Reupholstered bench seat

The transition from soft neutral family room to grey + brights is one step closer to completion.

Long overdue, the avocado corduroy bench cover (which I learned today that Scott has always hated) is gone.

before

after

The avocado has now been replaced with the same charcoal linen as is in the curtains (Ikea RITVA in gray). In fact, it is leftover fabric from the curtain project. This update took me less than one episode of Mad Men, leading me to wonder why, oh why, didn't I do it a long time ago? Like, maybe in November when I'd originally planned to?
 

before

after

Oh, wait, I know why it took me so long to get to this. It's because I needed two weeks of cold and snow to keep me inside working on house projects instead of out in the garage building furniture. So far, I've cleaned out and re-organized my pantry, cleaned out and actually cleaned my fridge, taken five bags of trash out of Callie's room, built the gallery ledges, AND washed and put away all of the clothes from our trip (usually unpacking is a never-ending chore for me). So, yeah, the weather's been crappy.

Speaking of which, here is one of the unlucky deer who was hanging out in my yard today getting attacked by a bird. The bird hopped from back to back as it made its way through the herd, pecking away at their ears, necks, backs, bottoms, and seemingly trying to eat them alive. Gross. The deer, just for the record, were not fans of the bird.

Back to the bench...the next step will be to throw together some bright, patterned pillows to liven up the wall of grey, black, and white. With more snow in the forecast (April 18th, December 18th, what's the difference), I've got high hopes for the pillows happening soon. It's exciting, I know, but please try to restrain yourselves.

For more on how I built and upholstered the bench, check out this post.

For the curtains, see this one.

Updated Gallery Wall

After painting our great room/kitchen/loft last fall, the dismantled gallery wall stayed dismantled until last weekend.

(The gallery wall back in 2010 when I first put it up.)

So, yeah. It only took me six and a half months to put it back together.

There may have been some humming and hawing. There may have been some indecision and some dragging of the feet.

But eventually I decided that I wanted to base the gallery wall on three ledges similar to these. I thought it probably wouldn't be enough space for all of the photos, but I gave myself enough room between the ledges (36" -- we used a yardstick to space the ledges) to hang a few frames in the leftover space.

I built my ledges using 1x3s for the back and 1x2s for the front and bottom, all joined using just glue and nails. Once they were joined, I cut off the ends of the ledges using my miter saw, to give me perfectly smooth ends. (Believe it or not, this is the first time I've noticed that 8' lumber isn't all exactly 8'.) All of the lumber is pre-primed finger-joint pine, painted in our white trim paint. To put them on the wall, I just drilled through the 1x3 on the back into the studs and attached the ledges to the wall using 2 1/2" deck screws. The lumber cost me about $30 -- not bad for three 8' ledges.

Next up? It's time to recover the gigantic bench under the gallery! The avocado green belongs to our old, muted color scheme. Now I'm deciding between using the same grey fabric that's in the striped curtains or going with something bright and fun. I'm leaning toward plain grey and adding fun, funky, colorful pillows. 

Media Center Bridge

Some of you may remember the media center I built for Ana's book, The Handbuilt Home. It's been in our house for about 15 months now and we absolutely love it. Other than the fact that it doesn't photograph well (black finishes are SO hard to shoot!), we think it is perfect.

Almost perfect.

We've got 22' ceilings in the room where the media center sits. The media center, as designed, was around 6' tall. In a normal house with normal proportions, 6' would probably be great. In this house, with ridiculous proportions, 6' was okay. But with curtains next to the media center that are 9' long, the 6' media center was looking a little dwarfed.

So, I emailed Ana to see if she would consider designing a bridge to go across the top of the media center, adding an additional two feet to the top of it. She was willing to do the design (she's posted the plans here!) and I was happy to build it.

Don't be fooled, my friends. This piece is HUGE. Scott and I had a heck of a time maneuvering it through our house and on top of the media towers. But once we got it up there, it was totally worth it.

