House Week: # Seven

Alas, the end of House Week. Thanks for putting up with me. Back to our regular Ellen-centric programming soon.

This isn't really a before and after, unless you consider it before and after Ellen!

I mentioned that I've tried to be creative with her toy storage. Our house isn't huge, and while the bedrooms and bathrooms and kitchen are totally adequate for us, the living space (and storage space) is more limited.

I bought this buffet at the Mission Road Antique Mall for a steal when we needed something to put the TV on. I swapped the knobs out for new ones at Anthropologie.

(Yes, hello Wonder Pets!)

There is a lot of good storage in here - hides the TV/DVD components, holds my recipes, all the DVDs and some games, and lots of Ellen's stuff!

This is the latest storage solution. I bought this little table at Now and Then Furniture Consignment in downtown Overland Park. It was a great price (maybe $60?) and I originally intended to paint it, which I may still do. It isn't a great piece of furniture, but is a good size for a lot of spaces in our house.

I wanted to find some tall square boxes to set on those lower wooden rungs to hold toys and stuff (and to hide the outlet behind all that junk). The boxes had to be a very precise size and I just didn't have the energy for the search. I came across this idea on the internets and thought it was the perfect solution!

Erik indulged my craziness and picked up this empty wine crate at our neighborhood liquor store for $3. It is the perfect size and pretty kid-proof.

Some may find this sacrilegious, but I find it frugal!

Oh, and I forgot to mention our new chair! This was an old chair from my parents (yet again) that needed a little updating. I forgot to take a before picture, but you can pretty much see it here:

After a lot of hemming and hawing, I found some fabric I liked at Calico Corners. Then, I searched online and found it for quite a bit cheaper, so just ordered several yards and still saved money after shipping. I initially ordered a few samples of indoor-outdoor fabric from JoAnn, but the colors and patterns just didn't work for me. (You can get great deals on fabric at JoAnn with the 50% off coupon each week in the paper).

I had it reupholstered here locally and it was super reasonable, if not very fast. I would be happy to share their name if anyone wants ... they recovered our sofa in the green fabric, too, years ago. They put in a new foam seat cushion and tied up the springs and it is good as new!

House Week: # Six

I mentioned that we had done some room swapping at our house. I don't have a good 'before' picture of our dining room, but this is a decent shot from my mom's birthday party last summer. It shows the old light fixture that came with the house, our tall hutch and the dining table in the middle of the room.

This is the new arrangement ...

Our slipcovered chairs and our old kitchen table in the corner. We technically have an eat-in kitchen, but we couldn't maneuver around the table with Ellen's high chair, and we honestly usually eat in front of the TV (terrible, I know). The things on the table are a hodge podge of items that I didn't have another place for. We got rid of the hutch and cleared out a lot of cabinets to make room for Ellen's toys, so most of the stuff went to the basement and I kept out a few things.

I've shown this before (during the Pantry Moth Infestation of 2010). This light fixture is from Overstock.com and is a virtual replica of one I fell in love with at Restoration Hardware, at a significantly reduced price. (Have you seen Copy Cat Chic? She always has great stuff like this). Apparently Overstock.com replicates lots of 'signature' pieces from all over the place at a lower price. Some people may balk at this, but I love it!

This desk is now where the hutch used to be. Yet again, another piece from my parents. (I also have a matching toy box in very bad shape and my parents still use the matching kitchen table). This stores all kinds of important stuff and it's great to be able to keep it hidden. These are the other two dining table chairs that I decided not to recover in ostrich just yet. The rug is from Flor and we've had it for several years and have been really happy with it.

And this buffet has always been in the dining room. It was my dresser growing up and it came from my Grandmother Hampton's dining room. It used to store only linens and dishes and things, but now the cabinets store Ellen's toys and books.

The silver tea service was my Grandmother McKnight's and my Aunt Susan gave it to us for a wedding gift. I love its shine! The elephants are kind of a crazy find from Good JuJu. I bought them for $24 and originally planned to spray paint them a fun color and make them into lamps. (Dave Smith the Lampmaker is great for this!). I will probably still do that at some point, but for now they kind of match the room and are strange and fun. (So says me).

And, of course, there is a touch of Ellen in every room. You can't avoid the kid stuff that builds up everywhere, but I am really trying to keep it contained and minimized as much as possible!

House Week: # Five

Our kitchen is not the kitchen of my dreams in form, but it functions very well for us. It is big for a house in Prairie Village and it has TONS of storage. We did a little cosmetic upgrade about a year after we got married - new dishwasher, removed an appliance garage, and new Formica counter tops. There used to be white, scratched up Formica that stained - can you imagine? Our thought process at the time was to make it live-able, but not to invest a ton of money because we didn't think we would be here very long.

