Nine Red: March 2014

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Creating with the Stars 2014

Hello & Happy Spring! Today makes it official, though it's been feeling Spring like for a few weeks now around here, and I love it! I woke up Monday morning to quite the surprise... I had entered my Air Plant Sphere project into the annual Creating with the stars contest on East Coast Creative... and well.... it was picked! And to top it off, I've been paired up with Brooke from the fantastic blog, All Things Thrifty. Sweet!

I'm excited of course, and also nervous - this is going to be a lot of work... but I'm up for the challenge. Week #1's theme is Knock Off, naturally - since the gals over at ECC have an awesome TV show now called Knock It Off on the Live Well Network (check out episodes here!). Here's the scoop, I'd love to share with you my ideas for what project I'll be knocking off & get your feedback, but this contest has to be totally anonymous, to keep things fair. So I'm on my own! All 12 contestants projects will be revealed on Monday and voting will be open for 48 hours... be sure to cast your votes for the best knock off project!

Thanks everyone for all the love & support - I gotta get to work - I've got a pretty good project up my sleeve...I hope. ;)

-Jesse

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Wednesday, March 5, 2014

China Cabinet Makeover

Hello again! Ralphy & I have finally gotten back into painting furniture! Feels so good. While moving here was a wonderful thing, I did lose my workshop, meaning we can only paint when the weather allows. Which luckily in California, is fairly often. I've got my eye on under the house to be a future workshop, but that will take a lot of time, and probably a lot of money. So for now, we work out in the sun under the glorious redwood trees. I guess it could be worse. . .

So in our kitchen, one thing was missing. A refrigerator! Of course we have one, but the only place for it was just outside the kitchen, in the entryway, facing the living room. And when the door was open, no one was coming in or out of that room. It bugged me:

So once we had a spot across the room for it (pics soon, it's terribly ugly right now!) it was time to fill the old spot with something special. And after scouring craigslist for a bit, we found this solid wood beauty for a mere $140..

It was the perfect size! It's more than I would usually pay for something we were going to give a makeover, but the fact that it was immediately available & the perfect size shows it was meant to be, and I forked over the cash.

I think it was painted in oil paint, the black was really pretty & very soft to the touch. Actually, the couple we bought from said it had been red, green, you name it. But we were craving color. Strong color. Perhaps it's living in a light challenged home, or perhaps it's us craving summertime, we both knew what color we wanted. Cozumel. No doubt....

After Ralph gave her a serious dusting, it was time to tape up the glass. Normally I'd just remove the glass, but this thing looks to be about 80 years old, and the glass was held in with teeny tiny tacks & pieces of wood that I KNEW would splinter, break, shatter, etc as soon as I took them off. So yea, taping sucks, but re-installing 80 year old glass sucks worse. Pick your battles.

Oh look, a drawer.

PAINT DETAILS! Ok, many people have questions about the color, brand, etc of paint we'll use on a certain project, so here it is:

Behr Paint & Primer in one, Interior, flat finish.
Color: Cozumel. They don't always have a card for this color, but just go up to the counter and ask for Behr's Cozumel. They have it, and we love it.

Halfway through painting I realized I forgot a mask. Don't do that unless you want to sneeze cozumel, too.

We chose to not sand. We had the primer in the paint which sticks to most surfaces REALLY well, and we had planned to let this naturally age and show the black through. So laziness + supposed planning ahead = long lasting paint job that always looks like you meant it. Yay!

We are using a lovely HVLP Gravity feed gun connected to our air compressor. I believe the brand is husky, I got it at home depot. I found the same on on Amazon right here, however. And actually that's a better price, I should of done that. But it's the same one, and I adore it.

Floetrol: Paint on it's own can be a little thick for my little gun, so you have to water it down a bit with Floetrol. I do a ratio of 1 part floetrol, to 4 parts paint. Stir in a separate cup, and dump in. Floetrol also helps smooth out the bumps, it's kind of magical to watch. I use it sometimes when I brush by hand for the same reason, bye bye brushstrokes. Here's a Link to Floetrol if you've never seen it before.

Reeach! Can you tell I'm vertically challenged?

