Simply Homemade: Inverted Christmas Tree

*Another Simply Homemade post! To see the other ideas, start here.

I am a little nervous about this post.

I’m just not sure you all are going to be able to stick with me when I show you my crazy project. I should trust you by now–after all, you’re still here even after I hung a metal mattress spring on the wall and called it art.

But I may have crossed the line this time.

It all started years ago when a woman at our church hung a full-sized, decorated Christmas tree upside down from the rafters in the foyer of our sanctuary. It was all lit up and massive, and when I walked into church the first Sunday after she did it, I gasped because I had never seen anything like it before. It was a Christmas tree chandelier!

That tree caused no small disturbance in our small community. I mean, an upside down Christmas tree? What does that even mean? It could be sacrilegious and since that was before the Internet was really a thing, no one could Google it so no one knew for sure.

Some people liked it and some people hated it and practically everyone agreed that the board should have been notified before a Christmas tree was hung upside down in church.

Personally, I couldn’t wait to grow up and make one of my own.

So this year, I did.

Inverted Christmas tree and mattress art

Now, before you disown me, let me say that we have since arrived in the modern age so I Googled “What does an upside-down Christmas tree mean?” before I actually hung one from the ceiling. To my relief, Google assured me that an upside-down Christmas tree is no more irreligious than a regular Christmas tree. So that’s good. I think.

Also, you will notice that my inverted Christmas tree is ombre. I’m probably about three years too late for the ombre trend, but such is my life. For instance, I have finally made my peace with chevron and I’m pretty sure that trend is over too.

Anyway, I thought the shape of an upside-down Christmas tree lent itself to a variegated color scheme, so I went for it, trend or no trend.

Is ombre over?

Also, I had the little problem of the color scheme in our rental house. I had to pick colors that wouldn’t clash with the mustard-on-terra-cotta look we have going on. So, that’s not hard.

I could have gone with plain gold or silver ornaments, but I wanted something with more impact. So, I decided to start out with rich chocolate ornaments, fade to deep crimson, then copper, gold, and finally, silver.

Anyone want to talk to my landlord about those walls?

You could do an ombre tree in any colors your husband won’t divorce you over. I think deep purple fading to silver would be fantastic (except it wouldn’t look good next to mustard-fading-to-ketchup walls). I was tempted to go with various shades of green, but since I already had quite a few gold, silver, and burgundy ornaments in my stash, I decided to spend a little less on “charitable giving” to Hobby Lobby this year and use what I had.

If you’re still reading this post, you might want to make an inverted Christmas tree yourself. Or, perhaps, you wonder how I convinced my husband that Hobby Lobby is a home for disenfranchised children and all those credit card charges are really donations to charity.

It’s simple (the tree, that is). This is what you’ll need:

An artificial tree (mine is 3′)

Lights!

Ornaments! Go ombre or go home! Just kidding. You can decorate however you like. I’m not a hater. Just make sure you have a LOT of ornaments (see below).

Ribbons!

A ceiling hook. I used two Monkey Hooks because they hold a ton of weight.

Green floral wire

Ombre inverted Christmas tree at night

How to Make an Inverted Christmas Tree

(Ombre Optional)

1) Discard the flimsy little legs that come with your tree and make sure that the trunk has no moving parts that might come loose when you flip the tree upside down. If it does, toss those too. You want a solid trunk, nothing more.

2) Wrap floral wire around the trunk to create a loop by which to hook the tree from your ceiling.

3) Wrap lights and ribbon around your tree. Wrap the ribbon all the way up the trunk to the ceiling to cover the hook so it looks like the trunk is going right into your beautiful popcorn ceiling (see below for a flashback to the ceilings of yesteryear).

4) Now you can start adding ornaments. You’ll need a lot. I mean, somewhere between a bazillion and a gazillion. You might think you have enough when you start this project, but you are wrong. Then you will go to the store to buy some more, but you will be wrong again. Just get them all. All the ornaments you can find.

Fortunately, you can pick up ornaments on the cheap at thrift stores, garage sales, or the Hobby Lobby Home for Disenfranchised Children (wink, wink). Place a few special ornaments in strategic places and they will “hide” the cheaper ornaments.

Wire the ornaments directly to the branches so they won’t fall off. If you secure them well enough, you may be able to store them on the tree when the season is over.

5) Stand back and admire your work! Or, if you’re insecure, stand back and wonder if an inverted Christmas tree is just plain weird.

An inverted Christmas tree and a quiet place to write

I happen to like the way it looks over the little freebie desk I decoupaged. I would even go so far as to suggest that this would be a great project to make for someone who can’t have a Christmas tree because of pets or small children, or for the couple that’s just starting out.

Or maybe it makes the perfect place to sit and spend a silent night. And couldn’t we all use one of those?

*Tomorrow’s Simply Homemade project is not upside-down at all. But it does involve duct tape. In other words, it’s one for the guys.

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What I Stole from Pottery Barn

I have a little love affair with Pottery Barn. Every time a catalog arrives in the mail, I flip through the pages looking for a way to crawl in.

