the main wall (under the mirror, which only exists in the sketch).  I stuffed it with baskets; but the baskets I had were WAY wrong for the shelf - wrong size, wrong style, wrong color, just...WRONG.  And a pain in the butt to use, too. 

However, since my last aquarium went belly-up and I no longer needed the little mini-dresser I had refinished to go under it, the mini-dresser got moved into the closet instead:

It works great - in the space, and as...wait for it...a dresser.  Imagine that.   It's a bit short, but I've got an idea for a little hutch-type thing to place on top of it (if I can find it in the garage).

My clothes are actually pretty well contained within the arrangement of shelves and rods I have now (especially since earlier this month I got rid of like half of them, finally).  The sketch above called for a small bar to the left of the dresser/mirror area for long coats and dresses, and a secondary dresser-type storage unit on the left below the shelves made of these modular cubes I have sitting around. But since linen-closet items are actually the biggest problem at the moment, I'm thinking of stacking the cubes vertically in the same space for more of a linen-cabinet type of thing for towels, sheets, rugs, etc. 

a similar tower o' cubes in my living room

If that ends up working, then the only thing missing will be the shelf running around the top of the room, and the mirror over the dresser.  Here's hoping!





(And I may or may not get around to this.  I've spent all week getting ready for a party tomorrow night, so that'll take up my entire day tomorrow; but usually Sunday after a party I like to unwind by doing something like this that just for me.  So we'll see). 

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