All posts by RebeccaLittle78

Basement Playroom Makeover: House 1.0

May 5, 2015House 1.0, PlayroomRebeccaLittle78

The house came complete with a retro, wood-paneled basement that we turned it into a playroom on a pretty tight budget. So how do you turn a Brady Bunch basement into a crisp white kid zone? See below.

First up, tips on how to paint the paneling.

1.) Sand it to get the sheen off. This is messy—masks recommended. We used an electric sander on the main part of the paneling, and then hand-sanded into the grooves. It took a weekend to complete.

2.) Wash the walls down to remove the grit.

3.) Prime the walls using Kilz primer. This effectively covers the knots in the knotty pine and gives a surface for the paint to grip to. This step took us a weekend and some weeknights after the kids went to sleep.

4.) Paint the walls using semi-gloss white paint. This took two coats.

5.) After we finished the walls, they looked so fresh and white that the ceiling looked drab so we painted that as well.

Before and after view down the basement stairs:

Another before and after view. Totally de-knotty pined.

The curtains and window seat were created from cute sheets I found at Urban Outfitters. The shelves are IKEA, and the train table — the bargain of my life — was obtained for $25 at a kiddie consignment sale.

We turned the nook into a reading spot and toy storage. The decals are from Etsy, the pillows are Marimekko, and the pads were covered by Urban Outfitters sheets.

My mom created toy bins in the seats by sewing canvas bags and velcro-ing them around the top so they can be removed and cleaned.

The cockpit was made by my husband (the door behind it hides the sump pump, so we don’t need to access it).

Expedit shelving and Sophie the Giraffe should be issued upon a child’s birth alongside those blue and pink striped newborn blankets. The shelvingand bins are Ikea; the couch is re-purposed from my parents house. The art along the back is homemade — a spaceman collage, ferris wheel and gumball light. The play table and rug are from the Land of Nod outlet in Naperville.

My husband had to make a door out of knotty pine so we could keep the kids out of the unfinished part of the basement. The result is here, complete with cat door.

And there you have it! A basement play room for some sweat equity and a whole lotta white paint.

Dining Room 1.0: No Phones at the Table

April 29, 2015Crafty, Dining Room, House 1.0RebeccaLittle78

My sons are too young to have their own devices, but I wanted to set a precedent early that the dinner table is a phone-free zone. (And, obviously, adults can use a reminder, too. Reddit will still be there after the dishes are cleared.) I downloaded a free trial of InDesign to make this sign, framed it and hung it on the dining room wall. Yes, there’s been some eye-rolling, but I consider it a victory that I can at least see those eyes and they’re not glued to a smartphone. Download this version here.

Dining Room: House 1.0

April 28, 2015Dining Room, House 1.0RebeccaLittle78

The dining room was one of the first rooms we re-decorated when we moved in, in part because peeling off wallpaper is so satisfying. Here are the before and after shots!

I am obsessed with this wallpaper and plan to use it again in the new house. It took a while to convince my husband, but the compromise was to use a neutral gray below to offset the wild pattern. The chandelier was original to the house and just needed to be cleaned (vinegar did the trick) in order to be restored to full reflectiveness. We also pulled up the carpet and had the hardwood floors stained in a dark tone.

The buffet and china cabinet once belonged to my great-grandmother, and the dining room table and chairs were once my aunt’s. I still plan to stain or paint the chairs a darker tone, but just didn’t get around to it in this house. That, and recovering the seats, are still on the to do list. I’ll get around to it eventually. In the meantime, the kids spill spaghetti on the old fabric.

Full Bath: House 1.0

April 21, 2015Bathroom, House 1.0RebeccaLittle78

This one was a simple re-do because we couldn’t afford to rip out the bath fixtures and renovate. Plus, the tiles and the vanity were in good shape, even if they weren’t exactly what we would have picked out.

Our solution was to make inexpensive fixes throughout. We painted the existing vanity and mirror black (using semi-gloss paint), and replaced the curtain with a retrofitted shower curtain. (I really love this solution. Shower curtains come in great patterns, the fabric wears well, and you can use one panel in a bathroom because you are unlikely to open the curtains very often.)

