The Furniture!

I've been AWOL over a week, but spent most of that time battling a piece-of-crap carpet shampooer that was falling apart and spouting leaks every which way, and a cold that had me semi-laid-up for most of the latter half of last week (including Thanksgiving Day, natch).  These carpets are going to be the death of me,  I tell you.  I must've put waaaay too much soap in the mix and I'm having to rinse them over and over to get the soap out.  Add to that that I'm just OLD now and I can't clean carpets from morning till midnight the way I used to, not when my carpet cleaner has declared himself my nemesis to the death. He's dripping copiously from the wand/hose connection (hence the gender) so by the time I've sucked up the water in one spot, he's dribbled a pint's worth in another (I'm not at all sympathetic simply because he's geriatric, too, btw.)  And pieces keep falling off of him.  (Not a gender issue - no Bobbit in my blood).  He just...hates me.  And he's winning.   I've set aside the battle with 1/2 of one bedroom yet to clean and a few more rinsings of the library and living room and Mr. Shampoo-Rinse-Repeat-Indefinitely lies there mocking me each time I pass.   Sigh.

However!  I did manage to get a few pieces of furniture painted.  First, the "before" pics...

The drum table, which I've already shared here.  What I haven't shared yet is how I blew my $12.50 bargain by absent-mindedly using it as a base to set a gallon can of paint down and push the lid into place.  This is what resulted...

So much for my bargain!  It'll probably cost me twenty or thirty bucks to replace the glass, but at least it's do-able.   Moving on though, here's what it looks like now...

Please ignore that little dark spot where the paint rubbed off at the lower left of the door.  I was impatient.  (Soooo unlike me!  ;)  The filigree bit behind the handles are part of the handle, but I painted them white because I just wanted a touch of silver.

I found this baby on CraigsList last night....

It was advertised at $20.00, and I gave them a twenty when I walked in the door, but just before I drove away, the seller caught me in the driveway, handed me a $10 bill, and said she thought it had been listed at $10 rather than $20.  I didn't argue with her a lot, and it was the highlight of my day.   It's got that same 70s Mediterranean vibe to it as both the drum table and the dresser that's still sitting in Studio A awaiting my attentions.  (Pray I don't hit the gas inadvertently before I get it out of there or the thing's history.)   Oh, and btw, I'd like a big ol' pat on the back for resisting the call of Mad Greens on my drive home with my treasure, what with that found ten bucks burning a hole in my pocket.  Mad Greens is my latest obsession for a quick, (relatively) cheap bite.  If you live in Colorado, you've got to try them.  If you don't live in Colorado, I'm going to have a killer guest room you can stay in when you come here to check them out.    Soon.  Ish.  :)

On with the pictures!   Here's how the night-stand looks now...

I may re-do the knobs on this one in white.  The metal primer I used on them was white and they looked really cool that way, but I had intended to use silver hardware on everything so I went ahead with the silver "just to see" and now I think I preferred them white.  They're okay as is, but I think I'll try antiquing them first, as the chain I'll be using for the lamps that will hang over each nightstand is silver flecked with black, and then if I'm still not in love they're going back to white.

If my sister is reading this, she's probably going to be underwhelmed by the plain old coat of white paint,  particularly after saying I do "interesting things" with furniture.  But I was inspired by this set of before-and-after photos from Enchantresses 3 that I found via Addicted2Decorating...

 Before 

After  

(more photos can be seen on either Addicted2Decorating or  Enchantresses 3)

I was absolutely dumbfounded when I saw how that truly-ugly "before" cabinet turned into a really striking and commanding piece with just a simple coat of white paint.  As I said when I first posted a photo of the drum table, I never would have even seen it had I not first seen these before and after photos.  It's chunky, 70s-style, goo-gaw Mediterranean (I think that was actually the industry term for it); waaaay too reminiscent of my very first living room furniture "suite" from 1974.  When I hunt for used furniture pieces with a eye to re-finishing them, I generally look for pretty simple, classic lines and then use paint colors or techniques to add personality if it needs it.   If I hadn't run across and become of fan of Kristi's blog, I never would have thought of this.  She's really opened my eyes to a few things that I had long ago passed of as passe, or knew about but just never seriously considered.  And while my smaller pieces aren't as striking as this massive cabinet and hutch, a simple coat of white paint  turned them into something completely new and fresh and perfect (for my current budget and tastes).

