Decorating Archives - Page 64 of 67

accessories, decor, Decorating, Falling in Love with Your Home, Pillows, Pretty Handsome Guy

Changing Out Your Pillows for a New Look

Winter is almost over, and not a moment too soon! I have been hanging onto my Christmas cards and warm fuzzy pillows and throw (from Pier One). But, I have been feeling the Winter blues. So, I decided to make a quick change to the line up in our living room. (Hey, Pretty Handsome Guy, did you like how I used a football term?! ha, ha.)

By the way, speaking of Pretty Handsome Guy, today is his birthday! He’s the big 4-0! Woohoo! I have four months to tease him about being 40 until my counter ticks over too. Then I’ll have to shut up about it.

Okay, sorry for the diversion, back to the topic at hand, falling in love with your room by changing out pillows.

Couch Before – Christmas Pillows and Throw

Sometimes falling in love with a room again is simply a matter of changing out your fabrics or pillows, throws, place mats, runners, a rug, etc. (Especially if you have an old couch that you are hiding under a slipcover.)

I had a few minutes without the kids the other day and suddenly found myself at the back of Steinmart in the pillow section. Within 15 minutes I had grabbed several discounted pillows and was running for the register before I had to pick up Pretty Handsome Boy #2. (Anyone else been in that mad dash to the register using up EVERY single minute before it is time to reclaim your children? Yeah, I figured I was the only one.)

When I got home, I performed transformation magic on the two chairs and sofa in our living room.

Wingback Chair Before

Wing Back Chair After

Club Chair Before

Oh – you eagle eye you – Yes, I know you just saw that pillow in the wingback chair above. I just moved it. FREE transformation Baby!

Club Chair After

Couch Before

Couch After (Throw from Club Chair Before)

Couch After – Close Up Pillows

As you can see in the above picture, I FINALLY put away all my Christmas cards that were displayed on the shutters in the background. So, how about your home? Do you have a room that could benefit from just a few new fabrics? Try it, this is the quickest way to transform a room.

I hope you will check out some other ways to “Fall in Love with Your Home Series”. in February!

February 24, 2011/7 Comments/by Brittany Bailey

creating moulding, Decorating, DecorChick, Guests, Stairway makeover

Adding Moulding to Your Staircase – Decor Chick Guest Post

Today I want to welcome Emily from DecorChick! Isn’t she gorgeous! But, she’s not just attractive, she is brilliant! (And fun to hang with.)

Why do I think she’s brilliant? Because she has one extra special, creative brain. Just look what she made out of a little lonely drawer!

I love her home and all the changes she’s made to it. Especially her staircase makeover! I’m jealous of her staircase because, I live in a two story home, and I spend A LOT of time going up and down the stairs. Every step I take on the stained carpet stairs with an ugly banister and spindles makes me long to live in Texas in Emily’s home. I have been wanting to give our staircase a makeover since we moved in. Sadly, I haven’t started it yet. But, I know when I do I will be more in love with my home because of it.

Emily has agreed to share her staircase moulding tutorial with you today. So, please give her a big welcoming hug.

Heeeeeeeeeeeres, Emily:

Hi everyone, I’m Emily from Decorchick. I’m so happy to be posting on Brittany’s blog today. I’ve always been a fan of Brittany and her blog, and I was fortunate and got to hang out with her at Blissdom and it was so much fun. Brittany is such a sweetheart, but I know you all know that already. 🙂

I finished a big project (with the help of my Dad) and transformed our staircase wall with lots of moulding. I couldn’t be happier with the results and I will be showing you the makeover today.

So, let’s take a look at the before photos.

And now….the after!

Ahhh, don’t you love wainscoting??

I was actually smart for once and painted the wall white before we added any boxes. I know, can you believe it? I actually followed my own advice. 🙂

When you are trying to do wainscoting up a staircase, you are going to have odd angles and cuts. But this new little gadget my Dad introduced me to is so cool. You just set it on your angle, say for instance our staircase banister, and it tells you exactly what angle it’s sitting at.

Pretty neat right? Oh, and those are my Dad’s hands. I don’t have man-hands and hairy wrists.

The angle of my staircase is 37 degrees, so the cuts were all made to compliment that.

For the moulding, I chose to use the foam stuff again. The pieces I bought were 7ft in length and cost $2.38 for each piece. I ended up buying 27 pieces. So that is $64.26 just for the moulding for the stair boxes.

First thing we did was cut all of the pieces for all 21 boxes.

Then we used this make-shift template so we could glue each piece together at the right angle, and on a flat surface.

We glued 2 pieces at a time with hot glue, and let them cool.

Some pieces cooling…

And then we would glue a box together.

And eventually got all of these.

Then we put up the frames temporarily with double-sided tape to get the spacing correct, nailed them in with a nail gun, and added the chair rail. The rail is not an actual “chair rail” but is window casing trim. It is decorative like a chair rail and has a nice ledge to it.

