Tag: project

Concrete Swiss Cross

In the modern and Scandinavian home scene you notice a lot of similar trends. Monochromatic palettes, clean uncluttered design, negative space, candles, wood, black and white etc. One other motif you will note is Swiss crosses. They’re on blankets, pillows, art and accessories. Find a scandi home pic on Pinterest, and play the find the Swiss cross game. Why is this motif so popular? It’s simple, bold and classic. Not a design fad, but a timeless design element.

I’ve been Scandinspired as of late, so when I spotted X silicone ice cube trays at Ikea, I saw them not as X’s but as +’s. With silicone + tray in hand, I used some leftover concrete from my concrete clock project to make concrete Swiss crosses.

Concrete Swiss Crosses

I poured excess grey concrete into my silicone ice cube trays, and covered with plastic. I left them to cure overnight, then easily popped them out of the silicone mold. [see how to mix & pour the concrete here.]

Concrete Poured into Ice Cube mold

Any excess concrete was lightly sanded off, and the crosses were lightly sanded the edges of the +’s so they would stand up easily.

Concrete Swiss Cross

Not only did I use up my excess mixed concrete, I also made a cute decor item. The little Swiss crosses look sweet in my black and white powder room.

Concrete Swiss Cross

Concrete Swiss Cross

Working with concrete and silicone molds was incredibly easy. I am now on the hunt for other cool silicone molds. One of those sphere ice cube trays perhaps?

SOURCES:
Concrete – Buddy Rhodes 10lb Artisan Mix
Silicone Ice Cube Tray – Ikea

See post on mixing the concrete here.

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

one out of five

 

Total Cost: $3

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!

 

Project Office

I have been working on our office for SIX MONTHS now. That’s right, half a year! Having a clingy spazzy puppy around doesn’t help. The moment you try to get some work done, he wants to play, or is hungry, or wants to go for a walk, or chew on the baseboard, or just wants so sit there and whine until you stop doing work and pay attention to him.
If having a puppy is this bad, I have no idea how people with babies eat, go pee or bathe. If I ever have kids, I just know I am going to be one of those mothers who puts the baby in the crib screaming and goes downstairs and has a glass of wine.

Where was I? Oh yes the office.
Wrangling the puppy was especially difficult when we were painting, or doing things that he could in no way be near. We would take turns working while the other watched the dog, or built a dog play area in the hallway. Needless to say the simplest task ended up taking days or weeks. I am still finishing a few things up, and a few projects are still incomplete, but it’s finally gotten to a point where I may actually let someone see it.

As for furniture; in our last office we built in a custom desk so when we moved to the storefront the desk stayed behind. We also owned a crappy old office chair, that I happily pushed to the curb before we carried away our last moving box.
So coming into the office in the new house, we owned:

  • A filing cabinet covered in El Granto’s music and snowboarding stickers, which is missing the rails to actually hang files on
  • A cheap Ikea drawer unit
  • LOTS AND LOTS of books, antique cameras and crap.

That is not a lot to work from…Try as hard as I did, you just cant make a desk out of crap. It topples over…

So for the first six months of living in the house we used my Grandmother’s 50 year old Ikea card table as a desk, and a folding chair. More often than not we ended up working with the laptop on the sofa downstairs.
Before I post pictures of all our office projects, here is some insight on what we had planned

My Pinterest Office Inspiration Board

This board is giving away a ton of hints of what we were up to, so stay tuned for the results!
And here is our great big office plan/project to do list.

TO DO:

 

UGH…I am tired just looking at the list…wheres my drink?