I have a chest-of-drawers and another nightstand that will be getting the same treatment, but haven't tackled them yet.   Lawdy, you should have seen me at the end of the night after spray-painting these pieces in Studio B.  Ha, for that matter, you should have seen the spider webs in the basem... er Studio B's windows.  It looked like Christmas down there!  Speaking of, this is the first time I can recall ever using spray paint to refinish a piece of indoor furniture (as distinguished from painting furniture indoors).  I'll go more into my reasons for that tomorrow, since I expect it to be a relatively slow news day. ;)  Did I mention my husband is off till after Christmas?  :)  See how smiley I am?  :) :) :)   I made muffins tonight!     Holiday-timey muffins...and I'm off to have another one...:)  

Manana!   

How-to: Clean-edged stripes

Once again, I accomplished diddly-squat in The Room.  I spent the bulk of the afternoon driving from one Hobby Lobby to another, amassing the yardage I'm going to need for all of these floor-to-ceiling curtains I have planned.  By the time I got home and had dinner it was after 8:00 p.m. and there's just no way I feel like starting on anything after 8:00 p.m. - not when there's an episode of Medium that needs watching (which, today's paper tells me, has been cancelled again).

I forgot when I was typing up last night's blog entry that I had snapped pics of the striping process, with plans to show how to get (almost) perfectly clean edges.  I'm so glad I forgot now, as it gives me something simple to blog about today!

As I've mentioned before, in Colorado you can't find a smooth wall to save your life.  Most drywall is finished with either "orange peel" texture which looks like this...

Or with "knock-down" texture which looks like this...

Both textures can be a nightmare for faux finishers and decorative painters, but the orange peel in particular... Well, let's just say there's a special place in hell reserved for the joker who came up with that one.  You only have to take one look at it to understand why you're not going to get nice, clean lines by simply taping over it.  I obliterated the dreaded orange peel from my home in all but one bathroom and the ceiling of The Room, so I don't have a handy spot to show you here, but you can see just from this photo what happens when you tape over texture of any sort...

No matter how securely you think you've pressed down your tape, there will be gaps for paint to sneak under and you're going to end up with a messy line.  There's a super easy fix though...

Before you go in with your stripe color, paint over the tape with your wall color first.  That way, the paint that sneaks under the gaps will match the walls and disappear!  If you for some reason don't have any of the wall color, you can also use a clear medium, such as the waterborne polyurethane I used for my tone-on-tone stenciling, but you'll need to be sure it matches the sheen of your current wall color.  If you need matte, the only product I know of that will work is Modern Masters Dead Flat Varnish.  It's pricey, but you won't need much.  

By the way, the temperatures here came no where close to the high of 60 that was forecast for yesterday and today, so you can blame the weatherman for there being no progress on the drum table.  I was hoping to do that one in the my main level studio (otherwise known as "the garage"), because toxic fumes will be involved, but it looks like I'm just going to have to hold my breath and do it in my lower-level studio (also known as "the basement").   

That's it for today, and I'm definitely taking the weekend off from blogging in the hopes of having something more exciting to share on Monday.  Thanks for stopping by! 

Detour ahead!

We're taking a bit of a detour today because I simply cannot live with my house in the filthy, disorganized state I've let it fall into over the past six weeks, so I'm taking today - and maybe even tomorrow! - off to clean.  But since I promised myself I'd blog here daily (or at least M-F), I don't dare fall down on the job less than two weeks in.  My friend Evin suggested that I post about how my obsession with the guest room re-do has caused the rest of my house (make that 'life') to fall apart, but that would become a whole new project in itself.  Imagine yourself in this scenario: You start cleaning your carpets, but don't finish up before you have to start a job for a client.  The client's room requires a lot of sewing, so your sewing room gets torn apart and threads tracked throughout the house.  The carpet shampooer gets set aside (after flooding the bathroom because the rag you tied around the faucet didn't actually contain the leak) in the hallway, because the carpet in the sewing room and two other bedrooms still need cleaning.  While out looking for fabrics for your client, you find the perfect fabric for your own living room drapes, so you end up shopping all over town for curtain rods... only to find the perfect bedding for your guest room.  Sometime in the midst of all of this, your thyroid meds prescription runs out and you don't dare ask for the doc to call it in because you've blatantly ignored four phone calls  going back four months to schedule your annual exam.  You finally finish the client's room, and days later the bed from the guest room is snapped up from a Craig's List ad.  Uh oh:  Christmas is coming, going to need a bed in there.  Hmmm, my son has been bugging me for years to start a blog.  This room re-do would be the perfect time!  Um... um...  really?  Right now, huh?  Living room drapes to be sewn, carpets to be cleaned, four rooms completely torn apart, kitchen floor getting grodier by the day, and why am I so tired lately? Ohhhh, three weeks off the thyroid meds.    Why, sure!  Why not start a blog!?!  Yeeeeesh.

