HANGING THE HORN

Remember how I repotted the staghorn fern in a grapevine ball a couple months ago? Because of the renovation to the back room (which has been finished for awhile but I still haven't gotten around to putting everything back in that room and therefore having shown you what it looks like now), the fern has been living in its ball but sitting in a pot.

But last weekend I was able finally hang it up. You may recall that I followed Kylee's tutorial on how to plant a staghorn fern in a grapevine ball. It took me awhile to find a bracket that I liked enough to use. This one came from a seller through Houzz.com. It was my first time ordering through Houzz but all went smoothly and I couldn't find this same bracket available for sale anywhere else. 

I didn't really want the bracket tight up to the door frame, but it ended up there because I wanted it to be mounted into a stud vs. just using wall anchors. Chalk this up to counting my chickens before they hatch, but staghorn ferns can grow to be huge and maybe I might get lucky enough to need all that support that a stud offers sometime in the future.

I wanted it to hang tipped forward just a little, so getting the fishing lines to be in just the right place took a little fiddling, but in the end I got it. I still haven't cut off the excess line on top yet because I wanted to make sure I liked how it was hanging. 

I love how it looks hanging and come summer I'll move it outside to hang in a shady corner of the pergola. 

By the way, the fern seems to be doing OK since the transplant. It does require a lot more watering than when it was in the plastic pot, but that's good. You don't ever want them sitting around in water. I just take the whole thing to the sink and squirt a bunch of water into the ball and occasionally give the fronds a bit of a mist. 

The sterile frond that was bright green when I repotted it has started turning brown (it's OK, that's what's supposed to happen) and another one is growing rapidly off the back. Eventually the entire grapevine ball should be covered in brown shieldlike sterile fronds. 

The staghorn is the only thing hanging in the room (maybe I'll get back to hanging art this weekend), but it certainly makes an impact. 

ALMOST PERFECT + SPRAY PAINT = LIGHT LOVE

There are times when you wonder what someone was thinking when they decided to make something one way or the other. I now believe that this is exactly why spray paint was invented.

I ordered this pretty light for the office / back room (heretofore just called the office even though there's really not that much work that happens back there, but this slash thing is getting annoying). Yes, the ceilings are low (well, 8 feet, which I guess is normal, but it's normal low, not normal high) and I've since read 40,000 designer blog posts about how I really should have a flush mount light there, but I didn't want a flush mount light. I wanted a pretty pendant light to be a fun dash of pizazz in the room.

Pretty light but bad canopy and chain color.

Lighting is one of those things where you can spent $10 or $1,000 and in the end you still have something that illuminates your room. It's just that the $10 looks like a boob and the $1,000 is a work of art. Most of us choose lights that fall somewhere in between. In this case, I was closer to $10 than $1,000 but still at a level I was somewhat uncomfortable spending for a light, even after finding a pretty good coupon. But when that light arrived I was smitten. Until I pulled the canopy and chain out of the box. Because while the light is scalloped-shaped bits of heaven (OK, capiz shells) finely lined in 14-karat gold (not 14-karat gold), the chain and canopy were spray painted a hideous shade of orange that I think was supposed to replicate copper but didn't in any way, shape or form replicate copper or any other actual metal.

There was also a pressing design issue with the chain: There was no way to shorten it. We tried to cut open a link, remove the excess links and close it back up again, but there was no way that sucker was going to go back together. Since by this point I realized that we were going to have to repaint the chain and canopy, we picked up a stainless steel openable chain link that twists shut and used that to make the connection where we had cut off the chain.

My mini spray booth setup and the canopy and chain in all its orange coppery glory.

The cutest can of spray paint ever.

And after a few coats of spray paint.

I scuffed up the canopy with a little bit of sandpaper, cleaned it well, rigged up a mini spray booth in the box the light was shipped in and went to town with a very cute mini can of gold spray paint.

Three coats later and all was forgiven.

