Slip cover changes

Well actually I haven't done anything yet.  A lot like Shanna, work has been very busy so I have been itching to get back to work on projects at home but have not had the time!  I am going to need a little help and advice on this one. 

You remember this Ikea couch I bought shortly after we moved in? I took pictures from a few angles so you can see the white with the other natural elements in the room (jute rug, bamboo blinds, lamp shade and rustic tables):

The couch just seems so...white.  Gasp I know.  I love white but it I feel like I want it to be a little warmer in color.  I have looked around for Rit dye to give it more of a cream/ light tan look but no dice.  Next thought was to dye this whole thing with tea bags.  I have read a lot about it and my concern would be that the color is not the same throughout or blotchy in places.

This is the look I am going for:

Source: potterybarn.com via Ashley on Pinterest

I know it is a very subtle change but I want it and I need to know how to make this happen!  Has anyone out there tried to do this before?  Any recommendations on how to successfully dye my slipcover to give it this look? Needless to say, my new pillows will probably have to be switched out because the gray is just not doing it for me.

I will be sure to keep you all posted when I tackle this project :)

See you swoon,

What to do with a hole in the wall?

The middle room has gone completely unfinished.  I painted it last year during a hurricane and loved the color by Sherwin Williams called Ancient Marble, you can see it here:

It reads a little more green in person but I was so happy with it after changing it from this:

Believe it or not, I am not going to talk about paint today although I am going to repaint this room because I feel like I need a little more color, you know you will be the first to see (besides my husband and Shanna) once I paint the room over again.  What I really want to talk about is that weird area next to the bed with an Ikea spinny mirror stand shoved in it.  Keeping with the spirit of Shanna's post yesterday, I am going to enlist your help.

What are we going to do with this small, very awkward, hole in the wall?!

When we moved it in there were shelves going up the entire wall (they were painted gray, and still are but now reside in the basement).  Useful yes but just didn't seem right to me.  For now I plan on keeping the full bed in the room but I want to make this guest bedroom functional and cozy which is just not the case right now.  No night stand?  Should that be a closet?  Should I make a fold out nightstand and keep some shelves or close this entire thing up and call it a day?

Here are some photos of this area, oh and if you have any idea for the open "window" area at the very top, I am all ears.

Speedo was trying to help. He really just wanted to sit in the open hole once I moved the mirror to take pictures but it does look like he is helping me analyze the situation!  Always so curious!  You can see where the shelves hung, there are quite a few of them, one you cannot see but it goes right where the window is at the top.

Here is the window at the top. 

Looks like there used to be a door for this, you can see where hinges used to be.  Unfortunately, there is no door hanging around the house anywhere to rehang if I wanted to.

What would you do with this area?  I would love to hear what you think and if you have any other ideas for the room let me know.  I have to get moving on this area of the house!

Happy Friday!!

See you swoon,

Closet case ...

I sat around this past Saturday trying to find something to do with myself.  This doesn't happen often.  I rearely slow down and typically have massive to do lists that are completely unrealistic for any human being to finish in a week let alone two days.  See, of course I could go out shopping or buy materials for projects I have in mind but I am trying to save some dough right now so I had to come up with a task that would cost close to nothing...or free. 
At about 3:00PM I decided I would tear my closet apart and try to find a way to create space for hanging clothes, kind of late in the day to be starting a project but I jumped in anyway.  I have a small closet in our middle bedroom to hang dresses but right now my wedding dress resides in this space so I have a limited amount of room for anything else.  I need more closet space!  I know that some people reading this is probably saying, "typical", but no really I needed more room to hang shirts and pants and it was time to take matters into my own hands.

I started ripping things apart before I took pictures so excuse the insane looking shelves, this is not how they normally look on any given day.  This is a sort of shot of what the closet looked like before.  The previous owners had made this closet and built the walls around the shelves (I learned this the hard way, more on that in a minute).  Not many of the homes on our street have any closet space so I was thrilled to have this in our bedroom.  It worked well for the first year here but I really did need more space for hangers.

This was Kelly's side...and some of my side (I needed his space too, mostly for shoes)

This takes me back to my early pre-teen years when I would be so dramatic about having to clean my room that I would tear the whole thing apart.  Makes me laugh thinking about that now especially because I did it for fun this time!

These are the brackets holding up the shelves.  My original plan was to take out the smaller top shelf and move the larger second shelf up.  Midway through ripping these out of the wall my husband suggested just hanging the hangers from the shorter shelf.  OOOOH man I did not want to admit this at first but this was a much better idea.  I was creating a lot more work for myself than was really necessary. 

