Vlog Tuesday: Room tour!

Okay okay yes, this is a little late, but the video took forever to load on Youtube!  Besides, I changed the timestamp to make it look like I posted this on a Tuesday.  So I didn't really miss my deadline.


As promised, I did a room tour as my vlog for today!



It's a little on the long side (16 minutes...yikes!!), but if you don't feel like sitting through the whole thing you can definitely feel free to skip around.  I got a little carried away talking about EACH AND EVERY PART OF THE ROOM in detail.  So maybe you'll appreciate it...or maybe you will hate it.  WHATEVER I DIDN'T DO IT FOR YOU.

Sorry.

Also try not to get motion sickness from my shaky-hand-Cloverfield-style camerawork.  I think that's why I had so much trouble getting the picture to focus.  Laaame.

For those of you who don't have time to watch the video, here is a panoramic photo of the finished room!

I finally mastered the panoramic feature on my phone's camera.

The reason why I decided to redo this room was because I am planning (*crosses fingers*) to move back home and find a job in the South Jersey area after graduation.  I feel like I'm taking a big risk by putting so many eggs in one basket (I mean...not ALL of the eggs), but this is where I feel at home...so this is the plan for now.  Who knows how I'll feel in a year, though.  Maybe I'll feel compelled to move far from home...or maybe my job search will just take me there whether I want it to or not.  I know that I can't really guarantee that I'll end up working/living in this area, but this room (along with the other benefits of living at home) are definitely incentive to try and stay.  I have a feeling that this upcoming year of blogging will be documenting some big life changes and some tough decisions.  With the completion of my room, I feel like summer is ending...and winter is coming*.  Yeah, I went there.


*I've been watching Game of Thrones a lot.  I'm halfway through the second season and it's only been a week. DON'T JUDGE ME.

Transformation Tuesday: DIY Projects

From now on, Transformation Tuesdays don't have to happen on Tuesdays.  Transformation Sunday just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.  Get over it.


I am OFFICIALLY FINISHED with all of my DIY projects!  It only took me like...the entire summer.

If you need to refresh your memory, I wrote a post back in July about all of the projects I took on.  You can read that here.

I finished a few simple projects to incorporate more of the coral color into my room.  I bought these metal desk organizers that were originally white, and decided to spray paint them coral since my lamp was turquoise.  I also bought this awesome rotating earring stand from amazon that was originally copper, but I primed and then spray painted coral as well.  In the process I managed to also paint the back porch coral, but such is life.  I also went to Home Depot and bought a sample size of coral wall paint, and used that to make those three stenciled canvases.  They're on display above my bed, and it filled the empty space above my bed that was desperate for some wall art.

These are the finished bedside tables!  I'm really pleased with the way they turned out.  I bought a sample size of turquoise/aqua paint from Home Depot and used that for the turquoise drawer and the stenciling on the white drawer.  I didn't want either drawer to be too overwhelmed with their new colors, so I figured stenciling would diffuse the colors a bit.  I also got to use the stencil from the canvas.  To make the stencil fit the drawer, I just taped off a couple of sections.  Overall I think they balance out the white and the turquoise, and have a nice touch of symmetry.

Also, I think there is a lot to be said about what the simple change of a knob can do to the overall effect of a piece of furniture.  Seriously.  I can't stop changing the knobs on things.  I THINK I HAVE A PROBLEM.

The biggest pain-in-my-ass project that I took on was this chair that I got from Goodwill for $3.99.  I saw a lot of potential in this chair, and was really into the fact that it was a coat of paint away from vintage.  I just forgot about the fact that chairs don't magically go from crappy-thrift-store to vintage-makeover in one day.  This was a long and tedious process.

The first thing I did was remove the cushion, tighten up some of the screws to make the frame sturdier, and then sand it down.  I didn't get any of this process, but trust me...you're not missing anything glamorous.  I spent a couple of days priming, painting, and clear-coating the chair to get it to look like an intentional piece of furniture instead of just a makeshift desk chair.  I really love how the white turned out.  I think it suits the frame!

Counter-clocwise from the top right: Ew, ew, ew, FINALLY.