Then came a LOT of caulking and spackling of all of the boxes and chair rail, more painting, and then done! And please, if you need to cover nail holes, use spackle and not caulking. I already knew this but for some dumb reason I used caulk and ended up redoing it with spackle. Caulk does not sand well and it gets rubbery. With spackle, it sands down nicely and you can’t even see the holes. Just my little tip!

I’ll just show you all more after photos because I know that’s what you really care about. 🙂

And here are a couple of night shots. P.S.- the sconces have flameless candles in them and they are on a timer, so they come on at the same time every day and stay on for 5 hours and turn off.

So what do you think? I think this is one of, if not, my favorite transformation so far. I think I always say that though. 🙂 This wall was always a challenge to decorate, so that’s why it’s been empty for 2 years now. I think having the wall more as an architectural feature was the way to go.

To see how the design of the staircase came about, you can read about that here. To see a more detailed how-to of the moulding boxes you can read that here.

Source list:

Starburst Mirror – Pier 1 for $69 (was on sale over half off! The original price was $149)
Candle Sconces – Hobby Lobby $30 each (with half off)
Flameless candles – Pier 1. I already had these candles but had to buy one more for about $14. Pier 1 flameless candles are my favorite because they glow from the bottom up, instead of just the top like a lot of others do.

Materials – $64.26 for moulding boxes, and approximately $20 for the chair rail.

Wall color – Baguette from Sherwin Williams — (But it’s soon changing to a different color)

I hope you enjoyed my staircase makeover, and thank you so much for having me Brittany!

Thanks Emily! I appreciate that you shared your tutorial with us. What do you guys think? Pretty fab, huh?! Well, you haven’t seen nothin’ yet.

Checkout her fabulous pantry! Seriously, I love her pantry (and her Dad who helped her build the custom carousels for her pantry. DecorChick Dad, can you adopt me please!!!)

See for yourself:

Pantry Makeover HERE.

I hope you will hop over to her blog and tell her I sent you. Enjoy your visit!

Stay tuned, we have a few more guest posters helping me with “Falling in Love with Your Home” February!

February 18, 2011/22 Comments/by Brittany Bailey

decor, Decorating, Falling in Love with Your Home, mantles, vignettes

Creating Seasonal Vignettes

I like to revitalize my love for a room by switching out the décor throughout the year. Decorating for the season gives the room a fresh look. Mantles are the ideal place to begin:

Autumn

Christmas

Valentine’s Day

Springtime

But, if you don’t have a mantle, you can use any flat surface!

Side Table

Pedestal

Pie Safe Cabinet

Built-in Bookshelf

Recessed Window Seat

Here are six tips for creating successful vignettes:

1. Varied heights

Try to create a visual triangle. Have one tallest object, then a 2nd tallest and a shortest. I use books all the time to help elevate an object that might be at the same height as another object. Attractive wooden crates or boxes covered with cloth can work too.

2. Varied textures

Using a variety of textures creates visual interest. In the picture below I have a ceramic bird sitting on torn strips of newspaper in a plaster container on top of an embroidered linen and some books.

3. Color palette

Choosing a color palette of 3 colors or less is an easy way to create an appealing vignette. For my Valentine’s Day vignette I chose to work with primarily red and white with some black.

The next year, the color palette was red, aqua and white.

4. Odd numbered groupings

Vignettes and small groupings tend to look better when you use an odd number of objects.

For example, in the grouping above, I have assembled:

1. Birdhouse on a candlestick (visually they are one object)

2. Bird nest in pedestal (again visually counts as one)

3. Stack of books

4. Picture frame

5. Felted rose laying in front of the picture frame.

5. Varied Shapes and Scale

Vignettes work well if you can vary the shape and scale of your objects. Grouping many objects of the same size and shape will not give your eye enough to explore and study. Always take a step back from your vignette to make sure that your grouping has different shapes and sizes represented.

6. It’s Your Décor

This is the most important rule! Make sure you create something you like. Use your own objects. And if you love it, that is all that matters. It really doesn’t have to meet someone else’s criteria of perfection. I wrote a whole post on imperfect decorating HERE.

Happy Decorating!

Did you spy Christmas cards in the background? Sure, it is February, but I love them too much to take them down yet. If you’d like to read more “Fall in Love with Your Home” February posts, click on the button below to see a recap of this month’s theme:

February 12, 2011/12 Comments/by Brittany Bailey

Decorating, Falling in Love with Your Home, Painting & Antiquing Techniques, Spray paint metal, storm door, threshold, wreath

Making an Entrance – Sprucing Up Your Entryway

Sprucing up your entryway. If your home is like ours, we have two entrances. The front door,

and the door near our driveway. The latter is used about 95% of the time by us and our friends.

Creating an inviting entrance for yourself is so important for falling in love with your home. Start sprucing up your entryway!

Think about it this way: How many times do you go in and out of your home through that one doorway? How many times do guests go in and out of that doorway? Do you follow me? So, it is you who should be welcomed home to your lovely home first and foremost!

This is what our family entrance looked like a few months ago:

How I lived with that ugly brown aluminum door for 3 years, I will never know. And let’s not even talk about that little red CPI security sticker!

