Archive for June, 2009
Push It, Push It Real Good
First of all, I hope you all got that Salt-N-Peppa reference in the title. Good times. And now on to our guest bedroom’s recent mini makeover. Check our our lovely new Wallflowers (courtesy of LaDiff) in all of their 3D glory (btw, have you entered the giveaway yet?).
Aren’t they so fresh and so clean in white? We love the gentle shadows that they cast on the wall and the playful texture that they add to a room that’s already full of fun patterns and prints (although I believe they’d be equally amazing on the white wall of an all-white room, like white on white sculpture).
As soon as we got them home we ripped them out of their boxes all Christmas-morning style and started playing with them. The white flowers are actually magnetic, so it’s no surprise that they ended up on our fridge (so pretty!)…
…and even on our hallway’s air intake vent (it’s so nature-meets-machine):
But how do the magnetic flowers stay in place on a regular old wall if they’re magnetic? Why push pins of course! You just hammer them into place on your wall…
… and the flower is drawn to the pin and stays up like magic:
Planning our pattern was no sweat. We just laid the flowers down on a high-contrast surface (the brown back of our guest bedroom’s patterned quilt) and messed around with them until we found an amorphous blob of blooms that tickled our fancy:
Then we slowly transferred them over to the wall (working our way up from the bottom and studying their relationship with each other as we went). We also found that placing a small piece of paper to mark where the already hung wallflowers used to be really helped us keep the whole picture in mind (and study the proportions that we wanted to duplicate on the wall).
As we went we did decide to slightly alter our layout since we didn’t want our gaggle of flora to be higher than the mirror that’s centered in the room. So we made it a bit thicker and less pokie (that’s a technical term) at the top.
Before we knew it, our bloom blob was really working for us. One of the most fun things was switching the sizes around until we adored everything about our little art installation and didn’t want to change a thing (thanks to the magnetic feature you can trade the flowers around tirelessly and even spin them to face any direction with ease).
So what do you guys think? Are you chomping at the bit to win some of your own? At $37 they’re a total steal even if you don’t snag them on the house (cheaper than most art + frame pairings). Would you choose the white flowers or the black ones – or even those fun stainless dragonflies? Where would you hang yours (framing a doorway? snaking up a staircase? in a nursery? the ceiling above your bed?). The possibilities are endless…
And speaking of Wallflowers in a nursery, check out Dooce’s new nursery with none other than the very same white blooms. It’s a small world (with lots of fabulous wall accessories, apparently).
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UPDATE: After we posted our little burst of blooms, a few people sweetly mentioned that they liked the original layout on the bed a bit more than the wall blob… and we actually agreed. A few minutes of switching things around (and eliminating three blooms, which are now on the fridge) produced our newer pokier shape (that isn’t too tall thanks to the removal of those three flowers). Score.
Gotta love those Wallflowers for allowing such a quick a presto change-o. Thanks for the comments one and all- and good luck on the giveaway!
Fab Freebie: The Wallflowers
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries***
For those of you following us on Twitter, you may have caught us talking about our trip to plan this giveaway two weekends ago. We were invited over to LaDifférence to pick out an item to give away (and also to try out for ourselves – score!). For all you non-Richmonders, LaDiff (as we locals know it) is an amazing 45,000 square foot showroom of modern and contemporary home furnishings. Sherry and I like to pop in there every so often to enjoy the eye candy and soak up the inspiration. We highly recommend a visit if you live around here or are every passing through (it almost couldn’t be any closer to I-95, right on Richmond’s historic canal walk).
And after getting over the excitement of being able to pick from four-stories worth of items, we finally settled on the perfect thing to dress up your walls: these wild and whimsical 3D Wallflowers. We knew the white set would be a fun addition to one of our rooms (are you surprised by our choice of color?) but figured the black flowers or even the silver dragonflies might be more fitting for you guys so they’re all up for grabs. Each installs with a simple magnetic push-pin and can add interest to boring hallways, empty corners and even ceilings… but we’ll show you more of that in our follow-up post about putting them up in our house (seriously, they couldn’t be more fun to look at or install).
For now, here are the details on this week’s giveaway (stay tuned for our installation play-by-play):
- PRIZE: A set of White Wallflowers, Black Wallflowers or Silver Wallflutters (a $37 value)
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I’M A WALLFLOWER” or “I’M A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY” or whatever it is that you are (bookworm? party animal?)
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, June 17th at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: Three lucky lads/ladies
- ELIGIBILITY: Prizes can be shipped to the lower 48 United States
- THE USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday. Good luck!
More info about our freebies is available on our Giveaway FAQs page. Images courtesy of LaDifférence.
Walking The Line
Remember this old post about all the fun projects we were daydreaming about taking on with some bonus cash from BHG’s 48-Hour Challenge? Well 20,000+ votes later (!) we didn’t win the 5K (congrats Nicole!), but the good news is that plenty of those projects are still on the agenda. In fact, two of them are already completed! Remember we spruced up our patio a few weeks ago with a DIY firepit and some cheap-o lounge chairs? One down, four to go.
Well, better make that three because we’re back to share the second project that we tackled on the sly. We hinted at wanting to “introduce some layered, textural interest in the half bath” but then decided not to delve into details and surprise you guys instead. Well… surprise!
See that cream on cream texture that’s visible all the way from the front door? Let’s get closer shall we?
