A BASEMENT BEFORE TO MAKE YOU CRINGE

I've alluded to changes and projects quite a bit here so it's well past time I fill you in on exactly what's happening. Mr. Much More Patient is starting his own business and needs an office here. So, we're making an office.

We already have a den/office type of room, but we both very much like using that room (which started as the original first-floor master bedroom) as a den and since Mr. MMP will require a fairly large desk, most of the things that make the den the cozy spot we like would have to go away. Similarly, the guest bedroom isn't really big enough for both a bed and a desk setup. So that means the office is heading underground to the finished half of the basement.

I'm certain I've written about the basement here before and I may have even written up grand plans for sprucing that space up, but for the first time things are actually happening down there.

This is the epitome of a "warts and all" before picture. The terrible red wall is my doing. But you can also see the pink vinyl floor. Behind the curtained wall is a storage are that actually works pretty well but needs some cleaning out.

Half of the basement was finished by a previous owner. Everything was clearly done as cheaply as possible. Fiberboard was used instead of drywall and furring strips were put over seams instead of taping and mudding. A cheap and exceptionally ugly pink and blue vinyl floor was glued to the concrete. The trim was just flat pine boards straight from the lumber yard. Three lights run down the middle of the room. I'm sad to say that when the current owners took over (um, that would be me), the atrocities got worse. Let's just say there were some bad paint color choices involved. In my defense, it was literally the first room I'd ever painted in my life and after years in beige apartments I was desperate for color. Hey, at least I did it in the basement and not the living room.

There is a shining star though, and that's the fireplace that extends from the one upstairs. A previous owner had the flue for it closed off so it no longer functions, but last year we removed the really ugly insert from it so at least it looks ok.

Time is of the essence with this project (and painting is underway) so I'm going into this with far less of a plan than I usually approach these projects with. And the budget is small so we're tackling the necessities and the cosmetics more than anything. Lighting upgrades, more insulation and even another heat vent (there is one that comes in the room but it's inadequate for the size of the space) would be very practical upgrades, but they are both time consuming and expensive so none of those is happening. Instead, we're working with what we have for the most part.

The fireplace is a nice focal point and the wicker chairs came with the place and I love them, but I'll need to make new cushions for them.

That starts with paint. We're painting everything—ceiling, walls, trim—the same color (Benjamin Moore Mascarpone, which is the trim color in the majority of the house and also the wall color in the living room) to both lighten it up down there and hopefully visually raise the height of the ceiling. I might have picked a different color but we had a lot of Mascarpone around so we went with that. I'll pick up new fixtures for the ceiling, hopefully ones that put out a bit more light than what's there.

This corner will be the office space. The wood box on the wall hides the electrical panel and the tall wood box to the right covers a sump pump.

The stairs are across from the wall above. Yes, I painted it blue and red. Don't judge. Actually, do judge. I deserve it.  On the far left of the photo you can see the doors that lead to the unfinished portion of the basement.

We absolutely must do something about the floor and not just because it's ugly. It is also very cold, so we need to cover it with something maybe layer area rugs on top of that. Unfortunately since it's a larger space, there is no truly inexpensive solution. We're still weighing the options for that.

I made a trip to Ikea to pick up a desk and a Besta credenza a couple weekends ago and we have plenty of other furniture for the rest of the room.

Here's a better view of the larger space. 

The lighting is just three ceiling lights, all of which will be replaced. About a year ago I got a quote of about $1,100 to add more lights to the room, so rather than do that, we'll supplement the lighting with strategically placed lamps. The bump outs on the right for the air ducts are really low. At 5 feet 2 inches tall, that's not an issue for me, but Mr. Much More Patient has to duck a little to get under them. Hopefully painting everything the same color will make that less noticeable.

I'll show you our progress as it happens. No matter what, I think it can only get better.

Do you have a finished area in your basement? If so, do you really use it?

A BEFORE AND AFTER 3 YEARS IN THE MAKING

I'm not one to draw projects out. When I get set on doing something I like to focus on it like a laser and pound it out until it's finished. I'd rather wait until I can do all of it exactly the way I want to than take it by bits and pieces or settle for something I don't really love because what I really, really want isn't in the budget at that time.

