Plates, candlesticks, and bowls, oh my!

In preparation of decorating our home for the upcoming Halloween holiday, I wanted to create a centerpiece for our square, counter-height table in our eat-in kitchen area. Taking advantage of the 1/2 price sticker day at Goodwill (Sundays and Mondays if you are wondering), I zipped over Sunday afternoon, donated the items that had begun to overspill our "Goodwill box" in the laundry room, and scoured their shelves looking for inspiration.

As I was browsing, I vaguely remembered a project on my want-to-do list that encompassed creating cake pedestals from recycled candlesticks and plates and some spray paint. So with a direction in mind, I began to pick out various sized candlesticks and plates. Once my basket was full, I situated myself in a conspicuous area in the shop and began playing around with the different sizes, heights, and quantities. I ended up arranging a group of three small stands at descending heights (groupings are always great in odd multiples). Orange was the color of the 1/2 price items that day, so I paid extra attention to selecting items with orange price tags.

Here is my thrift score from the search, which I walked away with for just under $6.

As you can see above, some of the items were quite dirty and the candlesticks had wax remnants, so as soon as I got home I washed them up and made sure I still remembered the arrangement I conjured up in Goodwill.

Then I took them out back and sprayed them with two coats of glossy black paint. Voilà, a trio of miniature cake stands.

I was a little concerned with the coverage on the clear glass candlestick (far back right) and the candlestick that had the painted flower detailing (front and center), but both turned out perfectly. In fact, the spray paint clung so well that I didn't even have any drips, a difficult feat for me! Now I can't wait to share my tablescape design with you. Check back Monday for all the gory details—bwah, ha, ha!

Revamp the Lamp

I have begun the great office decoranza but am taking it very slowly. Why? It might be because we just made some large purchases and our budget isn't all that flexible at the moment, but in actuality it is mostly because I can't come to a decision on my color palette until some little (and big) projects are finished first. So, in my (cough-cough) spare-time last week, I tackled one of those said projects on my list: revamping the lamp.

I bought this lamp base and shade from Goodwill so long ago that I can't remember what I paid for it (my guess is less than $5). Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a picture of the base before I painted it (shame on me!), but I have faith that you can imagine it a school bus yellow color. After a few quick coats of white gloss spray paint, the yellow was gone like a flash of light. However, the off-white shade with the white base was not doing it for me, so I tackled that next.

I had previously seen this DIY project Young House Love posted about recovering a drum shade and thought I could follow those steps to recover my lamp shade, no problem...that was until I realized my shade was not-so-much a drum shape but had a nice curve that I would have to account for. So, to modify their instructions, I made a template of the shade (similar to a pattern you would buy from a fabric store). I wrapped a large sheet of paper from a roll of newsprint I had picked up from my local newspaper for a previous project, taped it to the shade, drew an outline of where the edges ran, and cut that sucker out.

Then I pinned the template to my fabric and cut it about 1/4" larger which allowed enough fabric to wrap around and glue down on the interior of the shade.

As my glue gun was warming up, I quickly smoothed out the wrinkles with my iron and ironed a hem at the edge of the fabric that would be attached last.

I started by gluing down the raw edge of the fabric that I had not hemmed and proceeded to glue the edge of the fabric that circled the bottom of the shade. I didn't start gluing at the top of the shade because the circumference of the hoop was smaller and I didn't want to be stuck with fabric that was too tight when I started gluing the bottom of the shade.

Once the fabric was attached around the top and bottom edges, I dispensed a thin line of glue along the hemmed edge of the fabric, pulled it tight, affixed it to the shade, and called it a day.

The shade looks fantastic on the freshly painted base and I can't wait to use it in our to-be-decoranza'd office. And do you want to know the best part? I only spent a few bucks on the fabric to do it!

Anyone can handle this minimal DIY project. It was easy to complete and can change a dated lamp into an entirely different piece. Has anyone else recovered a lamp shade? Did you find it easy or was the shape difficult to work with? Send pics!

The Paint Fairies Strike 4

I came down with the painting craze last weekend. You know you're infected with it when your 6'2" husband gets home and finds his 5'2"-wife teetering on a barstool trying to reach the ceiling corner so she doesn't have to wait until he gets home to help her and so she can say she did it all by herself. And only when a painting project is finished, in less than 12 hours (including a night of sleep), do you know she has survived it. To some, I may be considered the victim, but in fact, the victim this time was our second story hallway (see below).

For a while I have had the framed art and photos in place, but for some reason I never found the time or motivation to pick a color and paint. Then a few weeks ago, while perusing my local Home Depot, I found the perfect color in the oops bin and for $5, I was willing to take the risk and just go for it. In the end it was totally worth it.

