Bedroom Refresh and Wood Tile

I'm up at my parents' house, helping them start the planning process for a big renovation they're hoping to take on soon. While I'm here we're also starting a little bedroom refresh. Remember when I decorated their room five years ago? How has it been SO long already?! We're keeping the beautiful Barbara Barry Poetical curtains, but most everything else is getting switched up.

We're trying to find a good mix of high and low in here, like with a more affordable, but still really beautiful, headboard made up with special linen bedding. A foot of the bed bench from Overstock and a special antique wingback upholstered in a pretty pale blue silk.

We're painting a pair of vintage chests a creamy white and thinking about splurging on these amazing leather and brass pulls. I bought a pair recently for the serpentine chest we keep on the landing and I love them an unreasonable amount! :)

We've been collecting art, lamps and accessories at thrift and antique stores. We're still missing a few items, like a new rug and an oversized floor mirror, but Homegoods gave us a little inspiration on both fronts. Sadly the mirror was more than we wanted to pay and the rug was the wrong size. I think it's sold out pretty much everywhere, but I know it's made by Jaipur Rugs. I'm hoping we can find something in a similar pale blue and cream color way soon.

Speaking of flooring, we've been working hard to figure out the floors for my parents' reno. Their floor plan is very open and we keep turning back to wood tile so we could use the same material in every space. Have you looked at this stuff lately? It's come lightyears from the time it first came out, and it's hard to beat it's durability and price point, especially when considering installation and upkeep. It also really makes sense for homes built on concrete slab, like most of the homes in Arizona, and like my parents' home. My mom and I fell in love with this image of a wood tile floor and we shopped around a few weeks ago, trying to find something similar.

We found this tile at a local showroom, made by the Italian tile-maker Supergres. It comes in four foot lengths and three different widths for less than $5 per square foot! We're both excited about the size and color. Each box comes with six tiles with a subtly different wood grain pattern on each tile.

Have you used wood tile in your home? Any tips for installation? We're going to make the grout lines as small as possible and I think that will really help trick the eye.

DIY Folding Screen from Bifold Doors

I've always loved a good folding screen! They are super useful and versatile for large homes and tiny apartments alike. And the best part is they are a cinch to make yourself using inexpensive hardware store bifold doors! 

I got these flat masonite doors at Home Depot for $40, which was cheap enough, but looking back I probably should have checked Habit ReStore before buying new. They sell a ton of closet doors just like these for just a couple bucks usually.

The masonite was pre-primed, so we rolled on a good coat of my forever-favorite Safety Red enamel paint as a first step.

We rolled on the backs first and then all the edges. We left the fronts white for the floral fabric application.

I had yards and yards of this pretty Brunschwig and Fils floral that was the perfect candidate for the decorative fronts of the screens. I should have taken a photo of the full width of the uncut fabric, but it's basically a thick wall of florals in the center of the pattern, with lots of black negative space on the edges. Since each door panel is only 15" wide, we were able to make the most of the black space (which felt a little more modern to me) and then create a new pattern with placement of the fabric repeats.

I wanted the fabric to look almost wallpapered, so we cut two sets of each pattern repeat, so there would be two sets of two matching doors.

The fabric decoupaged chair project worked out so well that I was quick to pull out the Mod Podge again on this project.

I brushed on an even, thick coat on the unpainted side of the doors, about two feet at a time.

I used the black edge as my guide and smoothed out the fabric as I went. It's really important to get out all the air bubbles before the Mod Podge dries.

Once the fabric had dried a bit, I cleaned up the edges with an X-acto knife, just like with the chair project.

Then we brushed on a top coat of Mod Podge, to even out and seal the fabric, especially around the edges.

After the top coat had dried, we flipped the doors over and screwed in new brass hinges. Each pair got three hinges installed on the backs, just like this, with the spine of the hinge facing down:

And then the two pairs were connected with three hinges installed inside the inner lip of the doors, so that the doors would zig and zag and fold correctly. Again, the hinge spine was facing down here.

Isn't the brass so pretty against the glossy red of the door backs?

And the pop of red peeking out from behind the black floral is so striking!

It's hard to tell in these photos, but the top coat of Mod Podge made for a really dreamy, matte wash over the pattern. It is SO pretty.

I really love the folding screen application, but I'm also thinking this would be a great way to dress up boring old bifold doors for a closet space! It's a really cheap way to get a wallpaper look in a room without the cost, hassle and commitment.

Have you seen any other folding screen projects around lately? I'm looking around my house thinking of all the places that could use one. They're so easy to make and so pretty! :)

White Floors and Serape Pillows

Thank you all for your very kind comments and emails about the baby news! And thank you so much for the input on this blog and its future. I know how lucky I am to get to do this for a living and I don't take that for granted. Thanks for giving me some time and space to figure out my next move. In the meantime, I'll still be here a couple times each week so don't give up on me yet!  :)

In other news, we finished painting the floors in the studio this weekend!! I used the pre-mixed white Rustoleum enamel and rolled on the paint in a really thick coat - no primer or top coat necessary. I LOVE how glossy it is!

The fabric shelves in the studio are almost all organized too and we'll be sending out special textiles to be made into pillows to sell on the new site (or at least that is the plan). There will be some made out of the fabrics that I only had small quantities of, but I also like the idea of using found textiles to make pillows too. I used a vintage serape blanket to make a bolster pillow for the daybed in the library and I really love how it turned out. It's such a fun piece of the design puzzle of these rooms that are all open to each other.

