be happy

So we've been working the guest bedroom lately and i've posted a few things (the curtains, the bed, etc) and we are now down to the details, which are fun and what i consider a personal challenge. i enjoy turning nothing into something or something old into something new.  

Today i decided to tackle some new "art" on the walls. This room has a cute dog-house dormer and charming arched walls which are a byproduct of the gabled roof.  anyway, i originally thought i would do twin beds in this room because they would just look so cute under these arches, but since we already owned the full size bed and the third floor guest room isn't exactly ready for furniture (where the full size bed will ultimately reside) this room will house for the moment a full size bed that fits charmingly inside the dormer.   that being said, before we moved in, i had the electrician rough in boxes for sconces to go over those "future" twin beds - guess where those boxes are right now..... that's right, behind the artwork in the picture below.  this artwork used to be in my old guest room so it was readily available and just the right size to hide the rough in boxes... but with the guest room coming together, they just didn't have the right feel anymore.  so i got to searching...

then i remembered the frames i had hanging in my old hallway

i have a dozen of these Ribba frames from Ikea - they're a great size and not anything super-expensive so i didn't feel bad about painting them and changing them up a bit. 

they used to frame this old damask scrap paper - it is so beautiful that it actually looks like fabric when behind glass, but this is not the look for the guestroom that is meant to feel cozy to grandchildren under the age of 5, so sadly it had to go....

i sat down at my desk and did what any thrifty designer would do - i went to pinterest to look for some inspiration and ultimately gave myself a headache - so i just decided to go with a simple, happy message.... be happy, be good. 

i already have the silhouette cameo, so cutting out letters would be a breeze

i sifted thru my collection of scrap paper and came up with a design that i felt would work well with the color scheme of the room. 

isn't this adorable paper - it's urban prairie petticoat #urp-1317

i set up the silhouette, selected a font (bambi bold - appropriate, right?!) 

after fidgeting with the font size, i went ahead and spray painted the frame and got to work.

i think one of the best little inventions is the double-sided tape rollers - 
they are clean, exact and precise - no waste, no mess.  

Pritt's are terrific and always hold like iron. 

here's the first layout - looks pretty happy, no?

i was so excited about how they looked that i never took a picture of the "be good" layout, so here's a picture of it in the frame on the wall!!

here they are side by side (the pinks are a perfect match!).

a hammer and a couple of 10-lb picture hangers....

and they're done!!

they're good and i'm happy!! 
(...and not a penny spent!!)

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All in Good Time...

When we moved into this house two years ago, things were a little hectic. 

   We owned this house for a while.  It was built in the early 20's and then converted to a duplex somewhere in the 50's.  We had always intended to renovate it, but we rented it out for a little while when life took us in a different direction.  Anyway, when it became a struggle for my dad to get around in our old house we decided we should make the commitment to converting this house back to single family.  After all, there was already a first floor bedroom addition with a private bath and given the size of the renovation there was plenty of opportunity to create nice wide doorways and the perfect place to add a ramp on the back side of the wrap around porch.  Besides, the real estate market was sluggish and we'd probably have enough time to get it all done before we could move anyway.  Needless to say,  we sold our old house in a record 3 days and proceeded to settle 90 days later.  So much for a sluggish market... So we decided to focus on the critical rooms - and i do mean critical.  We made sure my dad's bedroom on the first floor was ready, the ramp for his increasingly necessary wheelchair, ada access in general on the first floor, our bedroom and bathroom - pretty much everything else was up for grabs.  I am still planning on writing my best selling cookbook, "haute-plate" cuisine - no joke.  i cooked on a hot plate in a kitchen full of boxes for the better part of 6 months before we got a stove - not a kitchen - a stove..... anyway, this is my long-winded way of explaining how someone could live in a house for two years with a room that looks like this....

This is (or should i say "was") our guest room.  

Notice that the window in the first photo is one type of window, and in the second photo it's another type of window?  That's because we were still in the process of installing windows on the second floor when we moved in.  Notice how there's no trim around anything - the windows, doors, floors.  How about that crazy floor finish - nice, right? Oh, and how about that temporary light hanging out of the ceiling in the first photo above...nice..

