From Paint Chips to Artwork

Could there be anything more difficult to pick out than artwork? Not only does it make a statement in your home, but it’s an investment as well. While I’ve been working on my little master bedroom update, I’ve been researching artwork options to flank our bed (as well as researching bedside tables). I searched high and low and found some great options, but nothing was singing to me. That is, until I found this pin on Pinterest.

Jackpot. Graphic? Check. Free? Double check. Easy to change without guilt once I get tired of it? Bingo. I give all the credit of this idea to How about Orange, a great site for DIY ideas. I put my own twist on this with different colors, but the creativity was all from her original print. Jessica used Glidden paint swatches for her artwork, but I decided to try out the Martha Stewart line of paint colors from Home Depot. I kept on hearing how great her colors are, and lord knows I don’t need to paint my house anymore, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to try them out (colors listed at the end of the post).

I grabbed four of each paint color (is taking that many swatches from Home Depot even legal?), but each print took about 70 triangles and I got 4 triangles from each swatch… so you can do the math. :) I cut all my little triangles (2″ tall x 1.25″ wide, per the tutorial) and got to work on my completely random layouts.

Cute, right? These prints were as simple as gluing triangles to a piece of paper – because that’s essentially what I did. I made one print a little lighter (mine) and one a little darker (Scott) so I would have his/her artwork for our bedroom.

I hung the prints behind our lamps, which may seem strange, but hanging them above the lamps would have ended up looking very awkward. When the print is hung at a height that relates to the furniture underneath it, it creates a sort-of vignette with the table, lamp and print – so all three pieces serve as one element in the room. Also, hanging art too high is just decorating suicide – keep that in mind, folks. You want a room to die? Hang art above eye level and you’ll succeed.

Notice our new white bedding and gray striped sheets? These are the summer changes I’ve been talking about – and we kinda love them. More on that later!

 Paint swatches used (all Martha Stewart Line): Talc, Sandpiper, Cityscape, Bayou, Eiderdown, Parchment Paper, Fennel Seed, Oolong Tea, Dried Chamomile, Schoolhouse Slate, Gabardine, and Falcon.

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It’s Salmon, not Pink

This is the story of how I saved a couple bucks, realized what smart friends I have, and convinced my husband to get on board with pink furniture. How could these three things all possibly be about one little weekend project? I’m not quite sure, but that’s how this post started and I’m sticking to it.

For the past few months, I have been obsessed with researching new night stands for our bedroom. OBSESSED. I searched every (reasonably priced) furniture store I know of, checked every local antique store, and even spent hours on Pinterest (shocker) searching for inspiration or something that would be the. perfect. thing. for my master bedroom. You may or may not remember, but I was starting to tire of my sad little Ikea night stands, in these pictures of yore:

Kind of nondescript, right? Sure, when I purchased them 5 years ago, they were my first Ikea purchase and I was pretty excited at how great they looked for a whopping $30 dollars. But, they just weren’t cutting it for the updates we were doing in our bedroom, and it was time for a change. Hence, my extensive search.

After months of searching that only led to really expensive options or night stands I just wasn’t wild about, the lightbulb turned on that maybe I could reuse my existing Ikea night stands. Don’t I (and all other bloggers) preach about the wonders of paint and how they can dress up even the most drab of furnishings? Yes, of course, paint! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

(imagine here a before shot of my nightstands with casters, followed by lots of action shots of me refinishing these tables. Bad blogger.)

Yes, the Ikea casters were not only very boring (i.e. lacking any architectural details) but they also had casters. I knew that if I was going to keep these nightstands in my house, I had to give them a proper foot. With cheap plastic casters, they were the ugly duckling of the house and I knew it was time for an upgrade. So the renovation started with lots and lots of research on furniture feet, which eventually led me to $2.00 bun feet at Lowe’s – the perfect proportions for my simple nightstand.

As for the finishing, I went to my coworker for advice, since her husband is a professional carpenter/finisher/jack of all trades. I was a bit hesitant to re-finish these cheap pieces of furniture, but I figured if there was a way, my expert friend would know it. Not only did I get great advice (for re-finishing cheap, wood-ish Ikea furniture), I got a plethora of great information and tools to use during my project. Seriously, it pays to have friends that are experts in fields you aren’t! First, I started with sanding the night stands so that a primer would actually stick to the laquer-esque finish. Then, I applied one coat of oil-based Kilz primer (oil based sticks to everything, especially your hands), sanded slightly, and got ready for the paint.