Who wouldn’t want to live there? It’s a magical land where throw pillows always stay perfectly askew and people sip bottled water that cost more than my first car.

In Pottery Barn Land, every window has a view and you can hang a chandelier made out of antlers and no one calls you a redneck because you didn’t shoot the buck yourself.

“I couldn’t decide which rug to get so I got them both,” said no real wife ever.

Of course, no one in Pottery Barn Land has time to shoot a deer himself because everyone is too busy covering books in matching white paper and shopping for beige like it’s a noun.

Let’s not get too crazy with the color on those throw pillows, people.

In Pottery Barn land, children named Ashton and Brooklyn paint quietly at kid-sized tables perched over $1500 hand-knotted chevron rugs. They don’t even need smocks because Pottery Barn children have been taught to be careful with their cashmere.

Bless their little hearts.

Whenever Chess Club lets out early, Ashton and Brooklyn invite a group of ethnically diverse friends over to climb trees. You know, the trees that grow up inside their playroom.

“Outdoor trees are so yesterday, Ashton.”

However, Pottery Barn kids don’t climb trees, even the ones growing right up in front of their noses, and that’s a crying shame.

But I still want to live there.

It’s just too bad the exchange rate between The Real World and Pottery Barn Land is unfavorable. My dollar is worth so little there, I can’t even afford to live on the outskirts of town where oddly-sized pillow shams and last season’s Christmas ornaments are marked down to near-Target prices.

I have had to reconcile myself to a life of vicarious Pottery Barn living by means of catalog ogling.

But then, I saw this picture:

Don’t get distracted by the sieve on the wall–they had a design intern working that day–and check out that amazing chandelier!

You want a closer look. I understand.

Look at those gorgeous hand-blown glass pendants in eclectic shapes and sizes! Look at the mottled glass and non-energy efficient light bulbs! I had to have it. But at $500, there was no way that chandelier was going to get into my house.

Unless I stole it.

At first, I recoiled from the idea. But then, a plan begin to form in my little thieving brain and I knew what I had to do.

I had to steal that chandelier, and I had the perfect idea of just how to do it.

But wait! I can’t share all my secrets in one day. Come back tomorrow and catch me red-handed! I will show you exactly what I stole from Pottery Barn, and how you can steal it too!

Cabinet Transformations: A House Tour Detour

*Have you been following along with the house tour? If not, you can start the tour here.

Recently, my husband gave me that look and said, “Hey, you wanna come with me to Home Depot?”

My heart skipped a beat. He still knows just how to make me woozy after all these years.

Even though it was a date, he wandered over to lumber while I dawdled around the paint aisle to see if I needed to buy paint for, you know, something.

That’s when I saw it. A display of this product:

The beginning of my undoing

“Does that stuff really work?” I asked the saleslady. I was thinking of my dull, golden oak kitchen cabinets, these ones, behind this shameless picture of my adorable twins.

The sales clerk had wonderful things to say about the product, but at nearly $80 a box, I wasn’t willing to take the gamble on a product that might not work.

Well, Home Depot loves me almost as much as I love them, and while I was pondering whether or not a kitchen transformation was worth $80, they dropped the price. $39.99, baby. That’s a deal.

I quickly ordered two kits in Espresso. I wasn’t sure if one kit would be enough, and I didn’t want to pay full price for a second kit if I needed it later. In other words, I was too lazy to figure the square footage of my cabinets and decided to play it safe.

When the product arrived, I watched the DVD tutorial that came with the kit. The Barbie and Ken homeowners in the video assured me that this was a simple project I could do in a weekend. Let me assure you. Unless your “kitchen” consists of a microwave stand and a cupboard for Cheetos, this project will take longer than a weekend.Much longer.Had I know that at the beginning, I might not have had that slight mental breakdown around Day 4.But I’m getting ahead of myself.The first thing I did, as per Barbie and Ken’s instructions, was to clean my cabinets thoroughly. I wasn’t sure how clean they had to be so I baptized those bad boys in an ammonia solution I cooked up and applied out on the deck so I wouldn’t pass out from the fumes. It is very likely I didn’t need to work that hard. But I’m an overachiever.

