The Powder Room!

Hey, so...guess what? I'm about done for now with the powder room. Well, the marble vanity top is still in the works but that might still take a while.

I'm happy with it for now.

Do you want to see?

Let's look at this picture first:

Can you guess what I did? 

I changed my mind a little again!

Yup, the dots are on the ceiling

And I love it. I really do!

Sorry Mom!

She told me not to do it because she thought it was stupid.

I didn't listen. 

The reason is that I felt it was too busy next to the mirror. But on the ceiling, it draws your eyes up. Thin stripes on the walls and polka dots on the ceiling. Perfect combo in my book.

{UPDATE: The dots are now available in my Etsy store! 
Click HERE to see}

Some people might share my mom's opinion but I don't really care because I'm happy with it.

I think next week I will have a post about what she all doesn't like, haha! 

She is my toughest critic and I love her for that because nobody else would tell me their opinion as blunt as she does. It'll be a funny post

My Lowes mirror makeover (click on link or picture to see the post)

It is really hard to take good pictures in this tiny room that doesn't have any windows. 

So cut me some slack, ok?

my medicine cabinet makeover

I'm going to call it my sharpie room because the lines are Sharpie as well. For the mirror and the walls I only needed two water-based Sharpies! After reading Mandy's (Vintage Revivals) post about her Sharpie wallpaper where she recommends using water based Sharpies so you wouldn't have to prime over it with oil-based primer later, I decided to use water-based as well.
This was so CHEAP, really! Remember the gold paint from Lowes would have cost me around $80.

And here is a before picture. Remember this?

I like it so much better now.

And if you are asking me how I figured out the spacing for the dots, then I have to tell you that after trying to figure it out with my pathetic math skills and failing miserably, I decided to just jump right in and mostly eyeball them.
All I did is place them on each side, measured the middle between the dots...placed the next dot... then measured the middle again, placed another dot... And so on. That's it.
The rest was eyeballed. For real! I did and they turned out great. I'm sure nobody will ever be able to tell that they aren't perfect.
The vinyl was gold metallic (091) Oracal 631 (which is the wall vinyl). I didn't need any transfer paper either. Simple stick and peel!

I love the polka dots so much that I'd like to make another polka dot wall somewhere else! How do you like them?

(If you are interested in seeing some more of my gold sharpie projects then you can click HERE for my gold sharpie bookends or HERE for my gold sharpie graphic wallpaper.)

Stop back on Friday ok, because I have something exciting to share with you!

Guten Tag,

(Youleeya)

Playing with gold Sharpie

I love family photos and I had a lot of them on my old living room shelf but I didn't like them frames anymore.
When I was working on my brass and glass shelving unit, I bought some RIBBA frames at Ikea in several different sizes.

I love how chunky they are and I was planning on doing some gold and color details on them. Since I had a lot of rub and buff left, I was going to try that.

This is where I'm giving myself an award for this month:

I'm the best at picking items where no finish sticks to.

I'm a FINISH-REJECT-PICKER!

I'm also really good at picking things that don't have tags at the store by the way. Do you know what I'm talking about. It seems like every time I go to HomeGoods, the thing that I really want doesn't have a tag, the manager can't be found, they can't figure out how much it is and the new tag printer isn't working...

Anyway, first this month I had such a hard time applying the Rub 'n Buff to the shiny brass. And now I picked these beautiful white photo frames which I wanted to dress up a little. Seems easy again, right?
AHHHHHH, not so much.

The Rub 'n Buff would not stick to the frames at all. Look at the right one, well the left one with the coral spray paint isn't that much better is it?

I tried blaming it on the Rub 'n Buff again but I tried several things and nothing worked: I lightly sanded the frames and I applying deglosser.

cell phone picture

The black on the last frame is one of several black RIBBA frames that I bought because they had no white ones left in 5"x7" and I used Kilz spray primer to paint them. That is actually the only way I was able to apply any kind of gold finish onto the frames.

The white regular RIBBA frames didn't even like gold Sharpie and that stuff pretty much sticks to anything.

Yeah and how about all those sharpie projects on Pinterest. The gold Sharpie has been everywhere. One of my favorite projects is Mandy from Vintage Revival's gold Sharpie wallpaper. She is so awesome. Speaking of Mandy, I almost fell of my chair two days ago when I saw that she is following ME on Instagram. She probably let one of her kids play with her iPhone and they pressed follow by accident. I shouldn't even say this out loud, LOL, she might notice her mistake.

Back to my frames.
So I had to Kilz prime the frames and even then as you can see it in the above photo it peeled off in some places.

So here are some of the frames that I sharpied up. And I'm definitely more the Sharpie kind of girl compared to the Rub 'n Buff.

The little plate on the shelf was made by fellow blogger Lydia Pudel from Pudel-design. She sent it to me all the way from Germany because I won her Christmas giveaway.

