Category Archives: family room/office

Best. Find. Ever

Posted on January 31, 2012 | 12 Comments

This thing caught my eye from all the way on the other side of Goodwill. I saw it, I ran to it, and I sat on it. I was thrilled to find it quite sturdy. I stood around for a few minutes, holding it possessively while I decided for sure whether or not I wanted it. Then it seemed like everybody wanted it. People kept coming up and asking me what it was. And I wanted it even more.

As soon as I peel off the eighty-seven price tags I’m gonna paint it. I’m thinking navy. (in case your eyes are as bad as mine and you can’t see for yourself, it was $12.99. Quite a steal, I think.)

Here’s what it looks like upside down.

I have no idea what it was originally meant to be. Maybe it was an ottoman, which is what I plan on using it for. Or maybe some sort of crazy lantern? I’ve never seen anything quite like it. And those colors! Somebody was feeling feisty the day that palette was picked.

I’ve gotta admit, I’m not really looking forward to painting it. Covering those bright colors in all those nooks and crannies is gonna be a big pain. And I’m thinking I may have to actually use some sort of primer for the first time in probably three years. I despise primer with a deep and abiding hatred, but I suspect it’s a necessary evil in this case.

Like I said, I’m thinking of painting it navy, but I’m not completely sold just yet. Any suggestions?

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Posted in family room/office, Projects

A Sneak Peak of My New Favorite Thing

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 12 Comments

A week or two ago I was trolling vintage shops on etsy looking for a pretty quilt or blanket to throw over the back of my new white sofa. My cats are already pretty big fans of back-of-the-sofa lounging in general, but since this sofa backs up to a window that overlooks the driveway it’s a prime lounging position for all three animals to look out the window as they anxiously await our arrival home from a long day at work. Since I’d rather not take the slipcovers off to wash them every week I figured a pretty blanket could help protect that area of the sofa from becoming absolutely disgusting with pet hair. I didn’t find the perfect blanket (although I am contemplating a vintage army blanket-they’re plentiful, wool, and army green-thoughts?), I did find this item of interest:

A shag furniture throw. From Montgomery Ward and still in the original packaging. The seller (That70sShoppe) mentioned that it could also be used as an area rug. I measured out the dimensions in my front room, slept on it for the night, and the next morning purchased it for only $50. Shipping was $15, bringing it to a total of $65. Not bad for a big ‘ol area rug like that. It’s 70″ by 90″, which works out to about six feet by seven and a half feet. Perfect for my space. I haven’t gotten a picture of it in the context of the rest of the room yet, but check out Juliet and Pistachio’s reactions.

They love it. And Nick and I do, too. It is so soft and cozy and exactly the perfect size. I love the color, too. So cheerful and happy. It does slip around quite a bit, though, so for now I’ve got a smaller 4×6 rug underneath it to help hold it in place. Once February rolls around and I’ve got a new monthly home decor budget to play with my first order of business will be to get a proper rug pad. I find myself looking for excuses to walk across it ever since it got here, just to have the chance to squish my toes into that shaggy awesomeness. It might just be one of the top fifty things that have ever happened to me. Definitely one of my best purchases ever, I think. And I wasn’t even looking for a rug! I think it was looking for me. It was fate, I tell you. That rug and I were just meant to be together. Like two shaggy, star-crossed lovers.

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Posted in family room/office

A Little Privacy, Please?

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 9 Comments

One of the big things that has kept Nick and I from spending much time in the front room of our house (I’ve got to come up with a smoother name for it than “the family room/office”) is the completely uncovered window that looks right out onto our porch.

