Biggie Small

We got some new accessories, some big and some small, in the house that I wanted to show off! 

As you know we moved the old trunk in from the guest bedroom to sit by one of the chairs we're babysitting. 

Well once I learned my orchid didn't do well in front of that window it left the space a little bare so I went digging around to find something (that we already owned) to go there. I found this lovely Pier1 tray that my mom got me for my birthday a couple of years ago. I stacked some garden books on it and of course a succulent and then my aunt came across this small old fan and I snatched it up. 

I think the fan might actually plug in and work, but the plug in does look a little small and dingy. So since we don't really need a cool breeze over here I think I'll just let the cord hang out and not risk getting electrocuted. Isn't it lovely though?

Another accessory is rather big....like the size of a new couch! But here is the back/side view first. We bumped up the console table that used to live by the door to the garage so we could have a spot for a lamp and a nice mug of coffee while we were chillin' on the sofa.

Holla to sectional-slash-chaise big bundle of (fake) leather comfort! It's the best. thing. eva. Like, I have key-locked that corner chaise nook spot. I will toss my hubby a dog outta my way to get in it.

Oh, and I actually went to the flea market and bought something (in addition to) other than succulents. I scored these metal bin/baskets for 5 bucks. They slide on the shelf perfectly and are nice little catch alls. It's nice to see we only have enough junk for one basket currently...I won't hold my breath.

Chevron in the House

When we last left off on the bookcase trial and (mostly) errors we weren't looking pretty. And this is the shot in real time...even worse. To bring you up to speed I had this big dream of a solid beautiful navy bookcase. Solid as in not the bead board backing it had, I wanted it to be a solid against the wall of lines. So I tried some spray adhesive + scrapbook paper + foam board cut to size....well that = fail. Once the temperatures changed or whatever excuse I want to use, the papers started crinkling and coming unglued at the corners. 

So I let it hang out looking like a hot mess for weeks until I came across something. I knew something would pop up right when I wasn't focused on fixing the problem and sure enough it did. 

A couple of weekends ago while out at Gordman's with my bff we stumbled upon this beauty. Self adhesive shelf liner in a grey and white chevron. Sure it wasn't the solid color I dreamed of but hey I do love me some chevron and it was on 4.99 for over 30 yards. Sold.

So then finally this last weekend (with the help of the same bff) we got her up. And boy oh boy oh boy do I love it. Seriously I think it's the pop of bold that this wall needed. And even though it is a pattern I think since the chevron goes horizontal while the bead board goes vertical it does help break it all up.

I will tell you this stuff isn't the easiest in the world to apply. Luckily it's not like super glue so if you mess up (which we did, a ton) then you can carefully peel it back and reapply. There are still air bubbles in there that I think just won't come out (since the boards and the wall are both bowed and uneven) and if you look closely you can see where the bead board creases are. But seriously, I've said it before, but if you come over to my house and look that closely at my things and say something you can go to your perfect house and sit, haha. But seriously.

How about this gorge shot? This is one of those prints I picked up while we were in Colorado. Oh and that little skull thing? Haha, he's from Hobby Lobby that I spray painted white. 

Oh, and here ya go! Ugh, I love it. You can see we went up a little on the roof of each shelf. This was a) easier and b) that's it, we did it because it was the easiest way to handle too big contact paper. 

The best shot. No words, I just love it.

Dang Weather

For a while I've been wanting to copy what I see in a lot of inspiration rooms that have painted backs in their bookcases. We have this kind of odd-spot bookcase between our fireplace area and nook but the back of it is bead board like the walls. Once you put accessories in the bookcase the vertical lines kind of make it all too busy. So not only did I want to have a colored backed bookcase, but a smooth one. So I came up with this brillant idea of getting foam boards cut to size per shelf and adhere scrapbook paper to them. 

So off to Hob Lob we went with our shelf measurements and they did some slicing for us. Foam board was 30% off and scrapbook paper was 50% off so for the materials we needed for our funky placed bookcase and the cut out above our bar came up to just about $15 smacks. 

Once we got home I had high hopes of just being able to pop them into place. Yeah, well shelves were bowed and some were thicker than others so each foam board needed a little bit tweaking here and there. So my wonderful hubby would slide in the board and pencil mark where he needed to trim off a little.