Yes, I have pink nightstands, and I love them. I’ve been working on neutralizing my bedroom (to be revealed at a later date – oh, the anticipation!) but I knew that I wanted some fun pops of color to keep things interesting. I pulled some paint swatches, most of which were in the terra-cotta family, and went to the husband for final approval. He wasn’t pleased. He said something along the lines of “I’m not having pink furniture in my house” and suggested I do something lime green or a crackle finish. After such comments, I had to re-iterate that I am a designer and he should trust me on this one – especially considering the alternative (see heinous suggestions above). I painted one, even coat of my new salmon paint, sanded with a fine, brillo-like sanding pad (from my professional, finisher friend) and painted another coat. At this point, my husband understood and got on board with the lovely, pink paint.

After the paint dried for a day or two, I applied two thin coats (sanding in between, of course) of water-based polyurethane to give a hearty finish to our night stands. We let the poly dry for a good two days before moving it back into the room and putting our belongings on them. Sure, the night stands could stand a little bit of styling (or some baskets to conceal my explosion of un-read books) but I’m so excited with the very inexpensive improvement. These certainly aren’t my forever solution, but for now, they’re just dandy. Dandy and pink go together quite well, right?

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Asheville, NC – iPhone dump

Life has been busy, and I’m a broken record. I’m also going to do something a lot of bloggers tend to do – an iPhone dump. I’m such a cliché, right? Yes, I have an iPhone and yes, I kinda love it. And I wanted to share a few pictures I had on the ol’ phone, so why not do a virtual iPhone dump? I hear it’s the cool thing to do.

This weekend I attended a family wedding in Asheville, NC. I don’t know about you, but a family wedding is basically the best thing ever. My family is wonderful and funny and entertaining – and really knows how to throw a party. The rehearsal dinner was at a great venue, The Barns, in Black Mountain, NC and there was a bluegrass band called High Windy that was. so. good. We even bought their CDs afterwards, and felt like groupies.

After a night of foot stompin’ and barbeque eatin’ (catered by 12 Bones barbeque in Asheville), we took a trip to a huuuuge antique mall (Antique Tabacco Barn) that my coworker recommended. I was unsuccessful in finding new night stands, but I did send my coworker a picture of this cute dresser for $99 big ones.

Love that mirror! This antique mall was 77,000 SF of pure antique bliss. We found some beautiful old doors with egg-and-dart moulding and beveled glass, a custom wood cabinetry/divider wall, and a campaign dresser for a whopping $950. I decided to pass on that one. But seriously, if you’re in Asheville, check it out! We were all quite impressed with the goods they had there.

The actual wedding was at another beautiful venue, The Farm, and everything was perfect. There were wild horses for the guests to pet and a bonfire for s’mores under the stars.

The best part, though, was the Photobooth. This is a big trend in weddings now, and I have to agree that it’s the best thing ever. So fun!

Oh, and while my parents were up in NC visiting us, my sister decided to have a baby. She’s really known for her good timing with childbirth. Meet Clara Elaine, my new little niece. So excited to meet her!

One more photo dump: here is a little something that I’m working on in the abode. We’ll see if it turns out into something blogworthy! Thanks for hanging in there with me, readers!

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I’m Dreaming of a White Bedroom

It’s so interesting to me to see how my design aesthetic evolves as I get older. Five years ago, I was slapping apple green paint on my walls and buying bright, poppy accessories. Now, I’m craving something a bit different. I lean more towards neutral backdrops with subtle hints of pattern and texture. Take our living room, for example:

The Before

The (always in progress) After

My latest neutral focus has been my bedroom. Yes, my current bedspread is quite fetching, but for some reason I’m dying for a white oasis. I’ve been on the hunt for a lovely white bedspread, neutral but patterned sheets, and a little splash of color in some lamps and pillows. It’s quite the change from my norm, but I’m excited to have a hotel-esque bedroom at some point in the future (doesn’t white bedding just scream luxury hotel room?). Here is a dump of the inspiration I’ve been putting on pinterest recently.*

Maps for wallpaper? If I actually did this, my husband might explode with excitement.

Anyone else out there noticing their style changing as they grow up? Are you moving toward more sophisticated palettes, or more fun color combinations?