The now-improved light looking great.

You can see the twist-close link we added to the top and the spiffy new gold color that matches the rest of the light perfectly.

Yes, it irritates me that you can pay not a little bit of money for a light and still have to fix it yourself, but I love it so much that I would have ordered it anyway even if I knew that ahead of time. I've come a long way. Years ago I would have sent that light back because if something was new it was supposed to be perfect. These days, I just get out the spray paint.

Here are some other random things I've spray painted over the years.

• Hinges
• Speakers
• Barn light
• Patio chairs
• Desk 
• Lamp shade
• Patio table
• Obelisk

So what about you: Are you willing to make modifications to something new but not perfect?

AND THE RENO BEAT GOES ON ... AND ON

I figured it was time for an update on our little office / back room project, but prepare yourself for the most unexciting update ever.

Last I mentioned it, the drywall was up and the ceilings were painted and ready to be installed. That was ages ago. At least it seems like it. I think it was about two weeks ago. Since then, the ceiling and crown molding went up (they did a great job on that) and I got to painting.

As they say, it gets worse before it gets better.

The wainscoting in that room suffers from the same problem as the rest of the paneling in the house: it was painted over shiny poly, shellac or varnish without being sanded or primed. That means it's a pain to paint it if you want to do it right.

I opted for doing it mostly right and gave it all a really good sanding, but I didn't necessarily get all the way down to wood. After that I cleaned it and caulked all the gaps, which are plentiful in that old paneling. Then I primed with the same Zinnser BIN primer I used on the ceiling planks, and following up with Benjamin Moore Aura in satin. I used Mascarpone, which is the white we have in most of the house. Even though I gave it two coats, it's looking a little thin in some areas so I think I'll need to do a third coat.


Before the ceilings, crown and trim were installed, we painted the walls (it's so much faster when you don't have to cut in around the ceiling or door trim). I'll be honest, when I asked you all for your opinion on what color I should paint that room, I was leaning heavily toward something in the aqua family. But the the voters were very much in favor of a navy-ish color and a few people commented or wrote me practically begging me not to do the aqua. Well, you guys swayed me.

You can see more of the teal color in it here.

We ended up going with BM Summer Nights, which is a deep navy that leans toward teal in some lights. I liked the idea of a very tealish-navy as that picks up a color from the Chaing mai dragon fabric on the chairs. I'll also be completely honest and admit that the name of the color helped convince me to go that dark. I hate to say it, but I am absolutely influenced by paint color names. It's probably not at all good design, but it's the way my brain works.

We were able to crank out two coats of wall paint (I favor matte paint for walls) quickly and it looked great until they came to install the ceilings and put a bunch of dings in it that I had to go back and patch. I still haven't fixed the paint and I think I'll probably end up just doing an entire third coat so I don't have noticeable touchup areas.

I've filled all the holes in the trim, but I still need to paint it all, plus the two closet doors. I was on such a roll with painting and things were going so great but somewhere along the line I lost steam and I'm having a really hard time getting going again. Now it's to the point where I just need to crank it out. It doesn't help that we have no light in that room right now so if I work at night it's by shop light.

The sad fact about this project is that it was supposed to be done two weeks ago. A few things took a little longer than they should. The contractor left for a week for another project, putting a pause on the whole thing. But the big hangup has been the floors. I talked a little about this on Facebook, but allow me to bring you up to speed.

When they were finished with the drywall but hadn't yet done the ceilings or trim, the room was in a horrible state. It was absolutely covered in dust and dirt and there were holes in the floor covering they had put down to protect the wood floors. Drywall compound was everywhere (I was not impressed with the drywaller who was really, really messy; others I've worked with in the past have always worked very "clean"), including caked on our floors through the holes. We spent an entire day ripping up the red rosin paper they put down and cleaning up. In fact we blew up our shop vac and had to get another one. Then we had to scrape all of that drywall compound off. And when we lifted the paper (I wanted to clean the floor and get new paper down for painting and to make sure we weren't grinding a bunch of dirt in), we discovered that the dye in the red rosin paper had stained the floors in the area where the paper had gotten wet.