Fast forward 8 years and we're not going anywhere fast.

So, I decided that 8 years living with ugly cabinet pulls was too long. These had all weathered differently over the years and no longer matched very well. And, there were 38 of them!


I got all the pulls removed and they did leave a mark in the paint, but I scrubbed down all the cabinets with warm water and industrial grade ammonia and they cleaned up very well. (This is a great cleaning solution for stuff like this, but is NOXIOUS. Proceed with caution!)

I found some pulls at Target that were inexpensive and had large ends to cover up the old marks on the drawers and cabinets. One day I happened to see that they were in the clearance bin for 70% off. I thought I had been so clever waiting to buy them!

Turns out, not so much.

I visited every Target in town to find the clearance pulls (with assistance from Erik and Betsy), then ordered the remainder online (at regular price), only to find that I was ONE short. Urgh.

They worked out pretty well, though, and I'm still waiting to find 2 matching pulls for the half-bath off the kitchen.

I thought these huge drawers looked silly with a regular drawer pull, and this solution helped with the shortage!

I'm now left with one single, lonely pull on the false drawer just under our sink. I can't get a screwdriver up behind the cabinet to unscrew the pull because the sink is in the way. I wasn't sure anyone would notice. But. Well. Not anymore.

Suggestions?

House Week: # Four

Once I got going with the staple gun and faux ostrich, I really couldn't stop.

These are 4 of our 6 dining room chairs. They came from my grandmother, via my Aunt Susan, and they sit at a table my mom refinished years and years ago. Are you sensing a theme here?

I already re-covered them in this striped fabric a few years ago to match the walls and curtains in our dining room. In an effort to make more living space for Ellen and her things, we've done some furniture rearranging and now our dining room table and 4 chairs are in our family room. We couldn't get rid of it, because we don't have anywhere else to eat with guests if we can't use the deck, but we certainly don't use it all the time. Case in point: our dining room table is now my workspace for the laptop. Multitasking.

Another tip my mom gave me is to always buy dining room chairs that have a removable seat. Clearly I change my mind about what I like from time to time, and this makes it so easy and inexpensive to change the look.

I cut the leather a little bigger (or a lot bigger) than the seat bottom, then pulled it tightly and stapled all around.

Again, I had to trim the corners a bit because the leather was too thick to be stapled in layers.

Then, I just stapled everything as tightly as I could and screwed the seat bottoms back into the chairs. (The last time I did this was with a bench 4 days before I delivered Ellen. Yes, I have a problem).

Voila!

House Week: # Three

We used to have a metal and glass coffee table and I liked the airy feel of it, but it was relegated to the basement when Ellen became mobile. I searched for a padded ottoman or a bench with storage, but then remembered that I had this bench upstairs that wasn't serving much of a purpose. It was yet another hand-me-down from my parents. I used to be annoyed by the mish-mash of furniture we had in our house, but I'm appreciating it more and more.

The fabric on the bench had seen better days and only became worse with Ellen's dirty fingers. I decided to recover it in a more child-friendly fabric.

I loved the old nailhead trim and it took a long time to pry each nail out. I saved them all, hoping to salvage them, but in the end I just didn't have that much patience.

I ordered this faux ostrich leather from Your Auto Trim in the Paprika color. I got the suggestion from Little Green Notebook - I'm always getting great DIY ideas from her! I should have ordered the swatch card first because the color wasn't exactly what I wanted when it arrived, but it is fine.

I cut the piece of leather about the same size as the piece of blue fabric I removed. I borrowed my neighbor's super duper staple gun and stapled around the edges, as close as I could get to the wood frame. Finally, I cut off the excess leather very carefully with a utility knife, right at the edge of the frame.

I forgot to take any pictures of the process with the nailhead trim - my hands were full and it was midnight! I got the nailhead trim at Joann - it is very affordable and easy to use. Basically, it is a long strip of 'faux' metal nailhead, and then you hammer in an actual nail about every fifth spot. This was simple for me to do by myself and really helped to secure the leather to the bench - it was much thicker than the blue fabric I removed and individual nails probably wouldn't have worked.

The corners were tricky - I normally would have folded the fabric inward around the corner, but the leather was just too thick. This has held well for several weeks, so I think it will work.

I like the final product. In the end, I don't love the nailhead nearly as much as the old vintage-y individual nails, but I felt like no one would notice but me. And, well, now all of you.

The best part though? I can just wipe away Ellen's fingerprints and Erik's footprints with a damp cloth!