I digress.  I actually do have something to share today, though it's not from The Room.  While I did make some (minimal) progress yesterday, there's not enough to share, so when I got up this morning I was dreading facing this blog.  So instead, I went to read one of my new, favorite blogs - Addicted 2 Decorating,  and bless her heart, Kristi provided me with my quick and easy blog for today.     She shared "before" photos on a "great room" she's about to begin work on and one of the photos is of the fireplace, which has rather dated brick that she plans to paint.

Now I am absolutely, positively, not one of those people whose knee-jerk reaction to this idea is "OMG! No!  You can't paint brick!!!"   Nosiree, I'll paint pretty much anything and roll my eyes at the naysayers who gasp in horror as I do.  However, dated fireplace brick can also be easily changed without painting it, so that's the cheap and easy decor fix I'm going to show you today.  

We'll start with a photo of my exterior brick, because it's what my fireplace brick looked like originally, but I never thought to get "before" pics of my fireplace brick when I first changed the color of it 15 years ago....

As brick goes, it's not horrible by any means, but my family room fifteen years ago was done in muted shades of purple and sage, and at the time I just really felt my brick needed to be more rosy-hued.  I was able to get exactly the look I wanted by simply using very watered-down paints in the tones I wanted and sponging them onto the brick.  Brick being as porous as it is, it just soaked up that watery paint like a stain and voila! I had my perfect, rosy-hued brick... 

Then about ten years ago, we did a major remodel of our kitchen, which completely opened it up to the family room where this fireplace lives.  The remodel included this granite...

Which began to dictate my color choices throughout the room, and which did not work with the rosy-hued brick.  In fact, the original brick probably would have been perfect, but that seemed ever-so-boring an idea to me.   But I knew I wanted deeper tones, so that's where I started, and again by simply using very watered-down paints and universal tints.  Here's a photo showing the progress from rosy-hued (on the left) to a bit more earthen tones...

It was better, but I also was tired of the 'neatness'  of my brick.  I think there's actually a word for it, but I'm not a mason nor am I up on masonry terms, so 'neat' will have to do.  What I mean is the tooling, mostly:  Each brick is perfectly rectangular, and each row of mortar perfectly the same width.   I really, really like an older, antique-ier looking brick, with crumbled edges and a roughness to it.  Enter one of my favorite mediums....

So cheap; so versatile!  

After deepening the color of the rest of the brick, I just troweled this on haphazardly, letting the brick show through in places and adding a bit of color on top of it to mimic the water staining you see on real, aged brick here and there, and I am so so so happy with the results...

                                         

While I know I wasn't haphazard enough to produce a truly "aged" brick, it's a lot closer to what I was wanting.  And while I'm also definitely not one of those people who worries about resale value when I'm decorating my own home, it can't hurt to head those "OMG!  No!  You can't paint brick!" people off at the pass.  Because no one would look at this brick and say "Oh, geez - they painted the brick!"  

See you all tomorrow!

Note to self: Don't make promises. Ever.

Remember that promise I made in the close of yesterday's blog entry?  I lied and I'm ashamed of myself. I do have a good excuse involving molten metal and smoke alarms, but I won't go into that.  The one thing I did do related to the room yesterday was pick up a luggage rack at Bed, Bath and Beyond ($24 plus tax with my 20%-off coupon).  I don't think I've ever seen a collapsible luggage rack outside of a hotel room, and I don't really understand why more people don't have them.  Every time we have overnight guests I wish we had one to make it more convenient for them to live out of their suitcase, but it never occurred to me to actually go out and look for one.

