Wall Decor On a Budget

The "after" ... read on for an explanation!

When we did our house addition last year, we took advantage of having things ripped apart and we replaced our fireplace insert, had travertine tile installed around the fireplace, and a bigger mantel built. We really love our new fireplace, but I've struggled with how to decorate the wall space above it. I had a big Pottery Barn circular candleholder over our old fireplace but, after 5 1/2 years, I was tired of it!
We lived with the blank wall for about six months. Then, shortly before Christmas, I was fed up with the blank space, and put up an old (kind of lopsided) twig wreath that I had out in the garage. That lasted about two months before I just couldn't take it any more. It was bad! We went back to a naked wall for six weeks and then I finally remembered an inexpensive wall treatment I first saw on Nesting Place almost two years ago. Scrapbook paper to the rescue!
My husband cut some MDF (leftover from our Pottery Barn knockoff bookcase project!) to 12x12 for me. Then I painted the edges with brown craft paint and let them dry.
Like my fancy drying rack? Ha ha! My next step was to use spray adhesive and attach scrapbook paper to the fronts of the squares. Then I nailed sawtooth hangers on the back of each square (bought those at Target although they're also sold at hardware stores) and had my husband hang them on the wall. (Yes, I'm capable of hanging things on the wall, but he's an engineer and I like to put his multiple college degrees to work for me.)
Ooooh!
Ahhh!
Sooooo much better! Why on earth did it take me so long to remember that idea?! I love how this looks and I like knowing I didn't spend a fortune on it, so I won't feel guilty if I want to change it out in the future.

By the way, stay tuned for my 200th post giveaway!

New Curtains

Needless to say, after building our addition, we are a bit short on spare change. However, we had three windows that needed coverings (we opted to leave the three 2x2 square windows free of treatments). Initially I wanted to do wide white wood blinds. Actually, we went so far as to order the blinds (after I tracked down an amazing sale at JcPenney!) and hang them on two of the windows...and I hated them. Not only did I not like the look at all (they made our room look very closed in) the wood blinds totally didn't work on our slider. When the blinds were pulled up, there was a big mass of blind at the top of the doorframe (8ish inches or so) that we had to duck under. Not good!
So, we took down the wood blinds (while mourning the holes we had just put in our brand spanking new woodwork!) and had naked windows again as evidenced in the picture above (ignore all my extra kitchen stuff on the buffet--this was in the midst of the kitchen cabinet painting project!) Oh, and now we had even less spare change than before.

What to do, what to do? Why jump on the dropcloth curtain bandwagon, of course!
I bought cheap black curtain rods at Target--which finally made the black chandelier tie into the new space. Unfortunately the curtain rods were so cheap, they had "clear" plastic pieces in the middle of each rod that looked so tacky! Still, the pricetag on the curtain rods was too perfect to pass up--so I used a black Sharpie on the plastic pieces. Worked like a charm!
See those pieces on the rod--those are the plastic adjuster pieces that I colored black. We thought about hanging the rods all the way up at the ceiling, but we plan to put crown moulding up in here in the next year or two, so we opted against going all the way to the ceiling with the rods.
I wanted the curtains to be full, so I used one dropcloth for each panel even though I probably could have split the cloth and saved some money. Still, it was $10 per dropcloth, so it wasn't much at all. Six dropcloths to cover my three windows and they look like linen. My friends have been quite surprised to learn these are dropcloths!

I washed, dried (these shrink a lot!), and ironed the panels before running a few straight lines of stitches...and that was it! No cutting of the dropcloths at all! I'm so pleased with the look.
It's a bit beige in here right now, but I'm planning on some black and white pictures to balance things out. Right now I'm finding the light and airy neutrals to be quite soothing.

Our New View

Our beautiful new family room addition has given us one window facing the west--a direction we couldn't previously see from inside our house. Apparently we have been missing some gorgeous sunsets during our prior six years in this house! Look at the view we now have from our kitchen table! (I took these through the window)
Beautiful!!

