Bunny Ears Be Gone

Don’t get me wrong, I like bunnies. Just not when my fireplace brick reminds me of one. See the resemblance? 

For months after we moved into our house I pondered what to do with our outdated brick fireplace surround and mantel. Problem was, we weren’t ready to embark on a huge brick demo project and had yet to try our hand at tiling. I knew that I wanted a more substantial mantel, but it was mortared into place and supported by bricks also mortared into place. And I wasn’t about to take a sledge hammer to that brick (we just so happened to embark on this redo project in the weeks before our first Christmas in our new house…Santa needed a place to stuff stockings!). 

The brick itself wasn’t necessarily the offensive party, it was an ok color–not necessarily what I’d pick, but not hideous enough to merit painting it (I confess I’m not entirely sold on the look of painted brick anyway). So finally it dawned on me, what if we just cover up the bunny ears with drywall, and add a more substantial mantel onto of the existing one? That way we didn’t have to worry with demo or figuring out how to rework the large brick hearth that sits about 8 inches off the floor. Here’s what we did:

 First, Robert (the ever-obliging hubby) added wood to create a frame around the existing brick, and a surface that the drywall could be anchored to. We were able to use one piece of drywall for the front of the fireplace wall and smaller side pieces for the edges, along with corner bead pieces to help create defined edges. This was our first experience working with drywall, and it might have caused just a few headaches and ‘conversations’ between the two of us (along with tarping the already-decorated Christmas tree), but we finally got it done, along with some light texturing on the drywall and paint to make it blend in with the other walls in the living room.

Then we built the mantel out of wood around the existing brick-supported one. The wood was secured with screws and liquid nails to the existing wood. 

Some light distressing to the wood, some decorative trim pieces, walnut stain, and a couple of coats of polyurethane and we had this:

The final step was to add crown molding and hang our stockings with care. 

Today here’s how it looks, the mantel is currently sporting its summer beach attire. 

Ideal fix? No. Cheap and less messy? Kinda. Improvement on the old bunny ears? Yes, definitely. 

Patio Cushion Re-do

I’ve been hoping to replace my patio cushions for some time now, ever since the charming squirrels we had at our house in California decided that it would be great fun to chew up my nice Crate & Barrel outdoor pillows. So, I decided instead of purchasing new pricey pillows and cushions (just for the squirrels and pecan trees to make a mess of), I would reuse and recover my existing chair cushions with outdoor fabric. It proved to be a relatively easy project, they took me about a week to make after work and during naps on the weekend. 

I forgot to take a before picture – but here’s one of our patio set in our California house. Pre-squirrels. 

 I decided to go for a solid blue cushion (Robert Allen Baja Linen Marine) and patterned accent pillow (Robert Allen Baja Ogee Marine). The fabric looked beachy and summery, which I liked. I got my fabric at Joann’s during a 50% off sale, and I needed about 5 yards of solid blue, and just barely squeezed four pillows out of 1 yard of patterned fabric. I also had to purchase new pillow inserts for accent pillows, since when I opened up the ones I had been using, they were just stuffed with batting, and I wanted to use a pre-made pillow form. I ended up finding four 12x18” Weather Soft pillow inserts at Joann. I also picked up some outdoor quality thread (yes, they make this, I had no idea).  

Since I was reusing my old cushions, I carefully took apart the fabric around my old cushion using scissors and a seam ripper. I then used the old fabric as a template for my new piece of material. With my piece of blue fabric folded in half and the template also folded in half, I traced the shape of it using a piece of tailor’s chalk. 

By folding the fabric in half and cutting both sides at once, this assures that your front and back pieces are exactly the same size. I put some pins in the piece of fabric before I cut it, just to keep the two sides together while I was cutting. I did the same for a long skinny piece of fabric that would be the back and side edges of the pillow. The front edge is made by where my fold was. Check out the photos if that’s confusing.

The next step was to pin together my cushion pieces INSIDE OUT (so that the right sides of the fabric are facing each other, and your seams end up being on the inside of the cushion when you flip it right side out.)