Back to the walls:  I'm going to share my rambling thoughts on the very different and opposing ideas I have in the hopes that maybe one of you will have something to say on the topic that will finally budge me off the fence.

If you've been reading from the beginning, you'll recall this pattern...

and that I was thinking of using this along the perimeter of the ceiling, two or three rows deep, using the five accent colors randomly.  If I go with that, I have three different ideas for how to incorporate the colors on the walls, and you're just going to have to try to visualize two of them because I don't have access to a decent program to render it since I switched to a Mac.  (I hope to rectify that very soon.)  The first option would be to lay out random tone-on-tone stripes by simply taping them off on the flat/matte base coat and painting over those sections with a satin or semi-gloss waterborne polyurethane or glazing liquid.  Then I would do the same pattern as above on the walls, but letting the staggered blocks of color fall down the wall more on this stripe, less on that, etc.  I prefer an organic look rather than a strictly ordered one in this room because I think it's more relaxing (and this is a bedroom).  The second option would be to do the tone-on-tone striping the same way, but to add the metallics in here and there as narrower, floor-to-ceiling stripes, possibly centered in the tone-on-tone stripes, or perhaps flanking them.   The third option was inspired by this....

Eijffinger Bijoux Designer Range Wallpaper

featured on French Dressing

I love that look.  Hate wallpaper, love the look.  Love it so much I think this wins if I decide to go geometric.  A big plus to this is that I wouldn't need to do any tone-on-tone striping at all; in fact it would detract from it if I did.  Laying it out would take a bit of time, but I could probably have the walls finished tomorrow if I decide on this.  On the other hand, I don't think it would be as striking in the colors I'm using as it is in this photo.  Of wallpaper.  Ugh. That's a topic for another day.

The other, opposing idea I have is a variation on this theme....

This is a raised, or dimensional stencil that I fell in love with and purchased several years ago with absolutely no clue when or where I might use it.  Here I've only used some of the branches, but in my guest room I'd want to incorporate the whole tree...

From Victoria Larsen

By the way, I think Victoria Larsen is in Idaho, and I've just got to ask anyone who might know:  Don't they have aspen trees in Idaho?  Because she calls this an aspen and as a Coloradoan who sees aspen trees every day, I can tell you it's no aspen!  But isn't it pretty!?!  I love the detail on the bark and think the trunk could be so stunning in silver and white, with the leaves painted randomly with the other accent colors.  If I go this route, I'd plant one tree on the wall next to the window at the end of the room opposite the bed, and I'd continue the leaves here and there all the way around the perimeter of the room on the ceiling, and perhaps trailing a bit down the walls.  Beyond that, I'm undecided.  I could leave it at that, but also do the tone-on-tone striping - I'm thinking very wide stripes, 3" and up - so that my ceiling lighting still had something to play with on the walls.  Or I could paint a few stripes relatively evenly spaced throughout the room in the various accent colors with white leaves and branches placed on top.

There you have it:  Two very different ideas that I simply cannot seem to choose between.  Going geometric would certainly help give the room a more masculine feel, and would help to continue the art deco aspect as well, but I think that the deeply colored fabric I picked up for the headboard and plan to use on a footstool will help add a bit of that, as will the barrel chair if I actually am successful re-uphosltering it in the way I see it in my mind's eye.  Quite honestly, I'm leaning toward the tree though.  I don't think my son - the main person I'm trying to please by masculinizing the room to begin with - would be opposed to the trees.  He liked another tree theme that I did so much he asked me to duplicate it in his first apartment in Los Angeles, but it's also a much more masculine looking tree...

Looking at this photo again makes me sad I didn't keep in touch with the client. Betty was roughly my mother's age, and so open to both color and bold patterns in the rooms I did for her.  And every afternoon around four 'o clock she'd convince me to set down my brushes and join her for a glass of wine and we'd sit and chat and laugh and it was just a lovely way to end my workday.  I really miss her.