Three large areas of pink streaks like this covered our floor when the dye from red rosin paper stained the wood.

Our beautiful light floors (which were actually in great shape in that underused room, save for a bit of sunfade around the area rug) looked like a kid had gone to town with a pink highlighter. I'll spare you the details of dealing with this, but basically the contractor had never heard of this (I've since found out this is fairly common knowledge that red rosin paper absolutely cannot get wet), half accused us of doing something wrong and then agreed that it was his responsibility after we all met with the flooring guy, he filed an insurance claim, I had to deal with his insurance company and now it all seems to be handled and we'll be reimbursed the cost of refinishing the floor in that room.

The result was fine but in the meantime it has completely taken the wind out of my sails for this project. Everything was put on hold while we waited for a resolution on the floors and I used that and an excuse for my painting procrastination.

So that's where it is. Totally not finished. But here's a peek of a little something that's going in that room.

In other news, we've had to add an interesting detail to our stairs. What do you think?

In case you can't quite tell, that's plastic lattice zip-tied to the balusters. It's not there because it's stylish, that's for sure. Our geriatric cat Desdemona seems to be completely blind now and a couple weeks ago she walked between two balusters right off the edge of the second floor. She was OK (she's taken the same fall at least three other times that we know of), but we didn't want it to happen again, so scoured Home Depot for a quick solution and came up with an expensive sheet of vinyl lattice. We just cut it to the length and width we needed and used a handful of zip ties to hold it on. So far it's working great and poor Desi's biggest issue has been accidentally stepping in her food dish.

Like I said ... it's an unexciting update, but now you're filled in.

FRIDAY FINDS & A RENOVATION UPDATE

It's the first  Friday Finds of the year, but first a quick update on what's happening in the back room / office (I really need to just figure out a name for that room and call it that once and for all). Drywall is up, including on the ceiling, which was a surprise to me. Since we're putting wood planks up, and since we discovered a stained plywood ceiling up there, I figured the planks would go right on top of that. But apparently there has to be a fire barrier and I guess drywall fits that bill.

They are also fixing the damaged drywall around our chimney so the living room has been rearranged and full of ladders all week. All of that gives the house a very "under renovation" feel that seems to be bringing some issues to the surface. I'm starting to think that Mr. Much More Patient has PTSD from our big renovation because he can't wait for this to be over and really this is small potatoes compared to what we've done in the past.

What I know for sure is that it will all be worth in the end. It always is. If you want to see more as this progresses, follow me on Instagram, where I'm pretty much putting up at least one picture a day that shows what's happening.

That's what's happening in my house ... here's some things happening in places that are presumably much less dusty.

This story from Erin from Floret Flower Farm (the gardening blogosphere's latest, greatest success story) about how she realized that SHE was her own brand is fascinating and it spurred all kinds of ideas for things we should probably be doing differently at work (and a few things for the blog).

Great advice on seed shopping. Add it to the list of things I need to get going on.

One of the things I love about the end is everyone's top posts lists and years in review. Taking a look at what is popular on Margaret Roach's blog is sort of a bellweather of what's happening in the gardening world.

I also liked Hooked on Houses top renovations of the year.

And Grow a Good Life had a great year-end round up as well.

You're going to be hearing a lot from me on seed starting soon, so brush up on your grow light knowledge here.

The weekend plans at my house depend entirely on how far things have gotten by the end of the day. With luck I'll be painting the wood planks for the ceiling and maybe a door or two. What are you up to?

RENOVATION ... AGAIN

Surprise! I've been talking about all kinds of projects, namely a bit of DIY in the basement and redoing the downstairs bathroom, but here we are doing a project (and by we, I mean the people we hired to do it) that I don't think I've even mentioned. This is how stuff goes around here. And this is what I came home to last night.

