Craft Room Furniture! This is Finally Happening!

Hello! It's been a while since I've blogged. I'm afraid to look at how long. If you were reading my blog before, I'm sure you thought it was dead. I meant to keep blogging. I never meant to stop. But, I got very busy trying to be Utah's sole source of actresses between the ages if 17-35. I think I was in every community production In Utah County in the last year. If I wasn't, I saw it or knew someone in it. I got sucked into the vortex of community theater and almost the only crafting I did was sewing my costumes for productions. 

Recently, I was Ms. TeaVee in Willy Wonka. Using a mash up of vintage patterns, I made this dress: 

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. What I really came to post about is this disaster: 

Yep, my craft room. Sad, isn't it? And, this is after cleaning up for a while (a long, long while--and paying one of my kids $10 to help me). A huge part of it is that I have no workspace, so stuff ends up everywhere when I'm working. (Also, I have too much stuff, but I'm pretending that isn't a problem.)

Well, my friends, that is about to change! I recently came into a very cool couch and about $100. I want the couch to fit in this room so people can hang out with me while I craft, and the $100 is perfect for building a huge desk.

Last Saturday, David and I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore looking for kitchen cabinets to use to make this desk. We got a big fat zero, and they were more expensive than I was hoping. I could have cobbled something together, but it would have eaten my entire budget and nothing would have matched. Nothing would have matched! It was not working for me. So, on the way home I got the bright idea to look on KSL (basically the Craig's List of Utah--no idea why everyone posts there, but we do).

And there it was. Some guy remodeled four matching kitchens and was selling off the cabinets for $10 a piece. And he was home when we called! And didn't sound too eccentric! We were wrong about that last part, but that's okay. 

So, we go to this guy's house (which is upgraded in every possible way--the doorbell chime lasted longer than Beethoven's Symphony No. 9); he makes us remove our shoes to walk across the hardwood floors. Then we ride his elevator (yes, elevator) down to the walkout basement four car garage where he has the kitchen cabinets. We pick out six of them, and pay the guy. We was a perfectly nice normal guy. I'm not sure why he had an elevator, but I'll go with it. Our daughter was with us, and she thought it was cool. 

So, here they are, my new cabinets. 

The dude who sold them to us told us there was nothing wrong with them; that they were just outdated. Dude might have an elevator, but he was wrong about that. They are stinky--like old apartment smell--and greasy and damaged in spots. The hinges have plastic pieces that were breaking apart. There is some nasty gunky on one of the shelves that I am not even going to attempt to clean off. That thing is just getting replaced.

However, they are perfect for what I want them to do. More on that soon. Very, very soon. 

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Tutorial: Ampersand for a Shelf

A little while back, I bought a K and D from Hobby Lobby to put on my picture ledges once they were built. The plan was to get an ampersand to put between them. Awww, too adorable, right? Kara and David=forever. But, I couldn't find one I liked. I'm sort of a font snob. Ok, not sort of. I am. Like nearly every other female craft blogger, I started a Pinterest account, and there are a lot of snobby font things pinned to my funny board. Most of them make fun of Comic Sans. Poor Comic Sans. If only people wouldn't put it where it has no business being! Then Comic Sans wouldn't be the ugly dog of the font world.

Anyway, I pondered on this problem for several months. I could have cut my own ampersand out of wood with my mom's scroll saw, but it's about 20 minutes away, and that's kind of annoying to get exactly right. I've cut out complicated things with a scroll saw before (see the cake topper here), so I could do it, I was just being moody about it.

Then it hit me. A way in which I didn't have to drive round trip 40 minutes and get out the scroll saw from the caverns of my parents' garage. And this is that tutorial.

Supplies needed:
Scrap cardstock (or pretty cardstock in pretty colors)
Cricut machine or Silhouette machine or traditional die cut machine--I used a Cricut and Plantin Schoolbook cartridge
Mod podge
Sandpaper or rotatory tool
Wood filler
Spray Primer
Spray Paint

Step 1: Cut out a bunch of shapes of the same size. I didn't care about color, because I knew I was going to paint mine later. If you don't want to paint, you can use pretty colors in the same shades or coordinating shades for very pretty effects, or use all the same colors.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

I Knocked Through a Wall--Which Option Should I use to Fix It?

So, when we moved in, there was this little shelf in place:

 
When we were touring the house with the inspector, I was like "What's this weird hole/shelf here for?" And he was all like, "There used to be these types of phones that you had to plug into the wall. . ." I liked our inspector. He was sarcastic. I might have told that story before on the blog. It's a good story.

