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Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

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Bed, Bath, and Beyond

That last time I left you on our continuing house tour, we had just visited the main bathroom in our home.  Today, we’ll cruise through the upstairs bedrooms and master bath, which are all located a half-flight of stairs up from the great room where, if you recall, I hung a crib on the wall at the end of the hall.

Crib art

You can sorta kinda see where the staircase is off to the right of the picture below.

Living room

Okay, you can’t really see it at all.  This was really just an excuse to show you how my living room looked with my mother-in-law’s rug on the floor.  I borrowed it from her for staging purposes while we were trying to sell our house.

Unfortunately, this picture also shows my craigslist couches.  The moving guy looked at them and said to me, “Are you taking those with you?” and I almost cried.  I told him that if he had an accident and the couches accidentally flew off the back of the truck in the middle of the Nevada desert, I would not blame him.  In fact, I might hug him.  He said he’d make a note of that.

I digress.

I’ve already shown you the kids’ rooms in previous posts, but indulge me a moment while I bombard you with pictures and links from the past because I’m feeling sentimental these days.

This was Faith’s room the way it looked when we first moved in:

Butterfly Chandelier

Here it is after a little work:

Butterfly chandelier

We didn’t do much to her room but paint it with paint from the paint recycle store.  Yellow!  We also replaced the carpet in the entire upstairs (very recently) and trimmed out the rooms with trim we purchased from a building overstock store for pennies on the dollar.

Which brings me to a great money-saving point: adding trim to a house, whether interior or exterior, adds exponential value to the home.  It makes every room look nicer.  However, purchasing trim from a box store is like bleeding money.

If you are fortunate to have a building surplus store in your area (and many urban areas do), check them out for inexpensive woodwork.  Most of the woodwork in our home came from one of those stores.  We even replaced all of our cheap, hollow-core doors with solid wood doors for every room in our home (which you’ll see later).  You’ll die when you hear how much we paid for them.

Back to Faith’s room.  You can’t see her dresser, bookshelf, or keyboard, but you can see her  daybed which was a hand-me-down from friends at church.  If you’ve followed my blog for awhile, you might also recognize the Butterfly Chandelier I  made for her.  It’s one of my all-time favorite projects.  Check out the original post for instructions!

Butterfly Chandelier

Jonathan’s room was right down the hall, although it started out as the twins’ room for the first few years.

That room originally looked like this:

Decorating for boys

You will notice that none of the mint green ice cream paint was wasted in this house.  Not a drip.  It was in the kitchen, hall bathroom, and this room.

I got some blue paint at the paint recycle place, but it was too baby blue for me.  After all, I wanted a room that could grow with my boys, and I didn’t want to have to repaint in a few years.

So, I used the baby blue to paint the wall below the chair rail, then I purchased a glaze in a denim blue and a special brush for creating faux linen texture on walls.  I applied the darker blue glaze in two directions over the free baby blue paint to create a washed denim look.  The end result was just what I wanted: something sweet enough for a baby’s room but cool enough for a pre-teen.

Denim decor

When the twins were in the room, I strung up a bit of twine and hung up some of their outgrown overalls for a fast and cheap way of decorating a large portion of the wall.  Besides, it’s so hard to give away those sweet little baby clothes, isn’t it?

But then the room became Jonathan’s, so I took down the baby clothes and painted giant gears on the wall. 

Easy wall art

His wall art was super easy to do but everyone who walks into the room takes a breath because it looks like I killed myself painting gears on that wall.  But it really wasn’t as big of a project as it seems.  You can see more pictures of Jonathan’s room and check out the tutorial in this post.

His pegboard organizer is another favorite feature in his room.  It helps him keep all his little stuff where it belongs.

Pegboard organizer

Right across the hall from Jonathan’s room is the master bedroom and bathroom.  I don’t have very many pictures of the master bedroom because it is the Final Frontier.  It is the last room I ever clean and the only room I never finished decorating.  By the time I got around to taking pictures of it, I had taken most of the decor down in preparation for moving.  So, apologies all around.

When we bought the house, the room was in sorry shape.  It looked like this:

Master bedroom makeover

Boring, boring, boring.

The walls had a zillion little nail holes and places where someone had tried to putty someone else’s nail holes and I was 8 months pregnant with twins and didn’t have the patience for any of it.

So I got a huge pail of joint compound and a gigantic-o putty knife and I smeared that stuff all over the walls.  I was going for a DIY Venetian plaster look, minus the DIY.

About two hours in, I realized it was probably not a good idea to start smearing joint compound over every single inch of my master bedroom walls when I was eight months pregnant with twins, but because my husband kept walking past every half hour and grunting and saying things like, “Do you know what you’re doing?” and, “Are you sure this is going to look good when you’re done?” (which is entirely the wrong thing to say to a woman who is nesting, especially if she has a full bucket of joint compound at her disposal), I had to continue.