Here's what we did to install the bridge:

1. Remove the baseboards behind the media center and push the whole media center up against the wall, as flush as we could get it. Cords seem to get in the way of something like this, so we settled for *almost* flush.
2. Place the bridge on top of the towers and square the towers underneath. We had to do a little bit of shimmying and shaking to get everything perfectly square.
3. Using 1 1/4" wood screws, pre-drill and screw from the underside of the top of the media towers into the underside of the bridge. We used three screws in the top of each media tower.
4. Using L brackets large enough to span the distance from your bridge to your wall, secure the top of the media bridge to studs in your wall. We used 4 L brackets and more 1 1/4" screws (after pre-drilling). It seems really really sturdy (there was a lot of post-installation tugging to test the whole setup), but if we'd had them on hand we would have used 2" or even 2 1/2" screws.
5. We considered using a few more L brackets on the sides of the media towers in inconspicuous places, but once we got the top ones up, it really felt sturdy so we decided to forgo the side brackets.
6. Replace the baseboards on either side of the media towers, cutting them so they sit flush up against the towers.

Eventually I think the L brackets will get a coat of paint (grey on the wall side, black on the furniture side) just to camouflage them a bit. I'd also love to have a veritable garden of indoor plants on top, but I'd never water them so they'd die which would be way too sad for me. Scott says he'd like to be responsible for houseplants, though, so maybe. We'll see. I know they are great for filtering pollutants from indoor air, but they won't do us any good if they're dead.

Besides being difficult to maneuver, this piece is also expensive. Just for this 2' x 10' bridge, the materials cost around $300. Just for the wood and one box of pocket hole screws. Because you need long, super straight 1x12 boards for this, you just can't buy cheap lumber. In fact, cheap lumber isn't even available in these lengths. And, don't forget that the $300 bridge is in addition to the $800-ish you'll spend to build the two towers and the console that make up the rest of the media center. But, it's still WAY cheaper than you'd spend buying solid wood furniture this size, and it's customizable, which is my favorite part.

You might notice one special custom touch I added to this piece: the grass cloth backs! Yep, instead of plain black painted plywood in the back, I added grass cloth that I stole from roman shades we were no longer using. The shades were custom made for our french doors, but when we replaced our french doors the shades didn't fit anymore. So I hung onto them for a few years (thank goodness for the under-the-stairs storage in my house, and my husband's willingness to go along with me) and then cut them up to line the bookcases. I love the touch of texture that they add!

My bridge is built out of gorgeous poplar boards. I kind of felt bad painting them, but soothed myself with the reminder that they'd be distressed and some of the grain and a lot of the brown wood would show through. There's more about the finish (plus the plans for the media console and towers!) in Ana's book -- you should get yourself a copy! And get the media bridge plans on Ana's site here.

Psst...for a tutorial on how to hang your flatscreen tv for the cost of a 2x4, a few bolts, and some wood screws, check out how we did it!

{backyard redo} The Plan

You know from this post that a couple of months ago we ripped out our sorry excuse for a deck. That was the first step in renovating our backyard, something that has been on our to-do list since we moved into our house in 2004.

I liked to call our old deck "the raft." Or "the dock." It reminded me of a little dock out in a lake...the kind you'd swim to when you were a kid and then lie around for hours in the sun, occasionally doing flips off the side of the dock into the lake?

I didn't spend a lot of time at a lake with a dock as a kid, but somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I know that at some point I experienced a dock like that. And I'm certain that docks like that belong in lakes, not attached to houses and surrounded by grass.

Our backyard before we started work on it.

Another before, but from a different angle. There are, ahem,
a few extra pieces of furniture sitting back there in this shot.

The dock/raft was not a great place to gather. It wasn't big enough, for starters. There was no great focal point and no good way to arrange furniture to seat more than six people. I always kind of wondered when I might fall off and break my ankle. It also lacked afternoon shade and in the summer it turned into a great place to get a tan as long as you had a ten gallon jug of water to keep you from dehydrating like a raisin.

The patch of grass between the deck and the retaining wall wasn't really big enough to play in and it was hard to keep it green. We live in the desert. Grass doesn't really belong here, so to have grass in the back that wasn't even the right shape or size to use for anything seemed kind of lame.

Shall I continue with the multitude of problems in our backyard? Let's see...we back up to a hill and at the top of the hill is a neighbor. There are two scrawny pine trees between our house and theirs, but no trees to provide a great screen.