Anyway, it existed to set the phone on. Because there was only one phone jack and it was in the living room. That wall is between the kitchen and the living room.

But, it really annoyed me. It's not at eye level. Unless you are between the ages of five and eight. Considering that only three of the six people in our house qualify, I felt it needed to go.

(Also, woah, my kitchen has changed a lot since then!)

Rather than knock it out and fix the drywall, I thought--why not make this hole bigger? So, David and I worked on that.

And we got to this point. It hasn't changed in a while. Because we can't decide if this should have shelves or not have shelves, and if it has shelves what they should look like.

So, I used the magic of Photoshop to approximate what shelves would look like in different configurations.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Massive Bookcases=Massive Post

David and I are bibliophiles. I don't read as many books as I used to now that I discovered the joys of the internet and blogs, but I still read fairly voraciously. If I get on a reading kick, reading material becomes scarce quickly. I can't do a thing (except eat bags of M&Ms one M&M at a time) until I've finished reading every book in the vicinity. Usually I get my reading material from the library, but we like to buy our favorites to have on hand for multiple readings (I mean, who doesn't, really?). I also have a lot of my favorites from childhood still around. I'm hoping the kids will start reading them at some point. So far, I've only convinced Xander to read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

Our books have been lugged around in boxes from apartment to apartment. We have never owned enough bookcases to have them out properly. For a lot of the time, they've lived under the bed or our in the garage in plastic bins. This is less than ideal. I cannot tell you how many times I've been in the mood for a certain book and not been able to find it.

Anyway, that's the set up for the need for some massive bookcases. When we moved in, we mounted our flatscreen on this wall downstairs, planning to build a huge entertainment center around it.

Also, this is a blank wall (more on that in a minute). It's only tangentially related to the bookcases, but since what we did on it showed up in the photos, I'm showing it to you. I can't believe how much taller Griffin is now, compared to last year. He's the blur slightly to the right.

Well, that TV didn't exactly stay there. David won a TV at work (!!!), so the wall-mounted TV moved up to our bedroom, and the new TV was moved in. Good thing we didn't start building the entertainment center yet, because I'm not sure we would have planned for a TV quite as . . . gargantuan. I feel like I need to install velvet curtains and a popcorn maker to help it feel at home. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

David and I started building the bookcases. David really did most of the work. I helped, but I was mostly grunt labor. I maybe got in the way more than I helped. We built them out of MDF and plywood. We actually got them built with MDF shelves, but they were strong enough and once we put books on them, they started to bow, so it was back to knocking out the shelves and putting in stronger ones. But, luckily, we found out before we painted the second one.

It took a long time. About four hours to build the first one, then about an hour to build the second one, then about three hours to paint the first one, then about three hours to fix our shelf mistake, then about four more hours of painting. You get the picture.

We also ran into a problem of an electrical outlet. The shelves are 12" deep, but would have covered one electrical outlet about half way. Not good. So, we knocked a hole in the wall and moved it over. Not exactly a small job. At this point, I was deeply worried we were getting into a Give a Mouse a Cookie situation. The type where you end up with pink walls and a new tile floor with radiant heat and you wonder how you got there. We managed to stop though. After a little bit.

However, while we were patching that, we figured we might as well patch the other holes that happened to be in the room. It turned out to be quite a lot, actually.

1. The hole for the electrical outlet.
2. The hole we knocked in the other side of the wall while moving the electrical outlet
3. A hole cut at the top of the wall that was there when we moved in--for some work that was done--who knows what
4. A slight dent we made while moving in while getting the couch down the stairs
5. Someone got over-zealous when putting in an electrical outlet and cut the whole too big (not the one in the above pictures, someone who I don't know who did this before we moved in)
6. Our children put a slight dent in the wall (this is not surprising. It's actually surprising that of the six patches, only one was caused by our offspring).

That was a lot of patching to do. Really, the rest of our house does not resemble Swiss cheese. It was odd to look around and see just how many spots needed to be patched.

Then, we were able to put the bookcases into place. We realized that we had not built them quite high enough to have the gap between the wall and the ceiling be able to be bridged by the crown molding we plan to put up. So, we had to figure out a solution to that problem. But, otherwise! YAY! And other words which I will not say on this blog, because they involve curse words of joy.

That picture makes me laugh though, because the large TV just throws the scale all off. Those bookcases are over three feet wide. The TV is sitting on an old computer desk. That's a nightstand underneath the computer desk. Yet, I still feel like my eyes are telling me that's a small wall. It gets bigger once you put books on it.

