Front hall makeover

My other little spring makeover was in the front hall. I'd already done a lot of work on this tiny space last year. First of all there was an odd curved panel at the top that didn't serve any purpose. Bradley removed that and I repaired the holes that were left in the walls.

This is the "before":

We replaced the light fixture with a little acorn light. This one had a long stem but Bradley managed to cut it shorter so that it wouldn't hang too low and the door could open.

And finally the walls and ceiling had bumpy stucco that I skim coated. In case you're wondering, that little step took forever and I wouldn't recommend it unless you really can't live with the texture. It's doable in a tiny space like this but I think you'd really want to hire a professional for a larger wall.

My only real tip is that I found it was easier to gradually build up coats and then fine tune at the end with very thin coats rather than relying too much on sanding. Sanding that stuff makes a big mess! In the end I think it was worth it. I painted the walls to match the living room pale blue grey colour, Benjamin Moore's Green Tint.

So this Spring there wasn't much left to do, but the space still needed a bit of decorating. I added some hooks on the wall that replaced the clothes rail that used to be there. Most of our coats stay in the basement closet, so we don't need to keep everything in the front hall.

Then I found an old shelf in our garage that was left behind by the previous owners. It was a dull brown, with a damaged area on the lower shelf. So I filled that, sanded, primed and painted it Cloud White.

Originally I was going to put the shelf in the living room, but then realized it fit the front hall perfectly. Yay! It's perfect for baskets of hats and mittens, stacks of library books and any things that should be heading out of the house. For a finishing touch, I sewed some basket liners with blue and white seersucker using a great basket liner tutorial I found here).

p.s. This coming Sunday you can find me here!

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No-sew stereo makeover

Quick reminder, now is the time to bring in some branches to force! These are pear branches, I haven't tried those yet so we'll see if they blossom

This little makeover is about as simple as you can get. I'll explain how I did it just in case anyone else has an old stereo that they'd like to change.

 So, I'd like to get a lovely wooden Tivoli system someday when the budget allows. But until then I was getting tired of my stereo's blue speaker screens (that I had managed to spill paint on at some point.)

When I finally decided to update them, I realized it was actually really easy. I wish I had done it sooner. The screens are made up of fabric stretched over a plastic grill and the whole thing pops off. I wish I had noticed that when I was trying to clean off the paint! Anyway it can get dusty back there so it's a good opportunity to tidy that up.

Then just rip off the old fabric. Punch a hole with your scissors in the centre and pull the fabric away around the edges. It's basically just glued down and if you tug the whole piece of fabric will come off.

After that cut a new piece of fabric to fit. Just trace around the screen and leave a little extra to tuck around the back. I used one of my favourite linen prints, grey fish and waves on white. If you use a patterned fabric you can decide exactly where you'd like the pattern to be placed and which way is facing up. Also the patterns could match or be symmetrical to each other.

Then apply double sided tape around the edges of the plastic screen just on the inside.

It doesn't have to be perfect!

Place the screen in the centre of your fabric (wrong side of fabric facing up, front side of screen facing down), pull the edges of the fabric over and press onto the tape. It's like upholstering a chair seat, attach the centres first, then work your way around and gently press the edges of the fabric down on the tape while tugging very gently so that the fabric is snug but not stretched out of shape.

Once the fabric is attached all around you can use an extra tiny bit of tape to tidy up the corners, then trim away excess fabric.

Pop them back onto the speakers and you're done. That's it!

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Spring decorating

Now that the house is sunnier I've been feeling more motivated to do lots of little decorating projects. My decorating budget is still non-existent, so stay posted for lots of easy changes you can do that cost next to nothing. Most of these involved things I had lying around already, so it helps if you already have things like leftover paint from other projects etc.

The first thing I've done is add more shelving in our kitchen. The wall over our table was completely bare. When we moved into our house there was some wood left behind in the garage and I had found three more planks just like the ones I used to make shelves in the studio.

All I did was a quick sand before priming and painting. So they are still a little bumpy but I like that look. These were installed with some inexpensive brackets from IKEA.

Originally I had planned to just put a bunch of stuff  that was cluttering up our countertops on the shelves, but after I'd added a couple of ceramic pieces, I ended up gathering up the ones I had in the studio as well to have my whole collection in one place.