I stitched them together, leaving most of the back of the cushion open so that I could fit in my large piece of foam. 

Then I turned my cushion so it was right side out, and stuffed in the foam piece.

Then, pinned together my opening…

And I hand stitched the opening using a blind stitch. There’s a good tutorial on how to do this here.

Here’s the final result! They came out pretty nicely, though maybe not Crate & Barrel quality (I debated adding some piping along the seams, but that seemed too complicated for a novice like me).

Maybe we’ll have a couple more weeks before temperatures here in Texas reach the 100s and we won’t be able to enjoy sitting on them until the Fall. Now if only I could keep the squirrels away.

Cook-it Cabinet

So it's been a while since I've last posted. Almost a year. Ooops. I guess I've been so busy doing projects (and holding down a job) that I've neglected the whole part where you're supposed to take pictures and write blog posts. Anyway, better late than never.

Recently I've been working on getting my three-year-old's play room in order. Well, not ordered per se, as things never seem to stay picked up for long. One of our biggest needs in the play room was storage, especially to hold Clara's cook-its (cook-its are what I have always called play kitchen utensils and play food, don't ask me why!!). She has a little red and white kitchen from Target, but she had so many pots and pans and kitchen accessories that her sink was always filled up with assorted playthings. And you can't pretend-wash dishes in a full sink (we're starting her early on the chores, folks!).

So when my mom offered up an old cabinet that she had played with as a child, I was eager to give it a new life. My mom keeps everything, which is the subject of many family jokes. But I was so glad she held on to this cabinet. It brings back a lot of special memories as her dad made it for her when she was a little girl, and she repainted it for me, and I played with it when I was little. Now, Clara loves it, and we're keeping the family tradition alive.

When we brought the cabinet to our house, it was in pretty sad shape. There were numerous holes and dings in the paint, the hinges were rusty and the paint was peeling. It had lived at least 20 years in my mom's attic where it was exposed to who knows what (I won't go into the story of the raccoon living in there last summer). It had been painted several times over the years, first green and then bright yellow. After checking all the paint layers for with a lead paint test kit, Robert sanded the entire thing thoroughly, filled and sanded all the holes and marks, and gave it a good cleaning. We then painted the cabinet with three coats of Benjamin Moore Advance paint in off-the-shelf white. The cabinet doors got a coat of magnetic primer under the paint, though I'm sad to say that the doors are only weakly magnetic now, probably having to do with the fact that it took three coats of white paint to cover the dark gray primer. Maybe one of these days I'll sand them down and redo it, as I had visions of little magnetic letters on the cabinet door fronts. Finally, after some new drawer pulls and hinges, and letting the paint dry the recommended time, we anchored the top of the cabinet to the play room wall, and voila!

Now all that's left to do is add some red and white gingham check shelf liner to the inside of the cabinet to tie in the colors of her other play kitchen.

Plenty of storage, with room to grow!

[Not so] Pretty in Pink

I’m a big fan of buying small cans of paint samples to test on a wall, since it’s so hard to see what paint is going to look like out of the can (and off the swatch). I’ve had good luck with this strategy so far. That is, until this unfortunate incident.

Now that is PINK. You seriously couldn’t go in it without the pink reflecting on your skin and clothes and feeling a bit pink yourself. Not to mention what the room looked like from the street below (this room is on our second story, so a passerby could see up through the blinds and wonder “Why did they chose THAT color??”

Anyway, this all started when I was on a painting spree having just bought our house – every wall in the house was in desperate need of paint, and I had determined that “I’m only going to paint this room once.” Well, I ate my words as I pulled out the paint brushes for attempt #2. Here's a shot on move-in day with plain jane white walls.

 Knowing that this would one day be our daughter, Clara’s ‘big girl’ room, and having just made the curtains for the room in a medium pink color (I was inspired by these Land of Nod curtains, but they didn't make them long enough for my windows), I chose a darker pink (instead of a pale baby pink, which would really look like pepto bismol). Well, that didn’t quite work out how I had pictured it in my head. Here's where I was putting it all together - looks ok, right?