Consider this the penultimate step in ridding our house of the horrific wall texture that some former owner thought was a good idea. When we bought the house, every room other than the kitchen was covered in this thickly applied drywall compound applied in a fashion similar to one of those really fluffy cakes. Most of it went away when we did our big renovation and discovered that we had to shore up the living room ceiling (the weight of all that drywall compound contributed to a serious sag). I was more than happy to have to redo the drywall.

Then two years ago I did the hallway myself, mostly with a belt sander. For the record, even though it turned out pretty well, this was a really bad idea (I think I still cough up drywall dust).

The back room, aka the office, aka the original master bedroom is the worst room in the house as far as the texture goes. Our theory is that they started in that room and then "refined" their technique, because the swoops are really close together and it's all over the ceiling. There is a distinctive lemon meringue pie vibe in that room.

Here's what it looked like before this all started.

Things you should note about this photo: 1. The horrible wall texture; 2. The boob light; 3. The paint color samples on the wall, because at some point I thought paint was going to fix the problem in there. The sliding doors (which honestly I don't love but true French doors just aren't practical in our climate) lead out to the deck. 

One surprise—there are ALWAYS surprises when you start ripping open walls, especially in an older house—was that the ceiling underneath that drywall is stained plywood sheets, clearly the original ceiling. They are the same dark stain that lurks under all of the wainscoting in the house (and that was covered up with a not-very-good paint job). I can't imagine how dark this house must have been before someone painted everything and, I think, put in bigger windows. Frankly, even though that renovation was done in a rather sketchy way, I'm so glad someone did it because I'm not sure I would have seen past the darkness if I had looked at this house in its original state. 

So we're having that room re-drywalled from the original wainscoting up. The ceiling will be replaced with painted wood planks like in the kitchen. All this came about because at some point we had a leak on the chimney and the ceiling drywall was damaged. We feel fairly confident that we've fixed the leak so it was time to fix the drywall and it only made sense to have both projects done at once.

One thing I learned with our big renovation (and subsequent kitchen redo) was that if you can avoid getting your head set on an end date, you'll be a happier person, so I haven't asked about one nor really thought about it much. I will eventually, and I'm happy to see that they are working quickly, but for now I don't want to stress about it.

I'm doing all of the painting in this room and even though it's a small room, there's a lot of fiddly painting to be done. The wainscoting, which matches that in the living room and hallway, needs to be sanded, primed and painted because when the previous owners painted, they didn't sand or prime anything so if you so much as nudge the woodwork, the paint chips off. If I can paint really fast, the wood ceilings will be painted before installation and then just touched up after, which is far preferable to doing it after (as I found when I thought I crippled myself permanently painting the kitchen ceiling). I can't hold up the installation though, so they'll go up when the guys are ready to put them up regardless of how far I get. There's also a ton of trim—chair rail, baseboard plus trim around four doors and a window—and three doors plus the new walls.

This is a bright, sunny room that functions as an office, sitting room and walkway during the summer when we're on the deck and want to take a more direct route to the bathroom or living room. It can have a nautical bent, sort of. This is the room where we hang two huge nautical charts (one of the Great Lakes, which was was the first Christmas gift I gave Mr. Much More Patient many years ago, and that we still refer to on occasion, and another of Lake Michigan that details the course the boat Mr. Much More Patient was sailing on when it won a very big sailboat race), so it has a little bit of a nautical bent.

The wainscoting, trim and wood ceilings will all be painted the same warm white that is in much of the rest of the house: Benjamin Moore Mascarpone. I like to keep the same white going where possible for simplicity's sake not to mention continuity. The upstairs bathroom and kitchen are both Cloud White because I needed something just a touch whiter and the downstairs bathroom will be White Heron because I am attempting to match the subway tile color as closely as possible.