We he got them all trimmed and I got them taped together and slide them in to their own shelf.

Then I took each foam board individually and sprayed acid free adhesive on the board then very carefully placed a scrapbook paper on. I repeated this process until the board was covered. I had to trim a couple spots down and use acid free double stick squares in some places in addition to the adhesive but it all seemed to turn out ok. I used double stick thick foam squares in each corner and in the center to help the foam board stick to the back of the shelf.

Once all the accessories were put back in the area looked great. I love the pop of color against the white trim and grey walls and our mostly neutral accessories. It kind of helps make the bookcase stand out a little more as it's own area instead of a wall cut out. The chair and lamp placement help it become it's own little room in the house and I love it. 

But in the keeping-it-real- category this project may be a big fat fail. I don't know if it's the weather or me (let's just say the weather) but the entire thing is falling apart. The foam board won't stick to the wall, the scrapbook pages flap at the corners and one just fell completely off today. I love the color. I love the contrast. I love that the bead board is hidden. But this just isn't the answer. You win some, you lose some. I'll keep mulling over how to fix it, until then I will stare at half fallen scrapbook pages.

Oh and a picture frame just up and jumped off our entryway wall gallery today and broke. Dang weather.

Meet Betty and Allen

Right when we moved in B's mom was about to garage sell two reddish wingback recliner chairs. Well I had high hopes of being able to reupholster them and love them so we had B's parents bring them down and they've lived with us since April. Well they were super comfy but a little too tall for our space but just for fun I took some pictures and got a quote for having them reupholstered. Hello, sticker shock, meet cheap-o. It was going to be somewhere between $500-$700 smacks. Each. I could buy new chairs for less than that! So we moved on from that idea and I started looking around at some chairs that I could convince B to like and then stalk them until they went on sale sale. And then something magical happened. 

My aunt stopped by and said hey, we have are trying to clear out our living room and I have these two chairs that we need to store for awhile, would I be interested? They didn't want to get a storage unit and her kids' homes are already full of furniture so she thought of us. I said what chairs? Those two tan leather chairs with the beautiful fabric back? Yes, those chairs. 

I don't think I could've said yes faster. They ended up being able to bring them by that weekend and boy did they fit right in. I know, I know, I am just babysitting, but it could be a while so don't think I didn't name them the second I plopped down. This is Betty. She makes a nice little reading chair next to our bookcase with our reading lamp and pouf. 

And this is Allen. He is turned towards the tv for extra seating. I also brought in a trunk we got from my other aunt as a side table. And yes, this is the trunk we were using as a coffee table talked about here. 

How about them succulents? We found this woman who grows and sells succulents for super cheap at the flea market here in town that's held every Saturday. Have I been there every Saturday for the past 4 weekends to pick up 'just one more'? Now, that would be silly. 

So we hope Betty and Allen get to stay for a while. I did warn my aunt that they may bolt themselves to the floor. Who knows. But either way it gives us a nice (free!) upgrade and we get to see if the style/color/placement is something we like so it will help us in our search for our forever chairs. While they were over my uncle talked about how when they were first married her and her sister (the aunt with the trunk) would basically trade their entire living rooms once a month. The guys would load everything up and swap furniture so they could get a fresh look for their spaces. I tried to trade our couch for one of my aunt's....it didn't work.

One Shade of Gray

So like 85 things have happend since our last post before Christmas. We celebrated one graduation, three Christmases, missed one Christmas, traveled to Kansas City twice in 2 weeks, celebrated NYE in OKC and now we are finally back home! Oh and we painted the living room. This is what the post is actually about. Warning, loooonnnggg post.

After spending weeks and weeks talking about and researching what color to paint the living room we were finally able to get it done after receiving a Lowe's giftcard and paint accessories from my mom for Christmas (with the promise of her help of course). Our LR is tricky because as you can see with the three pictures below that all of our rooms except our kitchen all share one wall with no divider. So we had to pick a color we really liked since it would travel to multiple rooms. 