Deer walk through our yard regularly and browse on whatever is not deer resistant, so the few trees we've attempted to plant have been consumed. The back hill is hot and dry and the soil is a crumbly mess of dried clay. We have a drip system but we never enriched the soil and because it's not an area where we like to hang out, I haven't put much effort into getting anything to grow. So it looks like crap.

I do have some awesome peonies, though...for two weeks a year.

When we were ready to get to work on the backyard, we knew it wasn't something we could tackle ourselves. Plant a few plants? Yes. Reroute the sprinklers, pour concrete, dig out part of the retaining wall? Uh, not so much. That's the kind of stuff we leave to the professionals.

So I started with my friend Patrick's awesome service, Home Project HQ. I listed our project there and got bids from a few different contractors. The one who we ended up going with, the one who I now consider a friend, was Andrew Newland of Newland-Scaping and Whole Yards.

When Andrew came over to see the yard and chat about what our goals were for the space, I knew pretty much immediately that he was the one I wanted working on my yard. Andrew is not like other contractors I've encountered. Let's just start with this: he doesn't look at me like I'm nuts. That was enough of to sell me, right there. But on top of that, he's creative, artistic, and willing to try something different. He gets bored when he does the same thing over and over again and he seems to enjoy the challenge of working with materials in unconventional ways. He cares about sustainability and we see eye to eye on the elements of a healthy lifestyle. My initial impression of him was super positive and I'm thrilled that we were able to work with him on our yard.

During our initial meeting, these are the goals I gave Andrew for our yard:

• rip out the whole concrete block retaining wall and replace with river rock
• bump back part of the wall to enlarge our backyard space
• pour an exposed aggregate patio with a flagstone border and make it big enough to cover almost the entire backyard
• install a wood-burning fire pit
• build a pergola using wood from the existing deck (this made other contractors squirm)
• plant at least three, preferably more, Blue Spruces to screen our yard from the neighbors

I gave him a budget of $15,000 to work with which is, frankly, not nearly enough for the kind of work I was asking him to do, but that's what we had to work with. I also asked him to incorporate used wine bottles into the retaining wall. Between that off-the-wall request and the undersized budget, I figured Andrew would be totally justified in walking away and never coming back again.

But instead he sent me this amazing video of what our yard could look like. Not everything on the video was within our budget, but Andrew was willing to work with us to get the yard done in phases or to let us do what work we could do ourselves in order to get close to our budget.

Here is the proposal that Andrew sent:



I know, right? Is that completely amazing?

To stay close to our budget, we agreed to shrink the patio a bit and only push back the retaining wall in the immediate vicinity of the fire pit. We also agreed to use river rock to replace just the part of the retaining wall that we pushed back instead of all ten million feet of retaining walls that we have in our yard. Instead of doing all the planting for us, we agreed that Andrew and his crew would just plant four Blue Spruce trees. Scott and I will landscape the rest bit-by-bit. We also agreed (after some research and discussion) that the fire pit should be natural gas instead of wood burning, and so in his bid Andrew included the cost of running a gas line.

I was a little wary of having a fountain -- I wasn't sure that we could deal with the maintenance, but Andrew talked me into it and Scott and I are both thrilled that he did. It's much less maintenance than I thought it would be and it looks and sounds lovely. Plus, it's made out of copper pipe, reclaimed wood, and reclaimed corrugated metal. My vocabulary sadly lacks the appropriate words to describe its beauty. You'll just have to see for yourself.

I'll be back in a few days to show you how things are progressing!

psst...for more about our backyard redo, check out these posts.

Christmas fun with CeCe Caldwell's Paint

 

Inspired by this pin, on Monday I painted the Joy sign you see above. I'd been working with CeCe Caldwell's mineral-based paint on a table and was getting frustrated because the top wasn't coming out exactly how I wanted it -- there is definitely a learning curve to CeCe's paint when you're transitioning from conventional latex paint. So instead of driving myself crazy with the table top, I took my frustration out on something I knew I wanted heavily distressed...and I looove how it turned out! (Eventually I got the table right, too! More on that next week.)