The next step was to prep the seat for some new upholstery.  This part was even less glamorous than the lest, yet somehow I managed to remember to take pictures.  As you can see, the yellow faux-crushed-velvet was quickly disposed of only to reveal...EVEN UGLIER FABRIC.  After I removed the final layer of dirty old upholstery (accompanied by a sad, flat, paper-thin layer of cushioning), I used the base of the seat to trace a new cushion out of this RANDOM FOAM LYING AROUND IN OUR ATTIC.  My dad somehow snagged this from some kind of furniture supply warehouse or something.  I don't know.  But it is super dense and supports my lil' tush and is much much MUCH better than the old cushion.

I'm sure my mom appreciated me using her very nice serrated knife to slice an inedible cushion for upholstery.

Since the block of foam was a little too thick and needed to be cut to size, I hacked away at it using a serrated bread knife.  I hear that carving knives work well, too.  

I probably could have skipped the step where I thinned out the cushion if I had bought a block of high-density foam that was the right size from Joann Fabrics, since it was only like $6.99  But $6.99 is still more expensive than free, so I went ahead and put in the extra effort.

Not pictured: my sweat and tears and anxiety.

The next thing I did was attempt to upholster the chair.  Unfortunately, I am a wimp and did not have the strength to use the staple gun while stretching the fabric out enough to tightly cover the chair.

My dad is a bit of a perfectionist.

So my dad stepped in and did the job waaaay better than I could.

`

I forgot to take a picture of the finished cushion all by itself, but here is a picture of it in the frame of the chair.  I think it looks awesome!  I am super in love with this coral damask fabric, which my mom ordered on fabric.com.  We're also going to use it for window treatments, but I'm not worrying about that right now!  I tried to use a part of the pattern that was less obvious, mostly because I couldn't cut too far into the fabric because we need it for curtains.  But I can't believe how good it looks!

It took me kind of a while to get the ball rolling, but the transformation is pretty amazing.  And I'm sitting on it right now as I'm writing this entry, and LET ME TELL YOU HOW HAPPY MY BUTT IS.  That old cushion was pretty sad.

Expect a room tour soon!  I'm FINALLY FINISHED with my room.  FINALLY.

Blog Every Day in July: Day 15, Upcoming DIY Projects

So we've made a bit of progress on the room:

The headboard came in and I asked my dad to attach it to the bed, and I am really loving the way it looks!

I also moved all my clothes from the other closet into the new one, and I moved all of my books onto this bookshelf.  I don't have a lot of books at the moment because I went through and donated a lot of books that I knew I wasn't planning on reading again.  I also have a lot of my text and reference books at school for obvious reasons.  I also reeeeally need to organize all of that music on the fourth shelf.  Yikes.  I'm scared to see what it will look like after I move home from school.

In the last two entries, I talked about how tired I was from being out and about all day.  That was because I spent my entire weekend shopping for furniture and pillows for my room.  We went to about ten stores over the weekend, and somehow only wound up with like....three things that I really needed.

It turns out I'm gonna have to do a couple of DIY projects to customize a few things.

I ASSEMBLED THIS MYSELF!  It took me two hours, but I did it!  We found this at the Christmas Tree Shops for a really great price, so I don't feel guilty about doing some minor alterations.  I'm planning on using this as a stand to put my makeup in, and I'm going to get some turquoise colored baskets or bins to put in the shelves.  As for the drawer, I'm going to replace the knob with something that will match the chest of drawers that I ordered and paint the face of the drawer turquoise, so the visual you get down the front is all turquoise.  I wanted to get as much of the blue onto this piece, so there would be a bit of symmetry when you are looking at the bed, because on the other side is this piece:

I am in love with this little telephone table that we found Roomers in Haddonfield.  Fate practically handed me this piece of furniture.  We had gone to Haddonfield specifically to check out the consignment gallery that was conveniently located by some public parking.  Except there was a big craft fair going on that blocked a huge section of the road, so we couldn't get to the parking lot and wound up parking far away and walking to the shop.  The consignment shop wound up being closed, and we had to walk back to the car, but my mom insisted that we walk on the other side of the street (which you couldn't see because of the fair) so we could see the crafts on that side.  We saw this telephone table in the window and saw that it was the perfect color, and figured that it would be great as a night stand and before we even get the chance to walk into the store, we look up and see a sign that says everything in the whole store is 50% off.  Right color, right style, and the right price..That table was mine.

I do want to modify it just a little bit, by changing the knob on the drawer (just like the other table) and painting the drawer white to tie it in with the other furniture.  And this piece has been painted to have a distressed look, which I really love.  I'm going to look up some techniques on how to get that look...but if it seems too complicated I'm going to skip it.  This is not the time to be pushing my luck!