Lookin good! That took about 30 minutes (I knoooow!) and we let it dry while we went inside for cocktails. Luckily the hardware was already pretty nice, so that saved some cash. Oh, guess what we forgot!? The SHELVES..... and we realized it after we put the paint away. Though I'm so glad we did.... look at the black shelves:

I love it! So much better than a refrigerator in our hall/entryway/awkward area.. the black shelves look really nice in my opinion, and when the black coat underneath comes shining through over the years, it will compliment nicely.

View from the kitchen side of things:

Remember before....

Then of course we had to start playing with what will go inside... the original plan was to cover the back of the glass in a cute fabric, but we fell in love with it as is. So it stays clear.

I'm really happy with how this came out! What do you think, should we have left the fridge? Haha... no. Do you see that miniature wind chime in the pic above? It's in the lower left corner. That... is amazingly... for our cats. Yep - we have the indoor/outdoor cats totally trained to ring a little bell when they want to go outside. Spoiled beasts.

Have a good one!

-Jesse

Not ready to quit reading yet? That's what I like about you... ;)

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Saturday, March 1, 2014

Before and After: The Downstairs Bath Official Tour

Should we finally tour this bathroom or what? When we started the bathroom in...oh.. mid, November? The idea was for it to be a 1 to 2 weekend project. Then of course Thanksgiving happened, and oh - all of December is pretty much devoted to the holidays, and then we were able to get back to work. I'm pretty proud of our lil makeover, we did it on a budget ($300ish?) and changed the room drastically. You can see the the post that started it all here, or you can browse the many posts throughout the process by clicking here. Quick refresher of how it looked BEFORE:

Keep that image in mind as I do my best to photograph the AFTER photos. I really, really love how it turned out. I'll share two sets of photos, one in our fabulous vintage yellow light, that casts a warm glow all over the room - which by the way - makes your skin look amazing & clear. Yellow lights from now on, haha... Also - find project links under each photo. Get ready for a ton of photos...

Rather than replacing the existing stand, we decided to save a little cash & add some personality by giving it a face-lift. This was a simple job, paint & rub in a stain. Since we wanted a wall size mirror in here to make the space feel larger, we had a custom mirror cut & we built the frame ourselves. Adding a mantle gave us room to put a few plants & trinkets, while providing a space for people to set things.

The towel rack used to be to the right of the toilet, which, was pretty awkward. Adding a slim towel rack the width of the window provided ample hanging space while bringing yet another metal into the room.

Copper Towel Rack

The plan was to make some art, but by chance I spotted this at Ross & knew it would fit perfectly.

A few thrift store scores in woods, metallics & browns + my ferns cozy up this space.

DIY Mantle & Mirror

One more shot of that mirror.......

The floor was originally peel & stick linoleum, and once we started looking around on Amazon for flooring we realized peel & stick has come a long way! These were simple to put in, and give the illusion of a wood floor that I dream of. You can find them on Amazon here, we used 2 boxes totaling about $30.

Really Easy Wood Look Flooring

Man that room is hard to photograph! Here are some daytime shots, it's been super rainy so it was STILL a challenge getting good light, but I didn't want to wait until summer to share this with y'all. So here we go:

In a better lit bathroom you could totally see how awesome that rug is, I got it from an Etsy Seller (click here!). Here's a better shot:

So in love with that ceiling! The trim, was a... .let's just say, "learning experience". We used fence lumber (not treated with chemicals!) to achieve the rustic look (I'm too lazy to dismantle pallets, plus I hear they have super chemicals all over 'em), and did a simple whitewash before installing. I'd say it cost us around $40.

White Wood Ceiling Tutorial

I had wanted something in this blank corner since you could see it in the mirror, doubling it's blank-ness. It had to be small, it had to be light, it had to be living. Tah dah!

Newest Favorite Project: Air Plant Sphere

I'm really happy with the bathroom! I think we are coming in at around $300 total, which is pretty good considering we repainted, bought a new mirror & added a frame, built a mantle, redid the floors, added a custom whitewashed ceiling & scouted out all new accessories. Thanks for touring!

-Jesse

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