*for those of you that have been living under a rock (or, if you’re my dad), Pinterest has saved me from a very disorganized jumble of bookmarks and has now put all of my inspirations in one fabulous place. i heart it.

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Two dressers are better than one

*Editor’s Note: my dear friend told me that she was perplexed why my last post was about scones, when clearly there were pictures of light fixtures – and not biscuits. I’m so glad that I have friends that can teach me about echolocation and behavioral ecology, and that I can teach them that a wall mounted light fixture is in fact a sconce, and not a typo.*

January is turning out to be the month of mini updates to the abode. We’re enjoying our (much appreciated) bonuses and trying to figure out the best way to invest that money into something that we’ll get a lot out of. We thought long and hard about redesigning our closet so that it was more functional (some terrible sketches may have been involved), but in the end decided to put our hard-earned dollar into something we could take with us.

This was the dresser we had been living with since we said I do. You might be thinking that this looks like a mighty fine dresser (despite the bat’s wing escutcheon plates*) but looks can be deceiving. We were literally busting at the seams in this bad boy. The drawers were a bit shallow, not to mention rickety, and we were quickly outgrowing our hand-me-down furniture. We even made several trips to Goodwill to get rid of items we didn’t need, but for some reason the dresser wasn’t cutting it for our combined wardrobes. Luckily for me, I have a husband that gets his kicks buying new furniture, so we started the dresser search.

We knew that we wanted something with a dark stain and simple lines, and this Pottery Barn beauty seemed to fit the bill. We visited the store and promptly fell in love with the roomy drawers, but were not in love with the price tag. Almost $2,000 for two chests?! We just couldn’t justify spending so much on something so simple – especially when we found something so similar for half the price.

Well hello, Pottery Barn look-a-like. It’s so nice to meet you. We decided to check out Haverty’s, since we found our sectional there and were super happy with the reasonable price. Once we saw this dresser that had the clean lines and dark stain we were looking for, at half the price, our decision was a no brainer. We ordered up two of these beauties, and in five to ten business days, we were the proud new owners of a ton more storage space.

We flipped the room around a bit to have the dressers flank the window where our bed used to reside. We realized that after 3 years, our bedroom was feeling a bit ho-hum – and this switcheroo was just the change that we needed to make the room feel like new. Plus, mister Charlie’s bed is now in its own little nook, which he is absolutely smitten with.

Now, as you can see, the wall where our dresser used to be in unbearably bare, while the other side of the room is busting with eye candy. We’ll eventually move our photo collage to this newly open wall, but that’s another post for another day.

And, mister elephant has found a new place, which is no longer in front of the television, making for a very happy husband. Next up, our budget friendly rug purchase that is making my husband grrr with frustration, but making me feel like I live in an episode of Sarah’s House. Confused? Stay tuned.

*that refers to the hardware that’s on the drawers. There’s another bit of useless trivia for my dear friends that have no clue what I’m talking about 95% of the time.

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Bring on the Spring (bedding)

All this warmer weather had me itching for some new bedding in our master bedroom. I was still smitten with our paisley bedding, but we’ve had it for quite some time and it was time to change things up a bit and bring some color into our boudoir.

Now, you have to understand something about me: 1) warm weather makes me extremely happy, and 2) I crave change. Put those two things together, plus the hubs being out-of-town, and I was on a full-on bedding hunt for 2 days straight. I hit up all of the local retailers I could think of, plus discount places like Marshall’s and Ross. I even scoured the internet for hours trying to find something that was just the right amount of color and pattern to ease my indecisive mind. And where did I find our snazzy new bedding? The mecca of all things indie and, quite frankly, not really me – Urban Outfitters.

Urban’s sunshine medallion duvet was just what I needed to feed my need for a burst of color. Sure, it’s a bit on the hippy side, but I just love the colors and the large-scale pattern. We like to let Charlie up on the bed every once in a while (shh don’t tell) so I wanted to find a duvet that had enough going on (ie. not white) that it would hide any doggy dirt. I also wanted something that would work with our existing wall color – this is totally not the way to design, but I’m too lazy to repaint the walls right now.

This bedding also made me realize how great of a purchase our neutral Tate bed was. It’s the perfect backdrop for a colorful duvet, and the simple details of the bed help to combat the wild pattern (I’m totally talking myself into this purchase, aren’t I? I swear I’m happy with it).