Yup, we painted cream on cream horizontal stripes in the half bathroom! It used to be the same tone as the hallways and the adjoining den (Wishes by Glidden) but we decided to amp it up in that jewel box of a bathroom with some lighter stripes to make the room feel a little more expansive (horizontal stripes have a way of creating that effect) and a heckova lot more interesting. Jenn’s Design Star makeover from last summer was actually our inspiration- it just took us twelve months to make it happen. Here’s the bathroom before our little paint intervention:
The entire project took just 4 hours one evening, and the steps were really simple:
Step 1: Divide & Conquer- Measure the full length of your wall and divide that number by twice the number of stripes that you want to have minus one (ex: our ceiling is 98″ tall and we wanted six horizontal stripes so we divided 98 by 11 (6 x 2 = 12 – 1 = 11) to get the thickness of each stripe. Ours came out to about 8.9 inches.
Step 2: Make Your Mark- Use a ruler to mark off every 8.9 inches starting from the floor and working up to the ceiling (we made two small pencil marks on each wall, one on each side).
Step 3: Tape It Off- Grab some blue painter’s tape and connect your pencil markings to create taped off stripes (once the tape is in place rub it a few times so you know that it’s flush with the wall for cleaner lines). The main thing to remember is that the tape should go outside the marks for the stripes you’ll be painting but inside the marks in the negative space that you won’t be painting. This might sound confusing, but just ask yourself if you’re taping off the stripe or the negative space as you go, and make sure the taped stripes are the right distance apart (ours were 8.9 inches) while the tape for the negative spaces is closer (once you remove the tape both areas will be the same width).
Step 4: Roll With It- Grab a good roller and some slightly lighter or darker paint (subtle is key for this look, so just going a shade or two away from the wall color makes for a soft layered look). Then apply two even and thin coats of latex paint between the tape that’s further apart to create your stripes. You’ll also need to use an angled brush to cut in near the base molding and the ceiling.
Step 5: Take It Off, Baby- This is a very very very important step. It’s crucial that you remove every strip of tape as soon as you’re done with your second coat of paint while the paint is still wet (assuming the coverage is good enough that you don’t need a third coat). Waiting to remove the tape until after the paint has fully dried will cause peeling and uneven lines that are less than crisp (which will make you want to cry after all that taping). In short: as soon as your roller is down, start pulling that tape off the wall for a clean stripe that looks seamless and sleek.
There you have it. Horizontal wall stripes. Easy eh? Oh and we used a quart of Valspar’s Honeymilk for the stripes because we actually had a $10-off coupon to Lowe’s. And thanks to that $10 off coupon, this entire project came in at just… (drumroll please)… $2.48. Gotta love that bang-for-your-buck upgrade!
We really like how our crystal tear-drop chandelier (a cheap-o Urban Outfitter’s score from a while back) looks even more dreamy with the soft stripes around it.
And our $9.99 art somehow feels even more spa-like with the tone on tone stripes:
We also feel particularly lucky that our stripes ended up framing our wall sconces perfectly (of course this is something you can ensure by starting your stripes in that area and working up or down to tape off the rest of them so nothing cuts through your lighting at a funny spot).
So there it is. Our under $3 bathroom makeover. We’ve always had a soft spot for stripes (take our blog’s background for example, or our recently striped porch) and I guess we just had to bring ‘em into our tiny half bath to fully embrace the linear love.
What do you guys think? Did any of you take on any cheap-o projects this weekend? Any striping stories of your own? Do tell.
Rebekah’s Design Dilemma
Rebekah’s entry & dining room is bursting with some serious potential. Here’s her letter:
I’m SO excited for your help! We bought our 125-year-old house and redid it, and after all that work I’m stuck on the decorating part. Our dining room and entry room feels SO empty! I’d like it to flow with the adjoining rooms and feel cozier. I like comfortable modern with a touch of traditional. I’m loving your home’s neutral style with white accents and pops of color/pattern. The paint has to stay, as do the light fixtures and the dining table/chairs (I do want to replace them someday, so a suggestion would be great- I’d love a dark wood table that can expand to seat 8 people). The curio cabinet and rug can go. I’d like a bigger buffet and some of the icons/art above the curio have to stay, but the ones on the adjacent wall can go. I’d also like something else to store dishes in, even just a few. I need a little mudroom action like you have to store coats and shoes and we need window coverings (but don’t want to cover the original trim too much). Oh and I’m planning to paint the living room a different color (any suggestions?) because the red is just too dark for that room. Thank you! I know it will be great!! – Rebekah
This space is primed for a major makeover. Here’s the plan:
And now for the mood board breakdown.
Read the rest of this entry »
Eggciting News
Sorry about the terrible egg pun but you’ll never believe what we discovered in my bike helmet out in the garage. Granted, it does demonstrate that we haven’t been out riding as often as we should but…
There’s a bird’s nest in there. And it’s not an abandoned old one, it’s currently in use! Sorry for the blurry photo (taken by Sherry as she teetered on a ladder to get a quick shot before “scaring them”).
And a few hours after our discovery we actually saw the momma bird warming her eggos (no more picture-taking ensued as we didn’t want to spook our new feathered friend). Isn’t it funny that a bird would go through all the trouble to build a nest inside of a helmet in our detached garage? We think she’s getting in by squeezing under the seal at the base of the garage door (there aren’t any other openings and we doubt she’s waiting for us to raise the door to fly in since she probably needs a bit more control than that).
Have any of you guys ever made any exciting animal kindgom discoveries? Perhaps you found a beehive in your basement or a bat in your attic? Does anyone have a skunk mishap to toss into the pot? Or a squirrels gone wild tale? Do tell.