We eventually settled on a trim. Here's a close up. It will be covered a lot by the crown molding, but we planned on that. It will give us something to attach the molding to.

Through the magic of the internet, you get to skip the six or seven hours I spent categorizing, organizing and cataloging books! I made a spread sheet with every single book we owned! Then I sorted them by genre, making very tall stacks! Tripping hazards for more than two days! I didn't actually put them up on the shelves in alphabetical order though. Even I have my limits.

The only thing is, we are missing a box of books. I'm almost certain it is not in our house. We looked pretty thoroughly at my parents' house (our last residence). It's a box that was probably books that we hanging out in our master bedroom. It had my Anne of Green Gables series in it, a few books from my childhood I was trying to convince the boys to read, a Chelsea Handler book (verdict still out on whether or not I liked that one), one of the Borne Identity books in it. Probably quite a few more that my brain has filed away somewhere. I hope that box didn't get donated. I WANT THAT BOX. I'm mostly concerned about my Anne of Green Gables series. My aunt LuAnn gave the series to me when I was nine or ten and I opened it on Christmas Eve and read about most of the first book that night. It will be sad if I can't find that series--it has sentimental value.

Anyway, here are the finished bookcases in all their glory.

A close up of some of the decorated shelves. These will probably evolve some more.

That blank wall I showed you earlier? We actually did this project months ago, but we put up a map and framed it with trim. It's an idea floating around blogland that I saw and loved. When we first talked about buying a house, we ordered this map. It was the first thing we bought specifically for our first house. Cue cute awwing noises. (We might have hung it a little high, but. . . with all the staples and nails in that thing--it's staying.)

And here are some more views of the room. Because I always want more views of the room when people do huge projects like this. These views make the room look huge--wide angle lenses do that. It's pretty big, but probably not as big as it looks here.

And one of my couch cushions looks oddly purple. The color balance on these photos was giving me fits. Oh, and we are not planning on leaving the desk and the night stand as our TV's home. We are planning on building a media cabinet to go between the two bookcases and a bridge along the top. But, it works for now. And I have an awesome photo arrangement planned for under that airplane. One thing at a time. . .

And that concludes this massive post about massive bookcases that I alluded to in this post.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

A Little Vanity Makeover

I know I'm on a serious home decor kick lately. I haven't done much crafting lately. Mostly it's school, school and oh, more school, so when I get some free time, I want to move and not sit down.

I actually painted my bathroom vanity a while ago, and I thought I would save it for a whole series on my bathroom makeover, but eh, I feel like showing it to you now.

It used to be this lovely oak. This is a photo from the first day we moved in, so excuse the random toilet paper rolls on the bathroom cabinet. Toilet paper is one of the first things you need to install when you enter a new house. It's not good to forget. Personal experience after moving 8 times since my marriage.

Then, after a lot of sanding and a lot of patient painting, here's the finished product. Or near finished product. I'd like to replace the top sometime and the faucet (obviously).

I took out the bottom two drawers, because we weren't using them anyway, and found a basket that fit the space. It's where my blow dryer and flat iron go, which is nice, because after I'm finished, I just toss them down there. That's the only way anything ever gets put away at my house. Tossing. I'd like to paint the inside of that area black, but half finished projects are how I like to do things. It's more exciting that way. The mystery of never knowing when I will actually be all the way done with something is so intriguing.

I really, really like the black and the new drawer pulls from Home Depot! I also painted the bathroom gray (I will post pictures eventually) and it looks so good with the walls!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Leaves Paint Treatment in My Master Bedroom

Ages ago, before we even moved into the house, I planned on doing our bedroom in greys, yellows and blacks. I knew I was going to paint the walls grey, the ceiling yellow, put up crown molding and have a grey bedspread. I've been looking for ages for an acceptable king-size bedspread that also didn't require a 2nd mortage. I happened to find a fuzzy grey one at Shopko for $30 not too long ago, more than 1/2 off. It's basically just a huge throw, but it works for me. I'm just happy it didn't cost $300. Eventually, I want to get lots of pillows and make a cheerful quilt to put at the bottom of the bed. I'm thinking I will probably even knit at least one of the pillows.

So, the throw started a chain reaction. Mostly, I've just painted the bedroom and the bathroom grey. I had the idea forever ago to paint the wall opposite our bed with a huge white graphic vine leafy design, so as I painted the room, I had to work out how to do that too. I was pretty darn proud that I figured out how to get it even, with my low tech painter's tape and poster-board template. It's not perfect, but you all are not supposed to notice that, 'kay?