It’s actually a door, but we don’t use it as such and haven’t been able to get it open in months. It wasn’t a huge priority when I was making window treatments for the rest of our house because the porch affords an illusion of privacy, but you can see that the houses in our very old neighborhood are so close together that our neighbors could look right out of their window and into ours. Plus, there were more than a few awkward occasions when I found myself working in the office makeup free and liberated from the awkward confines of a bra only to look up and lock eyes with the mailman, right there on my porch. There are some days I would just much rather hide from the mailman and this window was making that impossible. After an accidental encounter with the UPS man while I was working from home on Monday, I decided something needed to be done. I rifled through my fabric stash until I found something about the right size and tacked it up there to see if it would do the job.

Perfect. I measured the window, then took the fabric down and hauled it to the laundry room for a good iron. Pretty much the only time I ever iron anything is if I want to cut it. It’s hard to get nice cuts in wrinkled fabric.

Once flat, I laid it out on my handy-dandy cardboard helper. I know that this thing is not technically intended to be used for cutting fabric, but instead some much fancier and technical endeavor like drafting patterns or some such nonsense, but it has really been a lifesaver for me in the cutting department. I used to have such a hard time figuring out how to measure and cut straight lines in fabric, but the grid makes it so easy. The squares are 1″ each so I just lined up one edge of the fabric with a line on the grid, measured over 24″ which of course lined up perfectly with another line, then used that line to guide my cutting. Spoiler alert: I forgot to add extra width for the hem. Oops.

I cut cut cut. then slid the fabric down and cut cut cut some more.

Ta-da! A perfectly 24″ wide panel. I didn’t care at all about the length. You’ll see why in a moment.

Next I sewed a hem on all four edges. It was around the time I sat down at my sewing machine that I realized I’d forgotten all about the hem allowance, so I only folded the fabric over once and kept it pretty narrow.

Then, with all four edges looking nice and neat, I tacked the panel up at the top of the window with four brass-ish thumbtacks I found at the back of a junk drawer. The panes of the window made a good guide for spacing. The fabric was just barely wide enough to cover the glass. I told myself it gave the whole thing a refreshingly casual air.

See? Just thumbtacks. I used a hammer to gently tap them in.

And now, for the most exciting part! I folded the bottom of the fabric up for a roman-shade-esque effect. I secured the folds first with straight pins until I was happy with the look, then came back and switched each pin out for a couple of stitches sewn by hand. And why yes, that is a lot of random crap you can see hanging out on the other side of our door. A lawnmower and a Christmas tree stand, to be exact. The curse of a spacious porch is that it collects clutter.

And voila! The final result! A 100% free, completely casual shade that took me less than thirty minutes to whip up on a whim.

I showed it to Nick when he got home and he actually said out loud, “Wow, this room is really starting to come together!” I about died. He pretty much never comments on home decor beyond standard grunts of approval, but it turns out that bare window had really been bugging him. It’d been bugging me too. Now I can lounge on the new sofa in any state of dress without fear of mailmen or neighbors. It’s a brave new world.

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Posted in Crafty Goodness, family room/office, How To, Projects

Painting: Check!

Posted on January 16, 2012 | 17 Comments

Our new family room slash office is FINALLY painted! My sister and her man Josh came over on Thursday night to have dinner and help us out. My mom happened to be spending the night on her way through town for work, so the three of us had a nice time visiting together while Josh tackled the cutting in (he’s a part time handyman so I hired him to do it for me).

We hadn’t done anything to prep and just pushed everything to the middle of the room when they got here. It was a hot mess.

Josh worked super fast and was done way sooner than Nick and I would have been, plus the result was much cleaner lines. Nobody in this household was blessed with a steady hand so Josh was a real lifesaver here.

Then first thing Saturday morning Nick got down to the business of rolling. His motivation to finish before the Saints game came on had him painting before he could even change out of his pajamas. He usually doesn’t work on stuff like this by himself, but after my whole lead paint freak out the doctor said I should delegate more projects to Nick (and he was there to hear it). Even though the no-VOC paint would probably be fine for me to be around, he seemed willing to go it alone and I wasn’t about to insist he let me help. After two coats and a couple of breaks he was done in time for lunch. It probably could have used a third coat, but one of the benefits of flat paint that I forgot to mention the other day is that towards the end when you’re tired of painting but there are still a few spots where the old color is peeking through you can just touch it up as needed instead of doing another coat all over. Perfect for lazy people like us.