Here is what I did to make the sign:

1. Lightly sand the surface of the wood. I used reclaimed dark-stained plywood from an old closet shelf.
2. Slap the Omaha Ochre CeCe Caldwell paint onto the board. I literally slapped, smooshed, and dragged it on to leave the surface far from smooth. I did this on purpose, so that when I waxed it at the end with dark wax, the wax would have crevices to stick to and add more depth and age.
3. Slap on a second coat. In retrospect, I could have gone without the second coat probably.
4. Lightly sand (with 320 grit) the dry paint to give me a surface smooth enough to take the letters.
5. For the fifth step, I should have distressed with a sponge and then sealed the Omaha Ochre paint. I'll explain why later. If I were to do it over again, I'd use my favorite PolyWhey sealer to seal the distressed paint.
6. Using a pencil and a 1x3 board to loosely measure my letters, I outlined the letters.
7. Fill in the letters using CeCe Caldwell's Traverse City Cherry paint. Again, I slapped it on and smooshed it around.
8. Once it was dry, I lightly sanded again. Here's where I got into some trouble. Sanding mixed the red into the ochre paint and then I had to be super nitpicky about rubbing down the ochre paint with a sponge to get the red out of the cracks and crevices. If I'd sealed the ochre first, this wouldn't have been an issue.
9. Distress with a sponge -- CeCe's paint is like unsealed drywall compound; it comes off with a damp sponge until you seal it, then it becomes impervious like conventional paint.
10. Seal with PolyWhey.
11. Wax with brown wax and then "clean up" extra brown wax using clear wax, which takes off and disperses colored wax.
12. Wax plywood edges with brown wax.
13. Buff the heck out of the whole thing with a soft, dry rag.

Here are a couple of close ups so you can see how the dark wax sits in the grooves made when I mooshed the paint around.

 In addition to the Joy sign, I made this Noel sign.

These two signs took almost no paint -- you could easily buy two small CeCe paint containers and do this project plus several others before running out.

I had originally planned to sell the Noel sign, but I'm pretty crazy about it sitting out by my front door with my Craigslist antique sled. So...who knows. It may be in my family for years to come. The Joy sign is at my friend Emily's house -- the first in a series of a few pieces I'll be making for her to repay a barter for some sweet Frye boots she gave me.

I'm pretty sure I got the good end of that deal -- an awesome pair of boots and a chance to go crazy with wood and paint. What's not to like about that?

Seeing red

I think I may have mentioned on Facebook last week that I went a little chair-crazy.

After painting the house grey, I was ready for some color. Specifically, some bright and shiny color. And, since we're in the middle of re-doing our backyard (more to come on that later in the week) and had no furniture to go out there, AND since Black Friday/Cyber Monday were upon us, it seemed like destiny.

It was time for new chairs.

As if I needed confirmation, our old leather parsons chairs sold on Craigslist in about 27 seconds. Within five minutes of the old chairs getting picked up from my house, the UPS man dropped off the new beauties pictured below.

So, as you can tell, it was obviously meant to be.

Of the 16 chairs I bought (you read that right, and yes, there are only four butts in our family), only 10 have arrived thus far. We've got eight of the ones you see in these photos, plus two red director's chairs like these. The red director's chairs will be perfect for chilling outside.

The other six chairs are on their way here via Greyhound.

I know. I'm full of surprises today. Did you know that you can have eBay and Etsy purchases shipped via Greyhound?  I didn't. It's way cheaper than the usual shipping methods.

Anyway, the other six chairs (the ones coming on the bus) are old school chairs. Not old-school, as in old-fashioned. Although...they are that too. They're actually Heywood Wakefield chairs that were used in schools starting in the 50's. They are industrial and funky but not worth much so I've got a fun revival in store for them. A revival which will involve the color red. Once they're finished, the school chairs will hang out inside the house -- four at the table, one at my desk, and one at my sewing nook. These other lovely ladies will go out to the patio. 

But for now I'm totally enjoying them inside the house.

I had some serious concerns that these chairs would feel too cold. They are, after all, metal and my house is usually about 65 degrees. They are a bit chilly for the first few seconds, but after that they warm up nicely. And, actually, they're surprisingly comfortable. I can sit in the one at my desk and get sucked into Pinterest for hours at a time, just like I did in my cushy leather parson's chair of yore. And for Scott, whose back sometimes aches when he sits in a chair that is too soft, these are just right. 

The only person in the family who is unhappy about these chairs, actually, is Callie. Callie, our seven year old, doesn't like change. But, she LOVES bright colors and shiny things, so I thought she'd be into these chairs. To my surprise, when she came home from school and saw them in the kitchen she burst into tears. 