Now, here comes the issue with the previous owners building the wall around the shelves.  They are way too long to come out of the closet in one piece.  Yup.  Learned that after I had one hanging and jammed between the two walls.  Out came the Dremmel.  This actually worked out better because I could cut two of the shelves on my side creating hanging space and leave the shelves on my husband's side for his clothes.  He was happy he wasnt losing his shelves in this project (he also has a second closet with a dresser and hanging poles so he didn't need the space like I did).

Here is my side all done!  I always knew I had a lot of gray, white, black, and navy clothing but this really showcases that huh?  I need more color in my life STAT!

I do plan to get matching hangers but like I said, this was a last minute project so I had to work with what I had at the time. 

This is the other side with my husbands clothes...and still my shoes but I NEED that side!  Good thing he doesn't need it, thanks for sharing :)

Have any of you tackled closet projects lately?  Are you looking for a new more functional closet design to fit your life?  Tell us all about it!

See you swoon,

Tutorial: A chair rail tale

Oy.  This was a doozie and this picture of Shanna says it all.

Our first attempt at chair rail ended up looking something like the picture below and this actually looks tame compared to the eight foot piece of chair rail we blew through trying to figure out ANGLES!  Angles are now my enemy, my brain works in straight lines only I have come to realize.  I thought adding chair rail to my staircase would be a cinch.  Bing, bang, boom, three or four mitered cuts and voila.  Bahahahaha, did I have another thing coming.

I started by creating a painters tape template just to get a visual.  This went all the way up the stairs so I could get a feel for the height I liked and moulding ideas for the bottom half.

Shanna and I pretty much got hung up immediately, we spent two hours cutting as many angles as you can imagine just hoping to stumble on the angle we needed.  We were praying for a miracle that never came.  We watched you tube for help and read articles and to our complete surprise, no one had a tutorial on how to get these angles to meet up at the top and bottom landing.

I have to give a lot of credit to my co-worker who is pretty handy and he helped me draw out pictures that I could use at home.  Once I had the stairs drawn out:

The easiest thing to do to find the angles for the chair rail is to make this diagram on the wall.  Lay the chair rail across the vertical line where you want the two chair rail pieces to meet.  Our angle ended up being 22.5" mitered cuts, funny we couldn't figure that out since that's common cut on the saw!

You can see it a little better here.  The chair rail will cross over where you see the dotted line and then you can just draw that line directly onto the chair rail:

You will do the same things at the top landing to find that angle as well:

Once you find the angle to cut the long straight piece going up the stairs, the small boards for the landing are much easier.  They are cut on the same degree but you will have to move the miter saw to the other side so the two angles match up. 

I also made a smaller version of the chair rail once I figured the angled cuts that I needed to make to help me keep the visual in my head and use the smaller pieces as guides when I kept running to the basement to cut the new pretty pieces of chair rail.

If I can give one piece of advice it would be to practice.  Its OK to mess up and you may have to buy a piece that will be come scrap just so you can practice but this is much better than nailing something to the wall and the realizing it's wrong.



After all the measuring it was time to get started.  We literally made four cuts to fit all the pieces together.  We used construction adhesive and painters tape to hold the chair rail in place while the glue dried.  This was originally the only thing we had planned to use to keep this attached to the wall because this is a cement party wall.  We weren't sure nails would actually go through the cement. 

Apparently my walls are nowhere close to flat so we had to try nails to hold everything close to the wall.  The glue kept separating and leaving very large gaps:

 

Finally!  All of it is up so now you can caulk any gaps and cracks.

Once the caulk has dried you can paint-yahoo!  I chose a white semigloss that matches my trim.  I wanted the illusion of beadboard and I liked the contrast against the rice grain colored walls. 

Here is it with the new mirror :)

You will have another after as soon as I hang my Ikea Ribba frames up the staircase.  I have decided that I am not going to make moulding boxes to avoid over-doing the framed look.  As always, stay tuned!

If you have any questions about angles or how we did this project let me know, I am happy to help!

See you swoon,



DIY Tutorial: Make Your Own Rustic Chunky Frame Mirror!

And so it began.  My staircase was flat out BORING.  I was planning on creating a picture gallery up the stairs to fill in the blank walls but something just didn't feel right.  I love me a beautiful gallery wall and had one in my apartment but visually in my mind it felt too cluttered since this space is also part of the dining room. 

The new plan was to create a large mirror with an aged look for the bottom of the stairs and then just a few pictures and prints going up the stair wall to keep things simple. 

The mirror was completed and hung yesterday and I am head over heels for this baby.  Yes I could have gone out and bought a mirror, been done with it and had it hanging weeks ago but there is no way I would feel the amazing sense of pride I get right now looking at it knowing I created this with my own two hands. 

