Designing a Home | Finding a Style

Just 16 more days until we are into the new house. Excited doesn't even begin to capture how we're feeling. But, as the move in date creeps up, as does my self-imposed timeline to figure out how to decorate this blank canvas.

This layout below is very similar to ours (just cut the island in half, take out the coffered ceilings and the beefy trim.. oh and almost everything else! But you get the idea).

What I love about this photo is that it's not pigeon holed into a style. The cabinets and mouldings and door style are all very traditional, yet the furniture is modern and simple. It's the definition of transitional design, and it's what I'm hoping to achieve with our home.

Via

Although the style below is pretty far from my own, I'm including it as a reminder for me to inject some colour in my space. I usually gravitate towards neutrals but look how happy this space is! I just love it.

Via

The opposite of colourful, the style below blends so many textures that it conveys warmth in a different way (let's be honest, I probably won't inject much colour and will end up with more neutrals no matter how hard I try).

Via

 I've always loved a little art deco or hollywood regency glam. It doesn't need to be done throughout nor overwhelming to make an impact.

Via

But, I also love the modern, clean line of this condo design. Do you see what I'm going here?

Via

And this space is just to.die.for.

Via

Okay, if you're still with me you've probably acknowledged that I have design ADD and I love about a million different things and styles. Hence why we are 16 days out and I'm still agonizing how to tackle the house. SO much pressure on myself to make it perfect. Right now, I'm just hoping to get our stuff in there and take it one day at a time. It's hard to know what to do with a space unless you'd lived in it, right?

If you have, how did you figure out your "style"? HELP!

How to Make a Faux- Marble Table Top with No Cuts, Thinset or Grout

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words... and other times a picture doesn't tell the whole story.

Let's take this photo for example.

I bet you by looking at it, you would never guess that the top looks like.... that.

The horror! It's pretty bad, I know. This Danish modern sideboard was a $40 craigslist find, and was refinished long before I discovered blogs and paint tutorials. We literally thought all we had to do was sand and paint. So that is what we did. In retrospect, it really needed a good layer or two of Killz primer, because this baby bled like a red sock in white laundry.

I literally applied TEN coats of paint in an effort to make it white, and not blotchy orangey white, and the result has been an ever tacky surface that dings and dents like nobodies business. I try covering it with loads of accessories, but that just makes it look cluttered. A few days ago, I just had enough, and decided to do something about it.

You know how most projects take way longer than anticipated and cost way more than budgeted for? Well, this was not one of those projects. In fact, it was the opposite. Because I was determined to not have to make any cuts in the tile, my search was narrowed to finding tile only 12 by 18 ". Since the table is 5 feet long, and 17.5 inches deep, five tiles would give me perfect coverage with a slight overhang.

I went in looking for marble. Obviously. Who doesn't like marble? But... Home Depot only had 12 by 12 bianca marble tiles and that just wouldn't do. Plus, I found the patterns very inconsistent and some very grey and veiny, and the purpose of this tile job was for it to blend as much as possible and look like a solid piece, and not look blatantly tiled. I think that the marble tiles they had were the rejects of the quarry, and that all the nice pretty white marble went to go live as a massive slab on someone's island.

So after a few minutes of pouting I let go of my marbled top idea... and then I saw it.

From afar, it looked like perfect white marble with just the right amount of grey veining. Mostly white and incredibly consistent. In a 12 by 18. As I made my way over to view this godsend, it hit me. This wasn't marble. Not even close. It's porcelain tile. It's porcelain tile that looks like marble. Shucks!  I almost walked away, and then I shrugged. Hey, it's better than what I've got now, right? It's the perfect size. It's super cheap. Ya. Why not? Let's just go for it.

And so I did. Determined not to use thinset or grout, I devised a plan. I used a tile setting mat and since there would only be 4 seams to fill, I would caulk it instead.

After cutting the sticky mat to size, I carefully spaced and lined up my table top. I wish there was a tutorial, but it was so stinkin' easy it's not even worth it. Peel and stick the mats, place tiles on top spaced evenly, caulk the grout lines. Caulk a couple more times to fully fill the space. Voila!