There I go, rambling again; sorry!   Please, if you have any opinion about the ideas I'm mulling over, leave me a comment.  I'm really sick of thinking about what to do with the walls; I want to just do the walls already!  Oh, and I take back what I said in a previous blog about it being a "luxury" having myself as a client.  I'm a PITA!

Painting progress

As expected, covering up the raspberry zebra stripes took a couple of coats of paint, but progress has been made...

As I was scooting around the room on my tush cutting in the baseboards in the wee hours of this morning, I kept glancing over at the interplay of the newly painted walls with the current black trim and carpet in an empty corner of the room...

At first, it hit me wrong, but almost immediately on the heels of "Oooh, not so sure," my thoughts started going to "Hmmm, very art-deco."   Not current-day, Miami art-deco, but 40s Hollywood art deco.   

From Art Deco Style

The above bath uses almost exactly the same two shades of green with black.  Love it!

From Apartment Therapy.com

I'm sure any of you who have ever done any house or apartment hunting in older sections of your town have seen this tile combo a time or two.  The woman who sent this pic to "ApartmentTherapy.com" was asking how to hide it.  I would showcase it!  

As I sat and looked at that stretch of black trim against the two greens last night, my second thought after "art deco" was that I could now see a way to make this room a balance of feminine and masculine.  My kids are probably the main people who will be using this guest room.  When I showed my son the bedding, his immediate and visceral reaction was "Floral?!?!?!!"  Okay, point taken, Chevy!  Since that "conversation" I've been looking for ways to masculinize the room a bit, and the art deco sub-theme seems a perfect jumping off point for that.  I've always loved art deco, but I've never, never been happy with any room I've done that's been true to one style and only one style.  I really prefer an eclectic mix, so I'm hopeful that I can blend the whimsy of the bedding and a couple of pieces of furniture I have planned with the more ordered elegance of art deco. 

Another thought I had while this idea gelled in my late-night musings was how much a luxury it is to be doing a room for myself rather than a client.  Not that I dislike having clients, believe me!  But if I were doing this room for a client, the basic decisions - wall and trim colors, fabrics, etc - would have been made at the outset.  I most likely would have chosen white trim instead of black, and I would have given the client a whole slew of reasons why that was the best choice.   And then, when I had my Eureka! moment in the midst of the work, I'd either have to sit down and shut up or go to the client for approval...

Me:  I know we agreed on white for the trim, but now I'm thinking black.

Client:  But you said white was classic and that black was going to be too heavy in this room.

Me:  I was wrong.

NOT a conversation that's fun to have with someone who trusts your judgment! 

By the way, cool as I do think the black looks, I brushed on some of the Regent Metallics Silver Bell with Behr's Black Suede and think this is really "it" for the trim...

I was actually going to go into a couple of other things today - bedside light fixtures, a few ideas I'm trying to decide between for the accent paint colors, and the headboard, but I need to get back to work!  Hopefully I'll have some photos with those accent colors up on the walls tomorrow.  In the meantime, I'm sharing this photo that I stumbled across while searching for art deco just because it made me go "Wow!"  I may make this a feature: a weekly or more frequent "Random WOW! of the week" photo.  Enjoy!

Designed by artist/architect

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

as featured on Furniture Fashion

Art as architecture, or architecture as art.  Whatever you call it, it really made me go WOW!  

Hmm, I may have to re-paint

As I mentioned in my first post, the room I'm re-doing was my daughter's, re-done for her a year after her brother left for college in what I dubbed the "Fruit Basket Zebra" style.  I never did get photos of the room after it was fully decorated, but this mini-collage will give you an idea...

I stole the zebra-stripe idea from a room Doug Wilson did on Trading Spaces (though his was in the more traditional black and white), choosing the colors from a raspberry and tangerine plaid comforter my daughter chose.  The only thing that's still in the room is that barrel chair in the corner.  It's a really comfortable chair but, as you'll see in photos to follow, it's seen its day.  I would consider re-upholstering it (myself - I'm much too cheap to pay someone else to do it), but it wasn't a quality piece to begin with so  I'll most likely be setting it out with the trash this week.   

For now though, let's look at just how cute the current paint job is with the new bedding...

Woo-hoo!  Now that makes a statement!  

