Thursday, October 23, 2014

Kid's Bedroom Remodel - Turning a Teenager's Room Into A Pink Princess Haven

When my eldest daughter moved into her own place, it coincided nicely with my youngest being ready for her first big girl room. Little girl wanted pink and white stripes and some diamonds, so I took to Pinterest and researched a bunch of designs and things that I wanted to do in there before we ever started.

The room isn't very big; including the closet floor space, it's 10'x9'. Three of the four walls had painted paneling and one was a flat surface. Here is a "before" shot:



After we cleaned it out and removed those gawdawful sliding closet doors, I went to the hardware store and chose a very, very pale pink as the base color, a darker pink for the stripes and diamonds, and a dark brown and a dark pink for polka dots in the new reading nook, for which her Daddy made built-ins for her out of some scrap wood.

After three coats of pale pink (almost white) paint, we had this:



And then came the laying out of the harlequin diamonds, which took a surprisingly long time. I had no idea so much math was involved in it; there's a reason I became an English major. Anyway, while I was at work, my Tommy Lee taped off and painted the diamonds and then painted the stripes on the paneling sections.



I added the polka dots right before we moved in the custom bed her Daddy made for her out of her old crib and some scrap wood and some pink paint and all the bright pink accoutrements.



Here is the "after" shot: a pink princess's dream bedroom.



It's a lot of pink, but she loves it and it fits her personality perfectly. I've since touched up the dark pink paint and ran a little bit and put a second coat of color onto the polka dots, too. Turned out super sweet, I think. :)

Monday, September 8, 2014

What Can You Make With Barbeque Skewers & Dental Floss?


BBQ skewers from the dollar store +
2 rolls of freebie dental floss from the dentist =
What??
I was reading the latest issue of HGTV Magazine on my Nook Sunday morning while watching the Steelers game and saw this decorative spiky ball thing. The article said it was $25 at zgallerie.com (though the price today on that link is $29.95). With school back in session and a ton of things to budget for with winter approaching, even that is not in my budget. But I really wanted that spiky, atomic-style ball. And that got me to thinking: how could I make one with stuff I already have? Lightbulb time! BBQ skewers and dental floss!

Crazy, right? I have an old tissue box almost full of sample containers of dental floss that I have collected over the years of taking the kids to the dentist, and I have two packages of BBQ skewers I got at the dollar store, and BBQ skewers tied together a certain way would look an awful lot like that spiky ball thing.

So, Steelers game over (Steelers won in a squeaker!), I grabbed a box of floss and the skewers and set to work. I tied the floss to one skewer right in the middle, and then started twisting the floss around more and more skewers at odd angles until I got this:


But it needed a coat of paint. I had purchased a can of chrome spray paint a couple months ago for another project and had some left, so I spray painted it with that, and the end result of an hour of tinkering with random objects got me this:




It looks great! It shimmers and shines in the light, and it cost me a grand total of $1 to make. Can't complain about that, and it looks AWESOME sitting next to my retro lamps. :)

Friday, July 11, 2014

Duct Tape Canister

If you've read my post about making decorator bins out of cereal boxes, you'll know that I am always repurposing stuff. I have had my eye on this cardboard bread crumb canister since I bought it, and I saved a couple of them, but someone threw them away. Anyway, I finished another box of these last night, and decided today - after I had run out of work stuff to do - to do what I was planning.

You see, I had purchased a roll of retro-ish decorator Duck brand duct tape, so I took this...





...and made it into this:


I don't know what I am going to do with it yet, but it looks pretty cool for a five-minute project.