But for various reasons, that approach wouldn't have worked when it came to dealing with our garage. Never a very good looking building, we toyed with the idea of tearing it down completely for a time. But when it became clear that really wasn't in the budget, we set to improving it little by little over the past few years.

Last week we put what is hopefully the last major finishing touch on the garage that has helped take it from a pretty pathetic looking structure that you'd be hesitant to park your car in, to something that I think looks far more charming than it really is.

October 2013

 

It all started three years ago almost to the day when out of seemingly nowhere, I decided I was sick of looking at a wreck of a garage, especially after we did so much work to renovate the house.

April 2014

The following spring very little progress had been made, but I satisfied my urge to do well, anything, by painting the door Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue, a color I'd been dying to use somewhere.

Later that spring we had the garage reroofed (which I can find no photos of) and that helped the look of the whole thing tremendously. We also got the driveway paved, which wasn't really on my radar but was something that Mr. Much Patient had pushed for for a long time (and in retrospect it was a good call).

July 2014

A few months later we hired a painter to paint the garage. At first I wasn't sure I loved the color (Benjamin Moore Ozark Shadows with Simply White trim), but you great blog readers encouraged me to live with it a little and that's a good thing because now I quite like it. At this point I was feeling like it was looking much better but still a bit plain.

July 2014

Then we stuck a new light on it. A really small change but certainly another little improvement.

April 2015

It sat like that for several months until the following spring when we built a small pergola on it to match the pergola on our deck. Of course Mr. Much More Patient still doesn't understand what the point of it is (answer: to look pretty, obviously), but I love it.

July 2015

Later last summer I decided that the Wythe Blue was never really right and I repainted the door Benjamin Moore New York State of Mind. Ah ... that's much better.

July 2016

This spring I bought a new planter for near the garage and slid the boxwood between the doors.

And then last week we finally did what I've been waiting ages for: We replaced those ugly, dented garage doors. I'll write a full post about that process (we did not install them ourselves) soon. For now, I'm just basking in the beauty of a garage that somehow went from pretty horrible, to pretty darn good. Fixing it up over three years never would have been my choice, but it actually worked out OK, and by spreading the cost over several years it doesn't seem like nearly such a big hit.

It's funny, since it took so long to get to this point it doesn't feel like it really changed that much, but check out this before and after.

Yep, that looks just a little better. And having two garage doors that work isn't so bad either.

HOW TO PAINT WOOD CEILNG PLANKS

I'm doing all the painting the back room / office, which has been taking up a considerable amount of the time I normally spend gazing at seed catalogs. Fortunately, I've powered through the majority of it and in the process developed a pretty good method for painting wood ceiling planks.

Having painted the wood ceilings in the kitchen (they were pickled pink when we moved in), I can assure you that if you have any choose in the matter at all, you want to paint ceiling planks before they are installed. The money you will save on massages or chiropractor bills is worth it.

Our contractor bought these to match the wood ceilings in the kitchen and hallway. They are two 4-inch planks with a V-groove in the middle with a tongue and groove. When you put them up they look like individual planks. When you turn the boards over, they are plain, 8-inch-wide planks, so they can be used in that configuration as well. In the bedrooms upstairs we went with 5- or 6-inch individual tongue-and-groove boards, which I actually prefer, but I wanted to match the existing ceilings downstairs. The tags on them called them "carsiding," so look for that if you can't find them by searching for planks.

Be selective about choosing boards. There are a few turkeys in the bunch the contractor brought over that hopefully he can cut the bad bits off of. The big thing to look for is a large knot in the tongue, because if (when) that falls out, there's nothing under it. A few of the boards have a decided hook in them as well and you want to try to avoid that for obvious reasons.

If you're planning to paint your planks, the main thing you have to be worried about is the knots. If you don't prep your planks properly (say that three times fast), the knots will bleed through and you'll be repainting in six months. This happened on our professionally painted boards upstairs and it was a pain, so do what you can to prevent it. 

The first step is to fill all the knots. This is my favorite wood filler now. It doesn't harden up in the can like others and it works on interior and exterior applications. It also dries in 30 minutes which is very helpful. I just use a plastic putty knife to smooth it on any knots, dings or scratches. 