First, I did some rough white as an undercoat. Probably should have just bit the darn bullet and risked the cracked teeth and consequential dental work and painted the whole area white, because it would have saved me work in the end. You can see how pathetically uneven my leaves are here, so when I did the measured ones, parts of the tan showed through. Eventually, David ended up filling in the whole area white for me for the bottom three sets of leaves.

(KEEP SCROLLING, THIS IS NOT THE FINISHED PRODUCT. DISCLAIMER ADDED BECAUSE OF A CERTAIN PERSON IN THE COMMENTS. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)

Then, I ran a level piece of painter's tape from ceiling to floor. It was of the 3" wide variety. Then I made a template for the angle of the stems, and measured off the spacing of the stems, and used painters tape again for the width.

Then I made a template for the leaves (and extended the angle of the stems up onto the template so it stayed the same) and traced them on the wall and cut in the leaves in with a paint brush. Which was annoying, but not as annoying to me as trying to tape it off and having the tape bleed. And yes, the tape bled on the stems, so I came back with the brush to touch them up. I've heard about various methods to prevent this, but I've never had much luck with them--so rather than go through that, I cut in when I can and touch up when I can't . Maybe I need to buy better tape.

Repeat down for five sets of leaves and about a million coats, and I got this (which I took when it was still wet; it looks a lot more even now):

Another angle (it has low dressers in front of it now, and it looks awesome!):

All this was done between school assignments. When I couldn't stand to work on school anymore, I would paint. When I could stand to paint anymore, I would work on school. It worked well. David did all of the rolling, bless him. I don't like rolling much. I'm going to show the bathroom soon, which looks sooooo much better!

I'm dying to make some curtains for the bedroom. I have a fabric picked out. I fought the idea of making curtains, but I shopped around and discovered the curtains, they are not cheap. This fact was previously unknown to me. I do not own a single curtain. So, I could have generic yellow curtains for the same price as fabulous, beautiful, graphic patterned curtains. Guess which one I am going to pick. Eventually. When I decide I want to spend $100 on curtains for my two bedroom windows. I could probably do yellow curtains for a lot less if I made them myself, but if I'm going to make them myself, I think I will do the amazing ones.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Painting My Laminate Countertops

Probably you have seen this all over the web recently. I first heard of it a while back on a blog, but I can't remember which one at the moment. Anyway, I tucked the idea away in my head for the future and it certainly came in handy in our new house.

You might remember from my tour post, that our countertops were a brightish orange color when we bought the house. My first priority was to get them painted, because I didn't want to have to do it while we were living in the house. It's a fairly easy process, but there is a lot of coats and drying time involved.

Ok, so here is the before shot:

There are some great tutorials around the web. I think this one is pretty useful. I just read a bunch and determined my own way of doing it.

I used a BIN shellac primer first and did two solid coats. This is what it looks like after primer.

Sooooo much better already. Then I did two coats of a soft white called Swiss Coffee from Glidden. Not much different.

Then I did some splotching with a wet paper towel in a light gray called Polished Limestone, also by Glidden. This was probably the scariest part. I haven't even done any sort of faux painting before. I wasn't trying to mimic the look of a natural stone, I just wanted something soft and modern looking.

After the first treatment:

It was looking pretty good after that. I had always planned to use a brownish gray on the top called Wood Smoke from Glidden (I really like their colors) on top, but I was pretty scared to do it. I decided to do a slight wipe over with a wet paper towel, to give it some depth. It worked out perfect, and I love how the brown tones pick up on the cabinets and really tie it all together.

Three coats of polyacrylic later and my countertops were finished. I adore them and they changed the entire mood of the kitchen. You do have to be a little more careful with them than laminate, but it's so worth it. I mean, who really would risk using a knife straight on their countertop without a cutting board anyway? Not me.

You'll notice that the tape didn't come off too cleanly. I did score it with a craft knife, but it just wasn't happy to be leaving. A little spackle and some paint and it looks really good again. I'm trying to decide if I want to put up a backsplash, or leave it painted. One part of me really wants to put up a pretty tile backsplash, buuuuuuuut, I want to gut the kitchen at some point in our ownership (David and I disagree over this a little bit, but we'll see what happens), and spending money on a backsplash when I could be saving it for a huge kitchen makeover isn't all the that tempting. The more I do in the kitchen, the more I lean toward keeping this kitchen around for a while; it's actually looking pretty and much more updated than I imagined. I even have a plan to work that crazy mustard yellow sink in so it looks like I did it on purpose.

Just to recap, before:

After:

Sharing Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.