A Little More Masterful

If you follow First Time Fancy over on Facebook, then the other week you may have seen the headboard I had discovered on craigslist, and was considering for our bedroom...

I was actually surprised on how much feedback I received... including from people who don't even follow me. However, the feedback was great and definitely confirmed that it was an excellent find. So we were in touch with the owner and eventually we drove out to see it, and ultimately make it our own. I just loved all of the detail in it. 

A lot of the feedback I received was to leave it as is, or to strip and restain it. Well, I'll start but saying I hate stripping anything... let alone a detailed piece like this - so that was immediately out of the question, and B agreed. Second, as heavy and solid as this piece may look, it's actually made out of soft pine, nothing that we would feel really bad about painting. Finally, we tried it out, as is, in our bedroom and it's definitely way too dark. So, out to my "workshop" (aka the empty sunroom) it went for some paint. 

I picked "Distant Grey", which is a Brian Glukstein colour, and had it colour matched at Home Depot to Behr's Premium, paint and primer in one interior gloss. It was the perfect white for our room on the paint chip, and just and perfect in person. 

I was incredibly impressed with how well the first coat covered the headboard, especially with how dark it was originally. You can also probably tell from the above photo that I skipped a major step and did not sand down the piece... but really - can you blame me? I would've been there for months sanding that thing down if I wanted to do the whole thing. Despite skipping this big step, the paint covered beautifully and had stayed really nicely.

In the end, I settled on two coats of paint on the piece. There are some spots where the wood shows through a tiny bit, giving the piece a little bit of a worn look and we both love it. I didn't really want it to be pure white, so I'd say I got exactly what I wanted. Here she is all lightened up and living in our much more masterful, master bedroom.

Oh yes, and my frame's and ampersand - I hung those before we even had the headboard in the house. Let me tell you how happy I am that I hung them so high! I'm still waiting to receive the files from Halle's one year photo shoot before I print the photos for those frames, so for now, they stay empty.

As white as it looks from a distance, when you get up close you get a better look at the worn quality of it...

Having a big statement headboard really makes a huge difference in the space, and much like our painted chairs, it's a way to add some character to our rental without putting any money into the actual house. I really do love it. We've come a long way from sleeping on the guest bedroom mattress on the floor in here...

For now I'm using our console table, that actually belongs in the front all, as a night stand. It's working well, but I'd really like to find a better piece, preferably one that has a mate so that B can have one on his side as well. At the moment he has an old painted dresser that we picked up on craigslist. It's a little too high to be a night table and the drawers stick a little. I think it would work better in the guest room, so my search for the right bedside tables continues. It's just hard to find two pieces that are the right size, provide us with good storage and at a price point that we like - but we'll just have to keep looking. 

These are only the first of many updates to this room. I'd love some pretty toss pillows in here, and some roman shades for the windows on either side of our bed. They look out into the sunroom, and since we hope to make that a nice place to hang out, I'd like the option to close them when we have company over. Like any space, it will all take some time and patience to find the right pieces to give us that perfect layered look, and I know in the end it will be worth it. 

"Mission Dress the Walls" - Project 1 Update

So, we've made some great progress on part 1 of "Mission Dress the Walls". Last week I shared with you the ampersand that my father created for us to use in our Master Bedroom. My original thought had been to paint it one of the colours found in our West Elm duvet cover. I even went so far as to pull out all of my paint swatch books, and colour match it to one of the colours in the Para Paints deck.

After a bit of consideration, I realized maybe going neutral would be a better idea. This would mean that we would be able to move it freely around this home, and any future home, and not have to worry about whether it would match, or if we would need to repaint it. Plus, with white paint already on hand, my project would remain free, and who doesn't love a project like that right?


So, last Friday while Halle was napping, I pulled out my paints and got to work on it. 

I let my first coat dry very well, and just as I suspected, the wood really soaked up the paint and a second coat was very necessary (and a third). In the end, B and I stepped back and agreed that white was the way to go. 

While that dried, we got to work in the bedroom. First, I used the templates that came with the frames, as well as our stencil for the ampersand, to lay out where we wanted everything on the wall. I started by eyeballing it, and it really looked good at first glance...

When I was all done, B came in and started measuring and discovered I was pretty much bang on. I gave myself a little pat on the back for that one. He did have to make a few adjustments and spent some time realigning and levelling everything. 