Lucky for us, a neighbor sold us her full view storm door when they added a garage onto their home. Had they not, I probably would still be scouring the Habitat ReStore. Or at least I would have painted the old door to match the house or use a more inviting color than doo-doo brown.

After I installed the storm door, I made sure to repaint the threshold as well. What?! You can’t see behind “Doo Doo Brown” above, is this?

Niiiiiice. Gold threshold with silver metal showing through. Not exactly my favorite rustic look. The easiest way to repaint it would have been to remove the threshold and spray paint it in the yard on a tarp. But, those screws weren’t going to budge for me. So, I masked off the entire doorway…

…storm door, floor, and…

…the mudroom to spray paint one piece of threshold brushed nickel. Okay, call me crazy, but I was on a mission to make my entryway more inviting for myself. And I wasn’t about to get brushed nickel on any other surfaces.

Much better, don’t you think? And I can honestly say that after using automotive primer and then the Rustoleum Brushed Nickel metallic paint, the threshold still looks like new!

But, I didn’t stop there. I added a kick plate in matching brushed nickel. And replaced the door sweep as well. And splurged on a new door mat. {Love my new mat!}

Finally, looking beyond the doorstep, I add some pumpkin topiaries, plants, wreath or other decorations (depending on the season) to greet you – errr, I mean me.

My good friend has this adorable planter near her side entrance (that she uses about 95% of the time, too.) It is the perfect place to switch out plants, or other decorations depending on the season.

So, that takes care of the exterior, but don’t neglect the inside! I added a new coat of paint to the inside of the door (that my sweet departed maniacal dog had left claw marks all over it.) I was so anxious to freshen it up, I didn’t even tape off the windows.

After the paint dried, I used a razor blade to score…

…and then scrape off the paint.

And as a final, welcome home, I hung my message center just inside the door.

I’m so happy to be home! And you should too so start by sprucing up your entryway.

So, what do you think? How does your home greet you? Does it welcome you with open arms or is it more of just a brief, “hi?”

February 7, 2011/34 Comments/by Brittany Bailey

Decorating, Falling in Love with Your Home, Hanging curtains, Removing Blinds

Removing the Blinds – Let There Be Light

Welcome back. Today, I’m going to show you how to maximize the amount of light that comes in your windows.

In my last post I talked about scraping and painting your ceilings to help reflect more natural light into your home. As we learned, more light can boost your mood, making you happier and helping you love your home.

Today, as part of my continuing series “Fall in Love with Your Home February”, we will be focusing on the windows in your home.

If you have mini-blinds (well, in my case I had maxi-blinds), they can block up to 25% of the light coming in your room, even when they are raised! Look at your window blinds, curtains and/or valance. Do they cover more than half of a window pane? Or more than 3-4″. If they do, they are blocking light.

Take a look at this photo taken today in our bathroom. The “maxi-blinds” were completely pulled open (picture on the left), but look how much light they were blocking when I took them down (picture on the right). You can see there is more light being reflected on the ceiling and the door. And it is a cloudy day. Can you imagine how much light is blocked on a sunny day?

Next up, take a look in our master bedroom. The top pictures show the room with roman shades that covered one whole pane height, or almost half of the upper window. The bottom photo is taken around the same time of day with new shades hung much higher. The amount of light increased in the room is dramatic!

As you can see below, I hung the shades above the window, and they only overlap the window by about 3-4″.

I also added curtains to the windows, but the rod extends far enough to the sides that the curtain doesn’t cover the window.

When opened, they only slightly cover the window casing.

What you saw above is akin to cheating the size of your window. If you install the blinds and hang the curtains outside the window, it makes your windows appear larger than they are.

Now, I’d like to bring in a professional interior designer so she can show you some of the rooms she has redesigned to maximize the amount of light coming into the windows.

Introducing Caitlin Campbell from Symmetry Designs in San Jose, CA:

The photo below is from her portfolio. Believe it or not, the two pictures are from the same dining room. The photo on the left is the before picture. And the photo on the right shows the room with the bulky valance removed and curtains hung on the outside of the windows. Even with the new dark dining set, the room has a much brighter feel.

photo courtesy of Symmetry Designs

This living room that Caitlin designed, was a bit drab and dark
(even with an exposed glass door).

photo courtesy of Symmetry Designs

But, after removing the valance and opening the mini-blinds, this room beckons us to enter and enjoy. Look at all that natural light flooding in.

I understand that we all need privacy sometimes. So, feel free to draw your curtains or blinds at night. But, I beg of you, please open them every morning! Invite in a little sunshine to brighten your day. And find yourself falling in love with your home.

Disclosure: Those of you that know me, know that Caitlin is my sister, but she REALLY is a talented interior designer. Besides if I told you she was my sister from the get go you wouldn’t have paid attention to her fantastic room makeovers. But seriously, she is NCIDQ Certified and an Industry Member of ASID. So, if you live in the San Jose, CA and need some expert design advice, look her up!

A few products you might be interested in (commission based links):

February 5, 2011/18 Comments/by Brittany Bailey