Meg vs. The Entryway: Just like I envisioned!

It isn't very often that I make my decor turn out the way I imagine it from the beginning. Such a thing requires me both finding what I am looking for and finding it cheap or on sale. But it happened in this one little corner.

Here's how it looked when we moved in. (Complete with mess.)

First order of business: take down those weird hooks and paint the walls. Then add a shoe cabinet from Ikea that I had liked for a long time.

Make sure little guy also approves.

Add a couple of spray painted Ikea frames, a Wal-Mart mirror, and leave it for several months.

Finally find a coat rack on clearance at Sam's Club, and spray paint the pole.

Voila! A little blurry (got to stop taking these pictures on my phone).

Meg vs. Decor: My new pillow!

It has been a long week. The kind where I meant to get lots of things done, but the house just got worse instead of better (thus no posting this week). And I think I might have some kind of sinus infection.

But then I got a sweet package from by BFF Emily, and it made my day! Look what she sent me!

I love this print, it matches my living room perfectly, and it makes me happy every time I see it! Not to mention that it is a super sturdy pillow cover, which should stand up well to all the abuse my little guys are all-too-quick to inflict upon anything I place in their reach. Check out this and other designs at Emily's Etsy store, Little Boston Print Shoppe. She is going to be listing some Christmas prints soon, and I am thinking I may just treat one of you lovely people to a set, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks, Emily!

Meg vs. Miscellany: Ambitious day - check!

Monday: Re-fill that green waste bin. Paint a coat on the changing table attachment. Tape the front hallway. Hang the mirror in the living room above the bench.

We managed to get it all done! I filled up the can with lots more cuttings from our giant overgrown rose bush (tree) and a branch from the yucca tree next to it. I just finished painting the first coat on the attachment (John started, but I had to intervene because I'm anal about the brush strokes), I taped the hallway this afternoon, and John helped me hang the mirror just before bedtime. Phew!

I think the mirror makes this corner look much more complete, but I still feel like it's missing something. We are both leaning toward painting the mirror, a la this look (but not this color; maybe coral):

Source here.

Whaddya think?

Meg vs. The Living Room: So far...

I am still trying to brainstorm some cute decor for our living rooms walls, and I realized I haven't really posted what I've done so far. The ceiling fan was the very first thing we did in the living room, and we tried to keep it consistent with the mission style fixtures throughout the living areas. But with all of the dark colors, we hope to lighten things up with our accent choices. My curtains came from a king-size sheet set, and the vase came from the dollar store and was painted inside with a free quart from Ace (if you're on Facebook and have an Ace Hardware nearby, keep on the lookout for their free quart Saturdays!). I filled the vase with branches cut from our back yard and stuck on some flowers and leaves cut out of my ever-growing paint chip collection.

Meg vs. The Back Yard: The never ending task.

Friday: Re-fill the green waste bin! Clear as much in the side yard as possible.
 
Someday I will get the side yard cleared out completely. And then I will have about ten times more than than to do around the rest of the yard. The work itself is good for me, right?

Saturday: Plant more seeds with the boys. Work on decorations for the living room.

We didn't get to planting seeds. It is 9pm and still 80 degrees in our house, so we only were outside for an hour or so after dinner, and that's when I worked on weeding. However, if I can count "Think of ideas for the living room" as "Work on decorations for the living room," then that goal was done.

Meg vs. Assorted Unfinished Business: Finishing up

Thursday: Clean up the painting stuff and put the bedroom back together. Put a final coat of paint on the living room bench.

The first half mostly was done because my husband felt bad and did it for me while I was washing a giant mound of dishes at 10pm. The second I did during nap time (the only time I was home before dinner all day!). It is nice to actually have something finished rather than in progress or waiting to be done!

Meg vs. The Living Room: Window Treatments

Wednesday: Kindly ask hubby to put blinds back up in the living room. Pull out sheets and figure out a plan for curtains.