The bottom shelf is the more utilitarian shelf, with the regularly used salt and pepper, butter dish, napkins and coasters. We do use the ceramic planters to store things like garlic cloves but really I just think they look pretty..

Then at the bottom I added hooks for my collection of tea cups. What can I say, I love granny decor whether it's chic or not!

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Ribbon rack

Here's a mini makeover that I think anyone could do in a day and create a pretty way to organize your ribbons in your craft room. I figure if things are handy (and easy to find) you're more likely to use them.
I found this spice rack at a local yard sale for 50 cents. The wood wasn't great, but I imagined it primed and painted white.

At first I wasn't sure what I would put on it, and when I tried some ribbon spools they looked like they would fall out. Then I realized, duh, that once the rack was on the wall it would prevent things from falling out the back. I placed the rack just above my thread rack, which is the next thing to get painted white. I don't want to be boring, but I just love how colours look against a white background.
I managed to fit almost all of my ribbon, except the yellow ones and my lace. I need another spice rack! As I've mentioned before (you can click on the "ribbons" label to see other posts on the subject) I usually wind the ribbons onto bits of cardboard rolls until I have a wooden spool free. It's a great way to use your old wooden spools once the thread is gone.

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My studio

So I've taken to calling it my studio, but it's really a combination of crafts room and art studio. It feels like an incredible luxury to have my own workroom for sewing and painting. And it's pretty much done, I just need a new light fixture!

I bought a desk from craigslist to have a practical working surface. It's a really big heavy desk with lots of storage for only $20. Well it quickly became covered with a mish-mash of crafts supplies. You know how it is! So I decided I needed some open shelves.
Yesterday I finished making the shelves. There was lots of lumber left in our garage when we moved in and I asked Bradley to cut one big plank into three pieces. They were a bit rough, but after a quick sand to avoid the really splintery bits, I primed and painted and they were fine. The brackets are from IKEA.The shades for the window are also from IKEA. They're patterned panel curtains that I like for their lacy look. (inspired by Fieldguided's beautiful room with lace covered window) I had bought them for our old house bedroom but they didn't really work out there. So it was great to find the perfect spot in our new house.

So, the south wall has the desk and open shelves with a little bench under the window.The east wall has my two secretary desks. The desk on the right has crafts supplies and the one on the left has art supplies. It helps keep things organized so that I can actually find things.The north wall has my fabric cabinet with vintage tins on top with extra sewing notions.This room has a pretty decorative vent cover and lovely dark hardwood floors. So painting was the only thing I needed to do (again because of holes in the walls after electrical work). The walls are painted in CIL Wedding White, which I think is similar to Benjamin Moore's Swiss Coffee. It's a nice bright white. The shelves were painted to match the trim in Cloud White. Just for fun, I searched under "craft room" on Flickr and found lots of inspiring pictures. You can see my favourites here. I love the fact that I'm not the only one with boxes and baskets and jars and cabinets and shelves bursting with supplies. There's a comfortable solidarity in it.

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Messy jobs

So today I've been doing the messy jobs that come before decorating. We have nice old grates that cover our vents, but the one in the bedroom had peeling paint and looked a bit grim. So I decided to strip it so I could repaint it and make it look nice and smooth.

I always regretting stripping anything. It always looks much much worse after you start stripping. And of course the bottle (this kind is meant to be environmentally friendly) confidently tells you that this stripper can take away layers of paint and it will do all the work for you. But in truth it's usually a smelly, messy, tedious job.

Afterwards I'm usually very happy with the results and feel it was worth it. Sort of. But in this case after a few rounds of gooey paint scraping I decided to call it a day and clean up, do a little sanding and leave it at that.
In this case the results weren't great. Probably not much better than a bit of scraping and sanding would have been, but I'm done and have remembered why I probably won't do this again.
We've also made new baseboards, since we removed the wainscotting. I primed those earlier this week, and today they got their 1st coat of paint. The nice old style of baseboards in our house are plain with a bevelled edge at the top. We couldn't find them pre-made so we (ie. Bradley) made our own with planks of wood cut with a matching bevelled edge.

This grate will tidy up our bedroom, along with the baseboards. Taking out the wainscotting turned out to create a whole lot of work. Also, as I just discovered, my post was used on Apartment Therapy.