The good thing about paint is – Ta Dah! Presto chang-o. 

This time around I settled on a soft gray, (Sherwin Williams Popular Gray, and Heron Plume for the ceiling). Gray seems to be my favorite color of the moment, as we just finished our gray and white master bathroom. In this bedroom, the gray acts like a backdrop against the pink curtains and Clara’s new white furniture – much more subtle and sophisticated. Oh, and we decided to go ahead and scrape the popcorn ceilings and retexture/paint while we were at it (we’re slowly working through the house!), and it’s much easier to paint the ceiling first and then the walls, so that you can sloppily paint the corner where the wall and ceiling meet, and then just cut in with the trim brush once when you’re painting the wall.

There wasn't a real rush to move Clara to her new room, we just felt she was getting too big for the crib and was developmentally ready to try out a 'real' bed. Not to mention we’ve planned a few overnight hotel stays this summer and fall and I’m hoping she can get used to a big bed between now and then, so as to avoid any fell-out-of-bed injuries in the middle of our vacation. Last night was her first night sleeping in the bed...and success! No falls or injuries...and she loves it. She was actually excited to go to bed, which is a nice change (wonder how long that will last...)! 

Now that the room is painted and the furniture is assembled, all we have to do is:

-stencil some designs and butterflies on the walls/ceiling

-put up crown mouldings

-design and build some floating shelves

-get together art for a grouping of frames on the wall

-move all the junk in my art supply closet to another room

-put in closet organizers

-make/buy a fun ottoman for her reading nook

-move all her stuff in!

Phew. One thing at a time!

Gray Matter

My little family has been living in our 2-story brick home for almost a year now (our first home!) My husband and I dreamed of buying a home for many years, but the timing was never right, especially once we made a temporary move across country. One thing that never changed was our desire to paint and improve every rental we lived in (yes, every one, I'm counting at least 5…) until we finally had the opportunity to return home and buy that piece of property we had wanted for so long. So, although we have been working tirelessly on painting, scraping, building, cleaning, and updating fixtures, hardware, etc for the past year, getting our feet wet per-se, our master bathroom felt like our first major project as homeowners. Nevermind the fact that I thought we’d be embarking on this project the month after we moved in (I’ve never been one to wait patiently for something).

But, it was worth the wait. Here’s a couple of before shots (on move-in day, so pardon the bad lighting!):

And now, the after.

We settled on a gray and white color palette, with temple gray marble tiles in the shower and tub surround, porcelain roto-print tile for the floor, and white ceramic subway tile on the walls with oil rubbed bronze accents. The vanity is a white base with gray and beige granite top from Home Decorator's Collection. While we’re not afraid to tackle big projects ourselves, this time we decided to go with a contractor for the tile work because the job involved a complete gut and reframing a whirlpool tub, and we knew if we attempted to do it all we’d kill ourselves trying to do the work outside of our 9 to 5 jobs (not to mention we’d be without our bathroom for weeks, possibly months!) So while it cost us a bit more, it was the right move. And we saved a chunk of change by doing all the demo and reinstalling toilet, vanity sinks and faucets ourselves. We're so happy with the results. I love feeling like I'm in a fancy hotel bathroom (though honestly, I never stay in hotels with marble showers. yay!) Does this make anyone else want to take a shower? Or is it just me?

Jumping on the Bandwagon

I’ve finally joined the bandwagon and have started The Sweet Life – if you’re reading this I hope this won’t be your only visit to my blog! I’ve heard many times from friends that I should be blogging about our adventures in home buying, decorating, DIYing, baking, living, etc., etc. But, I never felt like other people cared about what I was up to. Maybe nobody does, but I thought in the least this would be a good exercise in putting myself out there – and sharing my little glimpses of inspiration that I glean from all over the place and from the creative blog community out there on the web. So, here goes nothing!