Family Room...a partial reveal

Yes the addition has been done for awhile...done as in "fully constructed"...not done as in decorated and ready for company! Still, I do have one area that I'm ready to share--even though it still isn't totally done. We'll be moving our office/computer "stuff" into the area behind the couch and we also have a new breakfast area...but in the meantime, here is our family room area...
This is our expanded family room area--we LOVE it!! Really really REALLY love it! There is tons of natural light (all of these pictures were taken with no flash and no lights on...after dinner!)
I'm glad we decided to add the three square windows--they really add some great detail to this big wall.
Isn't that entertainment center/bookcase thing-a-ma-jig a fabulous fit?! I love it!
Ignore the frog tape that is on the wall around the doorway on the right--we're not done painting that particular doorway! The doorway goes to the playcloset, not to a real room.

We've had the armoire for eight years and love it. It is from the Broyhill Fontana collection--I think everyone who was married 7-12 years ago either owns something from this collection or has a friend who does! Anyhow, we never had room for the bookcases until now...and now they're discontinued!
I've been stalking Craigslist for quite awhile looking for these...with NO luck. However, I was out garage saleing and spotted these in the back of someone's garage! Woohoo!! They had a lot of the Fontana collection--I even purchased their square coffee table, so now I no longer have a train table as a coffee table! I also bought a table and chair set from them, but that is a story for a different day. I forget the exact amount I paid for these bookshelves, but I think it was $275 total for both of them. I love them and the amount of STUFF I can store in them. The one on the right has my children's games and the one on the right has their puzzles.
Clearly I'm not done decorating our new fireplace, but I'm loving its clean lines! The tile is travertine and the fireplace itself is gas.
And, for those who remember my post about carpet choices, I ended up buying two 8x10 area rugs (similar but not identical) from Pottery Barn. One is behind the couch in the soon-to-be-office-area and one is in the family room. As you can see in the picture above, I couldn't go bigger without either bumping into the wall or covering up part of the hearth in front of the fireplace. We decided the rugs would be our 8th wedding anniversary gift to each other--after all they fulfill the "pottery" requirement of the traditional gift list...or at least they do if you remember where I bought them from!

Kitchen Cabinets Part I

This is my kitchen...lots of oak and gold handles and oak...and more oak. Did I mention that I don't like oak? Now that we've expanded our family room (yes, I know I haven't posted "final" pictures of that!) and have a such a light and bright space with crisp white woodwork...well, the oak kitchen really doesn't flow with the space.

I've been planning our kitchen re-do for quite awhile, but I wanted to wait until the addition was done. So, now is the time! We spent the three day holiday weekend starting this project. We didn't get as far as I wanted, but we made good progress. I was hoping to get one side (the stove side) of the kitchen done. That didn't happen, but I do like what did happen!
My plan for our kitchen is to put beadboard on all the exposed ends of the cabinets as well as in the flat panels on the cabinet insets. Crown moulding will go on the tops of the cabinets and trim will be added to the bottom edge of the top cabinets. Quarter round trim will go along the base of the cabinets to transition to the hardwood floor. Everything will be sanded and painted a crisp white.
First we removed the cabinet doors and everything in the cabinets on one side of the kitchen. Then I started sanding the cabinets while my husband started cutting beadboard. We clamped up the first big piece of beadboard to see what we thought...and we loved it! Now my husband was beginning to see my vision for the kitchen!
I kept sanding and my husband kept cutting. I sanded all the doors using a random orbital sander as well as sandpaper along the edges. I primed and painted the old hinges with spray paint as we're hoping to reuse them. We attached the beadboard to the cabinet sides and door fronts using Liquid Nails and then my husband used finish nails and a hammer to attach the crown moulding and other trim pieces. Right now the budget doesn't allow for the purchase of a nail gun and compressor, but that sure would have come in handy.
This is my husband's first time cutting crown moulding--I think he did a fantastic job! Oh and take a look at the countertop. We have laminate counters with oak trim (yes, more oak!) that we're trying to save. I taped off the edge and primed it...and it is looking like it will work.
At this point the cabinets have one coat of primer. I'll be priming them again before painting them with some high quality white latex paint that I bought from Benjamin Moore. I'm painting everything with a brush. We have a paint sprayer, but it isn't a very good one because we don't have an air compressor (that whole budget thing again) and I decided that sanding out drips from our cheapo paint sprayer would be a huge pain because of the beadboard. So far the brush is working really well!
The beadboard panels fit perfectly on the flat surfaces of our kitchen cabinets. The faces of the cabinet boxes stick out just a bit on the front--so on the corners of the cabinets the edges aren't even. Does that make sense? Here's a picture where you can see how the beadboard just nestles right in there.
Still a lot (a LOT!) of work to go, but I'm already thrilled with how much better our kitchen is looking. I really and truly love what we're doing to the kitchen! Stay tuned and I'll post more pictures as we continue with the process.