This time I didn't get asked and they really hated this one! In my defense I think it's one of those cases where a photo is a bit misleading. The wainscotting really wasn't nice, and everyone who visited the house agreed. The room still has nice character with the old trim and aforementioned pretty old grate. And you guys know I do appreciate old things...

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WIP - Kitchen

So lately we've been doing lots of work on the house, mainly painting, and I've been trying out some new colours. When it came to the kitchen I wanted something very light. Our old kitchen had sliding doors out to the garden, as well as a large window and it was very bright. The new kitchen has a large window but only a single back door with a small window in it.

you can see the colour here, pretty subtle...

I liked the grey we used for the old kitchen, Benjamin Moore Titanium, but I wanted something that would work well with the blue in our living room. So I picked a very pale, bluish/greenish Benjamin Moore colour called Dewdrop. It has a sort of beach glass colour to it, but it's so pale it almost looks white. If you compare it to the trim you can see the colour. In the end I'm happy with it, it's subtle but my second choice was just a classic white kitchen so this has the same effect while having a hint of pretty colour.

Before and After

I wasn't planning to paint at all, the previous colour was a pale sandy-beige that was fine, but after doing the electrical work the walls were full of holes that we had to patch. Now I'm happy I did paint it as I love the way the kitchen feels now - more bright and airy, and it also feels more like ours. As you can see above, it's not much of a change but I like it!
When it does come time to renovate I'm not sure if we'll keep the original cabinets, probably we will but update the doors. I like the way they extend right up to the ceiling. The kitchen has a sort of 50s charm, but we could use more drawers and general storage. We would like to update the counter top, faucet, sink and add a tile backsplash. I do like the wood floor and it's larger than the galley kitchen we had before. Do I miss the renovated kitchen in our last house? I certainly do, but I still love our new house so it's ok!

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Bedroom rug

Option A: I think this is my favourite, colours work very well with what's in the room, it has a nice traditional and pretty pattern but the colours don't contrast too much so it's subtle. This one will blend in with the dark floors in a nice way.

As you may recall I had a lot of trouble buying our last wool rug. The store had it online only and for delivery to U.S. customers only.

Option B: The colours in this one work as well and the pattern is really pretty

So now that I'm looking for one for our bedroom I'm glad to say I've found an alternative.

Option C: I like the simple two colour scheme in this one, the colours work perfectly with the rest of the room. The pattern is nice but a little "pointy", maybe not restful enough for a bedroom?

The place I'm getting my bedroom rug is online at csn rugs which now delivers (for free!) to Canada. There are so many great choices, but I've managed to narrow it down to a few favourites.

Option D: I love this one so much. The grey and white work pretty well with the rest of the room, and the pattern is my favourite. So pretty!!

I like traditional rugs, but lately I've been loving all the contemporary rugs I'm seeing in decorating magazines. So when I was searching I narrowed it down to "wool", "contemporary", "floral" & "geometric" and price.

Option E: Again, great colours for the room. I like the modern and geometric pattern, it's a bit more playful. Not that it matters too much, but this one goes nicely with our duvet cover which has ovals in dark brown and blue on a white background.

I'm going to just get a small 2 x 3' rug to sit beside the bed.

Option F: Good colours, and a nice simple graphic pattern. This one will look nice against the floors. It's feminine but not overly so.

I'd like to get your opinions! Here's what the room has already:
• wall colour is Benjamin Moore Gray Mist with white trim
• bedframe is a traditional brass bed painted with Benjamin Moore Cloud White
• chest of drawers painted Cloud White
• dark stained oak floors
• IKEA Stockholm curtains with several shades of brown, grey and sand on a cream background

Option G: Last but not least, this one has a nice gentle colour scheme. Bradley loves this one. But it is going on my side of the bed...

I've shown my favourite choices throughout this post, with comments underneath. Please comment and let me know what you think! I'll show pictures of the rug in our bedroom once it arrives.

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Bedroom

While Bradley was at home on his electrical working staycation I had my own big task. Not quite as big but still an ordeal.

The bedroom had some old wainscotting, which was a little wonky. The slats were varying widths, varying heights, and had some mismatched areas of tongue and groove in the corner where a radiator was removed.So we decided the room would be much improved if we removed it. It was really the only thing that people criticized when visiting our house. The concensus being that it was more weird than charming.
Not being the most patient person in the world I couldn't wait to rip it out and see what was underneath. It wasn't too bad - the walls were intact underneath aside from numerous nail holes, a little strip of old wallpaper and some wiggly lines of adhesive.