I made curtains today! I had only done so once before, and they were pretty crude. I can't say that today's rendition are much better, but the fact that they came from a sheet helped because 3/4 of the seams were already done for me. The only problem is, the curtain rod we snatched at Ross in a hurry was too short, so I couldn't put them up. Boo! To make myself feel better, I turned one king-size pillowcase into two cases for throw pillows, and they are now sitting on our couch. I can't make anything else for that room in that fabric, or I think I will start to detest it even though I am totally in love with it now.

I did kindly asked my hubby to put up the blinds, and he kindly said that he would... then went off to study. I am confident that they will be put up soon. He has been super pro-active with the house projects this week, so I can't complain! Pictures to come as soon as we get things up and ready.

P.S. More living room news: our correct couches should be delivered next Friday or Saturday. No more borrowed couches with shipping fabric draped over them! Yay!

Meg vs. Refinishing: Painting the bench and a little relaxation.

Thursday: Clean out the gutter drain in the front yard. Pull weeds if there is still room in the can.

Friday: Change out the dimmer switch in the master bedroom. Cut up the rest of the branches and put in the shed for fire wood.

Saturday: Start refinishing bench - put on liquid sandpaper, go buy paint and hardware for drawers. 

Clearly it has been an off week. But for good reason! My in-laws are visiting (well, MIL got here yesterday, FIL will be here tomorrow). I didn't know they were coming when I planned my goals last week. So after doing more cleaning on Wednesday than I have done since we have lived here, I thought I could give myself a bit of a pass and take it easy. We've relaxed, gone to the Jelly Belly Factory, walked by the bay, and the hubs and I even went on a date (shopping for house stuff--we are hopeless romantics!). Still, some things have gotten done. The weed goal was easy because the can was already full, ha ha! I won't be too hung up if we don't finish all the goals this week because tomorrow we have awesome plans like going to the temple, eating out, dying Easter eggs, and doing some consulting with my Pops-in-law about future house projects. If I don't write until Sunday, I haven't been kidnapped, I've just been enjoying! And for your enjoyment, here are a couple of pictures from spray painting my bench today:

I decided to scratch my plans of painting the old fashioned was and just spray this bad boy all at once. Sometimes taking a shortcut is better than not doing it at all! Kind of a funny note - we noticed that all of the spray cans had pictures of Ikea furniture that they had spray painted. This can has a picture of our old dining room table painted white, and another can had our metal end table painted pink. I guess Rust-oleum doesn't have a very big budget for their cover art! Ha!

After a quick sanding.

After a whole can of primer (clearly I ran out).

After a whole can of paint.

I'll get another can next week so I can add another coat and finish off the parts I missed (the inside of the drawers, the underside of the tabletop, etc. But for not all the visible parts are somewhat presentable. When it is all dry tomorrow I'll take a picture with the pad back on. I am so excited!

Meg & John vs. The Living Room: DIY floating shelves (with a little help)

I am sorry it took me so long to post about our lovely new shelves. Though I am pretty sure only my mom is anxious to see them =).

I had the idea to do a crown molding knock-off shelf, and found a pretty thorough tutorial on this site. We got excited, bought some inexpensive molding, I took the ugly brackets off our old shelves, and... procrastinated trying to figure out how to cut and attach the molding. Luckily a handy friend of ours was over, took a look at what I had picked up, then took all the shelves home and put them together for us in about an hour. I am positive it would have taken me approximately 17 times that long.

So all we had left was to mount them. We wanted to use the existing plaster mounting thingies (that is the technical term) left from the old shelves, since they were already level and at the right height. The basic plan was to attach a 2x2 (that was cut on an angle on one side to fit inside the molding) directly to the wall, then to attach the floating shelf to that cleat, per the fix-it guy on the tutorial I referenced. I started by following this handy tip and putting toothpaste on each of the holes, then placing the board over the holes so we would know where to drill.

The result:

Next, we used my handy fabric ruler to mark a uniform height on each of our cleats.

We drilled holes in the wood, then screwed each beam to the wall.