Click the box above to go to A Soft Place to Land and see more projects! Or head over to The Shabby Chic Cottage for more Transformation Thursday projects!

Craigslist

I haven't posted about them yet, but at a garage sale a few weeks ago, I found two bookcases to match my Broyhill Fontana media armoire. I love my armoire and now that we've done (well, mostly done!) this addition, I have room for the matching bookcases...except they aren't made any more! I've been stalking Craigslist looking for them, but haven't had any luck...so I was *thrilled* to find them at a garage sale! I think I spent $275 on the pair of them plus a matching square coffee table and it was money well spent in my book!

Well, when my husband went to pick them up for me I had him ask if they happened to have the Broyhill Fontana table that they wanted to get rid of. You see, I had noticed they had the chairs out at their garage sale...so I was hoping they had the table stashed away inside their house. And they DID!!

The downside? It wasn't for sale. I was sad, but called and gave them my number in case they changed their mind. And they DID!!

The downside? They wanted $700 for the table, six chairs, and tile top server (kind of a mini buffet.) Again I was sad--I called and left a voicemail saying that I loved the set but that I just didn't have $700 to spend but that I appreciated them giving me the opportunity to buy their furniture.

Know what happened next?? They called and said I could have the set for $550! (Or something like that...I forget the exact price.) I was thrilled! I wanted the table to use in the breakfast area in the addition--the space is one big area and it would look great with my armoire and new bookshelves.

I went back and they were kind enough to sell it all to me for $475! I'm so happy!

The downside? We just finished a addition project that went over budget and buying new furniture really should have been put off six months. Ooopsie!

Craigslist to the rescue! I've been selling stuff on there for the past 1 1/2 weeks and have made $650 so far! That just about covers my garage sale purchases!

I made over $200 selling some expensive baby gates that we no longer need and I sold this table and chair set for $275...
And I sold this set (our old set that was too small for us) for $100...
And I cleared more space in the garage by selling *two* of these rugs for $40 each--they've just been rolled up in the corner for five years now!
I'm happy to get this stuff out of here and thrilled to make some decent money off of it. Now our formal dining room is a playroom, I can *almost* get my car in the garage, and I've partially furnished our new addition without breaking the bank. Hooray for Craigslist!

Just truckin' along...

I'm still here, just incredibly busy and TIRED! The addition is mostly done--we just need to have the electrical inspection and final inspection plus have the hardwood flooring guy come out and fix some minor problems with the finish on the vents. And, of course we have to finish the detail work inside as well as repair all the landscaping outside and paint the outside trim. Okay, maybe it isn't almost done!
Painting this trim is a big ol' PAIN!! It is wide, so brushes leave brush marks and foam rollers don't do the job either. I went out yesterday and bought a paint sprayer, so now we're trying that--except just taping the trim off (which I already did) isn't enough when you use a sprayer...so now we're using rosin paper to seal off the floor and the walls from overspray. It takes FOREVER!! We finally started spraying the first windows last night and....it looked horrible!! I was fed up and had my husband call a painter (yes, on a Sunday evening!) to hire him to come do the job for us. However the guy was really nice and gave us some tips for the sprayer, so my husband tried those and it seems to be going better now. Blah!