I know. It's crazy that she even thinks her unsolicited decorating opinion matters outside of her own room, but for some reason she does. She doesn't like the chairs because they're metal. I don't know why -- that is the only explanation she'd give me. For the first few days she refused to sit in them while we ate, but she did give in last night and sit at the table with us. I guess they're growing on her. Or she's tired of standing while she eats.

So, now, the 411 on these chairs. I settled on these because they were the cheapest. Period. They're not locally made, they're not antiques, they're not supposed to last for a million and one years. But they were only $169 for four chairs and no shipping charges. And their reviews were very positive. Go Overstock. Overstock calls them Tabouret Stacking Chairs.

Others I looked into were the Tolix chairs at Pottery Barn ($269 each), the Marais A chairs from Industry West ($145 each), the Emeco 111 Navy Chair ($260 each), and the Goodform Navy Chair (price varies).

I also searched Craigslist for something similar. I almost lucked out and bought nine Toledo drafting chairs for only $20/each from someone who obviously had NO idea what he was selling, but I was too slow. I even offered to pay over the asking price, but he'd already promised them to someone else. Someone who only paid the asking price! I pined over those chairs for about two weeks (I may have moped around a bit and then even cleaned my house in reaction to losing them) before I bought the Tabouret chairs. I know, they're completely different from the Toledo chairs but I just needed something...bright. And happy.

So for now, these shiny red chairs are brightening my days. When they make their way outside (I have to build them a table first) you'll be the first to know. And when my old school chairs arrive and begin to undergo their revival, you'll hear about that too. And then when I have a party and invite the entire city because I've obviously got seats for everyone...well, I just might keep all the chairs to myself, actually.

Reclaimed Kitchen Island

This piece has actually been hanging around our house for about a week now, but I haven't had a chance to blog about it until now. Maybe you remember we had some discussion on Facebook about whether the top should be wood, butcher block, or stainless steel? I ended up going with wood because it was fast and easy -- the stainless steel guy couldn't fabricate a top in time for my deadline for this piece. And I wasn't ready to invest in butcher block for a piece I was only *hoping* to sell, not assured of selling.

I built the island for a craft fair that was at my house last weekend -- I knew I would need more serving space in my kitchen, plus I hoped that it would showcase what I can do with reclaimed wood and I thought it would sell relatively easily. It didn't sell at the craft fair (got lots of ooohs and ahhhs, though), but I think it's got a new owner now (care of Craigslist). She's coming to pick it up tonight, and I am pretty sure I'll have to build another one for myself!

This little island has become sort of a workhorse in my kitchen!

I use it mostly as a place to prep veggies -- it is great to be able to face my "audience" while I work (can you tell I used to teach public speaking?) even if my audience is only the dog. Usually, though, my girls are sitting in the kitchen hanging out with me while I cook, and it is nice to be able to work without my back to them.

I've also found that it is a great place to store my juicer and my blender -- two pieces that we use regularly and take up more counter space than I'd like. The storage space under the island keeps my counters clear, which I love.

This size is a bit too big for my kitchen. It is 60"x26" and I need it to be more like 40"x26". I also think when I re-make it, I'll use a butcher block top. My never-ending complaint (or, one of my never-ending complaints) is that my cutting boards are too small (even though the biggest is about 18"x24"), so this should solve that problem. With the way that Scott and I eat, I'm constantly chopping veggies so I think the butcher block top will come in super handy.

I'm also going to add a galvanized pipe towel rack to one side of the island. I've got it sitting in the garage, waiting to be added, but I ran out of time to put it on this island because of the craft fair deadline that was quickly approaching. Plus, industrial-chic is not everyone's thing, so a friend suggested I leave it off and offer it as an add-on. Smart thinking, especially since galvanized pipe isn't as cheap as one would think.

One thing I'll miss about this island is its reclaimed origins. Almost the whole thing is built out of wood from our recently de-constructed deck. There are marks in it from where my girls banged on the wood while taking the deck apart, and some where they just banged on it because they had hammers in their hands and they are kids. We're using most of the old deck wood to build a pergola and I'm not sure how much will be left for furniture. I'm hoping to get at least a few pieces, but I may have to go find someone else's old wood to use or (gasp!) buy new wood.