You can also see the duvet cover and pillowcases that I bought for the bed.  I'm planning on using these with white sheets, to diffuse the turquoise a bit.  But so far I have a TON of turquoise happening and I need to get the coral in, in a way that makes a statement complimentary to what I already have.  I already ordered some coral throw pillows for the bed, but I also have a few other ideas.

-Wall art.  I looked through every piece of wall art at every single store we went to, and couldn't find a single thing that I liked.  It turns out that coral is not an easy color to find.  Instead I'm going to see if I can find some coral fabric and my local JoAnn Fabrics and stretch that over a couple of canvas frames.  I'll use that as the main piece of wall art over my bed.  I also have a couple of frames of wall art in my current room that would look great painted coral, so I'm going to get that done as well.

-My desk chair.  I've been trying to see if there are any nice upholstered dining room chairs or vanity chairs at my local Goodwill, because I would love to have a coral desk chair with maybe some turquoise upholstery.  I'm just waiting to find the right piece, since I don't want to spend a ton of money on a chair that I'm just going to paint over.  And as you could imagine, finding an already made coral chair is kind of rough.

-Lamps!  I did not find any lampshades or lamps that were coral, but there are a couple of options online.  I don't have any lamps at the moment, but I think if I can get the lamp on my nightstand to have some coral that will be a great way to balance out all the turquoise that I already have.


I'm getting so close to the end, and I feel like I'm sprinting to the finish line.  I can't wait to see what it's going to look like all put together!!

Blog Every Day in July: Day 6, Interior Design

So yesterday I FINALLY finished painting Melissa's old room, and hopefully I will soon be able to move into it and Melissa's Old Room will become Melanie's New Room.  I'm waiting on some pieces of furniture, and I have yet to buy a couple of pieces.  In the meantime, let me share some of my inspirations for the room:

So this is the color that I painted the walls.  It's from Behr's premium plus line and it's called "Parisian Taupe" and it's a really pretty neutral.  It looks a little bit darker in this picture than it does in the daylight.  I'd say with natural lighting, it translates to more of a khaki.  But at night, with indoor lighting, it's a lot closer to the color you see on the screen.  I really wanted a true taupe for the room, because I like that it's kind of in between brown and gray and it's got some warmth to it but it's also a little stony.  You know what I mean?  But when I bought paint samples, the true taupe that I was looking at ("Gallery Taupe" by Behr) was a little too dark, and according to everyone else it was kind of "muddy".  Which is a shame, because it was my favorite of the three swatches.  I wound up picking Parisian Taupe because eventually I am going to move out of this house to be a real person, and my parents will use my room as another guest room.  Since they didn't like the darker taupe, they planned to repaint the room.  Picking this lighter shade means that they don't have to do that, since everyone pretty much agreed that this was a really nice shade for the walls.  And in the long run, I think this was the better choice (even though my heart still yearns for true taupe!!).  This color is much less overwhelming, and much easier to coordinate with a variety of colors.  The other one?  Not so much.

Speaking of coordinating colors, here are my inspirations for accent colors:

I am really loving the combination of coral and turquoise as of lately.  I don't know what it is, but I am determined to make this color scheme work.  It sounds a little weird when you just say the two color names together, but honestly when you look at it, it's not so crazy.  In fact, it's fairly conventional.  Originally I had thought about painting the walls either coral or turquoise, like in the bottom right photo of that collage, but it made more sense to go with a neutral.  I'm not even going to try and get all of my furniture to be these colors.  I'm going for an all-white theme for my furniture.  So far I've bought a white wrought iron headboard, and a white five-drawer chest.  I plan on getting a white desk and two nightstands in either white or an accent color...but that's about it.  I like that white makes several statements: clean, contemporary, simple, elegant, etc.  I think that white furniture with turquoise and coral accents will be very...Melanie.  I like things to be light and bright.  I'm thinking for beddings, going with some sort turquoise comforter (I really like this turquoise marrakech pattern) and sheets, with a ton of throw pillows in coral and white and turquoise.  But first I need to find some more furniture!!

So this is the furniture I have bought so far.  I'm going for a more traditional style of furniture, and obviously I'm going for all white.  I like more vintage-looking pieces that have a bit of character, and are little curvier or loopier.  If that makes any sense.  One of the things that I would like to try and use to tie any other pieces I buy together are the knobs on the five-drawer chest.  You can't really tell from the picture, but they are kind of...crystal?  Like...they are plastic, but they are made to look like big crystals.  I think I can compromise on the type of desk I get (since everything cheap is a little TOO simple for my taste...but I'm really trying to cut corners in cost) by changing the knobs on the drawers to match this chest.  Ditto on the nightstands.  Hopefully this will all look cohesive and put together...instead of...not.