I don't have any pictures of the next part, because my awesome husband did it all by himself while I was locked in our room reading Hunger Games. I am such a good wife. In short, you set the shelf on this cleat, then screw the shelf to the cleat through the top of the shelf. John drilled pilot holes in both the shelf and the cleat, drilled a countersink hole in the top of the shelf for the screw to fit into, then attached the shelves to the cleats. Now check out the before and after!

Love love love! The only thing I have to brag about this project is that I have an awesome husband who took a night off from studying even though I was slacking off because he knew how excited I was about getting these shelves fixed up.

Meg vs. The Living Room: More Stinking Paint!

Thursday: Get paint samples for bedrooms and bathrooms. Scrape damaged paint from living room windows, then prime and paint.

I have to say, I am seriously tired of painting, and I still have about 80% of the house left to go. Blegh. Okay, the complaining is out of my system now.

We painted up our samples in our bedroom last night. We decided we would pick the color for our room, use that same color for the other bedrooms, then get the next darker coordinating color for our bathroom. We are holding off on picking paint for the kids' bathroom until we decide for sure on tile. Here are the samples:

Sorry for the horrible pictures! We chose the one on the left as a safer bet. The one on the right seemed a little dark and almost had a purple tinge to it. The last thing we want is to end up with all purple bedrooms! I am excited for clean, fresh walls if not for actually doing the job.

This afternoon during nap time I got to work on the front windows.

There were two places where the paint was bubbling up, and we were worried about water damage, so I scraped those spots off and took a look: no discernible damage. Yay! I started sanding a bit and was going to go at it with the electric sander to even things out again, when my common-sense alert kicked in: "This is a window on an old house! It isn't unlikely that one of these paint layers has lead! You are pregnant and have two kiddos! What are you doing?"

At this point I did what any experienced homeowner would do: I called my mom. "So, Mom, I think there's a good chance that the place I scraped has lead paint. So I think I should just stop right there and paint back over it."  "Yeah, I think you should do that."

So that's what I did. One coat of primer this afternoon, one coat of paint tonight, and another to come before the end of the week. It doesn't look too pretty, but not much worse than the big, bulging, chipping mess that was there before. Maybe sometime I'll have someone else deal with fixing it when the kiddos and me will not be near the premises. I also spent some time touching up all of the trim around the windows. Close inspection revealed that it was in dire need.

Ah, the perilous adventures of scatterbrained me trying to fix our old house!

Meg vs. The Living Room: Shelves!

Saturday:  Change oil in the car. Straighten the garage.

It was raining and we were unexpectedly busy today. Ergo no oil change... onto next week docket it goes! BUT my awesome hubby spent a good part of the day (When he should have been studying) putting up the living room shelves! And they look awesome!


The only bad part is that my back-up camera is now non-functional, and my back-up back-up is lost (had it earlier, pretty sure the kiddos hid it). So photos will have to wait. Boo. I will have to go look at my new shelves to cheer myself up.

Meg vs. The Living Room: DIY Bench Slipcover

Friday: Sew slip cover for living room bench.

I am doubly excited today. First, I made a new slipcover for my bench! All by myself! And second, I actually did it before lunch time. I am posting a good 12 hours before I usually get to it =).

A while back my good friend Emily pinned this tutorial for a DIY bench.

I had no desire to build a bench from scratch, but the cover immediately caught my eye. I had been trying to figure out how to re-upholster this old bench I got on Freecycle. It is just the right size for the space we have, and it also serves as extra seating when we have guests for dinner--we just pull it over to the dining room. But, as you can see, it is not especially attractive.

It is actually a coffee table that the previous owner converted into a bench, and they did not do a particularly neat job on the corners. I didn't want to repeat that mistake. So when I saw this cover, it was like an epiphany--it eliminated the bunchy corner problem, AND I could pull it off and wash it as needed. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?! No matter, that is why I have Pinterest; so I don't have to think of things myself.

This is the fabric I ordered on Amazon. I love it!