Do you have a small island in your kitchen? What do you use it for? Do you ever feel like it is in the way? One of my girls is a little bummed that the island leaves her less room for dancing. :)

FYI: if you're looking for plans for an island similar to this one, check out Michaela's Kitchen Island plans over at Ana White. This one is the same overall dimensions, but without the drawers. Also, this one was built using pocket hole construction and sealed with my favorite non-toxic sealer, PolyWhey by Vermont Natural Coatings.

{tutorial} Bold Striped Curtains

About a month ago, Scott and I embarked upon a repainting of almost the entire interior of our house. Bedrooms were spared but...not much else.

We went grey. (On the walls, not in our hair.)

Our grey walls were inspired by our new curtains, curtains that we didn't yet have. In my mind, though, and on Pinterest, I saw bold grey and white striped curtains.

Here are a few of my inspiration images:

Source: theyellowcapecod.com via Hillary on Pinterest

Source: theblissfulbeeblog.blogspot.com via Hillary on Pinterest

Source: awelldressedhome.com via Hillary on Pinterest

If I'm being totally honest, I have to tell you that originally I wanted bold chevron, but I couldn't find bold chevron fabric or curtains anywhere and the idea of making bold chevron fabric was just about enough to knock me out. So when my friend Emily suggested stripes instead, I was all over it.

For about ten seconds, I considered using white curtains and painting the stripes on. This seems like a reasonably good idea until you get down to the nitty gritty of it. Where do you lay out four 108" x 57" panels to paint them? Is there a clean spot (a dirt, dust, and pet hair-free place) in my house that is this big? Um, no. Is there one in yours?? Because, if so, I'd like to come move in with you. Or hire you to keep my house clean.

So that left me with a few options -- leaving a panel intact and adhering stripes to the panels, using something like Heat-n-Bond, was one option. This sounded cumbersome. The other option was buying panels (or fabric, but panels from Ikea were way cheaper than fabric from a fabric store) and cutting them apart, then sewing them back together.

In the end, this seemed like the easiest option. Plus, my mother in law agreed to do the sewing for me which kind of made it a no-brainer.

SO, here's how we did it.

I needed 4 108" curtain panels and I needed them to be lined.

I bought two packs of these grey curtains from Ikea and two packs of these white ones. Looking back, I should have bought two more packs of white ones to line the curtains, but I ended up buying 14 yards of crappy curtain liner from Hancock Fabrics instead. Another pack of curtains would have been cheaper, thicker, and wider.

The curtains needed to be washed ahead of time to deal with shrinkage, so I washed all the grey curtains together and then all the whites. After sewing the crappy curtain liner into the new curtains, we realized that we'd forgotten to pre-wash the liner. So...I guess when I wash the curtains I'll do it on cold and hang them to dry?

The moral of that story is remember to wash your liner, too.

Once the curtain panels were clean and dry, I laid them out on my rotary mat and cut them into strips. To make 4 108" panels with 1/2" seam allowances, I cut the following:

• 4 18.5" tall white strips with grommets from the tops of the white panels.
• 8 19" tall white strips
• 8 19" tall grey strips
• 4 23" tall grey strips for the bottoms. I left these unhemmed until the curtains where hanging, then hemmed them using the iron-on hemming strips that come with Ikea curtains.

My mother-in-law and I both agreed that getting the strips cut right is the main key in getting these curtains right. If they aren't exactly the right sizes, there is no way you'll be able to get the stripes lined up pefectly.

My stripes line up perfectly. I could live with them if they didn't line up perfectly, but someone more OCD than I am would probably go nuts.

Once the strips were all cut, my mother-in-law sewed them together, alternating colors, using a half inch seam allowance. In order to get the seams perfect, she put a strip of masking tape 1/2" from the needle on my machine -- this made it easy to keep the seam allowance right.

Getting the seam allowance consistent is the second crucial part of getting these curtains right.

Once all of the strips were sewn together, we cut the liner to fit and gave it both a top and bottom hem. This is where it gets a little murky and you might want to figure out a better way for yourself...