Look at him go. A man on a mission!

The brick fireplace surround has always been the same pale yellow as the walls, which I thought was stupid. We gave it two coats of some white semi-gloss we already had on hand.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane with these “before” shots:

And here’s the finished result with the room put back together (although still in desperate need of some decluttering and organization).

Ta-da! But because this is real life and not HGTV, I’m gonna be honest with you. I’m not thrilled with the color on the walls (Benjamin Moore’s Gray Mirage). It’s way too green and not nearly neutral enough. I’m wishing I’d had it mixed at a lighter strength or gone with another color that was more of a true gray. I feel like some of the punchier yellows and blues I want to bring in are going to clash with it. I spent nearly $100 between paint and labor, though, and it’s kind of a big deal that Nick put as much effort into it as he did, so I’m going to live with it for a while and see if it grows on me. Maybe as I bring in some organization and more colorful accessories the gray-green will fall into place?

What do you think? Do you think it matches up with the pale gray I picked from the palette (left side, second from the bottom)?

I was planning to accessorize with the yellows and blues from the right column, but I just don’t think they will go with this wall color at all. Maybe if I try using similar but muddier, more subdued shades it’ll work? I’m thinking 70′s Avocado Green and Harvest Gold. I just don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever set out to decorate a room with a specific color scheme and so far I am failing miserably.

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Posted in family room/office, Projects

Painting Progress

Posted on January 11, 2012 | 6 Comments

I got myself all pumped up writing last Friday’s post to get started painting the front room this weekend. Want to see how much I got done?

 

Impressive, no? I kid. The complete lack of progress is astounding. Not a single strip of tape on those walls. But do you know what I did get done? I negotiated with my sister for her long-time boyfriend (who dabbles as a handyman for hire in his spare time) to come over and do the cutting in for me. He’s charging about $75, which is soooo worth it because I can guarantee you that he will A) work way faster than me, and B) do a much better job. This is the same guy who installed our dishwasher, so if all goes well you can look forward to more jokes from my grandma in the comments about Cajuns not wearing any shoes.

And look what else I knocked off my to-do list:

I picked up a gallon of Olympic no-VOC paint (preferred for pregnant people) in a flat finish color-matched to Benjamin Moore’s Gray Mirage. It was about $20 at Lowe’s and I’m counting the moments until it gets slapped on those walls. Josh is supposed to come over to cut in after work one day this week and Nick and I will follow up with rolling the walls afterwards, maybe over the weekend. Since it’s flat paint we don’t have to worry about lap marks from cutting in one day and rolling another. The other big pro to flat paint is that it’s super easy to touch up, and since this room will also someday function as a playroom it’s nice to know that I’ll be able to just paint over any kid-related wall mishaps instead of trying to scrub it out. If you’d prefer to scrub, semi- and high-gloss paints are much more wipeable but you’ve got to be more careful about keeping a wet edge when painting. For some reason the whole science of avoiding lap marks overwhelms me so I just stick with flat.

I can’t wait to see this room in a new color! All three of the downstairs “bedrooms” in this house have the same pale yellow on the walls (I think it’s kind of a ubiquitous color in older homes, actually, as our old rental house had the same shade in the living room). While it’s a perfectly non-offensive, neutral choice it’s just not really our style and this is the first room we’ll be painting it out of. Next victim: the nursery, and someday we’ll get around to tackling the guest bedroom.

In other news, Nick and I are going to the doctor this afternoon for our very first ultrasound! We are both so excited. At our last appointment a month ago we heard the heart beat on a doppler which had me on cloud nine for a good three weeks or so, but lately I’ve been starting to get antsy again and I’m really looking forward to getting a good look at what’s going on in there. Hopefully we’ll be able to see a healthy little fist-sized baby-to-be bouncing around and this nervous mama will be able to rest assured that things are progressing swimmingly. Fingers crossed!

