Speaking of Painting Rugs...

I love beautiful curtains. The problem is, like many awesome and inspiring home decor items, they are expensive. I was really inspired by these curtains from Anthropologie (where else?! I am so predictable):

Anthropologie Quarter Color Curtain

They're a sort of ombre/dip-dyed style. The tops of the curtains are the same color as my $30 Ikea curtains in my living room:

So last week I bought some Rit Dye in Navy Blue to try it out myself. Here's a side-by-side comparison of what I currently have and what I want to DIY:

I'm going to try this project out sometime in July. I figure, what's the worst that could happen? I ruin my $30 Ikea curtains and I wasted $1.50 on some dye. Bottom line is that it will be fun to try it out even if it fails!

Paint a Rug...Why Not?

Now that I've been in the condo for what feels like quite a long time, I'm really ready to have some rugs on the floor! Rugs are expensive, so I decided I would try to paint one myself. I went to Hobby Lobby in search of fabric paint. I could only find black (see the picture below) in spray paint format, but I wanted something more colorful. 

Black Fabric Spraypaint

Instead, I used a free can of paint (with coupon) from Ace Hardware with fabric medium. Fabric medium is this gloopy liquid that you mix in with regular wall paint. It allows the paint to adhere to the fabric better, and it also prevents the fabric from becoming really crunchy. I grabbed this stuff from Hobby Lobby for about $3 (after coupon):

Textile Medium

The paint color I picked was Sun Dried Tomato Red by Clark + Kensington. It's more of a coral than a red. I picked it to match some of the colors in the room such as the desk & chair and large bed pillow. I grabbed a $60 rug from Ikea, which is the cheapest low-pile white rug I could find in a large size. It's the Erslev rug and it's about 6 x 8 feet.

Ikea Erslev Rug

I laid the rug out on the floor to see if it was about the right size.

It's pretty much a perfect fit. It goes under the bed a little, which is fine. 

Next I decided what pattern I wanted to paint. I decided to go with easy stripes since this is my first rug-painting experience. The stripes will also match the large pillow I keep on my bed - you can see it on my chair in the top right corner of the picture above. After deciding on the pattern, I measured out how big my stripes would have to be in order to evenly space them out along the rug - about 6" wide. I left any extra on the edges of the rug, since at least one edge will be under the bed. After mixing the textile medium into the paint can, I stuck down some painter's tape to mark where I wanted to paint, and then I got to painting!

So far so good. I've actually FINISHED this one stripe at this point, but I don't have a picture. Yep, only one stripe so far. The most difficult part is definitely the putting down the tape part.

Painting a rug is actually really fun. It definitely feels like something you shouldn't be doing!

Wisdom Teeth & Mirrors

Well, a mirror is something I definitely don't want to look at right now. Considering as how I have a chipmunk cheek. Yes, only one cheek has swelled up. I'm half chipmunk. This is day four after my wisdom teeth removal, and I feel OK. There's not much to say except that it sucks, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. And there wasn't any blood on my clothes (for some reason I thought there would be...gross, I know.) Also the doctor did not have me count down from 10 like you see in movies while I was being put under. He was just talking about how his friend was a miner in Alaska, and then he started laughing, which made me laugh. That's kind of creepy now that I think about it.

Anyway, last week I worked on a mirror. Ant's mom gave me an old mirror that I found in her storage room. When we saw it, we both thought "Beauty and the Beast!"

Large amounts of GOLD GOLD GOLD aren't really my thing though, but I knew just what to do. 

SPRAY PAINT! I used Valspar's Indigo Satin Spray Paint. They had some colors in the glossy sheen, but I didn't want it to be too shiny. Satin worked well. I've used Valspar spray paint before in Deep Sea Diving for the Licorice Chair, which is another shade of blue. It's more Bluey Blue though, while Indigo has an extremely, extremely faint hint of purple. But you wouldn't know it. 

Here's the mirror after one coat. I used many light coats to get the job done, as usual. 

Here's a close-up. My coats aren't very even, but that's OK. It evens out on its own in the end. 

And after coat two. 

It took a little extra work to get all of the nooks and crannies. 

And about five coats later...ta da!

I decided to hang the mirror in the living room right next to the front door. 

My Perfectly Imperfect Home book says that there should be a mirror near the door for guests to look at their appearance when they arrive and before they leave. 

The color of the mirror matches the blue in the lampshade next to it. I love it. 

Spray paint wins again! But like I said, I'm not going to be using it anytime soon.