For days.

My husband helped by continuing his half-hour rounds with a camera in hand.  He thought taking pictures of a very pregnant woman standing on a very tiny stool was funny.

It is not.

Also, there’s a very good possibility this is not what the nurses meant by “bed rest.”

Pregnant with twins

But I I finished my Venetian plaster walls before the twins were born, and I love them! 

Are we in Washington or are we in Rome?  I don’t know!

DIY Venetian plaster

After the joint compound dried (which took just about as long as it took my husband to have faith in my artistic vision), I painted the walls with a couple of shades taupe I mixed up from paint I got at the paint recycle place.  I’m telling you, that place saved us so much money!  I just dabbed lighter and darker shades together however my inner Michelangelo dictated and called it good.

DIY Venetian Plaster

Here’s a bigger view so you can see the texture on the walls. Please ignore the rest of the decor–we were moving and it’s kind of embarrassing.  I don’t think a china blue bedspread is Venetian.

DIY Venetian Plaster

In order to distract you from my decorating fail, I will tell you about our doors, as promised.  Those knotty alder doors came from a building surplus store where we found them for $30 each.  I’m pretty sure you can’t even cut down a tree for less than $30.  We collected them as we found them and replaced the cheap, tacky doors in our home with one by one.

It was worth living with mismatched doors for a few years because in the end, our entire house had these, and we didn’t have to pay over $300 apiece for them, which is the going rate at Home Depot.

DIY Venetian Plaster

Ack!  I love those doors.  I really wanted to take them with me to El Paso but I had a feeling the buyer would notice if his bedroom didn’t have a door.

Now, won’t you follow me to the master bathroom?  It was a very scary place when we first bought the house.

master bathroom upgrade

Oh, avert your gaze!  The stick-on vinyl floor tiles multiplied and migrated from the hall bathroom to this bathroom.  There was another builder-grade golden oak vanity, a cheap mirror, and awful brass “beauty bar” lighting.  Ugh.

master bathroom upgrade

Not to mention the fact that whoever installed the toilet paper holder must have had a sense of humor.

We knew we needed to tile the floor, and we really liked the look of natural stone, but it is expensive.  Our solution was to find an inexpensive tile that looked like natural stone, in keeping with the Venetian theme I had totally committed us to.

In order to make the floor look expensive and rich, we bought just a few of the more expensive tiles and scattered them throughout the floor.  I drew out a pattern of the floor and placed the expensive tiles right where I wanted them, and our dear friend from church tiled the whole thing for us.

Bathroom tile

Don’t you just love those little 2″ bronze tiles?

I used some leftover Cabinet Transformations product to redo the bathroom vanity just like I did in the kitchen.  Only this time, I knew what I was in for and I only whined about 30% of the time, and most of that was before I even started.

As it turned out, the bathroom vanity was so much easier to do than an entire kitchen.  The project was completed in less than two days, and most of that time was spent waiting for things to dry.  I didn’t have to work at it full-time like I did with the kitchen.

Cabinet Transformations

I couldn’t wait to take out the ugly brass faucet.  I’m not much of a plumber but I can read directions just as well as the next girl so I hanged out the faucet while Jeff added bronze cabinet pulls to the vanity.

I also built a frame around the cheap mirror using some solid wood trim we picked up at that same building surplus store for just a couple bucks.  I used the Cabinet Transformations product on the wood to make it match the vanity, only I added a strip of antique bronze paint to the inside rim of the frame before I applied the polyurethane coat.

For less than five dollars, that cheap mirror looked like a much less cheap mirror. 

And, I got to use the miter saw again.  Bonus!

Bathroom renovation

Here I am in the shower.  I wanted to get a picture of my less-cheap mirror and the fabulous light fixture I found on craigslist.

I love the architectural element this light fixture brings to the room.  It balances the Venetian thing we have going on.  I didn’t want the theme to get out of hand and have my master suite start looking like a cheap Italian restaurant complete with fake ivy and replicas of naked statues all over the place, which, while classy in Rome are kind of trashy in America.  You know it’s true.

Back to the renovation.  Jeff finished the vanity with a row of glass mosaic tiles in the same chocolate, cream, and bronze colors we had going on in the room already.  LOVE the glass mosaic tiles!

When it was all done, it was hard to believe it was the same room we started with.

Master bathroom renovation

P.S. We also moved the toilet paper holder.

I’ve only got one more stop on the home tour for you and I think I’ve saved the best for last!  Next time, I’ll show you how we added about 500 square feet of useable space to our home.  You won’t believe it!

Decorating, Home 5 Comments

Upcycle Crib Art

My house is a typical Seattle-area split-level.  The top level has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the only hallway in the entire house.  When you look up the short half-staircase to the “sleeping loft,” this is what you see:

Large Wall art

It’s a dead end.