I scoured Craigslist looking for mirrored closet doors that I could take the frames off of and use just the mirror portion for this project, I got that idea from this inspiration picture:

Source: younghouselove.com via Shanna & Jamie on Pinterest

Anyway, finding closet doors was not happening so I turned to my trusty friend, Ikea.  This place never fails...except on a Saturday when everyone is off work and seems to take up residence there.  I found the Stave mirror for $49.99 and examined it to make sure I could get the frame off before purchasing.  All the glass was held in with was some glue/silicone and staples.  I snatched her up and headed home.  I admit, this part scared me because even though this mirror was incredibly inexpensive for its size, I did not want to break it while taking the frame off.

All I can say is to take your time.  I used a razor blade to cut around the back of the frame and separate the glue from the mirror and used a flat head screw driver to bend all the staples back. 

That worked to an extent but I had to get out the hammer.  Yes a hammer and glass to do not mesh well but that was my only solution.  I went very slow and tapped all around the frame and it came apart pretty quickly and much easier than I had anticipated.

After sweating and praying that this would all come out in one piece, this is what I had.  I used a bathroom rug to set it on so it would have a soft pad and so it wouldn't slip on the floor. 

I decided to go with pine boards and individually chose each board to make sure they were super knotty.  You will see how these knots look stained in a little while but let's really get into the steps of bringing this monster to life.

What you will need:

-Inside frame: four 1x6 eight ft. pine panel boards
-Outside frame: four 1x6 eight ft. boards
-12 L brackets
-Silicone
-Wipe on stain, color of choice
-Ikea Stave mirror
-Miter saw (make sure you have one that can cut all the way through the width of the wood

#1: Purchase four 8ft 1x6 pine paneling boards.  They have this groove in them that I figured would be perfect to slide my mirror into.  I liked this idea much better than trying to glue the mirror to the wood and hoping it doesn't fall off.  This groove would make sure the mirror stayed secure for all of eternity (sorry I know this is slightly blurry, the next picture should help give you an idea of what it looks like).

#2: Break out your amazingly stunning chop saw.  Finally I get to put her into action!  Thank you Uncle John for giving this to me, I will take very good care of it and cut everything in sight!

#3: 45 degree angles galore.  That is all the cutting for this project consisted of, I was happy with the ease of measuring for my first woodworking project.

If you don't have a saw yet, let me recommend one with a laser, it helps out in so many ways.  You can be confident you are cutting exactly where you measured.

#4: Attach all corners with L brackets.  I did not use any glue on the actual wood.  The L brackets were strong enough to keep everything tight and secure.

#5: I connected three sides first and ended up testing the mirror quite a few times to make sure that everything lined up once the mirror was installed.  This is where I hit a little hang up.  Once I slid the mirror into place the top piece that looked perfect without the mirror now looked like this:

The issue?  The bottom piece that the mirror sat in was uneven.  A co-worker of mine recommended using my Dremmel sander to sand inside the groove, ummm genius!  Yes!!  So I did exactly that and the mirror fit like a glove.  Thank god because if I have to buy another piece of wood and start over you may have been seeing this Swoon girl on the news..... and not for anything good.

#6:  Once all three sides are connected and the mirror fits you can start working on the outside frame.  I used regular 1x6 pine boards.  I went through the same steps of cutting all three on 45 degree angles and attaching them to the inside frame.  I just laid the outside frame on top of the pine panels and used finishing nails to secure them together (you don't even see them after staining and if you do it just adds to the rustic feel).  Once you have the top and bottom frame nailed together I just used L brackets on the outside frame as well:

Here is a shot from the front of the frame:

#7: All I did here was make sure the fourth side that was not secured yet (remember, you still have to slide the mirror in) still matched up with the two shorter sides.  Good to go!

#8: Carefully, ever so carefully slide the mirror into the frame, you need two people.  Thank you husband for coming down to the basement every time I needed to check and double check what I was doing.

#9: You are in the home stretch!  I used silicon for the back of the mirror to make sure that it didn't wobble inside the frame.  I didn't want to hear it shake every time someone shut the front door or just walked by.  This was super easy, just load into your caulk gun and fire away.  It doesn't have to be super neat because no one will ever see this side.

#10: Get staining!  Thank you all for your advice last week, I took it!  The walnut stain was perfect and looks gorgeous against my rice grain wall.

The rag must have been happy with it too because this is what I saw after I opened it up!  Exactly how I felt too friend :)

Staining complete!

#11: Last step is to hang the mirror.  I used this hanging system to make sure the mirror would be secure to the wall.  It ends up being pretty heavy and this hook will hold up to 200 lbs.  A little excessive I know but I would rather go overboard than come home to a broken mirror.

Are you ready for this?  Now you can step back and admire.  This is all I have done since it went up yesterday.  It adds so much to this room and cost just about $100!

What do you think?  If I left anything out that you have questions about let me know!  Shanna and I are going to do a repeat of this project very soon for her bedroom :) 

See you swoon,