Tag Archives: DIY

Creating furniture!

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Now that we’ve finally got the walls painted and floors refinished we can start finding and buying furniture. Although we have purchased a few new pieces of furniture for the house, we have really had a fun time finding old pieces at thrift stores, garage sales, etc and turning them into unique pieces for our house. The best part about this (besides the cheap price!) is that we get to style the furniture to fit our tastes and match the decor of the house as well. We keep a sharp eye out for pieces with curved lines or ornate carvings that fit the time period of the house and present a good canvas for our furniture creation. Check out two of the pieces that we have restyled. Both were missing parts and/or damaged. With a little vision and a bit of paint we were able to make these two pieces into something fully functional and stylish as well!

My first project was a white cubby hole bookshelf that only needed a bit of paint to hide the scratches on its surface. We assembled the bookshelf on the front porch (and by we, I mean my dad 😉

The next step was to paint the bookshelf a glossy cream color to match the rest of the bedroom furniture.

I wanted to alter this piece of furniture and add a back to it so that I could add some fabric for a pop of color.  I purchase a large sheet of wood to create a backing and cut it down to the size of the bookshelf.

My original thought was to cover the backing in the wallpaper that I had leftover from our master bedroom nook. Unfortunately there was not enough left over so I went on the the next best idea- fabric! Joann Fabric was having a nice sale on their whole selection  so I chose a material with neutral color and a pattern similar to that of the aforementioned wallpaper. The fabric I chose was actually drapery fabric and had a great sheen to it as well as a cool, velvety texture.

We cut the fabric to size and attached it with duct tape to the wooden backing. Although staples may have been a sturdier form of attaching the fabric, duct tape allowed us to easily switch out the covering if we choose to alter our decor down the road. It also eliminates damage to the fabric piece which means we can use it other projects should we wish to.


Next we had to lug this thing up our L-shaped stairs and into the master bedroom.

I added a few books and knick-knacks anddddd project complete!

Our next project was creating a coffee table for the living room. I was fortunate enough to come into a table frame but not table top :/ No worries though, the frame of the table was absolutely too gorgeous to pass up!

We debated over whether to make the top of this out of wood or perhaps mosaic tiles or even a painted watercolor top. I was informed that the original top was made of marble that was cracked in shipping.

We decided to go with a wood top. We cut it to size and sanded it down. I also purchased a strip of trim to cover the crack between the table top and the frame.

After we assembled the trim and the table top we stained everything to match the existing frame.

Lastly, we added a protective coating on top to keep the surface looking nice.

All in all, two DIY projects that left our house looking a bit more homey! 🙂

Lions and Tigers and Wall Fabric?! (oh my!)

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Now that we are nicely settled in the house it was high time for some decorating! I have always been (and always will be!) the DIY kinda girl! I love crazy, weird ideas and I love, LOVE making something from nothing (I mean, just look at what I’ve done with Raul 😉 xoxo just kiddin’ babe)

Over the past couple of years we have had the opportunity to look inside several historic homes in different areas around town. There are a couple of different home tours that we like to frequent to check out what other people are doing with big, old houses. And we always walk away with a favorite out of the bunch. The “favorite” house always has something unique and special about it. Although our house has plenty of character and charm on its own a little help from my handy hands can’t hurt, right?!

A couple of weekends ago the weather turned cool and rainy.  After months of hot and humid weeks filled with outside work and, more often than not, perspiration, I decided to take advantage of the gray, stormy day and try out my first major DIY- covering an entire wall in fabric. 😀 Our wall is nice and big, and though it is freshly painted, it is B-O-R-I-N-G. This is what is looked like before.

We have a nice space and the wood work is obviously beautiful but I really wanted to make an impression on guests as soon as they walked through the front door. And so it was off to procure an eye-popping, color, texture wall ASAP. 😉

I woke up early and dragged Raul to Jo-Ann Fabrics. I had been scoping out the different patterns and textures for weeks. Finally, with a new paycheck in the bank and coupons in hand, we took the plunge and purchased 20 yards of this fantastic fabric. My advice: do NOT attempt this project unless this stuff is on sale…cuz it is expensive! I got lucky and got it at 50% off for September being National Sewing Month. 🙂

Here’s a close-up so you guys can check out the detail.