When spring broke this year (yes, this year) we finally got around to installing that missing window.  Which led to the trim in this room being finished, which led to paint, which led to the ceiling fan and outlets, and so on and so on - which led me to thinking about looking for a bed for this room. 

In seemingly no time, i found just what i was looking for - a cannonball bed - on craigslist for $40.00.  The added bonus, it fits perfectly into the dormer.  

As cute as the shape was, the finish was less than charming.  If you're new to this post, you might not know that i am a lifelong lover of pink, so my sister and my husband were both surprised when i decided to paint the bed a very cheery "sharp cheddar" orange.

Sharp Cheddar is a Benjamin Moore color, and i do love Benjamin Moore, but i am in LOVE with ACE Hardware's Royal Porch & Floor paint - it's an alkyd - and when they say gloss - they mean GLOSS... it is fantastic and finishes to the most beautiful shiny shell finish!

 So my favorite guys at Fisher's Hardware in Drexel Hill, PA mixed 

it up for me in a snap.

A Wooster Chinex brush is the perfect bristle for standing up to this 

thick-as-molasses finish.

Before I started to paint, I wiped the entire bed down with TSP by Jasco, to de-gloss the factory finish and prepare the surface for that beautiful glossy finish.  It was easy to mix, virtually odor free (which is not true of the powder version..) and took no time at all.

Just remember to wear gloves - cute ones. preferably pink...

Here's the first coat.

Look at that gloss only after one coat.

After completing the first coat.  I left the bed to dry under the newly installed ceiling fan - on high - for 24 hours before applying the second coat.

I was so excited about the bed, that I persuaded my husband that it was time to finish the floors.  Again, when we first moved in, we were going to install wall to wall sisal throughout the second floor, but didn't want to do it until everything was finished, so in the meantime we white washed the floors with a mix of 3 parts oil paint to 1 part mineral spirits.  The floors were in rough - and i do mean rough - shape so it was no heartbreak to paint them.  i have to admit, i like the finish so much, i'm not sure we'll ever see sisal in these parts. Again, at move-in, this room wasn't critical... 

So there you have it - two coats dried and beautifully glossy.

  

There's lots of cuteness in this room, but it really deserves a more thorough post than this - like everything else in this house.... all in good time...

all in good time.

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Ikea Faux Dotted Swiss

Some girls like faux fur, faux bois, faux tans, faux boo.. well, you get the drift - as for me - I like a good faux dotted swiss......  

Well, truthfully, I like dotted swiss curtains, but what I like even more is saving money.   A love of fabrics and fiscal prudence are gifts from my mom - she had a true love of design and I have yet to meet someone who loves finding a great bargain more than she did. She especially loved window treatments and changed them more than some people change their shoes.

So, when our the last new window was finally installed, trimmed and painted in the back bedroom of our second floor, it was time for me to call upon the skills my mother cultivated in me.  

Our new old house is an early 1920's hybrid of craftsman meets colonial, which we completely gutted and have restored into a rather respectable cozy home - and while we have allowed the hard details of the house to lean to the more masculine side of things, the soft details are all girl... well, mostly, so far as my husband will endure.  To me it's really just about balance of design - which speaks to me across the board - I like balance - like a vanilla and chocolate twist, bacon and eggs, peanut butter and jelly, circles and squares, stripes and checks, etc, etc.  So to balance the masculine details, I settled on the idea of feminine dotted swiss cafe curtains.  I wanted these throughout the second floor of our house for continuity both inside and out.  As for the dotted swiss, I didn't want the curtains to be silky or formal - I wanted them to suit the casual nature of the architecture. 