So, would you like to weigh in on a wall color choice in this room? I have it narrowed down to a dark navy (shocker) or something in the light blue / turquoise / aqua area. Unless one of you has a completely different idea that I haven't thought of.

Here's a navy combination (using BM North Sea). The mock-up is just a generic room from the Benjamin Moore website, not the actual office.

And here's something a little lighter (and perhaps less serious) with Benjamin Moore Galt Blue (from their Williamsburg collection, which has some great colors in it).

Thanks for weighing on the color choice! I'll keep you updated on the progress back there.

On my desk

Brightening up the corner of my desk at work today.

I'm so stingy about cutting flowers from my garden but I never regret it when I do. It's unbelievable to me how much this collection of daffs is making me happy today. 

More spray paint magic: This time on hinges

Having successfully spray painted a handful of odd things including a lamp (including the shade) and our wall-mounted stereo speakers, I'm far more inclined to at least give spray paint a chance to improve a situation before buying something new. And once again, spray paint has come through!

As I've said from the beginning, it was crucial to keep the office renovation on a shoestring budget. There are some great deals to be found on cabinet hardware (the handles I got from Ikea were incredibly well priced, I thought) but hinges are a whole other thing. And there are 32 hinges on the small wall of cabinets in my office. Even if, by some miracle, I found hinges for $2 each, I'd already be at $64. No way, José.

All that shiny brass hardware HAD to go!

I had nothing to lose by trying to spray paint them. And thankfully, after all that pain of staining the counters and painting the cabinets, this was an incredibly easy project.

I took them all off when I was painting the cabinet doors and plunged them in a bucket of my favorite pre-paint cleaner Dirtex and gave them a really good scrub with a stiff-bristle brush. I'm not sure what was on them, but they were really dirty.

I pulled out one of the many old bedsheets I save for projects like this as well as for moving, protecting plants from an early or late-season frost and covering up the dog bed and just laid them out in the driveway on that. Lest anyone forget how long ago I started this project, just take a look at these pictures. It was fall!

I picked up Rust-Oleum Universal in Titanium Silver, only because it was the only silver-toned metallic spray paint available at the hardware store that day (I would have gone for a satin nickel if it had been available). I've really gotten the hang of spray painting and like everyone says, the key is to do several very light coats. So light that the first few don't really look like much paint has been applied. It's not really until the third time I go over it that it is a different color and I usually do at least one more coat. This all happens in the span of about 15 minutes. When you're doing super thin coats, it doesn't take long for them to dry. I did give them a good hour or so to dry before I flipped them over and did the other side.

Sidenote: When on earth are those Viburnums that I planted to screen the neighbor's shed and never-used boat going to grow enough to do some actual screening? Speaking of which, does anyone want to buy my neighbor's house? Supposedly it's quietly for sale. If you buy it and move that godforsaken boat off the property line, I promise I will offer you first choice of any plants I dig up, divide or don't have room for.

Then I brought in spray paint drying supervisor Hudson to guard them while they dried. OK, I didn't really. He apparently thought that we should have bedsheets in the driveway all the time and why on earth wouldn't you sit on it if someone laid it out all nice like that.

I did have to buy new screws because I figured painting the old ones would be either a big pain or a massive failure or both.

Ack! I wish I had fixed that screw to turn it north-south before taking this picture. I hate when slotted screws aren't lined up.

I've been really impressed with how well the hinges have held up. I'm not seeing any wear on them at all. Granted, these cabinets aren't constantly being opened like they would be in a kitchen situation, but we are rifling through there at least once a day looking for something or other.

So that's the easiest project in this office renovation. Certainly much easier than painting the cabinets, dealing with that crazy counter and even the fabric-covered bulletin board "backsplash."

Painting the office cabinets

Hey it's me. Remember me? Gosh I've been a bad blogger lately. I had a rough couple of weeks at work and then a cold and some trip planning and blah, blah, blah. Who cares right? Life sucks sometimes; get your crap together and write a blog post why don't 'cha?

