Decorating With River Birch

I just wanted to share a few pictures of my entryway bench.

Before last week, I just had the two blue baskets.  The middle one was empty due to loaning it out, and it started to look lonely to me.  I got this idea stolen from Pottery Barn totally original idea and decided to fill it with some wood.

 

But not just any wood.

 

River Birch.

 

I love it!  I called up my childhood girlfriend, Holli, and she and her husband went to her dad's property and harvested some wood for me.  She passed it off to me last week when we met up for dinner, and that same day, I cut it up to the dimensions of my middle cubby.

I am loving it!

 

And I just found this tutorial on how to make a cushion for this bench....

 

And we also saved a little branch for this project:

Love Logs!



Coffee Table...er...Situation

Over the last few days, I have been analyzing our coffee table.  Well, we really don't have one.  Here is what we have been using since we moved in.

Now - I love this huge basket.  When we first bought it, we had it between our couch and wall.  It functioned as a home for our quilts.  I have no idea what brought it out into the middle of the floor, but I slapped a tray on there and it stayed.

But it's just not working for us.  Here's what I have pinned on Pinterest for inspiration.

Source

I love this option because it can function as a coffee table, a place to kick up your feet and a place you could sit on if I needed to move it around when we have a full house.

I am currently a MWF seeing a SRCT....let me translate: Married White Female seeking a Short Rectangular Coffee Table that I can upholster.  I am shopping Craigslist, yard sales and thrift stores.  I love the size of the basket, so I am looking for the same size and shape.

Of course, when I find one, that will only begin the torturing part of deciding on a fabric!!!  Anyone want to do a little mood board for fabrics that will work well with Sherwin Williams Ancient Marble walls, nude couches, white curtains and some dark, rich brown woods?  I'll love you forever :)

 

Bedside Bling...

Without much of a budget and nothing really rushing me, I have been tinkering around in the guest room since the recent overhaul.  So what do I do?  I just roam around the house and start grabbing what I have.  I knew that I wanted to flank the bed with tables of some sort, but I don't have any.  I threw this $14.00 thrift store chair beside the bed and love how it could function as a table!

For now, I threw a $5.00 yard sale end table (that is in desperate need of painting) on the other side with a $4.00 consignment shop lamp.

I love the curves of this lamp.  Those same curves are on the vase that I placed on the chair, actually... I guess I like big bottoms, haha.

There isn't a lot of space in the room after we put in a queen size bed.  I think the room is 10' x 11'.  A day bed would be perfect for the size of the space, but not in function.  We mostly have lovely romantic couples like us who need enough room to rhomp in when they stay over (did I just say that?!)...so... god save the queen...size bed.  Anywho....I am thinking a sweet little campaign desk on this wall would be so perfect!

Source

For this room, I would need a more narrow desk, but I am thinking this is completely DIYable...

 

Oh!  I don't know exactly where these will go, but they were $4.97 at Wal-Mart in the college section.  They had this chrome color and a brushed nickel color and a lot of empty rows that I am sure were filled with different colors.  They had about 5 or 6 different color shades that you could also mix and match up at $4.97 each.  Yesterday, I grabbed 2 to move around the house and think I will keep them no matter what.  They are so small and cute and big bottomed and can be sprayed any color!

Happy Tuesday!  This is my last wee of freedom...I start back to work next Friday :(

 

Gallery Wall

Again - I just finished a project that wasn't even on my 2011 Home Goals List OR my Summer to-do list!

Can somebody please pass me an Adderall?

I went to Ikea twice this summer and just randomly grabbed a handful of Ikea Ribba frames in different sizes.  I also started cleaning up our office and storing all of our random frames in the closet.  After assessing the situation, I realized that I had a butt-ton of frames! 

See, my dad owned a family business.  It just happened to be a frame shop.  Let me tell you, we had everything framed in our house.  If I got a new softball trophy, a picture was framed.  I went on my senior trip, he framed a group shot.  We went to a museum, the picture of the exhibit went behind glass.  I loved this!!!  Well, some things I kept in the frames and others came out.  Needless to say, it was obvious a gallery wall needed to happen.