See how the LR is really only the middle wall with the big picture window and the wall directly across it? But in the pic above it shares the entryway wall because of that funky half wall? Well we do have plans for separating that so we can paint the entry and dining another color. But that will be later. And see how toward the fireplace there are two columns on either side as well as one on the ceiling that kind of separate this space? Well we use that area as part of the LR so we wanted to keep them together. Now see the bookcase towards the right? 

It leads to this room which we use as a mudroom/bar/eating area but it's so close to the LR that we wanted to wrap the color around to that area as well. These shots also show you the color that we had when we moved in, I'm not sure what the actual color name is but I like to call it slab-o-butter yellow. Seriously I feel like I could walk up and dip a piece of bread in it. It also didn't help pop our crisp white trim and doors that we have and kind of just overall dulled the space down.

So after reading blog after blog (and later getting reassured by Nate Berkus) we decided to go with Moonshine by Benjamin Moore in satin. Yes, we've heard that flat paint is best for LR because it's easy to wipe down. However, not only does this color go into an eating area and we didn't want to mix finishes but I absolutely hate flat paint. It's easier to wipe down, yes, but that's because it shows dirt ten million times more! It feels like chalkboard paint and kind of dusty. So no we did not go flat. 

We chose Olympic Premium no VOC interior latex and I got this neat rim lip pourer thingy. It kept things super clean and helped me save a lot of paint from pooling in the rim, which was good because we barley got all three areas covered with one gallon. 

There were also many tricks and prepping that had to go on with these spaces. First of all the two actual LR walls are textured so they needed a nappy texture roller to get into all the grooves. Second of all the fireplace area and nook area have flat bead board walls so they needed a smooth foam roller and caulking. And boy did I caulk. Caulk is my new best friend. Seriously as I was caulking the bead board and gapped trim I took this shot to remind myself that it would all be worth it. Our bead board had these deep grooves and our trim wasn't flush in most places so I wanted to caulk the space so the paint job would look more professional, clean and we would use less paint since it wouldn't have to fill deep crevices. Here is a shot of the bead board above the nook where the lines on the right are caulked and the ones on the left are not. 

 And a close up shot of what I mean. Hello clean lines good bye dark holes.

And yet another shot. I think I'm doing this more to prove to myself that a week of cramped hands was worth it. But it was!

Before Caulk

 After Caulk

And here was my weapon of choice. A 1.49 tube of Alex white paintable caulk. And I was able to use the caulking gun that was left behind, yay!

Oh and here's another shot at some areas that need caulked. To caulk the space it was pretty simple but messy....but worth it. I'll keep saying it to block out those bad memories. Anyways, to get started I just trimmed a small hole off the tip and squeezed that caulking into either bead board crevices, trim gaps or brick meets wall inconsistencies. Once I would squeeze out a strip I would take my finger and run it down to get off any access and to kind of press it down into where it needed to go. I did this for every. strip. of. bead. board. That's well over 40 strips. Then the two sides of the fireplace. Then the base boards. Then the frames around the windows and bookcase. Then the hardest part, the place where the bead board meets the crown molding. ugh. 

  

But, bad memories aside, here is a final shot! A moonshine and caulked bead board wall. Lovely!

And a moonshine coated textured wall! FYI this is probably the truest shot of how the color actually looks, well I guess depending on your monitor. Just believe me when I say that it's the best gray ever. Not too purple or white or anything. Just gray. I mean, or you can believe Nate Berkus when he calls it the "perfect gray".

I love how our white frames pop against the gray, the wood tones look warmer, and the entire space just feels softer.

Alas, we still have work to do. Remember above I said we would be taking care of the divider to the entryway? Well this is that area. We have this weird little half wall that used to have spindles (cute!) but those have been taken down but we still have the weird jut out of a wall. Ideally I would love to see if we had wood flooring underneath the wall and just take it out. But until then we are just going to build a column out from the wall just like the other two we have leading into the fireplace area.

Here is the shot from underneath the nook. I like how we are kind of bringing down the total number of colors we have around the space. I like doing pops of color but against a neutral background. So like before we had butter yellow, gray, walnut, white and then our pops of teal and greens. But now it's just gray, walnut and white (all neutrals) and then our pops of colors.

