My Most Popular Pinterest Pin

I got a Pinterest account two years ago, mostly for pinning my wedding ideas, and then when we bought the house it extended into home decor. I am by no means popular on Pinterest, I just do my thing and at time of publishing this I only have 1576 followers and just over 2000 pins.

I do however have one popular Pin.

Yep that’s right, one. I am not even sure how or when it got popular. I posted it almost two years ago. One day it just had tons of repins.

So here it is, my most popular pin!

 

Right now it has over twenty thousand repins.

Whats your most popular Pin?

Pinterest Challenge – Painted Wallpaper

I love Pinterest. I have used it for organizing my wedding ideas, dreaming and planning our home renos, and even a recipe or two.

Most of all it inspires me. It’s like looking through magazine after magazine of gorgeous ideas. A few minutes of Pinteresting and my head is full of great ideas and projects, much to the chagrin of my husband!

So when Sherry @ Young House Love was discussing this years fall edition of their Pinterest Challenge, I decided to jump in with both feet.

I have been obsessed as of late with paintable wallpaper. I just love the texture and depth of it. Take for instance my inspiration shot from Emma @ The Marion House Book. Her use of the paintable wallpaper with a dark dramatic colour in her office is just stunning!

Check out her whole office here.

I already have a wallpapered wall in my Master Bedroom, but I have been thinking about adding some drama to my master closet. It’s not a walk-in closet, nor does it have room for a chandelier or an ottoman or any sort of art. Its just a standard double closet, but why should that stop it from being awesome?!

So I set out to add some drama to my closet by wallpapering & painting the insides of my closet doors! Yeah that’s right, the insides of my closet doors, so that when you open the doors they will scream TA-DA! It will be like having your own sexy magicians assistant hidden inside your closet.

Closet Before

So to put inspiration to fruition. We picked up a roll of (0n sale!) Martha Stewart paintable wallpaper in a pressed tin design, as well as a tester jar of dark purple paint.

We removed the doors from their hinges, then set them up on some saw horses in the guest room. The doors were a bit wider than the roll of wallpaper, and I could have taken the easy way out and just done a paneled insert for the door, but I decided to do it right and cover the entire door. So I laid out my first sheet of paper, wet & booked it, then applied it to the straight edge of the door. We smoothed out the bubbles and ensured the edges were well pressed down.

One Sheet of Wallpaper Applied to Door

We then lined up a second 1/2 sheet of paper (split lengthwise, so I could use the other half for the second door). Matched the pattern, wet & booked and applied the wallpaper. We then did the same thing on the other door.

Wallpaper Applied to Doors

I left the wallpaper overhanging the edges until it all dried. At that point I flipped the doors over. Placed a piece of scrap wood underneath to use as a cutting board. I then cut along the edges of the door with a sharp blade, cutting off the excess wallpaper and leaving a smooth edge.

We then gave the wallpaper two coats of purple paint with a brush. It was a pain to get the paint into all the little crevices! The second coat went much faster than the first.

Painting the Wallpaper
Doors Wallpapered & Painted

While the doors were drying, we gave a coat of dark grey paint to the closet, and prepped for new rods & organizers. We re-hung the doors, and this is what we have now! (sorry about the pic quality, we haven’t had an ounce of decent natural light in days with this storm!) I will take better pics once some sunshine decides to come out and play.

 

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
Martha Stewart Paintable Wallpaper in Pressed Tin – Canadian Tire
Behr Sample paint – Home Depot

Tools Used:
Wallpapering kit (wetting container, smoother, sponge, edge roller etc.)
Sharp Blade
Hammer & flat head screwdriver (for removing doors)
Paint Brushes & Trays

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

Two out of five

Total Cost: $20

Project Master Bedroom

Our Master Bedroom was actually one of the first rooms we started work on. (in the sense that it got a mini makeover before we started filming our episode of Holmes Inspection.)