Ok, as you can see above it was pretty bad... but not as bad as I had imagined it might be!

The best way to deal with cleaning up walls that have adhesive or other flaws is to chip or scrape off any bits that stick out, then skim coat the walls, then sand, then prime and paint. Usually it will take a couple of episodes of skimming and sanding to get it just right. The big trick I learned is to use a wide tool for skim coating, not a little putty knife.Now that I've done the first coat of paint I can see some more flaws I need to fix. But the walls look much better. I chose a pale neutral gray Benjamin Moore colour called Gray Mist. It's very subtle, quite warm, and just enough colour to contrast with the trim. I like the trim in our new house so I wanted it to show.

So that's the plan for the walls, next I'll show the furnishings!

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Hello new house

Phew! It's been a very busy few weeks. We've unpacked most of our boxes and are finding that luckily our furniture fits very nicely into the house. My favourite room so far is the living room which is practically all decorated.
Before we moved in I painted the walls. The original colour was a designer favourite Manchester Tan but I wanted something lighter. I chose a pretty pale blue colour called Green Tint. It looks like a bluish grey on the chip - very pale - but I found once I had painted all the walls you really start to see the blue. A very grey, soft, pale blue that I feel makes the room seem larger and brighter. It's hard to pick light subtle colours like this from the chip, in this case I actually relied on a description of the colour by a designer in House Beautiful magazine.

Then I added sheer voile curtains combined with blue linen drapes with a branch pattern. For the cushions I sewed two new blue and brown floral cushions and bought a velvet and grosgrain ribbon embellished cushion. Finally I hung my favourite picture on the wall, an original antique pen & ink piece that illustrates the Aesop fable The Fox and the Crow.
But the big project right now (being undertaken by my resourceful and talented husband) is updating our wiring. During the inspection we found out that there was a lot of knob and tube wiring in the house. In case you don't know, it's an old style of wiring that everyone used to have.

But nowadays any knob and tube wiring is going to be very old, and a bit the worse for wear. Mainly it becomes dry and a little brittle and can be a fire hazard. Insurance companies require that you replace it, and because you need insurance to get a mortgage we really have no choice in the matter.
Now that we're doing it, I'm glad because the old wiring that's coming out of the walls certainly doesn't look very wholesome.

Next up, the bedroom!

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I re-love the IKEA dining set

Sometimes I post something and then I think it needs a little follow-up. In this case it's the IKEA Fusion dining set. I loved it when we bought it and it did fit perfectly into our kitchen eat-in area. But I was never really happy with the cushions.

The set comes with the seats covered in a black matte vinyl? fabric. I really didn't like it. So I used an aqua and white striped fabric I had on hand to recover them. But I made some mistakes. First of all I didn't pre-wash the fabric and I had bought it 2nd hand so it turns out that there were dusty marks on it. I didn't notice until later.

Also I didn't remove the black fabric that was already there since it was attached with about 1000 staples. This isn't a good idea because it doesn't feel right and there was a subtle dark shadow from having the black underneath the white and blue striped fabric.

So this time I was determined to do it right. (if something is worth doing, etc...) For some reason I was picturing a green and white print and finally found the perfect one at a fabric store on Queen West. The best part is that it was a fabric that was usually $19/yard but I found an end piece that was around 1.5 yards for only $10! The green colour was exactly what I was looking for, and it was a nice upholstery weight with a lovely smooth feel to it.

Bradley helped remove the 1000 staples and I attached the new fabric and now I re-love the IKEA dining set. Yay!

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Hallway hoops

Thank you for all the positive comments about our house. It can be pretty stressful selling your house and our case is no exception! In the meantime, as requested, here's a detail of the hoops in the hallway. I posted them a while ago but didn't get a great photo of them as it wasn't a sunny week.
I got this idea from Blueprint originally, I think, then saw Karyn's fabulous version in the workroom.

Today I'm getting ready for the Love & Rummage trunk show at the workroom. I'm going to be selling my usual handmade things plus some extra vintage items. I've been trimming up some business cards as I ran out at the City of Craft show which was so busy.
The show is this Sunday so please visit!

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