I'm really excited to see how this all turns out!  Now that the room is painted I feel like things are going to move a lot quicker.  I'm definitely dreading the switch from my current room to the new one, and the idea of having to fill in wall space with pictures and stuff like that stresses me out a bit...but so far everything seems to be headed in the right direction.

I'll keep y'all updated on progress as the project continues!

Blog Every Day in July: Day 2, Home Improvement

I've been watching a lot of HGTV lately, and it looks like home improvement is the theme for this summer.  My sister recently bought a house, so she and her husband have been focusing on giving their new home some personality and making it as inviting as they can on a budget.  They are also working with my dad to remodel their laundry room into a space that doesn't look like it might have it's own miniature ecosystem.  Meanwhile, my parents are remodeling their master bathroom (and when I say my parents, I mean my dad...)--which crosses off another item on my mom's "wish list" (other rooms that have been crossed off: the kitchen, my bathroom).  So I decided to hop on the bandwagon and start my own project for the summer.

BEHOLD:

I think the star of this photo is my sister's 2002 haircut.

When I was ten years old, my sister and I decided that we wanted to design our own bedrooms.  So I opted for deep purple walls and some paisley sheets, which went really well with my ikea furniture, my beaded curtains, and my giant Tuck Everlasting movie poster (????????).  This just confirms the fact that I was a hot mess as a kid.  Honestly.

Anyways, my sister opted to go for a more cohesive theme (PFFT).  The picture above is a pretty accurate representation of the concept.  She decided to design the room around Van Gogh's "Starry Night".  The framed work in the photo above is a tissue-paper project that someone made for an art class, and Melissa bought it for thirty dollars.  You can kind of see in the picture that the wall is a pretty dark blue, and that my sister was REALLY EXCITED ABOUT STARRY NIGHT.  What you can't see is...the rest of the room.

The room was full of star and moon themed trinkets, and her bedspread had illustrations that look like they came out of a deck of tarot cards.  And it had all of this built in furniture that my dad made himself, which was really cool of him to do and we got like eleven years of use out of it--but it took up a ton of space.  Very appropriate for fifteen-year-old Melissa.  Not very appropriate for twenty-one-year-old Melanie.

FINISHED PRODUCT.
Just kidding.

This is what the room looks like right now.  One of the item's on my mom's wishlist is to turn my room into a guest room, and to turn Melissa's room into my room (seeing as she no longer needs it, on account of she now owns an entire house).  It's obviously a work-in-progress...but things are moving along a lot faster than I thought they would.

The first thing we desperately needed to do was repaint.  The dark blue fit well with the Starry Night theme, but it doesn't really fit in with....any other theme.  So easy fix, right?

NOPE. 

The previous owner of our house decided that it would be a great idea to cover the entire house head-to-toe with wallpaper.  Except, SURPRISE, removing wallpaper is hard...so when it came time to sell the house, they opted to paint over the wallpaper instead of removing it.

In case you were wondering, painted wallpaper is harder to remove than unpainted wallpaper.

Here you can see each step of removing the wallpaper.  You can see a little bit of the dark blue on the top right.  After we peeled off the paint and the top layer of the wallpaper, there was still all this leftover adhesive to remove (which you can kind of see to the right of the ladder, underneath the blue).  In order to remove that, you have to soften it up and carefully scrape it off of the drywall gently, making sure you don't scrape up the drywall (spoiler: I scraped up the drywall).

"BUT WAIT MELANIE...AREN'T WALLS USUALLY WHITE???".  Uhhh yeah.  Ideally, you would prime your drywall with some white primer before sticking on some wallpaper, or so I hear.  I guess the old owner of this house was left out in the dark on that one.  WHICH IS WHY IT TOOK US TWO DAYS TO REMOVE ALL OF THE WALLPAPER.

So after we painstakingly scraped off all of the wallpaper and adhesive, all we had to do was sand, spackle, and prime the wall, and then we'd be paint ready!

That's about as far as we've gotten.

Stay tuned for a post about furniture shopping, some decor inspirations, and the bound-to-be-drama-filled painting experience.