I adore the sophisticated, soft, gray tone that welcomes you with a modern attitude. This space is so angular that when every bedroom door is open, funky shadows criss-cross each other creating artistic lighting. Not surprisingly, the paint color was a custom match, but if you want the same, bring in this information to Home Depot and they should be able to replicate it.
Base 1: GL6411
CLRNT
B: 2-OZ, 0-384th
C: 1-OZ, 304-384th
F: 0-OZ, 64-384th

The Paint Fairies Strike 3

Does this yellow bathroom look familiar to you? If so, thanks for reading about the Curtain Change-up last week, and if not, do you hear "You are my sunshine" in your head too?

We bought our newly constructed home in September 2007. Being first-time homeowners, we followed our builder's recommendation to hold off painting for the first year except for our first floor's half bath and the burnt orange accent wall in our family room. Obviously, we chose this paint color long before we knew what colors we wanted to decorate with, because promptly after painting our garage entry and the grand entrance, we knew this had to go.

So, when my parents visited a few weeks ago, I enlisted my mom's assistance in helping me transform this room. And to make our job easier, before she arrived, I snagged a gallon of primer from good 'ol Home Depot and prepped for her arrival.

However, before we started slapping paint on the walls, I mocked up our game plan. I really wanted this half bath to be different than all other rooms and just like the rest of our house, it has nine foot ceilings, but in this tiny space they are accentuated and sometimes I feel like I'm in a silo. (I've never actually been in a silo, but I can imagine how it would feel.) So, I chose to paint horizontal stripes to make it appear wider, and by painting a dark stripe at the top an bottom of the room, it foreshortens the height. To make matters even better, we used all leftover paint from past painting projects in my home including the light cream from the kitchen, the taupe and milk chocolate brown from the grand entrance, and the dark chocolate brown from the dining table and chairs, meaning that this project cost nearly zip-oh! And as you will see, mocking up the stripes was crucial in determining where to tape and what order to paint the stripes in.

First, I taped off the three largest areas and since I primed the wall, it only took two coats for each color. Priming was a life saver for this particular project because without doing so, the old paint color could have altered any of the new paint colors, especially if the new paint was translucent in any spot.

Unfortunately, after completing just the first step, my mom had to go back to Minnesota and I was left to finish what I started. Nonetheless, I forged ahead, taping and painting the second round during the weeknights after work.

The third round was the most fun for me, not just because it was the last one, but because it was the dark chocolate brown, which added the final dimension to the walls. The dark chocolate brown is also semi-gloss, which makes it slightly shiny compared to the rest, which are all eggshell.

Once completed (many, many hours later), I reaffixed the toilet tank, rehung the art, and popped in the accessories; in no time it was back open for business.

Even though this project was not the quickest to accomplish (it took me 10 days from start to finsh), I couldn't be happier with the result. It is much more mature than the previous sunshine-yellow, and now when going from one room to the next on our first floor, it flows seamlessly.

The Paint Fairies Strike 2

I mentioned our goal to have our front living room/foyer/stair/hallway painted by the end of February in my 2010 Action Plans post, and after quickly knocking out a much smaller scale painting project in early January, Justin and I kept the momentum going and painted our massive 2-story space the weekend following our vacation in Hawaii. I tell ya, there's never a moment spared in our house!

To give you a taste of what we were facing, just take a look at these pictures.

(Justin demonstrating how he is going to reach the ceiling.)

Do you have a guess of how much paint we had to purchase? How does 10 gallons sound? Yes, it was a kick in the coin purse, but after receiving numerous professional painting quotes that surpassed $1000 I was quite relieved when the cashier at Home Depot told me the total was $360. On top of the savings we were already receiving by doing it ourselves, I bought the paint during the Behr $5 off per gallon rebate time so I knew I was going to get $50 back. Bonus!

Once again, as you can see (or maybe not), we sprung for Behr's Premium Plus paint ($33 per gallon). Seeing as that this is the first room our guests see when they enter our abode, we wanted to make sure that in two coats the color would be even and look like a professional did it. (Can you imagine painting this darn room three times?!)

After the big and drawn-out debate on how many colors we should use and what the colors should be, we decided on painting half of the room one color and the other half another. We really wanted the stairway to be a "wowsah" focal point, so we chose Behr's Melted Chocolate, which is a medium brown color. Melted Chocolate is a tad lighter than what I envisioned, but what made us choose this one over the other options was that at night, this one still looked brown and the others were tipping on the edge of black, not what we were going for. The lighter color we selected is actually Sherwin William's Mexican Sand but since Home Depot has the wonderful technology of color matching, we were able to get this color in the same paint as Melted Chocolate. Mexican Sand has a cooler undertone that I normally do not favor, but this room gets so much light during the day, the sun's rays warm it up.