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Posted in family room/office

What Now?

Posted on January 6, 2012 | 5 Comments

I’ve really slowed down the pace of projects in recent months, and in fact haven’t gotten much done at all around the house. I decorated for Christmas, opened my etsy shop (made another sale yesterday! woohoo!), and got a new sofa and dishwasher. Other than that, I mostly just grew a placenta.

But now that I’ve got most of my energy back it’s time to get busy. Where to begin? I keep wanting to jump to installing shelves above my desk in the office because it seems like a quick and satisfying project, but then I remember that I should probably paint first. And then I remember how much I hate cutting in and decide I don’t want to paint unless I can somehow get away with doing just the middles. So I think I’ll hire someone to help me, but that seems like a lot of work (finding painters, contacting them, setting up appointments, stressing about the cost…ugh). And I remain kind of stuck in that holding pattern of painting ambivalence.

The other project looming over me is the wing chairs. I could go back to upholstering them. But the idea of working on them in my future clean, organized, and efficient office and sewing area seems so much more appealing than working on them in the mess I’m currently surrounded by. I definitely think I want to tackle the office first.

Maybe I should just dive into the painting. Bite the bullet and start taping this weekend. I am really excited about someday getting to this:

Gray Mirage

The more I write about it, the more motivated I’m feeling. The hardest part is getting started, right? Well, actually, no, not really, not for me. I’ve mentioned before how great I am at starting projects and how sucky I am at finishing them. That’s why I need to start with the hardest part, the edges, and then work my way in to the satisfaction of rolling broad strokes of paint onto the wall. And since I plan on taping this time instead of deluding myself into believing I have the steady hand and patience required for cutting in by hand, it should be easy as pie once that tape is on the wall, right? Right? Please tell me this won’t be as awful as I suspect.

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Posted in family room/office, Projects

Family Room Phase Two

Posted on December 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

If phase one of converting the unused room at the front of my house into a functional family room and office was Family Room Plans - Revised, phase two is bringing in all the new stuff. Phase two started with a new sofa from Ikea and was rounded out this weekend by the addition of all the furniture and other “stuff” from the old office.

As you can see, my clutter problem wasn’t exactly limited to this room. I’ve got a lot of organizing to do.

See how organized all my shop wares are? Ha. That’s them all piled in front of the fireplace.

And somehow some of the cardboard from the sofa delivery never quite made it out of here.

It feels good to be using this room as an office (again. It was originally used as such when we first moved in), but there’s still a lot of work to be done. I need to do some serious decluttering, add some additional shelving and storage for the stuff that doesn’t get tossed, and bring in some more small furniture and accessories to really up the comfort factor of the living area. And of course I’d still like to paint (ugh), hang some stuff on the walls, etc. Slowly but surely, I know it’ll get done one of these days

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Posted in family room/office, Projects

Ektorp In the House!

Posted on November 29, 2011 | 6 Comments

Look what showed up on Saturday!

Believe it or not, there’s a sofa in there! The smaller box held the slipcover. And remember all that talk about the $60 gift card I’d get thanks to Ikea’s sofa sale? BlueBag, the Ikea delivery company, just took that money right off my invoice total since they can put it towards stuff they purchase for other customers. Turns out, though, that BlueBag has increased their prices since the last time I shopped with them and they now charge an extra sixty bucks to deliver to your house (as opposed to picking up at their showroom in New Orleans). That’s okay with me because I worried before that they might go out of business with their old pricing system. I seriously thought about saving myself the delivery fee by going to New Orleans myself, but I figured I’d spend probably half that just in gas to get there and back, plus nearly three hours of my life would be wasted round trip, and I wasn’t even sure the dang thing would fit in my car. Nick and I decided that since the couch was discounted by the exact amount that delivery would cost it was meant to be. So we spent Saturday puttering around the house and let the delivery guys worry about driving in the rain.

