Girl's Room: Cabinet, Hooks, and Bow Holder

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."

-Helen Keller

What I'm reading: HGTV magazine

What I'm writing: Finishing up a new chapter one to YA novel

I have three quick projects from Charlotte's room to share with you today.  I promise, just a few more posts of girly and then we'll move on to some other rooms in the house.  Honestly it's a little overwhelming when I start looking at pictures of all the things we've done.  But I'm following the Fly Lady Mantra and tossing my perfectionism!  One post at a time!

First, the cabinet.  My mom was pretty dang excited to be getting her first granddaughter.  And when Mom is excited, she goes shopping.  I was never quite sure what she'd drop off at my house next.  And one afternoon she brought me this treasure:

She actually had to fight a lady at the D.I. (the Utah version of Goodwill) to get this cupboard.  No fists or anything but there was a little grandma-on-grandma tension.  Mom was pretty proud of herself.  I think my dad hid behind a rack of shoes until the air cleared.

Now, honestly, it's amazing.  It's real, solid wood and is clearly handmade.  It reminded me of a little red toy cupboard we had when I was little, that was made by my grandpa.  I was already up to my elbows in projects and my due date was approaching and so I tried and tried to convince myself the cupboard was just fine as-is.  But.  The color.  I love pink, but that's the 80's country mauve-rose-pink.  With bright orange showing through from the previous paint job.  I love some distressed chippy show-through as much as the next girl, but this just wasn't working for me.

I also thought about replacing the hardware, but the more I looked at them, the more I loved the vintage flower knobs.

Finally I decided to just break down and do a make-over.  I knew it would bug me every time I looked at it if I didn't.  First I disassembled.

Don't you love that bright orange???  Whoever did the pink paint job didn't even take the hardware off.  Which left the cool vintage hardware looking like this:

Sad, but nothing a little spray paint won't fix.  I decided to go with Brushed Nickel to match the other accents in the room.

Here's a tip when spray painting hardware.  Use styrofoam!  I just poked all the little screws in a styrofoam block to keep them from rolling around.  It also made moving them from place to place much easier.  It was February when I worked on this project so I did the painting in the garage and then carried the blocks inside to dry where it was warmer.

I put the knobs up on toothpicks.  It worked great.

Meanwhile, the cupboard got three coats of white paint.  I didn't prime.  I used a cheap foam craft brush for the details and a large bristle paint brush for the rest.  This is the same paint we use on our doors and trim.  It's Sherwin Williams and is a custom match to the white paint the prior owners used on the trim.  We like to keep things easy, yo.

Because it was cold outside and I was getting pretty prego, I just laid painter's plastic on the floor in the nursery and painted it right there.  Worked just fine.

After the paint was dry and cured (I gave it a few days just to be sure) I got to work adding my own special pizzazz.  I used one of my favorite go-to resources for cheap decorating:  wrapping paper.  This design came from WalMart.  It was the perfect color.  And I dig polka dots.  

I had never ModPodged furniture before, so I did a lot (way too much) of obsessive reading on the Internet.  I finally decided to use ModPodge Hardcoat.  I wanted something durable.  It worked just like regular ModPodge, only I added multiple coats on top to create a nice finish.  My bigger problem was the application.

AAAAGGGHH!  I know!  I freaked out!  As soon as the wrapping paper hit the wet ModPodge, it went all curly and bubbly and did not want to lie flat.  And because it's just cheap wrapping paper the more I tried to scrape it down, the more it just peeled off.  It was bad, friends.

But.  It was just cheap wrapping paper!  I took a deep breath and walked away.  And did some more obsessive reading on the Internet.  Turns out, if you are worried about your paper being too thin to work with the moisture in ModPodge you can spray both sides with a quick coat of clear spray paint.  This seals the paper and protects it from warping.  So I went back, scraped off the bad news with a plastic Pampered Chef scraper, and tried again.  It worked just fine and turned out fabulous.