See what I mean? Before these colors all kind of competed with the butter yellow background, now they stand out.

Oh and we also hung a sheer and some hooks for my everyday goodies for easier access. Hey, it's a mudroom/bar/nook we can do whatever we want. 

And finally (not really) here is the moonshine paired against our crisp white brick fireplace. I am in love. This is my absolute favorite space in the house right now. Our distressed rustic mantle + avocado mirror + white brick + moonshine = love.

Here are some shots of those lovely mantle toppers. My lovely ceramic horse head that my bestie got for me for Christmas, a teal sand hourglass from Ross, a white antler from Vintage Trade Days sits on top of a cool patterned box I got for .99 from Ross. 

Neighhh. 

A Rustic Mantle

After taking the plunge and painting our brick fireplace back in October we were finally ready to tackle building and installing a mantle. I perused the interweb taking note of other off center fireplaces and how the mantle looked being different lengths, materials, height, etc to settle on our rustic wood design. I also found this helpful building plan that we followed roughly to get us along. 

We taped off a section 5 feet wide and about 2 feet from the top of the 'hole' to get an idea of placement. We decided to not run our mantle the entire (almost 8 feet!) width because we didn't want something that would cut off the fireplace from flowing with the ceiling and in hopes of creating a bit of balance to the off centered 'hole'. 

Then we purchased three 1x8 boards that were all 6 feet long. We would eventually trim them all to 5 feet and use two of those trim pieces for the ends of our hollow mantle. But first I needed to rough them up a bit. Frist I sanded all four edges down with 100 grit sandpaper to make the edges more round and less "new".

Then I used a bunch of the same techniques found in this video by Young House Love on how to make new wood look old. I also added in some techniques like hammering in the tip of a paint can opener.

Here are the stained results of some of those techniques. The curved shaped in the center is from banging a hammer, the dashes towards the right are from hammering the edge of a screw, the wisp line going off the top on the left is from dragging a paint can opener and all the little dings that are scattered are from banging a bag of screws.

Here's another detail shot: again some more screw hammering action as well as some effects from dragging a screw multiple times over the edge that you can see towards the top of the picture. Those darkest colored notches are the results that I got from hammering in the tip of a paint can opener - they are my favorite.

Of course you see those boards after I stained them. To get this finish I dipped a rag in water and wiped down one board at a time and let it soak in while I got my stain rag ready. Then I dipped in my stain rag and ran it along the board pretty quickly. I really only dipped 2 or 3 times and just kept wiping the entire board down so I could get a more soaked in look rather then a full coat of stain.

After all the boards were distressed, stained and assembled (you can get more how to directions from here) we finally were ready to get them up. Oh, and I forgot to mention that none of this would have even happened if B's dad hadn't come down to help. I did the distressing and staining but they assembled and hung (and rehung, haha). They put in two metal brakets that both had a 2x4 screwed to the top.

After a little reconfiguring to make sure we had everything level the guys had the mantle up after only two tries! And it was super sturdy! And it was level! Then of course came to accessorizing!

Since it is the holidays and hanging all my holiday decorations was the main reason why I fought for the mantle to get done so quickly I didn't slow down fast enough to snap a pic before the holiday deco got up. I took the avocado mirror that was originally in our entryway frame gallery to add some depth and color and kept the winter accessories that I had on the hearth. I also added a cute little banner that I made with leftover scrapbook paper and white paint and twine; it says "Happy Holidays".

Here is a shot of the edge. In the building plans we were going off of they cover their ends with stained veneer to get a more "finished" look, but I guess we are cheap prefer things "unfinished" because we kept it au natural.

And just because I love love love the finished distress and stain here is another shot with it paired next to the avocado mirror and crisp white brick.

And then finally to keep things real here is a shot of the whole shebang to try and give you perspective.  And sorry for the varying light tones in this shot but it's not the easiest to capture. I love that the mantle gives some cozy warmth to that end of the room and balances nicely with the built in bookcase. We still have tons of plans for this space so know we are in the middle confusing space in time. Oh and forgive the rando barstool that snuck it's way in - I was probably using it as a tripod since I still need one. 

Oh and yes that dark blob on the rug, that's ed.