Look for baddies like this and fill them with putty.

Here's a knot that has been sanded and filled, but I went back and filled it again because there were still a few indentations.

When it's dry, I sand the entire face of the board. It's important to get all the "mill glaze" off the of the boards as well as smooth out the wood filler. I only sand the faces of the planks and don't bother with the v-groove or tongue. I use the random orbital sander (the most used power tool in the house) with 150-grit sandpaper, because that's what I had. I would have used 180-grit if I had it, but either will do. 

When the boards are sanded, I vacuum off as much dust as I can and follow up with a damp rag. This is when I fill any dings or holes that I missed filling or that didn't get fully filled the first time. Then I go back and sand those by hand.

I use a 4-inch foam roller and a brush for the priming step, which is the most important. It is imperative that you use a stain blocking primer that specifically says it seals knots. I like Zinnsser products and used the new BIN latex stainblocker primer (I try to use latex when I can just for ease of cleanup). It's not cheap—$30 a gallon—but completely worth it. 

After filling the knots and sanding, prime the tongue and the groove with a brush, then follow up with a mini roller on the flats, tipping off the primer with a brush. 

Start with a brush in the V-groove and on the tongue, then follow up with the roller on each board. This goes very quickly and you can move fast. Then follow up with the brush and "tip" the primer, just smoothing everything out and making sure the edges are covered. You want to pay special attention to the tongue and the outside groove and make sure you don't have runs or puddles in these areas because that will make them difficult to mount. 

Our workbench is a mess, but I recommend a glass of wine with your paint tray.

Wait for the primer to dry—usually about an hour—and then do it all over again. Two coats of primer may sound excessive, but remember, the goal here is to seal those knots. I don't sand in between primer coats, and if there is a particularly dark knot that I can still see through two coats of primer, sometimes I go back and just touch that up. Better to be safe than sorry.

Next use 220-grit sandpaper on a sanding block to give everything a quick rub down. You're just trying to smooth out the primer, not remove it, so a quick sanding generally suffices. I also sand the groove at this stage. Again, follow up with a good dust removal process.

I prefer to paint wood ceilings with semigloss paint. It's the only time, other than occasionally when painting furniture, that I use a gloss shinier than satin. I originally painted the kitchen ceiling in satin and didn't care for it and had to go back and do it with semigloss. 

I like doing the finish coat with a brush. It takes a little longer than rolling it on, but I feel like I have more control over the paint with a brush vs. brushing the groove, following up with the roller and then tipping the paint. Work quickly and, when the paint is still wet, just lightly run your brush over the entire plank from one end to the other without stopping. This will even out any areas where the brush may have stopped.

Let them dry and they are ready to mount. I'll let the professionals handle that, and I'll be back with a mini tutorial on what happens next when that's finished.

A DOSE OF FUN COLOR JUST FOR SUMMER

We've been enjoying the most amazing stretch of gorgeous summer weather here in southeastern Wisconsin. Save for the fact that we could really use some rain, there is absolutely nothing to complain about. We've been savoring every possible moment of it (I seriously try to soak it in and save it for a few months from now), taking walks on the beach, paddleboarding, gardening, dining alfresco and getting to a few small, fun projects that I've had on the brain for awhile.

Last year I showed you our new old-fashioned screen door (that is so fantastic, by the way). I painted it Benjamin Moore's Wythe Blue, a color that I'd been dying to use on something. Unfortunately the color, which is absolutely lovely in so many applications, fell a little flat in the glaring sun on our all-white house. 

So Saturday, I picked (at the hardware store, which is usually not the right thing to do) Benjamin Moore's Clearlake to update the paint job.

The new screen color: Clearlake, a (really) bright turquoise.

The whole job took me a total of about 30 minutes. I just took the screen off its hinges, washed it, sanded it very lightly, taped off the screens and applied two coats, with about two hours in between. Usually the recoat time is a lot longer but it was pretty warm out so it dried quickly. With extra dry time, I had the screen remounted by cocktail hour.

The old color: Wythe Blue, still one of my favorite paint colors, just a tad bland for this application, in my opinion.