House Week: # Two

As part of the freshening up around here, I got the crazy idea to slipcover my sofa and chairs in white cotton. My mom planted the seed several months ago, then she got her own furniture slipcovered, and I just went for it!

We inherited this sofa when my parents downsized, which happened to be right when we got married! So, it's basically the best kind of sofa - free, long, and did I mention FREE? It is also old (like, as old as I am - so that is OLD) and I think was a wedding present to MY parents from my grandfather who owned a furniture store. It really is true - they don't make furniture like they used to.

When we inherited this sofa, it still had the original upholstery and the crayon marks underneath one of the pillows that I made years ago. We recovered it in this green fabric. Not super stylish, but durable and neutral.

We also had these chairs that we purchased from a furniture store that was going out of business around the time we got married. Comfy, but not totally my style.

So - we went for it! The lady who did the slipcovers (Deborah Blair) is local and I think she did a great job! She came to our house, brought the fabric samples, measured and showed up a few weeks later with the finished project. Ta da!

I've really been happy with them. The thing about white slipcovers and kids is that you have the option to wash your furniture, but also that you HAVE to wash your furniture. The slips are kind of grungy (I've flipped over the cushions to get maximum wear before washing - shhh, don't tell). Also, I'm really grossed out thinking about how dirty our old sofa was and we just couldn't see it.

The only DIY part of this project was these pillows. I just ordered a yard of fabric from Calico Corners and got some pillow forms at JoAnn (on sale!). I was finally able to use my new sewing machine that I got for Christmas a few years ago (and had never taken out of the box). It really is like riding a bike, though - you don't forget how to do it!

** For any of the rest of you crazy enough to have white slipcovers, here are my stain fighting tips thus far: 1. Make sure all the crayons and markers in your house are washable 2. If you get strawberries on your furniture, pour boiling water on to the stain while the slipcover is over a bowl. It make take 2-3 attempts, but it works pretty well!

House Week: # One

I'm back to my regular work schedule this week after 9 days off out of the last 10. (I know, woe is me). I've had these posts drafted for awhile, so now is as good a time as any to post them, I guess!

We've been making some upgrades at Casa Lund over the last few months ... thought I would document some of the details here in case you are feeling project-minded. (I wonder if all moms feel this way? I just sit home and stare at our walls and floors and furniture and dream of a less cluttered, more stylish space that doesn't serve as a racetrack for games of "I get you").

The first order of business was the fireplace. We painted the walls and trim in our living room before Erik moved in 8 years ago (and have re-painted since - thanks, Dede Preno). I never liked the brick and tile, but it was way down on the priority list. And you know how those things go ... you put it on the 'later' list, then 8 years pass and it's still on the 'later' list. Erik and I re-tiled our outside porch, but it took us 2 months and likely caused asbestos poisoning - not something we wanted to repeat in our living room.

These pictures aren't great, but I think you can appreciate the 70's mosaic brown tile ...

After some research and motherly-advice, I decided paint was the best, lowest-cost, solution. I visited my good friends at Gragg's Paint and they suggested a serious primer for the brick and tile. I used the XIM Primer-Sealer-Bonder with good success. I scrubbed everything really well first with an ammonia-water-dish soap solution, then sanded the tile to rough it up. I really glopped on the primer - it covered well and STUNK. For sure use a fan or open windows for ventilation. I'm pretty sure I lost some brain cells along the way. (Also - good tip from my Mom - you can put a used paintbrush in a plastic bag in the fridge between coats so you don't have to wash it or watch it dry out). After it dried overnight, I re-sanded and put on a second coat.

The guy at Gragg's said I could use any paint on top of the primer, so I used a black semi-gloss paint we already had. (The primer was oil based and the black was latex. It is fine to do it in this order, but not the reverse). I think I just did 2 coats of the black, as well, and I am pretty happy with the result.

My original intention was to also paint the brass fireplace surround with black high heat paint. I purchased the Rust-Oleum High Heat BBQ paint in a black semigloss, but then decided it was more work and a more permanent change than I really wanted.

Brass isn't my favorite, but I thought I could find some brass and black accessories to tie it all together. I searched and searched, but it can be hard to find things for a mantle, or the things I liked were too expensive. I've had a mirror above the fireplace for years, but it really only reflected the ceiling and wasn't super attractive. I decided to do a little shopping in my own house - we have a closet and basement full of 'art' and knick-knacks.

This is what I came up with ...


It serves the purpose for now until I find something I really love to put up there. The little bird in the yellow frame is from Vintage Printable. They have all kinds of images you can print for free for personal use. The New York Public Library has a similar digital gallery.