So I now take you back to yet another of my projects that I expected would take a few weeks and stretched into months. It's still not finished, but it's down to finishing touches and it's time to get in depth about some of the projects involved with it.

And that would the office. Here's what it's looking like now.

And you might remember, this is what it used to look like.

Even if it's not finished, you gotta admit that is SO much better. I feel so much more productive in this space. Seriously. I'm using more file folders. I'm making to-do lists that are getting done. My e-mail inbox went from more than 2,000 messages to no more than 200. I make it my goal to get it down to 200 every day before I leave. I get about 100 messages a day so it's a lot of time on e-mail, but it helps me feel much more in control about this.

I started by painting the trim and the walls. The trim went to BM Cloud White (so much fresher!) and the walls were painted BM Hudson Bay. I am absolutely loving this navy blue. Because I had to content with moving very heavy file cabinets around, I painted the wall in sections, which is not really the way you're supposed to paint rooms but it turned out fine.

Then I moved onto the cabinets. This was a job I completely underestimated the amount of work on, but I am so happy I did it. I'm happy because I've sort of been planning on repainting our kitchen cabinets at home myself and after having done this, I now know I will absolutely NOT be doing that. Too much work and frankly, I'm not happy enough with the results.

These are el cheapo cabinets. They are half-inch plywood with oak veneer. This was a heavily grained oak and I didn't want to be able to see the grain through the paint so I knew I'd have to do something to help fill in that grain.

Because I had limited space to work in the basement, I did the upper and lower cabinet doors separately, starting with the uppers. I took them all off, making sure to number them, and first cleaned them with Dirtex, which is my go-to pre-paint cleaner.

Then I sanded them with the random orbital sander. I went through more sandpaper on this job than you can imagine. I started with 80-grit and worked my way up to 220-grit, but I think I actually could have stuck with the course-grit paper longer to help knock down that grain. But no amount of sanding will eliminate grain entirely, so I turned to a product I'd not tried before: Fine Paints of Europe's Brushing Putty.

I used a cheap brush with stiff bristles to apply the brushing putty thinned with Penetrol. 

This product is quite expensive ($45 for .75 liters) and honestly, it's not easy to work with. Fortunately one of the reasons I love Fine Paints of Europe is that they have incredible customer service, so I called to get some help in using it and they talked me through the process. The first thing to do is add a little bit of Penetrol (a thinner available at the hardware store) to some brushing putty pour in a container. I did no more than 5% Penetrol and mixed it throughly. Then I used a cheap stiff-bristle brush (you WILL be throwing this brush away when you're finished with a coat of brushing putty so the cheaper the better so long as it's not losing bristles in  your finish), to apply an even coat. But that's not so easy. In fact, brushing even thinned brushing putty is a little bit like frosting a cake. There is no self leveling happening with this product, so it's up to you to apply it where you want it. Because my basement was pretty cold I had to wait a full 48 hours before it was dry enough to sand lightly with 120-grit paper. The idea is to smooth it out, not to take a lot off, because you could easily sand right through all the brushing putty you just put on.

Then I applied a second coat the same way. And honestly, I probably should have applied a third coat, but I just couldn't justify the cost for this project. I sanded it again, but the places where I didn't apply it too smoothly really dogged me at this point. Overall, I found it hard to find a balance between oversanding and sanding enough. After thoroughly cleaning the dust off (the brushing putty creates a really find powdery dust that was everywhere), I primed with an oil primer (as is necessary when covering the brushing putty).

This is where the process got really tedious. Painting both sides of cabinets requires a lot of drying time in between, so I'd paint for 40 minutes every night, which leads to a lot of clean up and set up time for little progress.