We also created the look of wainscoting without actually applying it. Wainscoting would have stuck out too much in this small space, not to mention that it cost more than we could spend. So we faked it. We created the look by building wood frames, and painted it the whole area white to make it look uniform. Then we painted the wall above it blue and voila! A revamped bathroom for less than $200.

Photo Wall: House 1.0

April 14, 2015Crafty, Hallway, House 1.0RebeccaLittle78

I wanted to make a family photo wall for years, and finally got around to it during the particularly strong nesting phase of my second pregnancy. I’ll be honest—it was a huge pain, took much longer than I expected, and made me temporarily resentful of the friends and family housed within the frames. (Lookin’ pretty smug there, Grandma. Don’t you judge me.) But once complete, it was happy and homey, and my kids both loved looking at the photos every day on their way up and down the stairs.

Here’s a step-by-step guide that streamlines the process, sans the stops and starts I had along the way.

1.) Gather family photos together. Printing digital photos is easy enough, but I wanted wedding photos and other old pictures from our parents and grandparents, which required borrowing, scanning, and re-sizing photos. Give yourself some time for this step. (Like maybe over the course of a month.) I stuck to printing photos in 4 x 6 and 5 x 7 to keep it fairly uniform.

2.) Buy frames. Home improvement magazines and design shows would recommend buying identical frames. This is fine if you are doing 15 or fewer frames, but is way too expensive if you need enough frames to cover a hallway. I chose a standard color (black) and bought all the 4 x 6 and 5 x 7 frames I came across over a period of four months. I mostly purchased from Michael’s, Garden Ridge, Bed Bath & Beyond, and HomeGoods, because they had the cheapest options. It created a less uniform pattern overall, but I think the random assortment is more visually interesting.

3.) Prepare the frames. Remove the stickers from the front of the glass with a razor blade and, if any of those you purchased were also table frames, remove the easel back so it fits flat to the wall when hung.

4.) Frame the photos. Place the photos in frames, being mindful of whether or not you want a standard pattern (for instance, all wedding photos in 5 x 7 frames) or if there are any other groupings you will eventually want on the wall. I printed all wedding photos in 5 x 7 and black and white, but varied the frame styles.

5.) Plan the wall. Decide roughly how you’d like the photos to look. I measured 1″ above our chair rail, and then eyeballed a distance above the chair rail as a top line for the photos. I placed painter’s tape down the wall to definitively show the top line; the bottom line I measured each time before hanging a photo.

6.) Plan the assortment. This step takes forever, so plan accordingly. My wall had three segments—two standard rectangles at the bottom of the stairs (pictured above), and then the long, diagonal part of the wall above the stairs.

For the rectangles, I measured a piece of butcher paper in the dimensions of the area I wanted to fill with photos and played with the frames until I was happy with the design (below).

For the part of the wall that included the rise of the stairs, I used an angle finder (below) and a piece of wood to mimic the angle of the rise at the height where I roughly wanted to keep the top line of the frames. (I ditched the butcher paper for this step because the area was too large, but that would work just as well.)

Then I started filling it in with frames, playing around with different combinations and varying the assortment between black and white and color photos, eras of photos and the family members pictured.

I used my bedroom floor as my workspace because it was the widest open floor space I had. I spent about a week experimenting with different photo combinations and drove myself crazy–for no good reason. Save yourself this unnecessary step by approximating a combination that you think you like, snapping a photo of it, and looking at the photo later to see if it is a pleasing assortment. For some reason, looking at it in a photo rather than staring at the arrangement itself helps prevent eye swim.

7.) Transfer the plan to the wall. Once you have the layout perfected, the next step is to transfer it onto the wall. My husband and I hung the photos together, and it definitely went faster as a two-man operation. We started hanging the photos from the bottom, using the chair rail as our guide, and systematically transferred the frames from our layout to the wall, two frames at a time. We measured the distance between the photos in our layout, mimicked it on the wall, and built the design slowly but surely. (This took about six nights of working an hour at a time. It was painstaking, so doing it in shorter bursts was less frustrating.)