Even though they were still empty, I wanted to get the frames up on the wall on Friday night. I knew that having them up there like that would force me to get the photos printed as soon as possible. The stencil also stayed right where it was, as we still needed to figure out how we wanted to hang the ampersand.


Yesterday, Halle and I made a trip to Home Depot and I did some searching for different options to hang the ampersand. In the end I opted for some 3M picture hanging strips. Now, everything may be up on the wall (still without photographs), but I can't reveal anything more to you yet. I know that seems like a big tease, but we actually have another project underway in our bedroom that I'm not prepared to reveal to you yet either... so you'll have to be patient and I will reveal both soon. 


I'll just say the bedroom is starting to look more and more like an appropriate master bedroom retreat. 


What have you done in your master bedroom to make it feel like your own space? 

Project Inspiration

Things have been pretty quiet around here on the decoration front. We haven't spent much time or money or projects recently, which has left me with very little to blog about. We did do a bit more exploring over the weekend, but I'm questioning if people want to be reading about our weekend day trips all the time. 


Even though we haven't been working away on stuff, I have been collecting some inspiration for projects that we do plan to tackle... especially for our master bedroom. I haven't shared any of the room with you, even though we have been adding to it slowly, and that's because there is not much to share at all. One item on our to-do list that I would like to get to sooner rather than later, is adding a headboard. We hemmed and hawed over what we wanted for a while. I did shopping both around here and online, but I never came up with anything that I loved. 


For a while I was pretty certain I wanted a wingback headboard... but I'm starting to realize, it doesn't really fit with the look I actually want. 

{Sarah Richardson Design via pinterest}

Next, I thought maybe we could just find a nice big piece of art to put over the bed... but really, we have a king size bed and huge wall space. It would probably cost us quite a lot to go that route, and that's not something that we are willing to do in a rental. 

{via pinterest}

Then, last week, it came to me during a late night Pinterest session...

{Design*Sponge via pinterest}

I'm thinking I may try to use old Pallets, but if I can get my hand on some old barn board, I may try that as well. I'll have to see what is available to me out here for a decent price. I'm pretty excited about the whole thing and I'll have to find something special to add to it. A quote, or word or lyric or something. The wheels are turning, and I'm hoping I can at least get this whole thing rolling before the end of the month. *fingers crossed*

Is anyone else feeling in a bit of a creative slump recently? What do you do to get out of it? Or maybe you are working on a project of your own at the moment! Maybe hearing about other's projects will help me to get motivated again?

The First Rental Purchase

Last Friday, Halle and I had absolutely nothing planned. We were hanging out at home and while she played on the floor in her nursery, I sat nearby (with my laptop resting atop of Babar), checking out things online. I had resigned myself to not buying ANYTHING at all from the rental until we moved... until I saw that West Elm was having a flash bedding sale that day.


This caught my attention, as since we found out we were moving, B and I started to discuss getting ourselves a nice King Size bed. I knew if we could score ourselves a nice duvet cover for a good price, we'd have a good start. After looking through the styles that were on offer, I sent B a few links who picked the Gallery Stripe Duvet as his favourite of the three options...

Since it was a one day sale, and I wanted to be certain about our purchase, I packed up Halle and we drove over to West Elm to check out the duvet in person. It looks even better in person, so home it came and I only had to spend $40 and change! Score!

My vision of the room is completely different than what you see above. We plan to go with plain white sheets and shams, and pull out some of the colours in the duvet using toss pillows. It's hard to picture looking at that photo, since it looks like a dorm room there. I'd also like to find a nice quilt or coverlet for the foot of the bed - I can't wait to go shopping (again)!

The biggest search will be for the perfect bed frame. I don't have anything specific in mind yet... and still a little time to consider different options.

I apologize if I am boring you all with my recent posts! As you can imagine, things are a little crazy at the moment, and purging, cleaning and organizing do not make for a very exciting post. Possibly less exciting than my recent material. I promise to share more on what we've been doing to prepare the house for renting it out, later this week...

Another Back Burner Project Completed

As you probably guessed from all of my other posts this week, while waiting for baby we have been focusing on finishing up those "back burner" projects that were either unfinished or just pushed off "until later". One project that I have been dying to tackle for ages now is the headboard for our master bedroom. 