This one turned out to be my favorite one. Wasn't my mom a cutie when she was 16? 
I put her next to my daughter's photo since they are two peas in a pod.

So back to my Rub 'n Buff issues. Do you want to have a good laugh?

Look at my poor abused brass bookends. All those Scratches and that awful unfinished Rub 'n Buff one on the left side.

Well I tried to fix them up a bit and I primed them with metal primer the same way I handled the brass bookshelf. After the drying time, I applied tape so I could finish the edges in stripes.

Then I removed the tape.

AND

Drumroll please.....Tada... Aren't they lovely? HAHAHA...HAHA!

Nice logo action here, right? Like anybody would pin this master piece ;)

So after that I went on a gold sharpie binge around the house even Lilly discovered the appeal of a sharpie.

Her fingernails:

 And there was more but I couldn't take anymore photos because it got to dark and the photos were way too crappy.

I hope that I'll be able to pick some upcoming projects that will work out perfectly!
Do you have any favorite Pinterest Sharpie projects?

Have a great weekend friends.

Tschüss,

Ballard Design Catalog Look For Less

This post is more like a hodge podge of random things and thoughts but first of all I want to talk about my new Ballard Design catalog (February 2013) that I received this past weekend. When I saw the cover, I knew that I had some things to say.

The colors just reminded me so much of my recent living room updates. And they certainly make me want to throw out my bed (calm down hubby, I won't). Just kidding I actually still like my bed. It's one of the few splurges that we have in the house.

Isn't the color of this bed beautiful? It just screams sunny spring morning!

The colors are a little off since I took a photo of the cover instead of scanning.

The pillows actually have a similar but a darker color as my pillows:

I have the Ikea Sanela pillow covers and at $7 for a cover I can't complain. Nobody beats that price and the quality is great. They are actually velvet too. I already had the inserts but you can get cheap inserts at Ikea as well which are no more than $7 too.

The Ballard Design pillows are custom pieces made with their Queens Velvet Teal Fabric (it looks way darker on the link than on the catalog photos). This fabric retails at $45 by the yard. So you can imagine what custom pillows would cost, right?

The rug is so me and reminds me of my living room rug. And that ottoman is beautiful, isn't it?

Only difference is that my changes were way cheaper. Shows again that you can get the look for a lot cheaper, right?

Look at their Avlon Dhurrie flatweave rug from the picture above. The 8' x 10' sells for $699 plus shipping. Mine is just as graphic, has similar colors and is also a flatweave. Guess how much I paid for mine on Overstock? Well, I paid $180 and $2 shipping. It's such a steal. If you are wondering what the name of the rug is, it is the Poolside Grey/ Bone Indoor Outdoor Rug (they don't have it in 8' x 10' anymore just 9' x 12') and they also sell it at Sears. They call the rug Safavieh Courtyard Grey/Bone Rug but they sell it for a price closer to the Ballard Design rug.

They have limited edition grey chevron lamp shades (Hudson Collection) in several sizes: 9" for $39, 15" for $59, 17' for $69. This is all pretty pricey compared to my 11" Target chevron lamp shades that I got for $15 (Or was it $20, I can't remember correctly but I know they were way cheaper).

If you have been following me on my new instagram account (and you should LOL @cuckoo4design) you probably saw that we are fixing our living room ceiling that had some damage due to excessive bathtubbing. Those kids can do some serious damage when they pretend that our tub is a wave pool. And to be really honest here, the damage started two years ago. The last time the kids were in the tub I had actually water dripping from a crack in the ceiling. Yes, we do procrastinate in our house as well, especially when it is a project that involves the husband in any way. I'm still trying to convince him that he has to be THE ONE to paint the ceiling when it is fixed. I did it last time and I hated every second of it. (While reading my post he asked me why it has to be him that paints the ceiling and I told him that one really good reason is that he is way taller than me. Don't you think that's a legit reason :)

(playing with the instagram features)

And here are some more random instagram pictures. I love playing with my new iPhone.

Inspiration browsing at Joann's Fabric.

At Pier1

Lucy playing ninja. It's blurry because it was dark.

Haha, I had to throw this one in here. My husband's bad high school 80s hair. Isn't it awesome?

Looks like I'm having lots of fun playing with instagram, doesn't it?

And another random thought is that I have been thinking about doing a feature day once a week. I love reading other blogs and finding new ones. Or just other people's awesome and inspiring projects that I come across. So I have been playing around with names and ideas on how to approach this. So many bloggers do this already and I'm not sure if I'd like to add to the millions of blog linky-parties or if I just want to feature randomly. Lets see.

I also had an idea last night that involves Pinterest and more Rub N' Buff. Let's see if it'll work. Some trial and error is in place again but the ceiling has to come first.

Talk to you on Friday.