If you scroll down to Step 5 in the bench tutorial, you will find the instructions for sewing the slipcover. I followed them pretty exactly, substituting the measurements for my bench and adding 1/2" on each side to compensate for the seams. My bench was 19 1/2" x 36", so these were the pieces I cut:

Top:  1 piece 20 x 36.5
Long Sides:  2 pieces 36.5 x 8
Short Sides:  2 pieces 20 x 8

(The white edge of the fabric is showing in the picture; I didn't include it in the measurement.)

It was a surprisingly easy project. If you are more proficient/less nervous at sewing, this could easily be done in an hour. After you subtract toddler entertainment/snack breaks, it really didn't take me much longer than that.

Here it is when I fitted it before hemming:

And after hemming:

Ta-Da! This is a super easy way to re-do an existing bench or turn a table into a bench. I can't wait to paint and add some cute hardware to finish this off.

Meg vs. The Living Room: Still no shelves.

Wednesday: Attempt to finally mount shelves. Touch up paint in the living and dining rooms.

I did myself a kindness and did the second half of today's goal on Monday. And it was extra nice because I STILL didn't get the shelves done! They are a serious Achilles' heel. I am convinced that when we finally get them up they are going to cause the wall to crack open or they will fall and destroy all my frames. Am I the only one that has these kind of DIY anxiety nightmares?

Back to why our walls are still shelf-less. I got a message last night saying that our windows came in early and the installers wanted to come first thing this morning. Awesome! Of course I called back and said yes, then slapped another coat of paint on my shelves, did a few other things, and crashed into bed, telling myself I would get up early to finish up what needed to be done for the window guys. Somehow I did not notice that the whole house was a disaster.

When I woke up and realized the extent of the mess, I got to work and dragged John out of bed (on his day off!) to take down all of the blinds. We were mostly done when the installer arrived at about 8:15 a.m. We did some necessary shopping in the morning, then I went to the temple during nap time since we couldn't do much with the installers working all day and John had some free time to watch the boys. When I got back we marked the wood for the shelves and charged the drill, then the boys got anxious for dinner, the missionaries called and needed some help from my husband, and I realized I was going to have to put the blinds back up by myself before bed time. So long, goal!

But again, we had a great day and I'll call it good. New windows, some necessary rejuvenation, and 1/5 of that stinking shelf project done! I am learning not to expect too much of myself; it is just as bad as expecting too little, and ends up with the same result--I am less effective.

Meg vs. The Living Room: Touch-up paint and painted shelves

Monday: Sand, fill, and paint shelves for the living room.


I tried to start on the shelves during "nap time," but my kids didn't cooperate with my well-laid plans, so I quickly filled a couple of holes and then ran back inside to the child presently making a ruckus.

Instead I decided to start on Wednesday's goal of touching up the paint, since it was mostly in places out of little ones' reach and was something I could do while watching the boys, and also do in little spurts without too much consequence on the results. But once the perfectionist goggles were on, the places I wanted to fix just kept popping up. There were a lot of places where the molding wasn't really straight, so the straight tape lines actually left little gaps in between the paint and the molding. You really can't tell much of a difference here, but it was just noticeable to be really annoying. Finally at just before 11pm I finally decided it was good enough.

All touched up and ready for shelves!

After a glass of water and an ice cream sundae, I forced myself out to the garage to squeeze in as much work on the shelves as I could manage before I collapsed in exhaustion. I finished a little sanding, wiped them down, and slapped a coat of paint on each one. Now two shelves have one coat and one shelf has two. They'll all need another coat or two tomorrow, but I will call today's mission accomplished.

I am already behind on tomorrow's goal because even though we put the can out at 6:30 a.m., apparently we missed the green waste truck. I am seriously tempted to ask my neighbors if I can borrow theirs, because not a single other person has had theirs out in the last few weeks. Alas, I feel too guilty making that my first real acquaintance with these people... Here's to another week with the giant tree branch in our driveway!

Meg vs. The Living Room: Ideating!

So speaking of blank slates, you can see my ideas for the living/dining rooms here.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?