It's the little things

My design philosophy is to be as creative as possible to create the look you want while staying within a meager budget. If I had unlimited resources and funds... well lets just say I have expensive taste. However, these things are not true so I must get inventive to make things look the way I want. Of course it is appropriate to splurge every once in awhile to really get a piece that you want, but in general with a little elbow grease you can modify things to be what you want for a fraction of the cost. Now this of course takes time and work but for me it is worth it since I love doing it and I find I end up with a much more custom look than if I bought everything and keep it as is.

For the nursery this design philosophy was in full force and for this post I have clumped together a few projects where I simply found a great deal and them customized it to be exactly what I wanted. My previous post about the old dresser I painted and converted into a changing table is such a project but was a little more work than is always necesary.

First, when searching for a chair for my nursery I could not find a single chair that I liked for less than $900 (like I said I have expensive taste). I was very specific that I that I wanted a glider or rocker that was modern looking, not too big and came in grey. In my opinion I found the inexpensive options for chairs to be frumpy and usually came in terrible shades of pastel pink, green or blue. So I began going to local thift stores, looking on Craigslist and checking out yard sales for an old chair that I could reupholster. It took some time and I went to a lot of thrift stores but I eventually came across a chair that with a little altering was perfect.

I found this chair at the Goodwill Redesign center on Scottsdale Rd and Thomas. It was $30 after a student discount (if you still have a student ID you can still claim to be a student). It is obviously from some little old ladies formal living room because it was in great condition and quite clean for being white. It rocks and is very comfortable making it a good choice. I considered even doing the reupholstry myself to save money but it was a bigger job than I wanted to take on so I went to a professional. I was referred to a place called By The Yard and I loved working with them. The fabrics they had available there were not quite what I wanted and were starting at $20 a yard so I decided to purchase this fabric from Fabrics.com and have them just do the reupholstering. To modernize the chair I had them take away the majority of the button-tufting (they said they couldn't take away all of it without compromising the comfort), remove the skirt at the bottom and take away the detached cushion on the top of the chair. So for a $30 chair plus $45 in fabric and $240 for the reupholstery totaling $315 I got a custom chair that no one else will have and is exactly the look I wanted. Here is the final product:

 

Two other small items in the nursery that gave me a lot of trouble finding what I wanted were the floor lamp for the reading corner and the area rug. Both, especially rugs, can be quite expensive and I just didn't want to pay a lot of money for either. 

While at Target one day just browsing the home section and mostly checking out the vast amount to clearance stuff I found a lamp on clearance for $15. The only thing it had going for it was the price and it had the basic shape I had been leaning toward in a lamp selection so I bought it. After getting it out of the box it is worth just about what I paid for it but I figured with a new shade it would be cute. I bought about 4 different shades in different colors and designs and none of them worked with the lamp or the rest of the nursery. So I figured why not try just painting the original shade that came with the lamp. It was just a plain cream fabric shade so I took some yellow fabric paint that I had and painted a chevron design. The result I rather like, it is imperfect and custom and goes great with the rest of the nursery. Lastly, I painted the silver base of the lamp cream and now I have an inexpesive lamp that I love.

As for the rug I had agonized over that purchase for months trying to rationalize spending hundreds of dollars on a rug but I couldn't. Eventually I ended up back on a rug I had liked from IKEA. The rug was large enough for the room and was only $20 so it was an unbeatable deal. The only problem was that it is grey and white and the room has so much grey I didn't want to make the room look dark. After the paint was done and a lot of the furnishings in place I decided it wouldn't make the room dark and went ahead and bought the rug. Of course, once in the room I thought it just needed a little something to make it special so I decided to add some yellow. Using fabric markers and a lot of free time I colored parts of the flowers on the rug yellow. It was a small alteration that makes the rug different from the 3 million out there and ties it into my color scheme a little better.

Customizing pieces can mean something as big as refinishing a dresser or something as small as adding accent colors to a rug. What's important is being creative to make something your own and not always having to settle for what's in stock.

 

Take a look, it's in a book...

Well I am finally getting back in to this blogging thing and I have a few projects to catch up on. The nursery is almost complete which is good since Ada is due in about two months.