Here’s a run down of what we started with: Our 2nd floor Master bedroom is on the small side at 10×12 feet, but we decided to make it our Master rather than the guest room because it had a large double closet, was quiet and away from the busy street, and it had an amazing private second floor deck. The room has one window, a glass door heading out to the deck, and decent height ceilings.

We purchased a new mattress, box spring and standard bed frame when we moved into the house, and brought along with us two tall dressers that my Mom & I had refinished glossy black a few years ago. That’s it. No bedside tables, lamps,  curtains or anything. For the first few months we used unpacked moving boxes as our bedside tables, and those temporary drapes that are made of folded paper. Then the ceiling started leaking in our bedroom, and we cut a giant hole and found ice in our ceiling. Thankfully the Holmes Group came in to help us, but that meant that our house was going to be on tv…with millions of people seeing it, and we had MOVING BOXES FOR BEDSIDE TABLES. Enter Kristen panic attack.

We needed to quickly get the room into a presentable shape before the Holmes Inspection crew came in to film our house, but without painting or doing anything to the actual room. So we did a few projects to get it up to a liveable state before construction. We built a headboard, got a few dressers as bedside tables, hung a mirror, got a couple lamps, curtains and threw in a vase of flowers…I know, its not much but at least we didn’t look like we were living in a shanty town when the camera crew came in.

Here are a few before (and in between) shots:

Master Bedroom Before We Moved In
Master Bedroom after mini makeover before Holmes Inspection Reno
Another View pre-reno

It still however had a long way to being complete!

Here’s some of our Inspiration:

Master Bedroom Pinterest Board

And here’s the Master Bedroom To Do List:

So check back for us (hopefully) knocking all those to-do’s off our list!

 

Light Fixture Facelift

Do you have something in your house that works perfectly well, it looks fine, and you have no justification what so ever to replace it, but you HATE IT? Yeah…that was my living room light fixture. It was fine…I just didn’t like it. It was also big, and costly to replace with anything I like. So it had no hope of getting replaced anytime soon. I had come to terms that our whole living room is in fact an epic fail (sofas don’t fit the space, the tv console is hideous, the dogs crate lives in the living room, and there’s no place to set down a drink.) So you think I would just concede the light failure and learn to live with it. Like the way hoarders seem to have come to terms with crawling over their belongings to get to the bathroom. Not so. I my friend am what you would call anal retentive, and if I can possibly change something I hate; I will.

This weekend I had enough of that light fixture, so I got El Granto to take it down, and I marched it outside and I spray painted that light. Take that heinous light. Now you are the same heinous light with a prettier color! Nah, I’m not giving it enough credit, I think it looks much better, and definitely good enough to get it off my hit list for a few months.


So here’s what we did.

Took the light apart (the bowl came attached from the rods, and the rods from the light fixture). It’s hard to see the lights terrible color from my before pic. It was white with gold brush strokes and a hint of green. Waaaay to country for this city house.

Close up of strange gold faux finish

I cleaned everything, then dragged a few saw horses outside, and made myself a little work station. I hung the rods and the hoop that the bowl sits in from an old piece of wood with some nails in it. I sat the light on some cardboard. In hindsight I should have hung the light as well as it would have been easier to paint. I made sure to mask off the light socket with tape. I painted with my favorite spray paint; Rustoleum Universal. This time with some left over Oil Rubbed Bronze. I painted with several light coats, ensuring I got into the nooks and crannies of the light.  Sorry grass, you were collateral damage in this project.

Painting the light in the backyard

After it dried we took it back inside and re-hung. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
Rustoleum Universal Spray Paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze – Home Depot

Tools Used:
Screw Driver, Ladder, Husband

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

One out of five

Total Cost: $0 (already owned the paint, $10 if you needed paint)

Guest Room Board & Batten How To

It was time to add some charm to our guest bedroom in the form of board & batten on the walls & some new (not yellow) paint. The room is big in the scope of our house at 12’x12′. It has a lovely bay window, double closet and original 100 year old ash floors. It also has amazing baseboards & trim (as does most of our house). When starting the board & batten the last thing I wanted to do was change, futz or in anyway do anything to the trim work. I wanted it to stay where it was, and do the board & batten up to it. Problem is, the baseboards are sloped and hit the wall with only 1/4″ space from the wall. This means that the material for my battens could only be 1/4″ thick, or else I’d have an unsightly overhang.Eeep…that doesn’t leave a lot of options.