Apart from the addition, life still is moving at full speed for us. Princess started swim lessons and seems to be a little fish! She's had four lessons thus far (they meet twice a week) and she loves it!

And, of course, she still does ballet, gymnastics, and soccer too. Way too many activities if you ask me! Swimming lessons will stop at the end of summer unless I can get her to give up gymnastics.

Handsome does soccer at the same time as Princess (on adjacent sections of the field) and his favorite thing is to be the goalie. That's pretty much all he wants to do!

And amidst all these activities, we still have to squeeze in lots of unstructured playtime!

We've had speech therapy and swallowing therapy appointments too, as well as a trip to Children's Hospital to see Handsome's GI doctor. Whenever we go there, we make a day of it and do fun things in the area. On this trip we stopped at our favorite outdoor mall to play. There are wonderful outdoor fountains there for children to splash in!


So as you can see, we are BUSY!! I miss blogging and visiting all of you--I haven't forgotten you!

Construction Progress

While we were on vacation, work continued on our addition--here is what we returned home to find!
The little landing on the back of the house was almost done. Hopefully we'll be able to leave it in place when we (in a year or two) build a deck onto the back of our house. It's a nice cedar and is very solidly constructed.
This corner is where we'll (eventually) tuck a deck.
The house REEKED when we got home. According to our neighbors, the flooring guys literally left about fifteen minutes before we arrived home. And...they worked until midnight a few nights. Yikes! Apparently the neighbors (three houses away!) could hear them. Whoops! Luckily our neighbors knew we were gone and don't blame us for the noise.

One of the things I'm excited about is that we had them do picture frame trim around the floor vents--and then we also have removable wood vents. Much better than the metal vent we used to have set into our old (tiny) wood floor area. When we had that old floor done, we just didn't even think about having wood vents.
This is the view from the front foyer area through to the new space. Look at all that light coming in!
Speaking of the foyer, I'm excited about a small change in here. We already had wood floor in here, but it stopped right at the edge of the door...which made it hard to get around the door without going on the carpet. We had the flooring guy add three extra rows of wood when he was adding all the other wood flooring. Then he sanded and stained everything. It looks good without taking up too much space from our small "formal" living room.
Here is the fireplace wall with the three square windows.
And here is one final shot. This is with my back to the wall in the new space and looking toward the kitchen. SPACE!! Lots of SPACE!

More work has been done in the past week--but we've done a fair amount of it, so I've been too tired to get pictures edited! It is looking great and is almost done!!

Fireplace Inspiration

We are thrilled to be upgrading and updating our fireplace as a part of this home renovation. Our old fireplace was drafty beyond belief, had gaudy gold trim, and had floor tiles applied to the wall...oh and random chunks of adhesive periodically fell from behind those wall tiles. They were barely holding on!
After the old (13ish year old) fireplace was removed, our contractor discovered there was a 1/4 inch gap in the plywood at the bottom of the fireplace box...no wonder it was breezy in our family room! Our new fireplace is just a bit bigger (taller) than our old one and has a stronger blower, too, so we'll get more heat from it.
I selected travertine to go around the fireplace and the mantel will be white...no pictures of that yet because it isn't built yet! Our contractor will be building it for us. Luckily he's finally understanding how particular I am about things and is doing things to my specifications--including my mantel top that I want to be between nine and ten inches wide on top! No more skinny mantels that are hard to decorate!

I found my inspiration mantel on Flickr. The woodworker did a gorgeous job on this mantel! I want mine to be a bit more simple (not so many insets) especially since my fireplace opening is bigger than this one...but this certainly is beautiful!

(By the way...we're at the coast this week! Beach pictures next week!)