I know these walls must just seem insane to... well, almost anyone, but for my then-14-year-old it was the envy of all her friends.

There's that chair!  Yikes!  I was shocked at just how bad of shape it was in when I pulled the sheet off of it.  I don't like the mirrored closet doors either, but I'm not sure at this point whether I'm going to replace them or disguise them.  

I like black trim in some rooms and always thought it worked well with the Fruit Basket Zebra, but will probably be changing it with this re-do.  I'm undecided what color I'm going to use though.  All I know for sure is I don't like the idea of white with the carpet color - but I may change my mind.

Now we come full-circle back to the bed side of the room.  The paper lantern is, happily, the perfect color and I'll probably use it somewhere.  The ceiling is actually almost exactly the same color as the green in one of the toss pillows.... 

As you can see here.  But it's too electric a green for what I have in mind, so it's going to have to be painted.  Dang it.  I hate painting ceilings.  It's neck-straining, back-breaking work and of course I have plans that will make it exponentially so.    Now for the new, improved paint colors!

Ha!  That wasn't very helpful.  I clearly need to find a better way to photograph paint colors.  Until I do though, the color at left is Behr's "Dried Palm" and will go on the walls.  The strip in the center is Behr's "Home Song" and will go on the ceiling.  The top four colors on the right are all from Ralph Lauren's Regent Metallics collections, starting with  Silver Bell,  then Highgate, Olivine, and Thatcher Green.  The bottom is Behr's "Grass Cloth."  You're probably wondering now how on earth I'm going to work all of these colors in.  The answer would be: I dunno!  I have some ideas I'm kicking around, but haven't finalized my plan. 

A word about paint brands before I head up to start painting.  Most - if not all - painting contractors have one particular brand of paint they stick with for everything and it will usually be Sherwin Williams, Kwal or Kelly Moore.  They do this at least partly because they need a dedicated, full-service paint shop where they know they can go in and pick up exactly what they need at  any given moment, and partly because they get discount pricing when they establish an account and a history with a paint store.  When I first started painting professionally, I, too, used such a shop - Kelly Moore in my case.  However, at a certain point I started asking myself "Why?"  The cost of the paint in the total price of a paint job is really pretty minimal - it generally runs about 10% of the total job - so price alone certainly isn't/shouldn't be a determining factor.  I also got really fed-up with how badly Kelly Moore paints splattered when you rolled them on (this may not still be the case - I quit using them 15 years ago).  I also never needed a gazillion gallons at a time the way most painting contractors do, so convenience wasn't really a factor for me.  Considering those realities, I began using Consumer Reports recommendations to choose which paint I use on which jobs many years ago.  CR does a new round of testing every fall, and they rate a whole range of qualities for each sheen of paint, such as how well it hides with one coat, how prone it is to "sticking" (meaning if you use it on bookshelves, are the books going to stick to it - not how well it sticks to the wall), how smooth the finished surface is (not of much importance on walls in Colorado, since 99.99% of the walls here are textured), etc.  Both Behr (sold at Home Depot) and Valspar (sold at Lowe's) are consistently in the top three or four CR recommendations and I generally use one or the other.  I really prefer Valspar - it just seems to be a better "one coat" paint to me and it glides on like silk.   Also, Valspar is rated either "excellent" or "very good" in every category but "surface smoothness" which received a "good" rating.  Again, since there are virtually no smooth walls in Colorado, that's not a factor that really matters unless you're painting furniture.  Behr is rated excellent or good in every category except fading, for which it received only a "fair."  That's a much bigger consideration, particularly if you're using a deeply colored paint.  Since the colors I'm using in this room aren't deep though, I went ahead with the Behr simply because they had the colors I wanted to use in their paint deck.  And it's a lot closer to home. :) 

A couple of final notes on choosing a paint brand:  In recent years, Kilz (sold at Walmart) is giving the big boys a run for their money, but I refuse to shop at Walmart unless I have absolutely no other choice.  If you don't share that disdain, it's definitely one of the most economical choices.  Finally, paint companies reformulate their paints allllllll the time.  It makes me crazy!  Just when you think you know a paint, BOOM, they go and change it.  And the changes are not always for the better.  So take my recommendations today with a big ol' grain of salt, because they could be turned on end tomorrow.