Here was my blank slate.  This is our hallway.  You are standing in the living room.  As you walk past the laundry room (on the right) and the guest bedroom (on the left), you will come to this dead end with the garage door and basement door to the left and our master bedroom, office and bathroom to the right.  Notice how lovely it is with the attic light switch, electrical outlet and some other random cover that looks to serve no purpose.

One night, I sat in front of the T.V. and cut out newspaper/sales flyer templates for each of the frames I had.  I also wrote on the template what size frame it was or some other detail about the frame to help me match it up later.  The next day, I taped my inspiration photos to the basement door and started placing the templates on the wall.

My tips would be....

1) Place your larger templates first.  Those will be the hardest to move later.  Just think about filling in with the smaller frames.

2) Cover any uglies.  I would do this first.  If you notice in the picture, I placed the large templates first.  I immediately went back and covered the attic switch and adjusted the larger frame farther to the left.  Switch these steps when you do them!

Here was my final placement:

And my homework:

That night, I primed about 11 frames that weren't white and got up the next morning and high gloss whited them (yep, that's a verb).

The next step was to start hanging everything.  Again, go in the same order.  Hang over the uglies first.  Start hanging your larger frames next.

Next, hang your medium frames and work on filling in all gaps.

Here is where I would just eyeball it.  Since I already had my large frames up (and wasn't moving those!), I just tweaked the placement of the medium frames in between them to even out the random spacing some.

(hhmmm...clearly, I can't remember the linear process.  I guess I placed everything on the wall and then sprayed them).

Here you can see how easy it is to make changes.  Thanks to the digital camera, I could just put both up, snap a picture and compare.  I didn't have to pull Rusty away from Angry Birds to get his opinion!

And I am a husband's nightmare.  I am good enough with eyeballing!  Seriously, Rusty stayed away during this project.  I seriously nailed right through the templates, hung the frame and ripped the paper out from behind it on the larger frames.  For the medium and other fill in frames, I used the trick above.  Just dab on a little toothpaste where the middle is and press it against the wall where you want it!  The wall went up in no time, and I have no regrets. 

Here are all of my final pictures!

Notice how I tied the outlet in?  I just took the glass out of a frame!

And just a few close ups of some frames that have something in them....

My "Owl Love You Forever" Etsy art, a fight night card that Rusty was on, the Kipling poem "If" that my dad framed for me when I was a teen and a $5 piece of Ikea art.

A newspaper clipping and article, my keys in a shaddow box and a wedding photo of us running to his truck (this covers the light switch...which, btw, Ribba frames are great for since they have hollow backs!).

A gallery within a gallery wall and a Robert E. Lee print that my grandfather framed when they first opened the business.  It's a family thing, you wouldn't understand, lol!  The tradition continues.

Well, the wall has been finished for a few days now.  I believe this was the most impulsive project I have done yet!  This has also been the project that I have not had one little piece of regret on.  I haven't even switched up any of the frame placements!  I love it.

I also formed an opinion.  If you want a cleaner look, go for larger spaces between larger frames.  In areas where I put too many frames that were 4x6 or smaller, the wall started to take a cluttered look.

Now to go and fill the rest of the empty frames....

P.S. - Dad, don't worry.  Lee is facing South.  I downloaded an app to double check!

I'm linking up to Home Stories A to Z, Coastal Charm, Ladybug Blessings, Sugar Bee Crafts, Giggles, Glitz and Glam, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Blue Cricket Design, Sew Much Ado, Night Owl Crafting, Someday Crafts, Gingersnap Crafts, My Repurposed Life, The Shabby Nest, Funky Junk, Spunky Junky, KoJo Designs, Vintage Revivals, Remodelaholic

Faux Board and Batten with Picture Ledge Guest Room Reveal

A few weeks ago, Rusty and I had planned to pressure wash the house, porch, deck, stairs and fence.  Then we needed to seal all of those surfaces.  Well - on top of it topping out at almost 100 degrees that week, our weather app also forcasted rain on and off.  Sooooo, instead of signing up for all of that fun, we decided to tackle an entirely new project that wasn't even on our to do list for this summer (typical, right?!).