The fabric is an organic fiber with lots of different greenish blue hues that complemented the hallway paint color marvelously! I also liked the striated markings because it would help to lengthen the entry way wall even more.

I had spent a lot of time researching the best method for hanging said fabric. I stumbled on some cool blog posts detailing how fabric could be hung on walls using regular old liquid laundry starch. Apparently the idea originated with some Army wives who wanted to make their Army barrack houses feel like homes without permanently changing the walls as this was not allowed. The cool thing about using starch to hang the fabric is that it can easily be peeled away from the wall when you are ready to take it down.  The fabric would have to be saturated, just like wallpaper, and hung in much the same manner. I looked high and low for liquid laundry starch- nada. So I ended up with 6 cans of this stuff.

We washed down the walls with soapy water and set to work measuring and cutting the fabric while the walls had a chance to dry.

My number one tidbit of advice? Measure twice and cut once! And in this instance, I am referring to the cut made by the sweet old lady at Jo-Ann Fabrics. I ended up buying approximately 4 extra yards of this stuff due to a miscalculation (hey! Math was never my strong point!) At $25 bucks a yard that’s some serious change…thank God for coupons and tons of other DIY’s that I can use this leftover fabric for (heck, one lady told me she used this fabric to make the lining on her bed comforter?!). Anyways, we soon got right into the project.

First things first- pull away all the old trim and moldings. I wanted the edges of the fabric to be tucked away under the molding, hence, the necessity to rip it all off first!

I then cut off a small square from the scrap fabric and tested out my spray starch method…

…hmmm, seems to work! Let’s do this thing already!!

We set up two ladders on the stairs and my dad and I each grabbed an end of the fabric and a can of starch. We coated the wall in the  sticky stuff and placed the fabric on the wall. My intention had been to hang the fabric using starch only. The advantage of this is that when I grew tired of the look the fabric would easily peel away from the wall and after a quick cleaning the wall would be clean and free of damage. Yeahhhh….soooo not so much. Lol The fabric did not want to stay flat against the wall. There were a lot of bubbles and I don’t know if this was due to the size of the area we were covering or lack of saturation or what. We ended up securing the fabric with a staple gun along the bottom and top of the wall in order to keep it in place.

And voila! It was that easy! And to top it off my house smelled like fresh laundry!

Now, on to the more complicated trim cutting side of this DIY (DAD-it-yourself). If you don’t have a DAD for this project I suggest you get one at your nearest Home Depot 😉

We bought some crown molding pieces and also some 12′ boards to make a corner covering like the one that we had removed. I decided to extend the corner cover all the way to the ceiling in order to hide the seams from the two separate fabric pieces we used to cover the wall..and well, honestly it just looked better!

After we attached all the trim and let the fabric and starch dry I found that there were quite a few large bubbles where the fabric did not adhere to the wall. I continued to spray on top of the fabric with the starch but I found this was not enough in a lot of areas….so I got out the wallpaper glue. Luckily, I still had plenty of this stuff leftover from my adventure in wallpapering.

I simply took a bit of the paste and brushed it over the top of the fabric- the stuff  penetrates and dries invisibly. It was enough to soak through the fabric and literally glue it to the wall. I then used the wallpaper brush and roller to smooth out the bubbles toward the open side of the fabric that had not been attached completely yet. My recommendations for any other DIYers who attempt this project would be either find a gallon of the liquid starch and saturate the heck out of your fabric OR if you can’t find that, make you own out of cornstarch! I think the sheer size and weight of this fabric made it hard for it to stick to the wall using the spray starch technique- although I definitely think that this would work for small areas.

The end results are Ah-mazing. I love the effect the wall gives when you walk in the door. It complements the dark wood beautifully and makes my home look like a dollhouse.