8.) Hang the frames. Measuring the distance between the frames was much harder once
hanging hardware was involved. It looked perfect on my model, but then the hanging hardware was two inches below where we wanted the top of the frame to hit. The solution: Tape a nail into the hanging hardware so it is sticking out, line the frame up where you want it, and then push the nail against the wall so it makes an indentation. Then hammer into that indentation.

9.) Enjoy!

Powder Room: House 1.0

April 7, 2015Bathroom, Crafty, House 1.0RebeccaLittle78

I know some people go bananas for toile. I am not one of those people. (I don’t care for pastoral scenes in any context.) Luckily the fixtures were high-end and in great shape, so the re-decorate was just a matter of taste.

Farewell to toile. In addition to the wallpaper, we pulled down the shelving and the mirror to replace them with items that didn’t jut out as much into this small space. The Moulin Rouge dancers (artwork, above) I purchased from a street stall in Paris 12 years ago and had never found a place for them. Now these coquettes have a home. The curtain is actually a shower curtain that my mom retrofitted for use on this window.

I also made this piece of inexpensive art (directions below) from print blocks, which I picked up at Architectural Artifacts (4325 N. Ravenswood Ave., Chicago, 773-348-0622).

These particular blocks were used to print the labels for the infant bloomers made at the Rubens Baby Factory. (You might remember the old sign from the building on Racine and Fullerton. It closed in 2004 and and has since been razed to make way for shops, restaurants, and other things of interest to DePaul students.) Anyway, I thought print blocked underwear was funny and a perfect fit for a bathroom. Here’s how to frame them, cheaply and easily.

1.) Find print blocks to provide artistic inspiration. The selection at Architectural Artifacts includes letters, old labels, print plates, and more vintage ephemera. I got all three of my blocks for less than $15.

2.) Buy a suitable background. I found a piece of flat wrapping paper at Paper Source that matched my bathroom décor for $2.50.

3.) Get the frame. The Ribba shadowbox frame at Ikea ($9.99) worked well because it allowed plenty of room between the background and the glass for the depth of the print blocks. I removed the included matting for my project.

4.) Use the paper to wrap the back of the frame like a present. Scotch tape worked just fine.

5.) Wood blocks are heavy enough that they need more than tape to stay put, so I used a power drill to attach them to the back of the cork frame.

6.) Pop the backing into the frame and done. Fifteen minutes and less than $30 for a piece of creative art that is a conversation piece for everyone that uses our bathroom.

Nursery: House 1.0

March 30, 2015House 1.0, NurseryRebeccaLittle78

Here are the before pics of the room. The previous owners used it as an office.

And here is the after.

We moved into our house when our first son was 3-months-old. Gender, obviously, was already established, but I wanted to decorate a nursery that would also work for our subsequent kids, be they boys or girls. Equal parts D.I.Y. and store-bought, here is the full result.

This room is small but perfectly sized for a nursery, which really doesn’t need much more than a crib, rocker, dresser and bookcase. I started with fabrics from Joann Fabrics—one striped, one polka dot—in coordinating colors. My sewing wizard mom created the bed skirt, crib bumpers, valance and two changing pad covers. (If you are lucky enough to have seamstress skills or can impose on someone who does, this is a very budget-friendly solution.) Incidentally, the art pictured here to the left of the crib is the embroidered alphabet that my mom made to hang in my nursery as a baby. Vintage. I used the fabric as inspiration for the paint colors for both the wall and the stripe. Most paint stores have the ability to color match from fabric, but I was able to find very close matches from paint swatches. The unifying theme is elephants, which are loved equally by both genders.

The cozy corner. This rocker, literally called the Best chair, lives up to its name. It is the most comfortable piece of furniture that we own, and we bought it in colors that match our living room furniture so we can move it downstairs when our kids age out of rocking. The valance and lamp shade are also mom-made and the teddy bear was created by my mother-in-law, in the same style as the one she made for my husband when he was a baby. (We’re surrounded by some seriously crafty ladies.) The bouncy wheel hanging from the ceiling was a present from Korea, so I can’t say where it can be found, but the bookcase is easy enough to find at Ikea. (Bolted to the wall, of course. Our boys are climbers.)