Before
Before
Before
Before

These were the possibilities that I could find:

  • 1/4″ x 4 foot long poplar lattice at almost $5 each…hurmph
  • 1/4″ x 8 foot vynal trim pieces at almost $6 each…ack
  • 1/4″ thick 4×8 sheet of hardboard for $17

The hardboard was looking to be the best option, but we don’t have a table saw yet (it’s still on my wish list). So we’d have to get the Home Depot guys to cut it down for us at $1 a cut, then somehow get it home. It could work, but it also wasn’t the best case scenario…I needed to think this one out.

I then called my local lumber yard Downtown Lumber. They’re always really helpful and I thought they may have some ideas. Turns out Downtown Lumber carries 1/4″ MDF in 4×8 sheets for $15, and they make custom cuts for 50 cents each. I like using mdf much better than hardboard (as it doesn’t have that glossy surface), and the lumber store is waaay closer to our house, and easier to walk home with big lumber.
So better + cheaper + less work = happy Kristen.

So I did my math, settled on 2.5″ battens, and placed the order to have 2 mdf sheets cut into 2.5″ strips. We headed over after work to pick it up and lugged it all home along with some trim. The getting it home was an epic fail (I’m talking all of it almost falling off a dolly, practically killing a cyclist and an epic argument) dammit we should just get a car already…

So after we got the wood home, and had a few drinks to forget the ordeal, I set out sanding the edges of the mdf for a nice smooth finish, and putting a coat of Behr Premium Plus Ultra in pure white on the edges. I didn’t paint the flat part of the battens for one main reason; I was going to have to fill & touch them up anyways, and to get a smooth finish I would really need to re-paint them entirely. Rather than make myself more work. I decided to paint them once they were on the wall with a small foam roller.

I did however paint the bottom of the wall so it would save me trying to paint in between the battens (yuck). Deciding where the paint would stop (where the top rail would go) was the hardest part. The storefront is not the least bit straight or level, and when I drew a level line on the wall it looked like I had done it drunk. So we fudged it, and made it kinda sorta parallel to the ceiling and floors. We used a chalk line to line it up, then used tape to mark the line, and to keep me from painting willy nilly everywhere.

Bottom of Wall Painted White

After the paint had dried (the next day) we installed the top rail out of the 2.5″ mdf battens on the nice line we’d made with the tape the day before.

Top Rail Installed

Then the vertical battens got added. We had to custom cut each and every one, as they were all different heights. I would measure a few, and head out to the garage to do the cutting, then lug them all back upstairs, over a baby gate (that was keeping the dog from free roaming and destroying the house) and then back into the guestroom. I made countless trips up and down those stairs.

Vertical Stiles Installed

We went with 12″ of space between battens, cause, well it looked good. The front wall under the bay window the spacing is fudged so that battens framed the windows (technically they should have not two battens touching eachother, but it looks correct once its all painted).

Under the Bay Window the Spacing is “Fudged”

We did have one instance where hitting an electrical outlet was unavoidable. It was on a small wall that had 2 switches, an outlet and an a/v outlet. The battens were almost the same size as the outlets, so we placed one batten directly centered on the outlet, so we could make flush cuts against it. We then measured out our 12″ on either side. The wall is not perfectly symmetrical, but you wouldn’t second guess it.

Where we couldn’t avoid hitting an electrical outlet, we changed the spacing so that a batten would hit it square so that our cuts would be easier

To make the spacing easier, we made a spacing jig out of some old lumber, and spaced & leveled then brad nailed each batten.

