Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

One of the many things I love about my husband is that he not only tolerates, but supports and encourages me to pick up things off the side of the road.  Imagine my delight when he came home with this ugly ass mirror...

He pulled it our a garbage can.  The things we do for love...  

Other than the light oak colored laminate and fake marble pieces (see below for picture), this baby had some real potential.  It is huge and has a nice shape to it.  I hoped a little spray paint could fix her right up.  But I was also knew there was the chance that no amount of spray paint could save this puppy.  Since the  mirror was free and spray paint is only $4 a can, I decided to go for it.

 

 Yes, those would be laminate counter top bits on top...  Oh my...

 

I started by wiping everything down really well and tapping newspaper over the actual mirror.  And then it was time for Valspar's metallic silver spray paint.

It only took a few coats to make this baby look good as new.  It even covered the laminate counter bits perfectly.  Having the frame in just one color (not two different types of laminate and metal) made a huge difference- it looks much more cohesive. 

And then it was time to hang it.  I forgot to take pictures of the mirror that was in this spot before, but don't worry it has a new home. 

I love that the mirror has similar detailing as the sideboard.  And  the scale of the mirror is much more appropriate based on how big the side board is.

Anyone else redeem a piece with some spray paint?

Cigar Box Shelves

Here's the thing, my husband loves cigars.  He actually even writes a cigar blog.  I would tell you to check him out, but the additional hits will just make his head swell... Anyways, loving cigars equates to lots of cigar crap in our home- lighters, bands, humidors, humidor crap and cigar boxes.  Out of all that, I mind the boxes the least, because really cigar boxes aren't so bad and generally are the least tacky of all cigar items. 

So thinking of cigar boxes, I got this little idea in my head.  I could turn cigar boxes into floating shelves and that is exactly what I did.

First, I got Seth to get me seven boxes.  If your husband doesn't have a million boxes lying around, just head to your local cigar store and I am sure they will hand over some boxes.

I pried the tops of each both with a pair of pliers because I wouldn't need them.  Since the boxes are unfinished, I wanted to give them a hint of something without taking away from the carved labels.  I ended up mixing bronze paint with water in a 1 to 4 ratio.  This ended up giving the boxes a bit of color and  just a little sparkle when the light hits them, without over powering the boxes.

Once the boxes were dry, all I had to do was hang them.  I sunk two screws per box and that seems to be holding just fine.

And then I added some adornments...

LOVE!!!!
I swear, this project is just as easy as it sounds.  All told, I think it maybe took an hour.  Plus, I had the boxes, paint and screws, so this baby cost ZERO dollars.  A free and easy project is certainly something I can get behind.

Anyone else do any easy and/or free projects lately?

Time to check in once again on the living room saga.  Remember where we were? 

• Seth and I rearranged furniture to make the space more liveable
• I realized our decor was a little college-student-esque and made some cheap and easy art

And just a reminder to where we started...

I started by taking down all of the existing prints (duh!) and quickly realized a little problem.  You see when Seth and I painted this room, we were short sighted.  We didn't consider that we would ever change anything, so we just painted over the picture hangy things.  Which meant when I removed those do-dads, We had an ugly white blob.

Whoops.  And to make matters even more complicated, we didn't have any paint left over and we didn't write down the paint name.  Home owner fail.  So I made a quick trip to Lowes and grabbed every brown paint swatch I could find.  Seth and I held them all up against the wall and found the one that look right.  I think the name has to do with a seal.  Who names this shit?  So another trip back to Lowes and I was able to buy an itty bitty of the paint color.

This is totally awesome.  And as you have probably guessed, we have this no leftover paint/ don't know the name of the paint problem all over the house, so I plan to eventually get itty-bitties for all the rooms of our house. 

Anyways, back to our saga, I dabbed some paint on the white spots and it dried perfect...

See can't tell, unless you're looking for it.  And if you are looking for it, please stop.

From here, the rest of the project was easy-breezy.  I mean really, hanging a picture isn't rocket science.  Without further ado, I give you the final product...

LOVE!  The scale is much better and the asymmetrical alignment looks much more grown up.  Plus I love how the blocks in my art play off of the squares in the Kandinsky print and the colors are similar to those in the Klimt.  I call this a major win.

I still have plenty left to do in this room, such as update the mantel arrangement...

That will also include doing something about that ghastly fireplace surround.

And hang new curtains....

The red just isn't working for me anymore.

And do something to make the bookshelf not look so cheap-o...

I really like what John and Sherry did here.  Now I just have to convince Seth....

And I have to make our upholstered coffee table not look so sad...

No brilliant ideas here yet, but I'm sure I'll figure out something...