Whoop! Whoop! (Wallpaper’s done!)

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Some of you will remember the awful internal debate I staged with myself when trying to decide what kind of wallpaper to hang and even if I should put said wallpaper up.  Thanks so much for all the feedback from all of you who commented! It made it a lot easier to make a decision. Even with all the comments and suggestions I still had to make three trips to the Benjamin Moore paint store in order to decide what I really wanted.

Here’s a snapshot of the choices I started with:

I asked for readers to vote for their favorite(s) to see what choice would be the most popular. I got a lot of feedback on here as well as on my link posted in my Facebook feed….and the results wereeeee:

Choice #1          8 votes

Choice #2         0 votes

Choice#3          0 votes

Choice#4          1 vote

Choice#5           5 votes

Choice#6          2 votes

Choice#7          0 votes

Choice#8          4 votes

Choice#9          2 votes

Choice#10        1 vote

Choice#11         2 votes

Choice#12         2 votes

Choice#13         1 vote

Choice#14         2 votes

Choice#15          3 votes

And although my personal favorite was #11, clearly Choice #1 was the winner! I loved #1 but I was on the fence about it because the pattern was ultra-white and all my accents and even the ceiling I had painted a cream color…a pale, cream color but nonetheless it wasn’t stark white. I considered some of the comments which swayed me towards a more neutral choice. I also took to heart the advice given to me by a couple of you who screamed the word “NOOOO!!” when you heard mention of wallpaper. I therefore struck a compromise with myself.  I would ONLY wallpaper a very small area AND I would focus on a design and pattern that complemented the walls of the bedroom rather than contrasted against it like I had originally planned.

So naturally, I ended up choosing a wallpaper that isn’t even one of the 15 choices! 😉 It IS the same pattern as #11 BUT it is more similar in color to #5 or #10.

After all the deliberation, choosing the wallpaper ended up being the easy part! Benjamin Moore has to order the paper from Thibault.com and the wrong color was sent to me (how ironic that the wallpaper that first arrived was very similar to #1?!). The salesperson at the store insisted that I would need 2 rolls…which meant a lot of $$. When the wrong pattern arrived I took the opportunity to insist that I only needed one roll…and wanting to remedy the mistake, Benjamin Moore obliged and even waived the restocking fee and shipping charges as well. Which meant I saved a lot of money in the end :)))

When I finally got my hands on the wallpaper we set right in to work.  Since part of the paper would be bordered by the exposed brick chimney we had to clean the bricks before applying the paper.  In removing the plaster and scrubbing away the dust, the mortar had become a bit stained. My dad suggested applying an acid made specifically for cleaning stone to get the brick and mortar back to sparkling.

Meanwhile, my mom and I started measuring and cutting the paper to place the first strip on the wall.  I purchased a gallon of wallpaper glue from Lowe’s and poured it into a paint pan.  The glue can be applied with a roller or brush. Simply lay the paper on a flat surface and start covering it from edge to edge with the paste.

(Although the directions say to spread glue on the back of the paper, I found that after trial and error it was much easier to roll the glue directly onto the painted wall)

The actual hanging of the wallpaper is the trickiest part. Managing 8ft of soggy paper is not the easiest task in the world. Luckily, I had someone who lived through all the wallpaper nightmares of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s to help me out-my mom 😉

The whole process was super easy and finished in less than half an hour! Oh and we had over half of the roll left which means I can use it for artwork and other nifty things in order to kind of carry the theme throughout the bedroom. Check out the finished TV nook!

I love how the paper has a metallic finish to it that changes from gold to silver to gray to brown depending on where you are standing. It really pulls out ALL the colors of the room. You may be wondering why there is a electrical plug smack in the middle of all that papery goodness..but that’s where the TV is going to mount so no fears! 😉 All that’s left is to trim out the walls and it will be a gorgeous!

I AM SIMPLY OBSESSED WITH THE WAY THAT IT TURNED OUT!

Much love and until next time!

-L.