I would be lying if I said it was the dreamiest of projects I've ever done. I like the result. I like it boatloads more than before. And for a $50 makeover, I'm happy as pie! But one day.... one day... I will cover that baby with a big ol slab. That said, it certainly isn't bad for an interim solution!

Master Makeover: The Dresser

Our master bedroom is SO CLOSE to being done and I am getting very excited to share it! I'm hoping to have it wrapped up in the next week or two. I've still got to sew pillows, and reupholster and paint the ottoman, build brackets for my roman shades, hang roman shades and art, and then we will *sort of* be done!

I want to wrap up some of those projects before I show a picture of the room/bed but for now you can get a sneak peek of the wall colour we just painted. As a refresher, our master used to look like this.

Anyhoo, before you get to see the dresser makeover and wall colour, feast your eyes on this beauty.

Sorry for the terrible photo, but it's the only before photo I have. I found this narsty dresser on craigslist for free. We needed a new dresser, and this one seemed to have some potential. We picked it up and it was about 1000 times heavier than I thought. Even without the drawers.

I was excited to get to work on it, so I used my electric sander and gave her a nice buff. The top was a varnished laminate and I decided that removing the varnish would be too much work, so I just sanded that as well and painted over it. I'm not a "by the books" painter so probably don't follow my lead. I definitely cut corners when it comes to painting furniture, especially free furniture, because I'm just not that attached to them.

I painted the body in the garage, and took the drawers out in the backyard to sand and spray paint.

Then this happened.

Our fur baby Sadie wanted to come play with me in the backyard while I worked away on the drawers. They were standing up so that the face of the drawer was pointing towards the sky, and balancing on the back on the cement patio. Long story short, a drawer fell down and crushed my little girl's foot. It was so heartbreaking hearing her cries and watching her hobble away. I can't even bare to think about it. Must. Stop. Now.

Anyways, along with the emotional pain of injuring her, we also were burdened with the financial pain of fixing her. Almost 500 beans.

This resulted in our "free" dresser costing us $500. In the back of my mind I couldn't help but think if I had just gone out and bought a dresser I actually liked I wouldn't have a broken wiener dog, but oh well, c'est la vie!

Back to the dresser. I used Antique White to paint the body and sprayed using the same colour for the solid wood drawers. Then I spray painted the original handles black to update the look a touch. It was okay. Meh.

I was too exhausted (and too upset from doggy-gate) to do anything else, so into the room she went. Didn't love it, but it did the trick.

When time came to update our bedroom, I knew I wanted to do something with the dresser. I found these pulls on ebay for $1.79 a piece from the Knob Shop.

They are AMAZING. I really love them, and they shipped to our US mailbox in a day. Seriously.

So I tried them out. What a difference! They really changed the whole look of the dresser.

Then I realized I only ordered 6. A bit of a blonde moment; I counted 6 drawers and ordered 6 knobs. Doh! I ordered the rest and again, they shipped insanely fast. Thank you Knob Shop!

Then life took over so I lived with the dresser looking like this for a week or so. I discussed with hubby about painting it white. He suggested a light grey. Mostly because we were out of white paint and we had light grey left over from our bathroom. Sure, why not?

I also thought a quick update would be to cover the curvy toe kick. A piece of wood nailed on and painted would make a world of a difference. I had my plan, just needed to find the time to do it (story of my life!).

Last night I was at a friend's for a Bachelorette viewing party, and when I came home, my hubby had done this.

He propped up the dresser so it could be painted in our room (waaaay too heavy to move back to the garage again) and he painted away in the light grey paint. He also covered the toe kick with the wood and replaced all my pulls.

 It's obviously not a perfect piece of furniture (note the uneven gaps) but can be fixed if we tighten up the tracks a bit I think). It just looks SO much better than that free $500 dresser looked a year ago. Want to see again? Not really? Too bad, here it is.

I will definitely take some more pics once it's cured and once I've had a chance to style it a bit. We have a big bulky TV that usually sits on it so I'm hoping I can get the hubby to wall mount it so it's out of the way. I'm just happy that I can finally say that I like our dresser. And it restores a bit of my faith in getting things from craigslist. Well, as long as you keep your animals out of harms way of course.

xo J