Our Spacing Guide (sorry for the out of focus shot, I was trying to shoot and hold)

It went very quick, the most time consuming part being the measuring and cutting (especially if I’d measured wrong, and had to go re-cut). We labeled each batten corresponding to what wall the were working on (Left, Right, Front, Back) and gave them a letter (i.e. Left-A was the first board on the left side, whereas Right-I was the last board on the right). This made it so much easier as you couldn’t loose track of what board went where.

After we fished installing all the vertical battens, we also decided to add some horizontal battens about a foot from the top to add a bit more visual appeal, and it matches the shaker paneling on the front of the storefront. We had lots of off cuts from the vertical battens, so we cut down a bunch of 12″ battens and brad nailed them in place. (and of course custom cut ones for the odd places.)

All the Rails & Stiles Installed

Next up was to fill all the damn holes from the brad nails. I filled the nail holes with spackle, and the cracks and seams with paintable caulking. I used the spackle this time so that we could easily sand to get a perfect finish on the flat battens.

Spacking

We then added some cove moulding on top of the top rail. I was going to add a small plate rail above that as well, but that proved to be too difficult with our wonky walls. Our walls just bowed and dipped so much that there were huge gaps at points. So we decided to call it done with the cove moulding.

After all that filling, sanding and caulking, I got to painting. I cut in the edges of the battens where they met the wall. I had given one coat of paint to the battens before I had installed them, but this second coat covered all the caulking and finished the sides beautiful. I painted the flat part of  the battens using a small foam roller. I made sure not to use too much paint so that it didn’t overflow into the “board” part, and it went quite quickly. I was running extremely low on paint (had only bought one gallon) and decided to brush on my second coat. The foam roller gives a beautiful finish, but it was looking like it was going to take three coats (which I did not have enough paint for) So I switched it up and painted the entire second coat with a brush. The trick to painting a flat surface with a brush without leaving brush marks is a light touch. You want to evenly distribute the paint without pulling any back up. I paint the whole piece, and then go back over it quickly with a light brush. When the paint dries this should leave you with a nice smooth finish.

Board & Batten Painted (wall still yellow)

After it dried for a day, I went back and painted the rest of the wall with a nice medium grey, which really made the board & batten pop!

Board & Batten Complete!
Board & Batten
Odin Likes the Board & Batten

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
2 – 1/4″ 4×8 sheets of mdf cut into 2.5″ strips: Downtown Lumber
1/2″ cove moulding: Downtown Lumber
DAP Spackle : Home Hardware
DAP Alex Plus Paintable Caulking: Home Depot
Paint (Board & Batten)- Behr Premium Plus Ultra Pure White in Satin: Home Depot
Paint (Wall) – Behr Premium Plus Ultra in Anonymous in Eggshell: Home Depot

Tools Used:
Mitre saw, measuring tape, level, chalk line, math, paint tray & rollers, brushes, sandpaper

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

Three out of five

(the hardest part was determining the spacing)

Total Cost: $100 ($50 for the mdf & cove moulding, and $50 for the white paint. We already had the grey paint)

Guest Room Board & Batten Reveal

After measuring and planning, and cutting and nailing, and caulking and painting, its finally done. Our guest room now has a board & batten wall treatment (althou I think its more shaker paneling…but tomato tomato)

Without further adieu, here is our completed Board & Batten treatment in our Guest Room.

Whatcha think?

(Come back tomorrow for a how to!)

*UPDATE* Check out the how to here:

Guest Room Board & Batten How To

 

Craft Fail

Have you checked out Craft Fail yet? It’s great, it chronicles peoples adventures epic screw-up’s in crafting/DIYing/cooking things they found on internet tutorials.

As you may know by now, I often get an idea in my head and insist on trying it out. (Like when I cut a hole in the wall.) Sometimes it turns out to be an awesomsauce idea and sometimes not so much…

So this weekend I wanted some bedside table lamps for the Guest Room, but I couldn’t find what I wanted for the price I wanted. So I started looking around the house for stuff to make lamps with. We have two of these $9.99 Ikea Grono table lamps just sitting around collecting dust. It’s like the sad Ikea lamp commercial all over again…

Ikea Grono Table Lamp

I also happened to have two of these pretty white vases.