My mother-in-law topstitched the top of the liner along the seam just below the grommets at the tops of the panels. Then, she pressed the sides of the panels over about 1/2", sandwiched the liner between the two layers of curtain, and topstitched the length of the curtains.

We talked about a bunch of ways to put the liner in, but because we needed to leave the grommets accessible, we couldn't find a great way to do it. This seems to have worked, though!

Once the liner was in, we hung the curtains and then I used the hemming strips enclosed with the curtains from Ikea to press and hem the curtains.

All together, including curtains, liner, and thread, these panels cost me about $175 and I ended up with a lot of fabric leftover -- one full grey panel, another half a grey panel, and about 3/4 of a white panel. I already have plans for the grey fabric and I have no doubt that I'll be able to use the leftover white fabric down the road, too. Clearly, these panels were more expensive than just buying four plain Ikea panels (I could have done that for about $75). But, for the effect that I ended up with, I think $45-ish per panel was a pretty good price!

The evolution of a wall

Do you agree that there are some parts of your house that are constantly evolving? I mean, some things change and then stay that way (like my wood floors will probably stay wood floors for a very long time) but some things have to be grown into.

When we first moved into our house, this was the view from the entry:

When Scott and I decided to buy this house in the Springs, we were still living in Cincinnati. He wasn't able to make the trip out to look for a house, but he trusted me to pick a good house in a good neighborhood. This is what I came up with. It is a good house and it is a great neighborhood, but it took some imagination to see what the house could become.

I have a good imagination. Scott's isn't so good, but (thank God) he trusted me. When he walked in and saw a house that was spectacularly maintained but not at all updated, he didn't freak out.

That might be reason #863 that I love my husband. He trusts me.

Anyway, in order to maintain the "integrity" of the original house, we lived with the brown cedar siding for a while. My mom has great decorating instincts and said, "Paint it glossy white!" but we took our time. We spent time living in the space, just being there, before we made any changes. We asked opinions from our family and even from at least one wood restoration "expert" to see if there was anything we could do to lighten up that cedar. More than one person recommended drywalling over it.

But in the end, it got a few coats of stainblocking primer and then some sage green paint (technically, the paint was Celery green from Restoration Hardware). Brown cedar, it turns out, was not our style.

And the cedar looked better (to us) after it was painted. But then there was the issue of that orange brick which contrasted heavily with the celery green cedar. My mom said, "Paint the brick glossy white!" but we wanted to go for a more subtle look first. So we got out a few different shades of paint and some drywall compound and gave it the look of used brick (which was actually my mom's second suggestion). We lightened up the mortar and whitewashed the bricks here and there until it looked random enough to pass as old used brick.

This was about 4 days after giving birth to Callie. I'm pretty sure I fed her,
got spit up on, and climbed right back up on the ladder to keep working. Nice.

If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't leave this face for a minute, certainly not to
faux paint brick. She was (is) too precious.

And, actually, the faux used brick wasn't terrible. I wish I had some better photos, but in this one at least you can see how it looked at Christmas. It looked okay.

But at some point, we decided that we were ready for the brick to be white. I am so thankful that Scott goes along with me on these whims -- even though he's the one who usually has to be at the top of the 22 foot ladder, he is willing to let these elements of our house evolve.

And so we went white. More stainblocking primer, three or four coats of white paint, and lots of patience.

Looking back, I think what forced the move to white was the artwork above the mantle. That painting was done by Brynn, my older daughter, when she was about four or five years old. I loved the colors and wanted it up in the house. I wanted it front and center. But the "used" brick on the fireplace competed with it and so the brick, all 22 x 6 feet of it, had to change.

The white brick surrounded by celery cedar held on for about five years before we decided to go grey last month. But, as we went grey on all the drywall, it seemed like a good time to make the full transition from brown cedar to glossy white, just like my mom had said we should on day one.

So maybe the moral of the story should be, "Listen to your mother and do as she says." If I had, I would have saved myself (and Scott) hours and hours of time standing on a ladder (and subsequent trips to the massage therapist and doctor to get his back re-aligned after time on said ladder).

I think, though, that part of discovering our style requires more than changing our house from one extreme to another without hitting any of the stops in between. Especially for a couple as young (and inexperienced) as Scott and I were when we moved in. We were 27? 26? That is awfully young to assume that we could know our style. Somehow my mom knew where we'd end up. She could see around that corner before we could. But the in between? That was part of our evolution.