We decided to move the rug from our living room into the bedroom, since we have a new rug for the living room on the way. I love how the neutral rug grounds the room and it’s so nice to have something cushy for our feet to land upon on a cool, spring morning.

As always with a new purchase, I notice things that need to be tweaked in the space. Have you seen our sad and outdated Ikea table lamps? I’ve been ignoring them for some time because, again, the laziness. But now that we have something fresh and new, I’m dying for some new lamps – possibly yellow? I’m thinking I can find two thrift store lamps of different styles and tie them together with a glossy yellow finish and white drum shade. Project!

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Big Girl Bedtime

The day has finally arrived. All of the anticipation and anxiousness has culminated itself into this one moment: the bed delivery. Pretty dramatic for a piece of furniture, right? Well, this isn’t just a bed. It’s a BIG GIRL bed. I talked about our purchase a couple of months ago, and since we placed our order, we’ve been waiting and waiting for Crate and Barrel to let us know when the fateful day would arrive. Apparently our bed was made by one handed old men and spun with pure gold for the amount of time it took to get here, but that’s beside the point. All hail the Tate bed in all of its ivory fabric glory!

The sleek, low platform bed is definitely something we’re getting used to, but we’re super pleased with the purchase. Just the fact that we’re now able to lean up against something solid while we read at night (ie. not the window blinds) makes this bed purchase a win in our book. We’re also really pleased with the fabric choice. The standard khaki color was nice, but this smooth ivory will be super versatile when we change out the bedding in the future – which I’m sure will happen very often. In case you forgot, here is what our college-esque bed frame looked like before the arrival of Mr. Tate.

Ho hum. Oh, and in case you’re wondering where our awesome paisley bedspread went to, no need to fret. We’re in what I like to call “Scott Summer Mode” which means we strip down our bed to the bare bones (ie. the throw only) so that the hubs doesn’t sweat himself to death at night. Nice visual, huh? Despite the fact that our house is a cool 75 degrees everynight and I’m perfectly happy to be doused in down all year round, we use just our throw in the summer time to keep things cool. I’m not bitter. Does anyone else have a “summer set” of bedding?

Now that we have a real bed, we also have real design details, like this perfectly tufted headboard. Swoon. It’s just enough detail to get me worked up, but not too traditional to make me wanna spew. I’m down with cabriole legs and highboys, but just not in my home for some reason. Clean lines is the way to go for this abode.

Kinda like in our new “footboard”. Platform beds don’t have a footboard, which is something we struggled with in our bed decision. We didn’t want our bedding to always be sliding off the end of the bed, so hopefully with this design our bedding can stay nicely tucked into our faux footboard and stay on our bodies, where it belongs. How do you guys like the new digs? Are you pleased as punch about the fabric choice like we are?

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Happy Birthday, House!

Today marks the two year anniversary of the day Scott and I purchased our lovely little home. It was the beginning of an era – the beginning of our life as a married couple, the beginning of our fav pooch, Charlie, and the beginning of our adventures in home renovation. We’ve had some great times in this house of ours: seeing our lovely little dog take his first steps and celebrating our first wedding anniversary, just to name a few. We’ve also encountered some pretty interesting times – multiple leaks in the roof, which led to moldy ceilings (score!), doors too tight for their frames, bug infestations, etc. Ahh, the joys of home ownership!

To properly celebrate this momentous occasion, let’s take a little walk down memory lane to see a few of the changes we’ve done to spruce up the place!

The kitchen before we moved in sported a stove and fridge straight out of the 1950s, as well as outdated white cabinet knobs and grimy tiled countertops. We decided to spruce it up on the cheap by keeping the new cabinets and good-enough tile flooring, while adding some swanky new quartz countertops and DIY tile backsplash, product of yours truly.

With a coat of green paint, new black appliances and a proud pooch, our kitchen went from drab to totally rad. Yay us! We also tackled a mini-bathroom makeover for our guest bathroom, which was in desperate need of repair, thanks to the dingy textured walls that we inherited with the house.

We added some super thin drywall to cover the monstrosity that is textured walls, replaced the mirror and, of course, added a fresh coat of cool blue paint. We also finished the whole room off with some new, crisp white crown moulding, which makes all the difference in home renovation land.

When we toured our house before purchasing, we were wowed by the huge master bedroom, but knew that we would want to put our own spin on the room. The white ceiling fan and scroll curtain rods weren’t our cup of tea – at all.