I thought it would be a brilliant idea to make lamps out of my vases using the lamp hardware from my Grono’s. All I needed to do was cut a hole in the bottom of the vases…

Turns out, glass drill bits are EXPENSIVE. And both El Grant & I were convinced I would bust the vases all to hell while trying to drill holes in them. So Instead I thought of all the hipster ahhem cute painted mason jars out there, and decided I should just PAINT the inside of my Ikea Grono lamps with white paint instead.

So I broke out my white chalk paint and gave it two coats. It looked.like.crap. It was all uneven and streaky. I then thought I maybe should have poured the paint into the lamp instead of painting it. So I taped off the bottom hole, poured some chalk paint inside, swirled it around, then tipped it upside down and let it dry.

THIS is what I found the next day.

Whats that? Oh its all my paint PEELING off
An aerial view to show more of the epic failing going on

Today’s lesson: Sometimes you FAIL HARD.

Today in Toronto – Spot a Super Holmes

To kick off Mike Holmes’ new show Holmes Makes It Right which premiers tonight at 9pm on HGTV, Mike Holmes & some Holmes “look-alikes” will be gallivanting around Toronto in capes between 11am-4pm today. Spot a Super Holmes or a Holmes Look Alike and enter to win $5,000 cash or prizes from Milwaukee Tools and Roxul!

Check out the contest page here for more info, and watch HGTV Canada’s Facebook page and twitter today for hints on the Super Holmes locations.

As you may know Mike saved us from our leaky mess of a home when he fixed our house as part of a Holmes Inspection episode. Check it out here. We owe the world to Mike & his team, and we’re excited to see the families and homes he’s going to help this time around!

DIY “Leaded” Glass

I love leaded glass, especially in exterior transom windows of old storefronts. The transom above our front door is a leaded glass window (albeit new) and I love it. I WISH our house had some original leaded glass, but alas all we have are energy efficient double pane windows. I know, I am the only person on earth who complains about how energy efficient her house is…

The Storefront Window

We looked into getting some real leaded glass for the storefront window transoms, but it was darn near impossible, and pretty much a huge waste of money as our current windows are perfectly fine. The problem is however, that once I get an idea into my head I am not easily dissuaded. So I started researching for a solution and came across this:

Pebeo Vitrail lead adhesive strips. It’s used for faking your own stained glass. They have a line of glass paints, and you literally make your design out of this tape, then fill it in with the glass paint.

I didn’t want the stained glass look, but the lead looked like a pretty cool idea. So I popped into every art store I came across, and on my third try I managed to find a package. It was $24 for 33 feet. I thought that would be plenty for my project and headed home.

I then did some research for leaded glass patterns.

We narrowed it down to either a Diamond pattern, or  a Regent pattern. I drew both out to the size of our transom windows, and once drawn out, we liked the Regent the best.

I headed outside and thoroughly cleaned the windows and then taped my drawn out pattern on the inside of the window. I then set to re-create the pattern on the outside of the window. It was a bit tricky due to the space between the front pane of glass and the back one where the pattern was. If I change the angle I was looking at the window it changed the pattern. I tried hard to keep it straight and true but alas its a bit crooked. Shh don’t tell.

The adhesive leaded glass was very easy to cut, but the backing wasn’t that sticky. You really need to burnish it in place with the provided application tool to make sure it stays where its supposed to. Once I got into the swing of things my lines became straighter and my cuts more precise. Just as I was fining the first of two windows I noticed that I was dangerously low on adhesive lead! Eeep. Apparently 33 feet doesn’t go that far when you have an intricate pattern. So I was unable to finish both windows, so for now I have one leaded glass transom window. What do you think?

“Leaded” Glass Window (view from outside)
“Leaded” Glass Window (view from inside)