We weren’t completely off the hook, though. We still had to put it together.

We found the instructions tucked into the springs on the bottom. In traditional Ikea fashion, they were needlessly complicated and unclear. We followed them only halfheartedly.

Really all we had to do was screw on the legs, unfold the main part of the couch (the seat and back were hinged together), and attach the arms. The hardest part was stuffing the cushions into the slipcovers.

Ta-da! But alas, do you notice something missing? There were no back cushions! We called the guys who delivered it to make sure they hadn’t left another box in the truck, but they said that everything should have been in the one box and that is must have been a packaging error on Ikea’s end. They said they’ll talk to Ikea and pick up some back cushions for us on this week’s trip to Ikea Houston.

This room is still a graveyard for unwanted things, like our old dishwasher and that purple end table with the paint peeling off. And I’d be lying if I told you that there isn’t still cardboard strewn everywhere from that giant box. But this couch has given me hope that someday it will be the relaxing and inviting space I’ve been dreaming of.

PS: Thank you all for your kind and supportive comments yesterday! To my complete shock and awe I woke up this morning to find that I’d already sold my first item! It’s shipping out today and I feel like a real life businesslady. Thanks for your support!

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Posted in family room/office

The New Family Room/Office: Choosing a Palette

Posted on October 24, 2011 | 9 Comments

I’ve been continuing to decorate the family room/office in my head while I save up money and energy to actually decorate it. Here are some pics to jog your memory. I’ve since cleared it out a bit more and painted the desk green.

I’m really inspired by the peacock, Claude. He was a gift from my friend Cassie and after we paint the walls he’ll get hung above the mantel. Here’s a close-up. He’s so glamorous, that Claude.

I like the idea of using a peacock as a jumping-off point for the color scheme in here. Don’t tell Claude I said this, but I find his coloring a little too quiet for this purpose. Doing a whole room in greens and golds is just not really my jam. So I tracked down one of his more vibrant brethren via the internet.

image source

Delightful, isn’t he? There’s this awesome website I found out about via Pinterest that will generate a color scheme from any image online (check it out here). Here’s what I got when I plugged in Mr. Peacock:

Color Palette Generator

Ahhhhhh! Love!!! Full disclosure: I generated color palettes from a couple different peacock pictures (including this print that I own) and picked the one that I liked the best. I really liked the range of neutral and saturated tones that this one provided, plus that green on the right is an almost perfect match for the color I already painted the desk (Valspar’s Ball Game).

Also, I think that the muddy greens/golds on the left side of the palette relate well to Claude.

I really like the light gray color on the left for the walls, but how to translate it to a paint color? Well, I googled “match paint to html color” and found a handy little web app that takes the html code (#ccccbb for this color) and generates the best matches from your favorite paint collection. The wall color in our living room is from Benjamin Moore’s Color Preview (BM Overcast, to be precise). I love how it’s neutral without being boring, so I thought searching that collection would be a good start. I wasn’t disappointed.

easyrgb.com

My favorite is the color on the bottom left, Gray Mirage. I looked around and had a hard time finding pictures of it in action, but from what I understand it’s very greigy and reads in some lights as a pale olive and in others as a more true gray or taupe. The Overcast paint on our living room walls has a similar quality and I love how dynamic it is. It’s hard to grow tired of a paint color when it changes throughout the day. This decision was easy: Gray Mirage on the walls.

Gray Mirage

It’s looking like the big furniture in here is going to be mostly white, so I’ll bring in some more of the peacock-inspired colors through textiles and accessories. I’ve got my eye on that yellow for my half-baked stenciled rug idea, but I think that even the more tame hues on the left side of the palette will be useful in layering neutrals for a space that’s not all fun and games.