I'm so happy with how the colorful striped pattern of the serape mixes with the neutral color but big pattern of the Bengal Bazaar linen on the upholstery.

Plus, I think you just can't go wrong with a good bolster pillow! I love the oversized shape. I picked up the fluffy down insert on sale at West Elm for just a few dollars last year. It's a good one.

A little note though (in case you want to try something similar yourself). With woven textiles like a blanket, you'll want to iron on a fusible backing to help keep the fibers together, since the weave is not really meant to be cut. You can find the inexpensive iron-on backing at Joanns or pretty much any fabric store.

PS - How to sew a pillow in jut a few minutes!

DIY: Fabric Painting with Dye on Drop Cloths

I am excited to experiment with this technique more (I know there's a lot I need to still figure out), but I'm pretty happy with how the fabric painting/dyeing technique worked out with the drop clothes I used for our mudroom makeover. I wanted this project to be as inexpensive as possible, but I didn't want to just use some fabric I had laying around. I wanted it to be kid-friendly and playful.

I used a few bottles of liquid RIT I had laying around in Apple Green, Lemon Yellow, Denim and Rose Pink, and then diluted them down a bit with water. The main leaf color is Denim, which is sort of a purpley-black-indigo.

But first, I cut out all the pieces I needed to make the three box cushions before I started (and I included generous seam allowances just in case the fabric shrunk after washing, which it did). To make sure all the patterns would match right and would wrap down the edges, I careful marked out all the center spots of the X pattern.

I used different sizes of brushes to apply the patterns, which I wanted to all feel organic (leaves and insects in abstract patterns). I used a 1" foam brush to do the main pattern and I love it the most. I want to do a whole room of curtains in just this pattern!

The girls wanted to help and I wanted more color in the pattern, so we kept going with colors and shapes. We added really loose versions of bees and dragonflies and just some circles for splashes of color.

I love how the fabric looked at this point and part of me wishes we would have stopped here, but I didn't know what would happen to the dye if we didn't set it. I figured it would be disastrous if (when?) watered spilled on the fabric, so I threw it all in the washer on cold and delicate. I wish I would have hand washed them all, which I think would have left the background a little more cream and less blue and maybe would have left a little more color in the pattern.

The soft dreaminess is still nice though and I wasn't about to redo all my and the girls' hard work, se we just went with it. :)

I think the white piping helps brighten things up a little.

Any tips on setting dye without washing it all out? I can't wait to try round two of fabric painting!

DIY Yellow Curtains for the Playroom

There are only two bedrooms on the main floor of our house, the master bedroom and a large-ish room at the front of the house. For the first few months that we lived here, I used it as my office space, but it just didn't really work for some reason. Then I had the idea to move my office to the big space above our garage on the other side of the house and make the old office our playroom.

I had been a little worried that toys would end up migrating all over the house with this set up, where the playroom is right by the living spaces, but really, it's been so great. I love both the studio space and this playroom, which we only very recently decided to quickly decorate in time for the Domino shoot. We had been planning on doing Evie's room as the kid's space in the spread, but the playroom ended up being the easier space to photograph in the end, so we threw this room together in about seven crazy days! These yellow curtains were our jumping off point.

I wanted this room to feel girly and playful, and I thought pretty curtains were a great place to start. We had no time and really no budget to make fancy curtains though, so IKEA came to the rescue. I had actually picked up three packs of these white cotton Ritva panel pairs a couple months before (when the room was still an office) and I just hadn't got around to hanging them yet.

I almost didn't use them because I wanted the walls to be white, and I wanted the curtains to be a fun color to pop off the white. This image kept coming to mind when I was brainstorming colors. I only wish I had the budget to recreate these exactly!

image

I figured it wouldn't really be a wasted effort to try and dye the IKEA panels because I wasn't able to return them at that point. So I picked up four bottles of RIT dye - two each of Golden Yellow and Lemon Yellow. It's not for everyone, or for every tub, but I felt comfortable with dying the panels in my bathtub. I tested the dye beforehand and there was no staining on the fiberglass, so I felt good about moving forward using my tub. It made the project and clean up about a million times easier than using a big tupperware tub (and I have a front-loading washing machine, so that wasn't an option).

I got three of the panels wet in the shower first (which helps the dye soak up more evenly) while I filled the tub with about six or seven inches of the hottest water I could get out of the tap. I added one bottle of each of the two yellow colors and about half a cup of salt. Once that was all mixed, I put in the three panels and while wearing long gloves, moved the fabric around in the dye bath for a good 20-30 minutes until the color looked bright and even. I turned on the faucet again, to cold this time, and let the dye bath drain and the cold water run on the panels until the water was close to clear. I moved the panels to a laundry basket and took them to the washing machine for a cold water wash on the delicate cycle.

I made a hanging station and let the panels air dry over night. And then I started again with the second batch of three panels and two more bottles of dye.

Then we ironed each panel well before hanging them over white fabric shades from Lowes (which were less than $20 for the 48" size!) and white wooden rings and rods, also from Lowes.

I love, love, love how these curtains turned out. Because I had bought the IKEA panels so many months before, it practically felt like a $12 project, where I just had to buy the dye. :) And I think the color combo of the lemon and golden yellow colors really worked out perfectly, which was sort of a lucky break.

I think when I have some extra time I'll add a thick or even black out lining to these to add some weight and a clean white backside view from the front of the house (though the white roman shades help a bit with that for now).

Have you had any successes with dying big projects like this? Have you used your tub or a tupperware container?