 

bad old windows & aluminum siding         beautiful new windows & cedar siding    

 To my great surprise, dotted swiss cafe curtains are not as readily available in the stores as they were when I was a kid.  So I did an online search and was further shocked by the fact that for the smallest window on my second floor it was going to be $35/per window for one pair of 72"w cafe curtains - that is just barely more than double the 32" width of the window - not lush by any measure.  My mom was all about making something look like more than it actually was and, ideally, doing it for the least amount of money possible.   I couldn't bear to think that it was going to cost me nearly $400 for 9 pairs of   cafe curtains that weren't even going to look lush. Undeterred, I continued to search, until one day I when was walking through Ikea with my sister and came across these...

Matilda sheer panels from Ikea.  Take a look at those dimensions - that's right, that 55"w is PER PANEL - or 110"w per pair.  For $19.99!!  Wait, because this gets better... the 98"l made it possible for me to get three - count 'em, three - pairs of cafe length curtains from each package.  Now, I am a girl who knows how to operate a sewing machine (I have 4 of them), knows what she likes, is rarely deterred and loves to find a bargain - so this deal hit all the bells for me.  Cutting these panels into three sets of curtains meant I was getting nearly quadruple the width of each window for $6.50 PER WINDOW!  To get this kind of "lushness" it would have cost me $70 per window online and it would have been four separate panels per window instead of two.  Of course, I did have to cut and sew them, and they aren't exactly dotted swiss, but look below - now tell me that isn't some cute fabric....

It's what I like to call "faux" dotted swiss... and it's machine washable and 100% cotton!-

I bought three pairs for a grand total of $60 and couldn't wait to get home to spike the bargain in the end-zone.  I measured all the windows and went to work.  

It was ridiculously easy.  

The sides were already finished and from every package the last pair cut from the bottom of the panel were technically already hemmed-

Just pin the hem and the head of the curtain, iron, sew and iron again.  

This fabric irons BEAUTIFULLY.

Last pair of 9 complete...

All that's left to do is put them in place, stand back, and

know that my mom is somewhere up there beaming with pride!

  

                       tv/sitting room                            guest bedroom                            master bedroom

As I mentioned, I grew up with a mom who loved curtains - like L-O-V-E-D - curtains.  When I was 5, she would persuade me into a trip to her favorite linen shop with the chance of having lunch across the street at the Woolworth's lunch counter with one of the older sales ladies from the linen shop while she shopped for curtains.  Before you draw any rash conclusions about my mom letting her 5 year old go off with "strangers" so she could "shop", it bears noting, that times were definitely different back in 1974 - and my mom had been going to that linen store, dealing with that same sweet sales lady, for the better part of 15 years.  It was a win-win as far as I was concerned - I must confess, curtain bargains didn't hold the same charm for me back then and I was VERY happy to sit at the counter of Woolworth's with a sweet old sales lady who was clearly charmed by my 5 year old nature.  Given my later need for a special diet for hyperactivity, I suspect the owner of the linen shop probably happily picked up the tab for that grilled cheese and coke to keep my mom in the store and me, well, not.  See, everybody wins... 

As for the bargain hunting, I am the youngest of five so my mom not only knew how to find a bargain - it was a financial imperative.  My mom would say - we have champagne tastes and a beer budget, but she made it fun and taught us all a lot about quality and getting the most for your money. My mother's ability to comb through that jamb-packed linen shop for just the right curtain style, impressed me - maybe via osmosis, but just the same... On the way over to 5th Street, my mom would quiz me on fabrics, colors and styles.  Later, when I was a little older, we'd do the math to get the right size for the window opening or maybe the math of how much it was going to cost to furnish the kitchen with new curtains for Easter.  The money math we kept just between us - nobody, sometimes not even my dad,  -needed to know just how good she was at finding a bargain.  

Our house was always tasteful, dignified, but most importantly, cozy.  How my mom did it all with five kids and one man's salary, I don't know, but she passed on the importance of making a house a home, knowing good quality, and virtue of prudent economics - sometimes under the clever guise of new kitchen curtains and the promise of a grilled cheese at Woolworths.... now, who's beaming with pride...

this post is linked to:

http://www.savvysouthernstyle.net/2013/06/wow-us-wednesdays-122.html