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Posted in family room/office

Family Room Plans (revised)

Posted on October 10, 2011 | 10 Comments

The room at the front of our house is almost completely empty. We sold, donated, or trashed everything we could. There are just a few more items remaining that either missed the first trip to Goodwill or need to go live somewhere else in the house.

Here’s how it looked a few months ago, filled with junk:

And here are the pics I snapped yesterday (right after a craigslist buyer picked up the futon bed):

The only thing this room is filled with now is potential.

It’s such a strange space. It’s not technically considered a bedroom, because it doesn’t have a closet (although we do refer to it as such when we say that we live in a four-bedroom house). It’s also got a door to the front porch that we never use. It was operable when we first moved in, but the last time Nick and I tried to open it we couldn’t. We may try again when it’s not so humid, but I’d really rather just treat it as a window. The exterior door and the fireplace help the room feel more like a living space, but the door to the living room is very bedroom-like, with a lock and everything. Then there’s the weird way that the fireplace wall is split and the way that the ceiling is staggered to accommodate the air conditioning ductwork (several of our downstairs rooms have that going on, as the house wasn’t built with air conditioning).

This room is also huge-17.5′x11′. We just didn’t know what to do with that much space, so I let it become that embarrassing room where stuff you don’t need or want is piled high and unfinished projects go to die. I never got around to making a curtain for the door to the porch, so anyone who comes over can see my mess through the window before even setting foot in the house. Not exactly the first impression I’d like to make.

When I started rethinking this room in early summer, my idea was to convert it to a casual living space slash office slash playroom for future kiddos. You can see all the plans in the original post, but to summarize, I wanted to get a sectional sofa with a sleeper bed, a big plush rug, and a TV console with plenty of storage, then bring in my already owned desk and shelving.

If you look closely at the pictures that I took of the room yesterday, you can see some green painter’s tape on the floor. That’s how I marked out the dimensions of a sectional sofa. Let me just tell you, I’m glad I didn’t order a new sofa before double-checking! My original measurements were completely wrong and my sectional dreams have been crushed. I came to terms with the fact that I am apparently completely unskilled in the use of graph paper and went to floorplanner.com to try again.

Here’s what I’m working with. The bare bones of the room.

And here’s the original layout I had in mind (revised to include the sewing desk I just got the other day).

Yeah, that was totally not going to work. The TV looked all jammed in the corner, and the giant sofa totally dominated the room. Part of the appeal of having a sectional was so several people could comfortable gather to watch movies or LSU games or whatever, but the people sitting nearest the TV would have to turn completely to the side just to see, and they’d probably be blocking the view of everyone else with their giant heads. No bueno.

So, it was back to the drawing board. I stood looking around the room for a while, then went and started moving things around on floorplanner. Here’s what I came up with:

I love it. The work area is clustered on the far side of the room and the living area is near the fireplace, which seems a more fitting arrangement. And the only things I’ll need to buy are a sofa, a rug, and a TV. Not that that’s anything to scoff at-I’ll be saving my home decor dollars for months-but the $300 I made selling off all my clutter sure takes the sting out of it. And no worries, I’ve got some ideas for keeping it thrifty. 

I’ve got some work to do while I save up for those big ticket items, namely:

  • paint the walls (or hire someone, maybe just to do the cutting in)
  • insulate the windows
  • insulate the fireplace
  • paint the small desk I picked up at Goodwill to house my sewing machine

I’m soooooo excited to get started. First on my to-do list: get rid of the rest of the crap in there. Most of it is Nick’s. I’ll admit, though, that I do need to clean out what we call “the long closet” to make room for some of the things that must stay. Old houses are funny-we don’t have a garage, shed, or basement, or access to storage in our attic, but we do have a twelve foot long closet running between our dining room and bathroom. It’s gotten a little out of hand in recent months and it’s about time I whipped it into shape.

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Posted in Before & After, family room/office, Wishing & Hoping