You may remember way back in April of 2010, I bought a beautiful Robert Allen fabric that inspired our master bedroom project (that of course never actually got under way until February of this year). I purchased it for a steal of a price on Fabric.com, with the intentions of making a beautiful headboard for our bedroom. So, this past weekend, B and his Dad pulled an old piece of plywood out of the garage and we got busy.


Friday night B had measured the bed and we decided the headboard would be 24" x 62.5" - so he cut up the plywood to the right dimensions for me. Once it was cut, I used an old double sized IKEA duvet we had laying around, doubled it up and cut it to wrap around the plywood nicely...

Once wrapped, I pulled out my trusty upholstery staple gun that my parents bought me for Christmas (along with B's air compressor) and got to work. It was my first time using it and it was fantastic and so easy to use (much easier to pull the trigger than the giant heavy staple gun B has). 

{What? You don't make upholstered headboards when you're 3 days over your due date?}

Thanks to some extra pairs of hands from B and his lovely Mom, we were able to get that duvet wrapped nice and tight around the plywood and stapled into place rather quickly...

Next step was to pull out my fabric, and centre it onto my board until we liked the repeat pattern that we saw. When we had it just right, and knew we'd have enough fabric on all four sides to wrap past the batting, I got to work cutting away the excess fabric...

Once again, I required some extra hands to wrap the fabric around our headboard, especially at this point where we wanted to be sure we had some nice clean corners. B and his Mom were such a great help with this part, folding and holding and B made sure to staple the corners for me as they required a little extra pressure with the excess batting and fabric. I took over whenever I could though... I love using that stapler...

We made sure to staple either end of the headboard, then the top and the bottom last to make sure we got everything tight and looking good. The bottom we were a little less concerned about since it will be hidden behind out bed frame. The finished project was pretty good - I mean, even that back look neat and tidy when we were done with it...

Once it was all done (about 20 - 25) minutes later, B brought it directly upstairs so that we could see how it was going to look in place. We all agreed it was a successful (and very easy) project to tackle in an afternoon.

It makes the whole room feel more finished and like a proper bedroom - especially with my finished artwork (which we actually hung on the exact same day that we made this). The best part is how it comes up our half wall to meet our slanted ceiling, and brings some more colour into our room. That fabric is a large reason why I wanted to paint the walls white, and I think that it works out perfectly. 

Bedroom Progress - DIY Artwork

Our "Master" bedroom that it. Yeah... remember that project? The one that we were working on way back in February so that we could get Peanut's nursery all set up. It's been quite a while since I've brought this one up, huh? Well, I've actually been working on a DIY art piece for months now to address the giant blank wall between our closet and doorway... pretty much right at the foot of our bed...

After seeing a post on Under the Sycamore where Ashley Ann shared their new master bedroom, it got me thinking. Ashley mentioned that when her and her husband were engaged someone had told them to keep their bedroom about them... and with baby on the way I knew that would be a great idea for B and I as well. So, with that in mind, I wanted the artwork in our bedroom to be meaningful.

For a while, I've been inspired by this photo here...

{via}

I'm a big music fan, and an even bigger Bryan Adams fan (oh yeah!). So not only did a piece of artwork showcasing wonderful lyrics stick out to me, but Bryan Adams lyrics! Come on! Right up my alley! 

In the end, I knew I didn't want to copy this exact piece, and I also knew I would love to use a song that was special to both myself and B. Back when I was first considering this project, I was listening to some songs from Adele's album 21, and I heard her cover of the song "Love Song", and instantly knew this was the song. 311 also did this song and they are B's favorite band. The first time that we celebrated his birthday together, I bought two tickets for us to see them live in Toronto. I'm not the worlds biggest 311 fan, but I've been to 2 shows with him, and the lyrics to this song are perfectly us.

So the day that we finally picked up our framed artwork from Michael's, I also picked up some essentials for creating a new, personalized master piece for our bedroom.

What I grabbed was 2 canvas' for $14.00, 3 tubes of acrylic paint for $4.99 each, and some plastic letter stencils for $4.99. My total was just under $40 for everything.

My first step when I got home was to get the background colour on. I mixed together some blue, grey and white and ended up with this...