I let the cabinets dry overnight and then went to work on the first step of the kit, the deglosser. This is a watery solution that strips the finish off the cabinets. It is the reason Rustoleum can make the claim that if you use this kit, you won’t have to sand your cabinets. Let me just tell you a secret. You still do. It’s just you don’t have to do it with sandpaper. You get to scrub the solution onto your cabinets using a green scrubby. This sounds easy, and in one sense, it is, especially if you have bionic arms. But my, oh my, if you don’t have bionic arms, your hands will hurt by the end. Furthermore, whatever you do, don’t forget about those four doors you left drying in the tub because when you find them after you think you’re done “deglossing,” you will cry.Fortunately, Rustoleum is very generous with the deglosser. You will have plenty to last for days and days and days and…In fact, the two large bottles I found when I opened the kit should have been a clue that I was going to be “deglossing” for a good long time.
Still deglossing…It took me two days to do this part of the process. Barbie made it look so easy. This is what I looked like:
I don’t think I brushed my hair for two days. Nor did I clean my house:If you look closely, you’ll see Paul is on the floor with his shirt on backwards.
Here I am, thinking of what I’m going to do the next time my husband sweet-talks me into going to Home Depot. When at last the deglossing is done, I moved on to the second step, which is applying the Bond Coat, or cabinet color. The Bond Coat is like a cross between a paint and a stain. It allows the wood grain to show through, but it doesn’t penetrate the wood the way a stain does.
This was definitely the most fun part of the process for me. Once you begin painting the cabinets, it starts to feel like you’re actually getting somewhere, and you’ll be so happy, you might even manage to put on mascara for the first time all week.
But somewhere along the way, you’ll realize that you have to do two coats.That’s all those cabinets…times two.It will begin to feel like this project is never going to end.
Note to husbands and small children: Now is not a good time to ask “What’s for dinner?” Just don’t do it.Because even though it looks like I was sitting around eating bon bons for four days, I was actually quite busy. In between slapping on layers of Bond Coat, I spray painted the old hinges so they’d blend in with the cabinets.

Does this seem like a cheap short-cut to buying new hinges?

Not at all. There are several reasons why it’s okay to spray paint hardware without feeling the least bit guilty about it.

First of all, if you own an older home (and trust me, anything that predates my high school graduation is considered an older home), it might be difficult to match the hinges on your cabinets. If you can’t find matching hinges, you’ll have to putty the old holes and drill new ones to accommodate the update hardware.

That sounds an awful lot like the kind of work I don’t like.

Second, if you get a high-quality spray paint it will be very durable. I prefer Rustoleum to Krylon for anything that gets handled, like hardware. I really like their Metallic Finish series because it has a texture to it that hides imperfections like rust or general griminess.

Third, if you’re trying to redo your kitchen on a budget, buying new hinges is an added expense. Sure, it’s nice to have all-new stuff, but if you can salvage what you have, this is one area you can skimp and save a few dollars without giving up much in the quality of the final product.

I also chose to add crown molding to the tops of the cabinets and above the pantry door. The Cabinet Transformations product will stick to fiberboard or engineered wood which is a great thing because that is so much cheaper than real wood trim.

I bought the length of trim I needed, watched a few YouTube videos on how to install crown molding, had my husband help me when I couldn’t figure out how to unlock his miter saw, watched more YouTube videos because the first video neglected to tell me that I needed to cut crown molding upside down so I totally ruined it, bought more trim because of said mistake with cutting, and finally, had my husband help nail up the final product.

While I was rockin’ the power tools, I used the table saw to cut wainscoting to classy-up the island, which looked like it used to have a wall attached to it.

Because it did.

The wainscoting and trim made the island look more substantial and less like it was once attached to a wall, especially after the Bond Coat was applied.

Here is the island, in process.

After the trim was on, I was able to complete the last step of the Cabinet Transformation process, the protective polyurethane coat. The kit included a decorative glaze, but because I was using the Espresso color, I felt the decorative glaze was an unnecessary step, and by that point in the project, I was ready to eliminate all unnecessary steps.

So good-bye, decorative glaze. I’ll save you for another day.

The poly coat was tricky. I wasn’t a big fan of the polyurethane included in the kit. It dried super, super fast which made it difficult to get a nice finish on large, flat surfaces, like the ends of cabinets or the pantry door. I ended up sanding and applying a second coat to some places that I just couldn’t get right.

Additionally, the kit comes with plenty of product except for the poly. I had to buy more. Unfortunately, Rustoleum doesn’t sell their polyurethane in the store! I had to purchase a different brand and hope the finish matched. Fortunately, the new polyurethane was much easier to work with!

If I could do things over again, I would have ditched the polyurethane from the kit and finished the entire project with a different brand.

But, it all worked out okay in the end. Here is the island, completed.

We added stainless steal cabinet pulls that I purchased from Overstock.com for a fraction of the cost of buying the exact same thing from a box store.

Even with a coupon, the cabinet pulls cost almost as one of the Cabinet Transformations kits, but it added so much to the final look of the kitchen, I was glad we did it. I’ve already shown you the before and after pictures of this room, but here are a few in case you missed it:

Above is the before, and here is the after:

Now. I complained a lot about the work involved with this transformation. It certainly would have been easier with a Fairy Godmother or a magic wand for help.

But I love, love, love the end results. Every realtor who has come into our home has commented on the cabinets. It looks and feels like a whole new kitchen. Sure, it took a lot of effort, but every good thing takes effort, right?

In fact, I loved the results so much, I ended up using the second kit to do the cabinets in our master bathroom, which I’ll show you during the next part of our tour!

So even though it was a lot of work, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

How about you? Are you ready to tackle a kitchen transformation of your own? If you need a little motivation, check out the side-by-side shot one more time!

*I was not paid for any portion of this review, or supplied with product, although that would have been super-awesome.

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