Before

Now. This isn't the best angle for a shot anymore, but just for comparison's sake...

A better angle.

And so here is where we are today. We're still making changes and the view from our entry is still evolving -- in fact we made some major changes just this week. I'll update you on those in the next few days. But for now we've hit a place that we're really happy with. It is bright and airy and getting more modern every day. It is a look I never would have predicted but it feels like home.

Staircase Makeover

When I started our basement renovation about a year and a half ago, I knew that part of it would include ripping the carpet off the stairs and...then what? That part I didn't know. It depended on what was under the stairs and also on how I was feeling the day I decided to work on them. Er, the night I decided to work on them. Because of course I do my best work in the middle of the night. Case in point:

And, really, that carpet was great for catching the dust and debris that I dragged out of the basement every time I walked upstairs during the renovation, so I left it on until the bitter end. By the time I was ready to remove the carpet, I had plenty of inspiration pinned on Pinterest to help me decide what to do. Here are a few of the images that turned the wheels in my brain:

Source: houzz.com via Hillary on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Hillary on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Hillary on Pinterest

Source: designstiles.me via Hillary on Pinterest

Source: blog.2modern.com via Hillary on Pinterest

Source: apartmenttherapy.com via Hillary on Pinterest

That last one was definitely my favorite, but unfortunately my treads were not solid wood, so I couldn't stain them like I'd hoped. I've also been loving the fun striped runners that are hot right now, so I thought I'd go with something more modern instead of the grain-sack look in the photo above. When I saw the Söften rug at Ikea, that sealed the deal. The charcoal grey color was great with my new grey walls and my soon-to-be gray and white curtains (stay tuned for bold horizontal stripes...hopefully before Thanksgiving).

At just under five feet long, one Söften rug wasn't long enough to cover all the stairs, and so I bought three of them, hoping that the three would be enough to cover my whole staircase (true to form, I didn't actually measure the staircase before buying or installing the runners). The bummer was that when I got the rugs home, they were about half an inch too wide for my staircase (did I just mention something about how I didn't measure?). Undaunted, I trimmed off the hems on the short sides and pressed the long sides under and sewed new hems along the edges.

Using two Ikea Stopp anti-slip rug underlays (a total bargain at $3.99/each and just the right width) and my pneumatic staple gun, I made my way down the stairs stapling the rug to the top of the riser, the intersection between the riser and the tread, and then under the tread nose.

If you are contemplating installing a similar runner, I would definitely recommend using a pneumatic stapler (as in, a stapler that is attached to an air compressor). My electric stapler would not have been able to do this project. If you don't have an air compressor and pneumatic stapler, you need to beg, borrow, or steal one before you attempt this.

When I got to spots where I needed to join the end of one rug with the beginning of another, I simply turned under the end of the new rug and stapled it up under the nose of the most recently covered tread, right over the rug that was ending. Very simple and not fussy at all. Somehow I managed to have each rug end right in the middle of a riser, not a tread, so I didn't even have to cut them down...except the last one. I ended up with about 18" of rug left at the end. I assume this is due to my very careful planning and measuring.

One place I made a mistake was in keeping the rug centered on the staircase. It would help to use painter's tape to mark the edges of where the rug should go before you start stapling. Or at least step back and take a look every once in a while. But, since it isn't horribly lopsided, I'm not worried about it.

Frankly, the cat uses this staircase more than anyone else in this family (to get to her litter box in the utility room) and I don't think she cares if the runner is perfectly straight. Or maybe she does? She is a cat, after all.

Oh, and you might have noticed in the before and after that I did some board and batten down there, too. I think the white walls really help lighten up an otherwise dark hallway. I haven't done a board and batten tutorial because there are about ten million of them out there in blogland, but you might like to know that I chose not to use MDF for my board and batten. That was an intentional departure from the blogger norm -- I prefer not to use MDF because of the chemicals it off-gasses and because of the toxins in the sawdust, which I would inhale every time I cut a board. If you want to know more, I'll gladly do a post on why I don't use MDF. Just ask!

And, lastly, the louvered door in that photo above? Yeah, I added that sometime between the "before" and the "after," too. You can see my pocket door tutorial here.