In the spirit of catching up on my blogging I will start with a project I saw on Pinterest and friends had many questions about on Facebook. I want Ada to be an avid reader so I created a reading corner with bookshelves on the wall. Here is the finished project:

For this post I am going to focus solely on the bookshelf project. I would love to think that I am inventive enough to come up with this idea on my own but with Pinterest I don't have to be; I just need to be creative enough to make other people's great ideas my own. I will call that inspiration rather than stealing. But for the sake of being fair here is the original blog where the idea comes from.

First, I had to decide where in the room I wanted the shelves to go to determine how long they would be. Originally, I wanted them on the other side of the room but after getting some of the nursery furniture in place I changed the layout of the room and this wall made the most sense for the shelves. The wall is about 5 1/2 feet so I decided to make the bookshelves 4 feet in length. With the spacing I wanted between shelves, 4 made sense so I knew I would need at least 16 feet of gutter to make my shelves. At Home Depot they sell these vinyl gutters in 10 foot lengths so I bought 2. Along with the length of gutter I did need to purchase the end caps which just popped on to the gutters to make a clean edge. I needed 2 for each shelf and were conveniently sold in 2 packs so I bought 4 total. Gutters come in both metal and vinyl but I chose vinyl for the ease and being more kid friendly. I also looked at other stores like Lowe's but found the gutters at Home Depot more what I was looking for. If you decide to make these shelves shop around a bit to find what you like. Here are the exact gutters I purchased for your reference. Unfortunately, Home Depot would not cut the gutters for us as "they only cut wood" so we had to purchase a saw. We asked the store associate which saw would work best and he directed us to a very inexpensive mitre saw. This saw did cut the gutters but it was a pain in the butt and I feel a hack saw or basically any other saw would have worked better. Fortunately, the end caps cover up all jagged edges so it really didn't matter. Here is the saw we were told to buy and the edges it left:

Altogether we purchased two 10 foot lengths of gutter, four 2 packs of end caps and a mitre saw for about $45. We already had screws at home and the other tools (or so we thought) we needed. This can be a very inexpensive project depending on what tools you already have and what you may need to purchase. These shelves are stylish and space-saving but can get as expensive as traditional shelves so take that into account if you are wanting to make these for the economical factor alone.

Installation should have been easy but became a big headache and my poor husband was very frustrated. One problem that we constantly run into is that the walls in our house are plaster rather than drywall so it makes drilling, hammering, screwing and attaching just about anything to the walls very difficult. That being said any project is also a lot easier if you have the right tools. We ended up having to purchase some tools which added to the cost of the project but made it a lot easier. If you do not have an electric drill, drillbits or a level you may find them very useful for this project and frankly good to have for future projects. We ended up purchasing a charger for our electric drill(after not being able to find the original), a set of drill bits and a laser level(that we later returned because it was made for use with drywall) and spent an extra $50 that we had not anticipated. The tools necessary for this project: a saw to cut gutters, a measuring tape, a level(laser or regular), screws(drywall if you have drywall), an electric drill, drill bits(if you wish to pre-drill your holes on the gutters), and a stud finder(optional but if you have drywall and do not know how to find the studs this may save some headache).

Once we had the right tools, I measured where on the wall I wanted each shelf (I think they are about a foot apart) predrilled holes in the gutters about 8 to 12 inches apart and then screwed each gutter into the wall making sure it stayed as level as possible. With our walls this was very difficult so they did not turn out perfect but once all the books are on you can hardly notice. We used regular screws but if you have drywall you should probably use drywall screws and find the studs rather than just drilling every 8 to 12 inches. Here is a picture of the screws in the shelves:

Using studs you will probably only need 3 screws per shelf instead of 5 like we used. Once screwed into the wall, they are done and ready to be dressed with books and stuffed animals.
A useful tip, the endcaps can be a little tricky to put on the gutters so put them on before attaching to the wall.




Here is a close up of the finished project:

All in all it was a pretty easy and inexpensive project that I think looks great. I had several books from my childhood and we received a lot of new books at our baby shower so it filled up in no time. Scatter in a few stuffed animals and it looks very decorative and is very functional. The best part is it takes up a whole wall that would otherwise be blank and saves precious floor space that would be eaten by a traditional bookshelf. For my small space it was the perfect choice.