We slapped some paint on those drab walls, brought in some pictures to remind us of good times and hung some curtains to add a little bit of drama. We’re still awaiting our super mod bed to be delivered, and contemplating a future rug and bench purchase, but for now our master suite is music to our ears.

We’ve had lots of other fun projects to fill up our spare time, but I’ll save those for another post. Happy birthday, the artful abode! Here’s to another year of pulling weeds, touching up paint and avoiding major roof renovations. Yay! :)

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Big Girl Bed, Big Girl Dilemma

Scott and I decided to jump into adult land and actually research buying a real bed. Not a box spring that we’ve had since college, but a legitimate big girl bed, complete with real wood slats and espresso wood legs. Swoon! I’m super excited about this new venture, but of course, I’m having a bit of a decision dilemma. If I was choosing this bed for someone else it would take .5 seconds. But choosing something for myself? Pour yourself some wine because it’s gonna be a long one.

We have narrowed it down to some fabulous contenders (including some favs from Room and Board), but our top cheese at the moment is the Tate Bed from Crate and Barrel. Yum. We tested it out in person at the store today, but brought home a couple of fabric swatches before sealing the deal. Enter my indecisiveness. 

The bed on the left is a great, neutral suede color that would be a great contrast to our new white curtains and soothing blue walls. Plus, it’s in stock and would ship within 1 week. Buuuut I’m not entirely sold on how well it coordinates with our existing chocolate bedding. If you’ve forgotten what our lovely bedding looks like, check it out below.

The bed on the right is a great ivory color that looks great with the paisley bedding, but it would take 8 weeks to deliver and might show a bit more dirt than the darker color.

So what’s a girl to do? Any thoughts on this super important issue that I’m sure you’re all losing sleep over? Should we stick with our best friend beige, or take a risk on a lovely ivory? Oooo I need your help!

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White is the new Black

I think I have a new obsession with all things white. Don’t get me wrong – my love affair with color is still going strong, but I love finding little pops of white to add to the house to lighten things up a bit. Despite the fact that our house is jammed packed with windows, we don’t have the best natural light – so a little bit of white goes a long way in Casa Hernandez.

Today’s installment of white comes from none other than Ikea. I had been pinning for their white grommet top curtains ever since I installed them in my sister’s nursery, and I’ve had my eye on those chic Ikea picture rails, but hadn’t found the perfect spot for them yet. So after overthinking and planning everything in my head (as usual) I decided on the perfect spots for my new pops of white.

The wall above our TV in our den was itching for something – and something big. Our access door to the attic is right above where the TV stands, so I didn’t want to put something on the wall, like a floating shelf, that would need to be removed every time we pulled down the attic door. I also wanted to bring in a touch of white to the den since most of the furniture in this room is dark, so the white floating shelf was the perfect solution.

Voile! This six foot sucker is the perfect solution to filling up our lonely wall above the television. I’m still working on filling the ledge with awesome frames of alternating sizes/colors, but am so pleased with my jolt of white that I had to share. Oh, and we have a slight obsession with Friends. This photo conveniently crops out the full 10 seasons of Friends we have hiding in our media cabinet. Nerd alert!

Our other white-tastic accent comes in the form of curtains. Curtains are the bane of my existence. I don’t have any in my home and spend countless hours trying to decide on what colors and types to put where. They haunt me. Luckily, I made the decision to put white curtains in our master bedroom to lighten up our somewhat dark palette of chocolate and blue, so I knew these economy curtains from Ikea would do just the trick.

The infamous before shot. I think that if you make your before shoots look a bit sad (unmade bed, curtains strewn about) the after shots have that much more of an impact. Did I just give away my secrets? Whoops. 

Handy Husband did a great job at hanging our Ikea curtain rails. We hung these curtains as high as humanly possible to give the illusion of higher ceilings. If you hang your curtains lower than ceiling height, your eye will focus on that point and make the room feel smaller and less awesome.

It’s amazing how much something so minuscule can give a room such a “finished” look. I left these curtains just a bit longer than our ceiling height so they puddled a bit on the floor. Too-short curtains is like wearing high water pants – definitely a fashion no no. The curtains also give our non-big-girl bed a faux headboard look, which works great in the interim until we splurge for a real bed- headboard and all. Any white addicts like me out there who want to share their latest white obsessions?

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