I have pinned so many different pictures of the faux board and batten, that I knew I just had to jump on board of this blogosphere trend (yes, I know I am about a year late... don't blame me, I was homeschooled).   All it took was mentioning it the night before when Rusty was about 3 beers deep out of his build-you-own six pack.  See, it's all about strategy.

Note:  This is not a tutorial!  Here is a great resource if you need one.  Scroll to the bottom of Centsational Girl's blog post, and you will see about six or eight hyper links for more tutorials in all different styles!

Enjoy some before and afters:

The color we chose was Svelte Sage by Sherwin Williams.  It was a left over can that we used under the chair rail in the dining room.  The good thing about this project is that if we want to change the color, there will be very little painting!  I'm thinking this room will be great for little mini makeovers when I get bored.

It's about 60" high.  I just stood next to the wall and Rusty held up his hand for me to step away and see if it looked right.  It looked about right.  My only tip would be to not cut your room in half and try to let your board and batten fall either 1/3 or 2/3 up the wall.  Mine is right about 2/3 of the way up the wall.

Here are the supplies you will need:

1.  1"x4"

2.  1"x3"

3.  1+3/8" Base (163 at Home Depot)

4.  1"x1 1/2"

Here is our order of operations when it came to the process.

1.  Mark a line where we wanted the top of the ledge to be.

2.  Paint everything under that line white.  We used a gallon of our trim paint (high gloss white by Sherwin Williams).  We figured that if this were real trim, it would be a high gloss white anyway.

3.  Put up the 1"x4" all around the room.

4.  Space out the batten strips anywhere between 16" and 17" inches.  This just depended on what divided best with the length of each wall as well as where outlets were.  We didn't want to split any outlets.  We also started each corner with a batten strip to keep things structured and continuous.

5.  Attach the 1"x3" picture ledge.

6.  Attach the trim.

7.  Caulk and fill in nail holes.

8.  Paint a coat of high gloss over everything.

Here is a picture of the bottom of out batten pieces.  I know that some blogs replace their baseboards to be as wide as the strips, but we kept our baseboards because they are much prettier than the replacement option.  It is just cut on a 45.

In some of the pictures, you can also see where we attempted to put up crown moulding.  We still have to go back and caulk and touch up paint, but the crown was free from a friend, so we are happy!

So - Some things we still need to do with this room...room arrangement, bedding, curtains, accessorize.  I am thinking a little bench at the end of the bed for a tray to rest on and a little throw.  I will put some frames and other tchotchkes on the picture ledge.  I am thinking about two matching lamps to flank the bed in a nickel or silver.  Maybe a night stand on one side under the lamp and a wooden chair painted and chipped up in an accent color under the lamp on the other side acting as a table.  Maybe stack some books in the floor and even prop one of my ladders up against the wall (chipped up in the same accent color?).

Overall - we LOVE the look!  I am not ashamed to leave that door open in the hallway anymore.  I bet we spent about $150.00 on the 10'x11' room and worked on it for maybe 10 hours.

What do you think?!  You can come be my guest now!

Linking up with:
Making The World Cuter
I Heart Naptime
Skip To My Lou
Sumo's Sweet Stuff

 

And In The Blue Corner.....

Last weekend, I wrote this post while in Charleston, S.C. for Rusty's 9th MMA fight.  We didn't take many pictures of the event because that's not very "hard core" apparently, but I did snag a few and a video of the his victory.


The weigh ins were at 6:00 that night, so we left home around 9:00 a.m. and got to the hotel around 3:00.  Right away, Rusty still had to cut 6 pounds, so he dressed in hefty bags and put on black sweats and a hoodie.  He did two 1 hour sessions of running and sitting in the sun....while I held down the fort in the air conditioned hotel :)

At 6:00, he made weight at 205 and took his promo picture with his opponent.

Right away, we headed to his favorite pre fight restaurant, Olive Garden.  When we stopped for gas, Rusty popped in to buy some Cheerwine!

After dinner, we went to take a constitutional in downtown Charleston.  It is our favorite city, and we know it well.  We got some gelato and snapped this single picture on one of the few cobblestone streets that are left.

Here's a video of his entire fight.

And a single shot after the win!

It was a great weekend.  He hopes to be back in the ring July 30th!