Nothing about that boring back wall makes you want to go upstairs.  Nothing about it says, “The upstairs is just as interesting as the downstairs!” which is kind of okay because that’s my bedroom off to the right and there’s a very good reason why the door is closed.  And it’s not because I’m sleeping.

Also, there’s a reason there are no baseboards but that’s another post.

Anyway, that back wall has bothered me ever since we moved in.  I hung a shelf on it which I decorate.  With stuff.  But, one measly little shelf does not do the trick.

So, I decided to stencil the wall.  I even bought a stencil in a Moroccan-style pattern from Michael’s and kind of beat myself up about it because it was expensive, even with a coupon.  But before I could get my paintbrushes wet, I stepped out into the garage and I saw this:

Metal wall art

Do you know what that is?  That is the metal bottom to my beloved white crib.  It looks just like my stencil!  It has the same Moroccan feel to it as my stencil only it is metal and it is a crib and it is something I already have which means I don’t have to paint my wall with a flimsy yet expensive stencil!

I hauled it upstairs.

My husband was working on a sermon in the bedroom.  I told him I was going to hang a crib on the wall.  Let it be noted that his response was not as enthusiastic as mine. 

But first, I “antiqued” the frame a little bit by highlighting some areas with green paint.  I didn’t go overboard on this because of my husband, who, as noted above, was not particularly thrilled about this whole idea to begin with.  I thought green paint would push him over the edge.

I also thought about spray painting the entire thing white, or green (I’m kinda into green), or turquoise (I’m kinda into turquoise too) but I decided to play it safe.  For now.

It only took a second to paint and not much longer to dry since I didn’t go overboard.  Once painted, I grabbed a couple of these hooks.

How to hang large art

The best way to hang large art

These things are brilliant.  You can hang an elephant on your wall with one of these, and the best part is, it leaves only a teeny, tiny hole in your drywall.  I. Love. Them.  You can find them at any home improvement or general merchandise store by all the hooks and picture hanging stuff.  They are called by various names including Hercules Hooks, Monkey Hooks, or just drywall hooks.  They’re cheap.  They can hang 30-50 pounds each, and I always have them on hand.

Except I just used my last two.

How to hang large art

Always use a level

I leveled them up (you only get one chance to hang a giant piece of metal on your wall so you want to do it right).

Then, I hung the crib on the wall.

Yes.

I hung a crib on the wall.

Metal Crib wall art

I added a few accessories.

Upcycle Crib art

Those are my great-grandmother’s books.  And that mirror?  That was a gift from the good people at Macy’s when my husband and I registered there for our wedding.  Actually, they gave us a silver picture frame, which I hated, so I antiqued the silver, added a mirror, and now I’m happy.

Upcycle Crib Art

Upcycle Crib Art

The hydrangeas came from my yard at the end of the season last year.  I dried a bunch and use them for everything.  These I placed in a mercury glass candle holder (I’m obsessed with mercury glass).  The candle holder still has some candle left in but it smells like soap and I can’t stand to burn it so…it’s holding flowers.  The other little candle is trying to burn the house down.

Also, I made a little wreath to hang on the crib.  I simply took a paper plate, cut out the middle, and wrapped the entire thing in a bit of leftover yarn.  I made some paper flowers out of an old book bound for Goodwill (My Antonia, if you must know), finished it with some ribbon I scavenged off the floor while everyone else was looking at the presents they got for Christmas, and walla!  A free wreath.

DIY yarn wreath

DIY yarn wreath with paper flowers. You can also see a bit of the green paint I added.

I grounded the whole thing by adding a collection of flameless candles (safety first, Mommies) perched atop an antique chair and on top of my grammy’s button jar.

Antique buttons

Grammy’s Button Jar

Recycle Crib Ideas

Don’t you love the Moroccan pattern as a backdrop?

Moroccan wall art

The Moroccans would be proud

This entire project cost me NOTHING.  It took much less time than stenciling my wall, and the best part is, I got to reuse a part of a crib that has very special meaning to me.

Now, when I look up the short flight of stairs, I don’t feel like I’m walking into a dead end.  It feels inviting, which probably means I should stop dumping things in my room so I have somewhere to go after I reach the end of the hall.

So what do you think?  Am I crazy for hanging an old crib on my wall?  Or do you like it?

I have plans for the other parts of the crib, but for now,  you might want to check out some of my other decorating projects.  There’s Jonathan’s room makeover which takes large-scale wall art to a new level using a projector.  Check out the Great Gears! in his room.

For ideas on how to decorate a girl’s room, see the shadow art in Kya’s room.

You may also like to see the butterfly chandelier I made for Faith.I’ve been going a little craft crazy lately so look for more projects coming soon!

Decorating, Home, Parenting 23 Comments

I believe you can find grace for the mother you are and help to become the mother you long to be—a mom who has the freedom to choose the better things and enjoy her kids right now.

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