Source

The Licorice Chair

Remember this chair in progress? I don't really expect you to remember because it's been about a month! Here it is traveling in the back of the car and not wearing its seatbelt!!!

So the story is that my boyfriend and I were given this little oddly-colored chair from his grandma. We decided to paint it blue as inspired by my infatuation with Chex Mix. Or Cool Ranch Doritos. Whatever.

We were in the paint chip aisle at Lowe's when I saw something that said *Available in Spray Paint on a shade of blue. Hello! Spray paint is the best. So I knew that would be a great choice. The color is Deep Sea Diving, the darkest blue to the right in the picture below.

The spray paint is by Valspar and it was in Glossy. 

Here's a close-up of the product number and name.

First we had to sand the little chair down because it was coated in shiny, slippery shellac. 

Once it was all sanded down, I applied primer (white) to it from another spray paint can.

Then my boyfriend decided to clean up with an especially tiny broom. Good job! He can do stuff!

After the priming was done I began to spray paint the blue color on in light, even coats. Sort of even. Well, not even at all. Light, uneven coats. There we go.

You'll also notice that I took the uncharacteristic precaution of using a drop cloth. That's because it wasn't my driveway. I, for one, would love to have spray paint on my driveway. Spray paint is the best! Let's spray paint everything!

Here is the chair, all done and all blue. 

And I threw him back into the backseat of the car. Again, no seatbelt! How sassy. There's also some sort of creepy hieroglyphics on the bottom. I was instructed not to paint over those. Ok!

Here's the chair in its new home. Recognize the desk??

And now you can see why exactly the blue was a good choice. Because it matches the blue in the bedspread! Yippie.

Oh, and by the way, now that I've seen this blue ombre chair DIY on Design Sponge, my chair is feeling really lame. I may have to give it another makeover. But only if it promises to wear its seatbelt.

Chair in Progress

I'm working on a little project this Saturday evening. The paint smells like licorice! Weird. Going to try not to smell anymore, haha!

Piano Bench Makeover

A few Christmases ago, my boyfriend was given this electric keyboard and piano bench:

It's a dark picture, but you can see them, right? That's in our old rental house. Do you want to know something creepy? The piano bench used to look like this:

Yamaha Wood Piano Bench

Now what I want to know is, how can anyone in good conscience make a piece of furniture this ugly? I almost considered it a lost cause. Instead of giving up, I decided to make it more functional and change its form a bit with some black paint and a bit of fabric.

First I knew I wanted it to hold sheet music, so I removed the top and added a bottom and two hinges to create a little storage space.

Next I painted the wooden base with black paint. And finally, I added some batting and this fabric I found on Etsy by Lizzy House. The pattern is from the Castle Peeps collection and it's called Castle Dots in green. I purchased the fabric from uberstitch, but you can find Lizzy's fabric all over Etsy with a search. Also, most sellers on Etsy will sell you just the amount of fabric you need cut off the bolt, so be sure to contact them to see if they'll do a custom listing for you.

Here's the top of the bench after it was all finished:

And now you can see those black legs:

And here it is with its new storage compartment:

Now the bench looks a lot less...naked? And it's way more functional. Awesome.

Sewing Desk Makeover - Round Two!

Remember how the sewing desk went from this...

To this?

Well, it has had another transformation! Last summer with the gray paint chipping a bit (I didn't coat it in clear coat or anything) we decided to do some tweaking to the design and then sand it down and refinish it with wood stain. Notice how the desk opens up (presumably to let out the sewing machine, but the sewing machine is long gone)? Well, we removed the top two pieces that opened up, then we removed the board below that, and then we reattached the top two "opening" pieces. Except we made it so that they won't open up anymore. The effect is that now the desktop is at a more reasonable height to sit at. 

You can see what I mean in the picture below:

Now there's only one layer of desktop. Here's a closeup of the little drawer, which I left painted Cornbread yellow:

I used a Miniwax stain with a built-in poly coating so that I only had to use one product instead of two. 

Here's the top of the desk from above:

And inside the drawer (I didn't cut the bolt, whoops):

The most difficult part of this project was definitely sanding in the little nooks and crannies of the desk to make sure that the gray paint and the leftover finish from the desk's past life were removed so that they new stain would sink in. Another thing you might want to keep in mind if you're tackling a refinishing project is that it takes a loooong time for the stain/poly coating to dry to the point where it does not smell anymore. I recommend leaving the furniture outside for as long as possible.

Now we're finally getting some use out of this guy (it has been in storage) at my boyfriend's new apartment.