Here is the finished product:

Charlotte loves this cabinet!  At first I used it mostly for decoration and hid not-cute stuff in the bottom behind the doors.  Now that she's almost three, she has her own opinions, so it's got toys on the shelves and books in the bottom.  It works great, she loves it, and the paint and paper have held up beautifully.  Score for Grandma!

A few notes on the other items.  The amazing wall mirror came with our house.  It was above the sink in the utility bathroom.  It was way too small for that spot but I loved it.  It was a funky yellow-cream color so it got a coat of white spray paint like just about everything else in the room.  The small vanity mirror is an antique from my husband's grandmother.  The adorable princess piggy bank came from Hobby Lobby (another Grandma splurge).  And that little birdbath jewelry holder on top?  A gift from my friend Sue, who knows exactly what I like.  Everyone needs a friend like Sue!

Next, I knew I needed somewhere to put all her headbands and bows.  First, I looked through my stash for something with hooks, and I found this.

My sister-in-law gave me these super cute bee hooks for my birthday several years back.  I love them, and we used them for keys in our old house.  But since we moved, I hadn't found the perfect place to use them.  I especially love the twisted wire wings.

The colors were a little more rustic than I was going for in the new house, and especially in Charlotte's room, but I was afraid of ruining my cute hooks.  I worried and fretted for a while, and then I decided to just go for it.  So the first thing I did was pull off all the adorable bees.

 

This was scary.  It really was.  But they came off really easily.  I should know by now that nothing is ever as hard as I make it in my head.  Next, I spray painted the entire thing bright white.  Then I painted the center section (the part that was off-white) a light pink.  The color is Glidden- Pink Peony.  It was a paint sample I got for free during a promotion.  I just did it by hand, without taping the edges, and used the brush built in to the sample bottle.  I gave the bees a quick dose of spray glitter and re-attached them.  Ta da!  Worked great, and I love them even more than before.

Finally, a bow holder.  I know there are billions and billions of tutorials, so I won't go into details here.  I thought you might enjoy the before and after, though.

Before:  Old thrift-store frame.  Dark brown wood, really (not!) beautiful gold painted trim.  This is after I removed the cardboard from the center.

After:  A coat of white spray paint on the frame.  Pink fabric stretched over existing cardboard and attached with hot glue.  Then I raided my ribbon stash.  I did use the same brown ruffled ribbon to tie in with the lamp.  I just attached those with hot glue too and reassembled.

Here it is all loaded up.

The hamper at the bottom is an antique I found at the DI.  It's in perfect condition and I love its groovy vibe.  It's full of dress-up clothes.  

And there you have it!  Three fun projects using items I already had (except for the wrapping paper).  The baby headbands are gone so we use the hooks for dress-up purses.  I love that we still use these items as Charlotte gets bigger, just for different things.  That's the best kind of project.

Baby Girl's Nursery, Part 1

"It's not who we are that holds us back; it's who we think we're not."
-Michael Nolan

What I'm reading:  It Starts with Food
What I'm writing:  Not much right now.  At least I'm honest!

Most of you know that I have three boys (10, 7, and 6) and one little girl (2).  When we found out we were expecting a girl, I was a little... excited.  Just a little.

Now don't get me wrong.  I love being a Boy Mom!  When we started having kids, I wanted boys and I was blessed with three in a row.  They are best friends and they are fun and rowdy and dirty and sweet and I adore them.  But after all that boyish fun, I hoped for a little girl to help even out the estrogen-testosterone balance (or lack thereof).  And I really, really wanted to craft and decorate for a girl.

I may have gone just a wee bit overboard with the nursery.  But Husband just smiled and got out of my way, and boy did I have a great time!  The only thing that slowed me down was Girl's decision to show up 3+ weeks early, which put a serious cramp in my crafting.  This is the first of a series of posts showing projects from Girl's room.

My inspiration for Girl's room came from Chris at Just a Girl Blog.  Her daughter's room is adorable.