I was obsessed with the furniture from now-defunct Chicago shop The White Attic, but we couldn’t afford the splurge. So my mom re-created the look by painting an old dresser she owned to mimic their style, then added Anthropologie knobs. The framed artwork is courtesy of Etsy.

That covers the D.I.Y., but below is a buying guide for the store-bought items, with the exception of the crib, which is no longer made. I recommend splurging on a crib that is hardwood rather than particle board to reduce off-gassing, as well as purchasing one from an American or Canadian company that uses baby-safe paints.(Kids gnaw. It’s always better if they don’t gnaw on lead.) And yes, I know there are crib bumpers in the photos. These pics were taken before they were roundly demonized, and anyway, I had an on/off solution with them. Off when the kids were infants, on when they were smacking their heads against the side of the crib, back off when they could stand and used them as leverage to escape.

Best glider, other varieties available here, starting around $550.

Elephant mobile, $49, in a similar style to mine.

Animal parade print, $24 unframed.

Be Kind to Books Club vintage poster, $21.99

Elephant hamper, $19.99

Elephant rocker, $120

Name puzzle stool (click here for similar styles)

Cloud B Soothing Sounds Gentle Giraffe, $35

“Bunch of Clowns” art at LoftPrints.com by artist Chuck Wimmer—I purchased it from the One of a Kind Show in Chicago.

Monogrammed nursery blanket, $29.50

Zinnia handle in aqua, $18 a piece

Office Revamp – House 1.0

March 25, 2015House 1.0, OfficeRebeccaLittle78

This is a photo of our office when we bought the house. It had brown shag carpeting, dingy tan walls and a pheasant wallpaper border. But those eaves were pretty cool, and we wanted to bring them out.

First step was to replace the carpet. We had pulled up carpeting from the first floor that happened to match the other bedrooms, so we hired a retired carpet installer to fit it to this room. (Carpet stores won’t do this for you – you have to buy their goods to get their people.) He did a great job, but also was the first and only contractor to bleed in our house. He cut himself with his carpet knife and left a Blair Witch-style bloody handprint on our stairs. Carpet: Not for sissies.

And here’s the after view of the office. We painted the walls yellow and green to make it look happier, and my mom made the curtains from festive sheets I found at Urban Outfitters.

This is a charming little corner area that was too small for furniture. I set down a baby quilt that my mother-in-law made, and let the kids romp around there while I worked. This worked much better in theory than in practice (the children staying put, not the design), but still. Makes for a good photograph.

And this is how we staged the room for house showings. That is not a real bed — it’s a Bed, Bath and Beyond-style fake bed made from boxes. And yet no matter how many times we tell our toddler not to jump on it, he keeps doing it, and it caves in. Then he says “It doesn’t work.” It’s fun to be two.

Starting With Projects from the Old House

March 24, 2015House 1.0RebeccaLittle78

I have time to kill until we finish rooms in the new house, so I’m going to start by posting projects from the old house. I have to work with the photos I already have so there will be some gaps in step-by-step D.I.Y., but I will be able to plan better once I start with the new house. So if you have any questions, feel free to use the contact form, and I can fill in the blanks for you.

And We’re Off

March 16, 2015UncategorizedRebeccaLittle78

We’ve owned the house for three months now. A lot of projects are underway, though few are completed. (It’s a little hard to make any progress with 4- and 2-year-old boys who think that it’s super fun to flush paint brushes down toilets. Maybe I’ll try it sometime. Seems to be hilarious to the under 5 set.)

I won’t post anything from the new house until I have completed rooms to show (with plenty of progress pics along the way) because that’s the way Sarah Richardson would do it. (I want to roll the Sarah’s House way as much as possible, albeit without a Sarah’s House budget.)

In the meantime, I’ll post some photos of the projects that we’ve completed in our current house so you can get a sense of our style. I’ll make a big announcement when posts move into new house territory. Maybe there will be balloons. Perhaps a cake. I don’t know – I’ll get into some hard cider and see where the day takes me.

My Own Manderley

Adventures in home renovation