Tip: Taping the paint chips on the wall and looking at them at different times throughout the day was very important during our selection process. If we hadn't done this, we would have ended up with a black stairway and a rosy-colored room.

Here is a mock-up of the paint colors we selected.

Before we could get down to business, we had to move all of our things out and into a safe spot. So, this is how our dining room looked--a little more crammed than it usually is.

In order to reach all the way up the walls, Justin borrowed some painting tools from his dad that squashed my skepticism and worked extremely well. He got an extension pole and ceiling and trim edger. He also bought an attachment for the pole that held a paint brush, which he used to do the corners of the walls.

Here he is, high flying painting

And now that I have completely bored you to death with the play-by-play, here are the photos you've been waiting for, our freshly painted living room/foyer/stair/hallway.

What do you think? Did we make the right color choices? Would you have chosen differently?

I've got a few more upcoming projects for this space up my sleeve (some that I'm even tackling this weekend) so make sure you come back and check often.

The Paint Fairies Strike 1

Justin and I are 0.25 steps closer to checking off number 1 on our resolution list, paint. Last weekend, we successfully picked paint colors for our massive two story foyer and living room (more to come) and even got our hands a little dirty painting the pseudo-hallway and foyer by the door to our garage. I don't have any big stories or mistakes to tell you about this time, except that we have already gouged one of the freshly painted walls requiring a patch and touch-up paint, but never fear, it's all good!

Once again we purchased Behr Premium Plus paint, as we did when we dolled up our dining room, to provide an even tone and because it is super easy to work with. At first, we opted to go with a neutral brown tone in that room, but at the last minute decided to punch it up (I love color!) and painted it a celery green (surprise, surprise) that is one shade lighter than our dining room. In fact, the color is Behr grass cloth and is from the same paint chip card. A gallon of Behr Premium Plus paint costs $32 smack-a-roos, but being the money-stretcher I am, I still had $9 left on the Home Depot gift card that I won from One Project Closer's monthly giveaway last September to cash in for this project. That means we got uber-awesome paint for only $23, that's what I call a deal.

Here is the room before with the builder-white "paint". (If your eyes are good, you can catch a glimpse into our forbidden office.)

And with the celery green walls after.

While we were on a roll, literally, we also painted the short little hallway that connects the front of our house to the back of the house (in the form of a few feet) and is the home to our coat closet. After pondering about the color, we chose to paint it the same as the back half of our home, Behr classic taupe. We chose to go this route, rather than select a different color, in order to pull the color from the back of the house into the front, which increases the visual flow between the two. Also, the nude paint color complements the other colors we have chosen for the grand foyer. We also found (after making this decision) that we had almost a full gallon of the paint remaining from when we originally painted the walls last year, which means that we spent zero dinero on this baby project and inched our way toward the bigger goal of having all of our walls painted for free. Bonus!

Has anyone else used leftover paint to spruce up their home? Painted a piece of furniture? Splattered some on blank canvas for some easy DIY art?

Dreaming of Paint Fairies

I know I have a problem when my dreams star paint, rollers, or me spray painting my cat. Don't call the ASPCA, it was just a dream! Maybe it's brought on by my current obsession with paint swatches or maybe it's because we have been living with asylum-esque white walls in over half of our house for over two years and it has caused me to go crazy (hey, at least they aren't padded). Nonetheless, Justin and I have decided that one of our winter projects this year will be painting our 17 feet tall entry way and living room. However, that was the easy party, the big decision we are currently squabbling over is how many colors to use and where to paint each one.

Choosing colors purely based on logic, we decided to use neutral tan/beige/taupe/brown colors in the room since it is going to be a nightmare to paint and we don't want to have to redo it soon because we chose an uber-trendy color. We have selected three potentials that work well together for this large room (from dark to light): Behr - Revival Mahogany (dark brown), Behr - Melted Chocolate (brown), and Sherwin Williams - Mexican Sand (tan/beige). Being the go-against-the-grain girl I am, I would love to use all three colors in the space to break up the large walls and provide designation of where one "room" ends and another begins. Here are a couple photos of the room. (PS please ignore the mess!)

Here's the layout of the space. The red lines are walls that are going to be painted and all but the ones under the stairs are 17 feet tall.

Now you can see why I might be going mad! Here's the good stuff, you get to chime in on what you would do. I mocked up four options based off of what we were debating, but if you have another suggestion by all means, let us know!

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Decisions, decisions, cast your vote by leaving a comment below!