Once the canvas was dry, I got to work stenciling on my letters. About one word into the lyrics, I realized there would not be enough space on one canvas to get anywhere near the whole song on. SO, B suggested painting the second canvas as well, and having the lyrics run across both. Genius! Lucky for me, the paint colour was super easy to mix again, and I got my second canvas coated pretty quickly.

The longest process of the whole project was lining up and stenciling each individual letter. In between each letter, I whipped out my good ol' hair dryer to make sure the letter was completely dry and wouldn't smudge when I lined the next letter up. The lines aren't perfectly straight, and the greys vary from line to line, but once I started, I decided to roll with the imperfections. I also decided to take the key words in the song and use a chocolate brown for them, just like the brown that trims our beautiful duvet cover and pillow shams. I am completely thrilled with the end result...

Oh, and even though the longest process was lining up and stenciling each individual letter, what really caused my delay in completing this project was when I messed up part of the lyrics and THEN had problems mixing a similar colour of blue. It discouraged me for a while and then I just got caught up with Peanut related projects and activites and our artwork went on the back burner. Now I'm just happy that it's done and hanging in our bedroom where it belongs...

Have you created any custom and/or meaningful artwork for your home?

Nuts n Bolts - Hardwiring IKEA Lighting

It's been a while since Kerry shared with you our new "master" bedroom (it's really not very "master-ful"). Today, I wanted to share with you how to hardwire some basic IKEA wall scones, that are meant to be plugged into an outlet.


One of the projects that Kerry was pretty certain she wanted in our bedroom, and I wasn't fully on board with at first, was hardwiring lamps over our built-in nightstands. Of course, after I got it finished, I remembered why she's the designer. What we started off with was two ARSTID wall lamps from IKEA. 

First things first, I opened up one of the packages and examined the 'base' of the light to determine the best route for modification for hardwiring. I found that in order to access the wires the back cover plate needed to be removed from the base by taking the two screws out on either side of the fixture. 

Once the back plate was off, I cut the plug end off in order to pull the wire through the hole on the bottom of the fixure.

After the chord was out of it's designated hole, I pulled the plastic wire guard out and put it aside for a minute.

I used a 5/16" drill bit to put a hole into the back cover plate.  Be careful, the plate will want to spin around once the bit catches. I used the hammer to hold the plate in place. Pliers probably would have worked better, but that was all that I had up in the room with me at the time.  I also drilled it onto a scrap piece of wood so I didn't end up putting a hole in the floor.

Once the hole was drilled, I placed the re-used wire guard in the new hole.  It's important to put this piece in place as the new hole will have metal burs on it that could cut into the wire as you pull it through, so this will protect your wire.

Take a look at the wires in the back of the fixture and take note of the black wire, this is your hot wire. You will need to take a marker and put a mark on the end of that wire where you cut the plug off, so that you know which wire is the hot one when connecting it to your power source.

Once my wires were marked, I drilled a hole in the wall where we wanted to place the fixture. I then used the plate to mark on our wall where I needed to drill for the drywall anchors.  Then Kerry got busy drilling the holes and I got the anchors in place.

 

Next, I ran the wire through the hole I had already drilled in the back plate... 

... then fed the wire into the wall and to our power source (in our case, we used existing outlets).

I was careful to make sure that before connecting anything that our power was off! This is an absolute must to avoid potential electrocution. 

Once I was certain our power was off, I took the end of the wire and stripped the two ends of the chord, and connected the hot wire to the top gold screw (on the left) and the white (neutral) wire to the top silver screw, on the right. Outlets will be labeled with which side your hot and white wires should be connected to.   

If you are unfamiliar with wiring, it might not hurt to do some googling on how to properly wire up an outlet.  Typically the power comes into an outlet on the bottom of the outlet and if it is in a series, the upper screws provide power to the next outlet or in this case the light. 

Once the wire is connected feed the rest of the wire through the wall and mount the plate to the wall with the previously installed drywall anchors. 

Re-attach the fixtue to the plate with the two scews on either side, place a bulb inside the fixture and turn the power back on.

 

This may seem like an intimidating venture, but it really is pretty simple. If you are uncomfortable with electricity then this probably isn't for you. However if you know you're basic wiring, you should be good to go.


So, are you up for hardwiring some IKEA lights yourself? Anything I missed that you want to ask?