Tschüss und guten Tag,

Cursed Corner Brass Bookshelf

So I finally wrapped up and finished the brass shelf in my "cursed corner". (The shelf was brass plated metal by the way, NOT solid quality brass. Click here if you want to see.)

If you haven't been reading along and are wondering why I call it the cursed corner, let me explain again.

This project started with the fact that I wanted to replace this Ikea shelf in my living room:

My children did a number on it with their toy baskets. I was also bothered by the fact that no big books and decor items fit into the cubbies. It's just a big bulky square that I originally chose for it's abilities to store my toddlers toys and to be able to get screwed into the walls for safety.

Well my kids aren't toddlers anymore and I was so ready for a change and when I spotted this 80's brass and glass shelf at the auction I knew I could turn it into something that I would love. It has the perfect size. I bought it for $35! Great price!

original auction website photo

Now it appears a simple project, right? Remove Ikea Expedit shelf and put up brass shelf. That's what I thought too but it just ended up being such a hassle.
I had screwed the Expedit to the wall and cut the molding to fit it in. I also painted around it several times. So there was a big mess to clean up and fix.

 I think everything that could go wrong went wrong from this point on and a small project turned out to be a long process. Did that ever happen to you?

• I cut the molding wrong several times and had to run back and forth to Home Depot to get more
• I lost the original screws to the brass shelf on one of those runs because I wanted to replace several stripped ones. Of course they were metric and hard to find
• I cut my foot on the half finished floor molding and I was barely able to walk.
• Lowes mixed the paint wrong that I used to paint over the messy wall, so I had to paint a second time.
• I wanted to build chunky white shelves. Yeah how about those? Do you remember? Well I changed my mind after finding out how much the lumber was and I couldn't find a cheap alternative. I was thinking the white Ikea Lack floating shelf, but they weren't deep enough. Why spend extra money if I had perfect glass shelves? So I did a little somethin' somethin' with them. I'll explain later.
• And last but not least: Fixing the shiny brass on the frame. I really didn't want it to be shiny. I wanted the golden look of the mirror that I have hanging over my small secretary desk. I bought Rub 'n Buff. Which took quite some time to get to my house and it wasn't as easy to apply as I had expected.  

So this post is to explain what I did to get rid of the shiny brass and what I did to the glass shelves.

I used my $1 brass bookends as guinea pigs.

My first try was to just take the sheen of the brass and maybe have it age naturally. Well the sheen didn't come off and I tried several potent things. I tried lacquer thinner (paint thinner) and even heavy duty stripper right onto the frame but nothing worked. The shiny brass remained.

Then I moved to the Rub 'n Buff. I tried to apply it right to the brass and it got blotchy and uneven. I have seen several bloggers do that and for them it worked. For me not so much.
Check out Kelly @ViewAlongTheWay's brass Rub n' Buff lamp makeover here or my silhouette giveaway winner Andrea @OakRidgeRevival's brass Rub n' Buff lamp makeover here. Their lamps look great. My shelf is in the cursed corner though so it didn't work for me and this is what the finish looked like for me. I tried diluting it with deglosser but didn't like the results. I even sprayed the shiny brass with a mat clear coat and I tried liquid leaf. NO likey likey either.

The left side shows the blotchy Rub n' Buff, the right side shows the mat clear coat

This is 2 coats of Rub n' Buff on the actual frame. Very uneven!

I had researched Rub 'n Buff on other blogs and the stand out blog for it is the queen of Rub 'n Buff Sammy from ReNew ReDo. She has used it on all kinds of surfaces. Check out her ideas and Q&A here but she also mentions that shiny brass is tricky and that Rub n' Buff doesn't work well with it.

So I ended up priming the frame with metal primer spray paint. The first time I didn't wait the full 48 hour drying time and the Rub n' Buff ate away the paint. So I had to fix the primer again.

 BUT finally the Rub n' Buff stuck to the frame. Yippie!

It was hard to understand for my husband why I primed the gold shelf frame to just paint it gold again. Haha, but he doesn't need to understand it ;)

Now we come to the glass shelves and this is where the bracelet from yesterday's post comes into place. I loved the jade and gold of the bracelet. Since the glass was tinted green, I decided to try painting the underside of each glass white to bring out the tint. It worked! And I really like it. It doesn't mean that I might not change them out for my first choice, the chunky white shelves, down the road, but for now I'm really happy with this result. I used water based primer to paint the shelves.

Sorry for the bad photo but it was late and dark outside!

After this long post (if you made it through the entire rambling) you can understand why a seemingly easy project turned out to be such a long process.

And the hubby doesn't think that the shelf is hideous anymore. He said: "I never pictured it looking like this!" and I'm doing a happy dance. Mission accomplished!

I finally like my "cursed corner".
What do you think?
(Next I will have some small projects coming up with the new white picture frames and the $1 brass bookends)

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