I love the robin's egg blue walls, the pink, blue, and green color scheme, and the tree.  This picture is actually a little different than the one I looked at, since her daughter is getting older and they are updating the room.  As you will see in later posts, I shamelessly ripped off some of these ideas.  But when something is as perfect as Chris's room, it's hard to resist.

This is what we had to work with: our room in its original state.  The wall color isn't bad, but it's just kind of a bland beige and every room on the first floor was the same when we moved in.  Neutral paint colors are great when trying to sell a house, but now that it was ours, I was ready for some color.

The room had become a repository for all the unused/unwanted furniture and other items that we didn't know where else to put.  Note the beautiful rose-colored cabinet.  You'll see that again later.

Other challenges include large windows on two of the walls (great for light, not so great for furniture placement) and a closet on the third.

We were also cursed blessed with mismatched curtains on ceiling tracks.  Oh, the design potential.

 And finally, we had this treasure of a ceiling fixture.

The very first thing I did was rip down those, ahem, special curtains.  I truly loved them and shed great tears of agony as we gently deposited them in our large black trash receptacle.  Any neighbors who heard someone yelling "Woo hoo!  Die, evil curtains of Mordor!".... well, clearly that was someone else.

Next we patched the holes left in the ceiling from the curtain tracks, and painted the walls (you guessed it) robin's egg blue.  As we were painting away, Husband gave me a weird look and said "You know, now that we're finally getting a girl, I find it ironic we are painting her bedroom blue."  But I had a plan, you see.  I knew I would want to use a lot of pink and I wanted a different color on the walls to give the room some contrast.  No little girl needs to live in Pepto Land.  I also wanted to go with kind of a cutesy, outdoors, woodland feel.  The soft aqua was a nice "sky" without being too literal.

The little owl was handmade by me using this pattern from Little Hibou shop on Etsy.  Which, by the way, when I looked up the link I realized the shop has added a bunch more patterns and I am going to have to put those on my Christmas list!  I have just the set of five.  I was going to make all of them but again, little Girl arrived early.  The owl was not difficult at all and I would describe my embroidery skills as "extreme novice."  I would really recommend this pattern if you're looking for cute stuffed animals.

Ahem.  Sorry for the detour.  Back to our regularly scheduled nursery make-over.

One wonderful thing about our 1970s house is the big windows.  One complicated thing about big windows is finding affordable window coverings.  In the end we decided on white vinyl blinds for the nursery, but we had to put two blinds in each window because they are so large.  We found these great curtain rods at Ross Dress for Less.  I have had great success finding extra-long curtain rods for a reasonable price at Ross.  I think these were less than $10 each.  I especially like the glass balls on the ends.

I also stressed way more than necessary about the curtain panels.  I wanted something thick enough to potentially block light and drafts from the old windows, but all the lined thermal curtains were less-than-cute.  I found lots of fun sheer ones but they wouldn't block the light.  Finally, after much indecision and endlessly texting my sister pictures from every store in town, I settled on these tab-top striped cotton twill panels from WalMart.  I debated because of the yellow and orange- I was afraid it would bring in too many colors.  But in the end, I decided I love them in this room.  They bring a lot of bright fun and energy.

Maybe someday she'll outgrow the stripes, but for now they are perfect for my spunky, silly, sassy little girl.  P.S.  I know these pictures are kind of dark.  I am not a professional photographer, but I'm working on my skills.  Thanks for being patient with my learning curve!

The paint and windows were the first step.  In the next few posts I'll share some of my fun decor items.  Our budget for this room was extremely tight, so I'm pretty excited about the cute things I was able to make for very little money.  Stay tuned!

(Apparently my learning curve is steep and includes the post scheduling feature.  This post was supposed to go up on Friday, July 26.  It did not post on its own so I manually posted it on Tuesday, July 30... but it is still dated Friday, July 26.  Why must you mess with my mind, Blogger-demons?)