Stay tuned as the saga continues....

Easy Art

As I mentioned in this post, although I love our cozy TV room, the decor strikes me as a little on the college side of things.  You know, too small art that we bought at the local poster sale...  Sadly, moving the furniture around really highlighted our decor problems.

The biggest problem area is the spot where the couch now sits.  Before, this wall was easy to overlook with our too-cramped furniture lay out.

See not so bad...  With the lamp and dresser the wall decor doesn't look so bad.  At that time I had even thought about adding some really tall something to fill in the space below the middle picture.

But once the couch came to live on this wall...

Yikes...  Clearly with the size of the couch, those sweet little college purchased prints were just not going to work.

I totally loved Sherry's cheap-o idea to use paint chips to create something lovely.  However, I didn't have a big ole basket of paint swatches lying around and I didn't think my local Lowe's would appreciate me grabbing paint swatches just to make some art, so I figured I could paint something.

I started by gathering my supplies- cheap-o canvas, 10 monochromish  paints, a paint brush and some measuring implements.  I measured my canvas into 2 inch squares...

I know those marks a bit hard to see, but I did want to keep my pencil lines on the light side so I would be sure that my paint would cover them.

I didn't want this to look at all patterned, so I just got to work filling in squares...

2 colors down...  You can see on the edges that I went over my lines a bit.  I wanted to be sure that my mat and frame wouldn't show any white spaces on the edge of the canvas, so I eliminated the white space.

Just about 1/2 way done.  You can see that I added some metallic gold.  LOVE.

3/4 of the way done and I've added a bit of metallic bronze.  I was careful to make sure that the gold and bronze squares didn't land next to each other.  That seemed like it may be too much.

FINISHED!  LOVE LOVE LOVE!

And framed.  LOVE LOVE LOVE X 1,000,000

I really am thrilled how this came out.  I don't have the steadiest of hands, so I was concerned about painting outside the lines.  My lines are far from straight, but by moving slow and using a small brush, I did a-okay and I love that it isn't absolutely precise.

All in all, this project ran me about $30, but the frame and mat were $20.  All in all, not bad for some cheap-o art and a fun afternoon of painting.

Tune in next week to find out how it all looks on the wall!

Presto Chango

The end of this month marks 2 years since Seth and I have been in our little house.  And with few (no?) exceptions, the furniture is pretty much in the exact space it landed on move in day.  For the most part, this is a good thing.  When we move, we take our time arranging furniture to make sure we like everything.  But our living room, man, the room was just not working for us.

When we originally arranged the furniture, we placed the couch in the middle of the room, so that the fireplace would be the focal point of the room. This was a great idea (not really) and it meant that things were nice and cozy the 3 days a year we actually have a fire going.  The rest of the year, the room just felt cramped.

 

This is what the room looked like when you walked in it.  As you can see, there is no room to move about.

This is the view if you turn left.  See, no room?

Turn left again, and you can see that the couch is scooted as far back as possible, while still keeping an area for walking too and from the door.

And out last wall is taken up by a huge beautiful window and a kitty condo (so not proud of that).  And you can see how Matilda lies on the couch cushions, effectively squishing them so far out of shape, they are virtually useless.  Thanks, dog.

So with this in mind, Seth and I decided that we had to rehash this space.  It just wasn't right.  The room isn't huge, but it shouldn't be that tight.  And believe it or not, the couch is actually the right size for the room, but the placement is allowing for total couch domination.

We started by pulling all the furniture out....

And Seth got to vacuum the whole room...

Now that we had a nice, clean work space, we moved furniture around... a lot.  Sadly, no pictures of this process because I was helping.  Believe it.

We figured pretty quickly that everything hinged on where the couch went...  And as much as I am anti-counch-against-the-wall, Seth was right and it worked out...

So the couch went on the big wall, across from the window, making the window the new and lovely focal point...

The leather chair moved to where the kitty condo had been (the kitty condo went to live in the guest bedroom- sorry guests!).

 

The bookcase stayed where it was.  If you had asked me before we started this process, I would have put money on the bookcase moving...

The orignial TV stand went to the garage for Seth to use and the dresser we ganked from the side of the road took its place.  The dresser holds part of our extremely too large DVD collection.

And the room was done.  This room is totally functional now.  I am so happy with the amount of space we have.  Seth and I can happily watch a movie and not feel like we have to be on top of each other.  The dogs have room to play and we have room to move. Of course, this move around has made me notice how much this room looks like a bunch of college kids decorated it... Lets just say, I'm working on it and plan to show you an easy project later.

Anybody else have fun adventures in furniture moving?