I used a different paint than usual on the cabinets. Fine Paints of Europe Eco satin is my top tier paint for woodwork, but it is a huge budget breaker and if you recall, the whole idea of this office makeover (done on my dime) was to keep it cheap. My next choice is BM Aura. But this time I used BM Advance, which I'd read great things about and claims to be formulate for woodwork. Even though lots of people (including John and Sherry at Young House Love who just used it to paint their kitchen cabinets) love it, I have to say I'm not a fan. It just didn't level nicely for me. Granted, by this point in the project, my basement was a horrible place to be painting. Residual dust was hounding me and the temperature was just too chilly for quick curing so all the dust that was around had even more opportunity to stick to the paint.

I did two coats of paint on each side, let the doors sit for a full week to cure, and then reinstalled them and repeated that overly long process with the bottom doors. One of the longest, most boring projects I've ever done. And let me tell you, my office was looking particularly awful during that long process. We had a new person start during all of this and I can only imagine what he thought about my office when it looked like this on his first day.

But once they were hanging I started to get really annoyed with the finish. There was a serious dust issue (not to mention dog hair which is my menace) and a lot of uneven spots. So I gave them one more light sanding and recoated them with one coat of my old standby Aura paint. And the difference was amazing, not just because of the paint but also because I was out of that dirty basement (note to self: deep clean basement before taking on any more painting projects).

I replaced all the dated hardware with Ikea hardware, and did a little number on the hinges (more on that later), and I have a completely new look. The cabinets aren't perfect by any means, and I'd be annoyed if I looked at them all day, but my back faces them so that's not an issue. And the look is great, I think.

I've already shown you some of the counters (nightmare!) and the corkboard "backsplash" I made. Next I'll show you what I did with the desk and a few of the other finishing touches.

Pet the nice moss

Does that sound a little wrong? Because I do.

I couldn't blog about it because it would have ruined the Christmas surprise, I bought three Moss Rocks for Christmas gifts this year. I ordered them well in advance because I wanted to make sure I'd get them in plenty of time. My mom, sister-in-law and I (yes, I buy gifts for myself; and yes, sometimes I wrap them up and put them under the tree) all got "Cobble" size (medium) Moss Rocks for Christmas. I bought  them in lichen, toadstool and raindrop (sagey green, off white and turquoise) and decided who should get each color when they arrived.

I have to say, these things are just the cutest little buggers. It's so weird, but everyone's first reaction when they see them is to say "Awwwww." And then the next thing they do is pet them. I'm serious. Your first reaction is to reach out and fluff the little guy's fuzzy head.

I brought mine to work and keep it on my desk so I can pet it throughout the day. I'm a toucher, much to the dismay of everyone I work with. I absolutely must be fiddling or touching or playing with something all the time. I don't even realize I'm doing it, actually. I will pick up someone's stapler while I'm talking with them and start dismantling it in the middle of a conversation. I completely and accidentally invade people's person space by picking up something on their desk. I usually carry a pen with me everywhere I go, which helps because I fiddle with my pen instead of something off some random victim's desk. It's weird. It might even be a little OCD, but who doesn't have a little dose of OCD in them?

Anyway, the Moss Rock seems to help a bit with those tendencies. Plus it's helping me do better at keeping my desk clean, because it looks so much cuter all by itself with its candle friend when it's not covered with a pile of paper.

Just to clarify, Moss Rocks didn't send me anything or ask me to do anything, and frankly has no idea I'm writing this post. I just really love the Moss Rocks I bought. Obviously ... since I've admitted to sort of molesting them. Although I'm wondering if maybe I have a problem with that (see previous offense here). Is there a 12-step program for plant molesters?

How-to: A beautiful pinboard

I have great news: progress is being made on the office redo (mentioned here, here, here and here). I stopped updating you guys on it because it got downright depressing when I was having so many problems with the counters (sadly mentioned here, here and here).

Rather than wait until it's all finished and show you it all at once, I thought I'd break out a couple of the projects and tell you about them first.