And then comes baby...

Before even knowing the sex of our expected baby, I knew I wanted a gender neutral palette for the nursery. Currently I am obsessed with gray and yellow so naturally those were the colors I wanted to do. I was recently introduced to Pinterest so that was where I started my inspiration for the nursery. I have approached this room differently than I did the rest of my house since I have never decorated a nursery nor do I have any furniture for a nursery so it was like a blank slate. This room is also different in that I actually did a drawing of my ideas and as I collect paint colors and whatnot I plan to put together a design board as if I were presenting the design of the room to myself. It actually has proved quite useful for organizing my design ideas and execution. My first project has been to get what I deem the three major furniture items necessary for the nursery: a crib, a dresser/changing table, a rocking chair. Furniture shopping is the most stressful thing I find about decorating because it can be so expensive and so hard to find exactly what you want. Due to this fact the furniture shopping portion of my decorating seems to take months of searching, shopping and agonizing over different choices. After purchasing a relatively inexpensive yet stylish crib and seeing nothing but very expensive choices for the dresser and chair I decided to find thrift store items and make them exactly what I wanted. I have found that with some time and elbow grease this option is exactly how people on a budget, aka real life, need to decorate. Now this did mean countless trips to multiple Goodwills, other thrift stores and trolling Craigslist until I finally found both a chair and a dresser that met my needs but I will now have exactly what I wanted for the space and for a fraction of the cost.

My first find that has actually been completed is the dresser/changing table. This was a lucky find as I have found that dressers in decent condition are hard to find at the Goodwill and are still a bit pricey on Craigslist so when I came across this dresser at a yard sale for $15 I could not pass it up.

 

The dresser is solid wood probably a mid-century piece from like the 60's with a medium finish and solid brass handles. Definitely needed some love as it was covered in scratches and dents. Luckily, I was wanting to paint it so the scratches were no problem. My good friend and sister-in-law Meghan was gracious enough to help me with picking up, moving and sanding the whole thing. However, in the excitement I did forget to take a proper "before" picture, sorry. After a good sanding with medium grit sandpaper and washing it down it was ready to be painted. I chose a light buttery shade of yellow in an interior low VOC paint with a semi-gloss finish so it will be easy to clean. Originally, I had thought I would paint it white but at the last minute went with yellow and I could not be happier with it. Color does not always have to be limited to walls or accent pieces, the right shade of a color can become almost like a neutral in the space rather than an accent. By painting a piece of furniture an unexpected color it adds interest to the space and brings the palette together. The brass hardware obviously clashed with the new shade of yellow so I spray painted them a cream that I conveniently had on hand from some other projects I have done. After three coats of paint and a night drying outside the dresser was done. 

 All it needs to be functional as a changing table is a changing pad and some baskets to hold wipes, etc. Total cost for the dresser was about $65 including paint supplies. That is about half the cost of most of the dressers a I had looked at and in my opinion much cuter!

Stay tuned for more updates on the progress of the nursery as I complete them.

And it begins with a song of rebellion...

By the end of January my life is going to change forever. My husband and I are expecting our first child and I will become a stay-at-home wife and mother. I am so excited to be able to stay home with my first baby as it seems to be more of a luxury than the norm in this day and age. However, it was never my dream to grow up to be a housewife or a stay-at-home mom. In fact, I had rather the opposite dream when I first discovered what I wanted to do when I grew up. It was in ninth grade that I found a passion for interior design and developed my dream to become an interior designer. At that time I decided I would someday become a rich and successful designer and my husband would be the one to stay home with the kids. Now life certainly made some serious changes to my plans and I could not be happier with the place I am at currently, but I still have longing to follow through with my dreams and be an interior designer. I may not have graduated with the degree I intended but I still succeeded in getting a degree related to design and I am constantly honing my craft of what I will now call interior decorating rather than the prestigious design. I no longer envision myself working for that big design firm but rather I design for real life; for what I know; for what I can afford. My goal now is to create an interior that is both visually appealing and functional as well as affordable. As I journey into a new chapter in my life I am proud to redefine myself as both a mother and an aspiring decorator. I have spent many hours decorating my own home and it is continually a work in progress. As I complete projects I will share them here and hopefully inspire others.