If you recall, the goal was to update my outdated, dingy and totally uninspiring office at work on a shoestring budget. Since I spend more time in this space than any other, I didn't mind putting a little bit of my own money and a lot of my time into fixing up this space. While I was planning the space, I was struggling with what to do in the "backsplash" area, and it was reader Robin from Three Acres & 3,000 Square Feet who suggested a fabric covered bulletin board. What a great idea.

Here's the old office looking like a total junk yard. Which it pretty much was. Below is a mock-up of the vision for it.

Functional and beautiful, not to mention much easier than wallpaper or some kind of fancy paint treatment.

So I made these fabric covered pinboards that might just be the best part of the whole room.

I started with Homasote handipanels because they work great as a pinboard. These are pressed fiberboard used for soundproofing and crafting. I had never heard of them before I started researching this project on the Internet (pretty much no matter how self explanatory a project may be, I start with Google). I was hoping to have these cut in the store because they can be really messy to cut, but the place I bought them from didn't have them. Fortunately they are really easy to cut with any kind of saw including a regular drywall hand saw.

Because I was covering such a long area, I had to use three boards. I also had outlets to contend with, so once I had the boards cut to size, I needed to mark the location for the outlets. Of course you can measure this, but I'm going to be honest here: I'm horrible at measuring. Well, I can measure, but somewhere along the line, things tend to get lost in translation. So I marked the outlets in a way even I can't screw up (this works with drywall too). With the outlet covers removed, I covered the actual outlets with a bit of painter's tape.

Then I grabbed the little lipstick palette I keep in my desk for emergencies, and picked the bright red color that I will never, ever wear, and brushed it on the tape over the actual outlets.

Then I lined the board up and pressed it against the tape so the lipstick would mark the board.

After the board was marked, I lined the outlet cover up with the lipstick mark and used it as a template to mark the area I'd need to cut.

Once I cut the outlet holes, I stapled two layers of thin batting on each board. For the outlet holes I cut an X and stapled around the hole.

The hardest part of this project by far was lining up the pattern. If I had used a solid fabric I could have knocked a good two hours off, but, of course I didn't.  I used a heavy upholstery fabric with a flocked velvet pattern that I picked up on sale from Calico Corners a couple months ago (Sultana Lattice from the Iman collection). I ended up needing two yards, but only because I had to match the pattern. I could have gotten away with a yard and a half if pattern matching wasn't an issue.

Here I was getting a general idea of where I would cut for each piece.

I had to line up the fabric not only so it was straight on each board, but so that the pattern matched up from board to board, giving the illusion of one long board. Mostly this just took some trial and error but it was pretty tedious.

Stapling the fabric to the boards was about as simple as it gets. I just made sure I was keeping equal tension on the fabric as I pulled. The only slightly tricky part was the corners. For those I just pulled the fabric tight across the corner and put in one staple.

Then I cut the excess fabric off and folded it over as neatly as possible and put a few more staples in.

 

I wanted to velcro the panels to the wall so I wouldn't damage the wall but the batting made that difficult. I took a furring strip we had leftover from something, cut it in pieces and hot glued it to the back where I wanted to attach the velcro. Then I just stuck it to the wall.

You can see where the seams are, but I think I did a pretty good job lining up the pattern.

 

I'm really happy with how it turned out. Not only is it beautiful and spices up the place a bit, but I have a convenient place to hang notes (although I'm trying hard not to clutter it up). And an added benefit that I wasn't expecting is that it added a bit more soundproofing along that wall.

I spent about $30 for the Homasote boards. The fabric was a bit of splurge at about $45. Certainly this is a project that could be done very inexpensively by keeping the size of the board a bit smaller and by choosing a less expensive fabric (burlap would be very cool).

* Unfortunately it seems that if you go to a direct link to an old post you can't view the comments, but if you look at it on the general blog page you can see them fine. I'm sure this has something to do with adding the new comment form. I'm hoping I can get it fixed but in the meantime, sorry for any inconvenience.