I don't know if the color is perfect. It's bright, that's for sure, and I think it lends a punch of color that the house really needed. What I know is that it was so easy to change that I'm happy to live with bright turquoise for awhile and next summer, if I decide it's not right, I'll just change it again. You have to love that about paint.

A DIY SIDE TABLE RESCUED FROM THE LAND OF UNFINISHED PROJECTS

Have you ever started a project and then finished it three years later? I do it more often than I care to say.

I remember when I got this table. After my grandmother died, a lot of the furniture from her house was shifted to the family cottage and some of the furniture from the cottage was up for grabs. One of the items was an old Pottery Barn side table that converted to a game table. It had baked in the sun so the veneer was faded and peeling off in many places.

I grabbed it from the junk pile because I figured it could be a fun piece to experiment on. It could only get better.

Normally this is where I'd show you a photo of the hideous before. And I'm 90% sure I have one. Somewhere. But since I never name my photos, finding it would take a really long time and (insert more excuses here).

I glued down the peeling veneer with some wood glue and sanded the whole thing. Then I stained the top just to bring back the wood color.

I downloaded a quatrefoil pattern off the Internet and transferred it to heavy duty vinyl sticker material. I can't tell you where to get this. I got a piece from a co-worker who makes vinyl decals. After transferring the pattern I painstakingly cut it out using an exacto knife.

When the pattern was cut out, I very carefully started peeling the backing off the part I cut out, since that's the bit I wanted to remain stained, not painted. It took some time to position it properly. The key here was to only peel back about an inch of backing, get that situated on top the table correctly and then slowly peel away the rest of the backing while smoothing down the sticker. It was a little hairy and it would be very difficult with a very intricate pattern, but it worked out fine.

A good sticky primer was the next step, and I used it on the entire table, going right over the top of the vinyl sticker. This was followed by a light sanding and a coat of high gloss paint (Benjamin Moore Aura, which is what I use for most projects).

When the final paint coat was dry to the touch but not completely dry, I peeled off the sticker. In order to keep it from flopping on the painted bits, I cut away the sticker as I pulled it off. In some places it pulled up the edge of the paint a little but I could go back and fix that later.

The only problem was that the paint left a rather noticeable edge where it met the now-exposed wood. So I used 400-grit sandpaper to very carefully knock down the edges. Then I went back and touched up the paint with an artist paintbrush.

All of that left the wood stain looking a little less rich than I had hoped, so I went back with cotton swabs and just touched up the stain, blotting with paper towel as I went.

You gotta love pictures that show off all your sins. This is in the room where we still haven't dealt with the horrible wall texture. On the left side of the photo you can see where I was testing paint samples. That was at least four years ago. With the new table, the art is poorly hung. But hey ... new table, right?

I think this is a look that was probably very in about three years ago and maybe isn't so much anymore, but I like it nonetheless. The drawer still needs a knob but I'm looking for the right one. The table is also probably a tad on the small side for the loveseat it is by, but it replaced a table twice the size and half the height that was there that did nothing but attract clutter, so I'm appreciating the more refined look.

And if nothing else, it is one more forgotten project officially checked off the list.

Let there be (a not ugly) light

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you had a nice New Year's Eve and a great first day 2014. I was happy to get the house completely de-Christmassed. As much as I like the decorations (and I really just got them up about a week and a half ago), it's still nice to reclaim the house.

Last weekend, when I was supposed to be taking down the Christmas decorations, I got involved in a few other projects that seemed like way more fun. It was nice to check a few things off the to-do list that have been lingering there for quite some time. 

We have a very small hallway downstairs that is a total nothing space. It's not really offensive, but it's completely blah, and it's been on the list to get a little love for quite some time. 

Here's what it has looked like since we bought the house (other than the blue stripe on the ceiling, which was a color test and the yellow tape on the trim in preparation for painting).

Nothing to get excited about right? The kitchen is the doorway to the right, the bathroom is to the left, the two doors on the left that you see are closets and straight ahead is the sunroom/den/back room (I really have to decide what I'm going to call that room so I can quit with all the slashes). This is taken from the living room.

The ceiling was the same pickled knotty pine that was in the kitchen before I painted it (the first time and the second time when I realized it really needed to be semi-gloss). The wainscotting is a continuation from the living room and you notice that the walls have the hideous plaster texture on them. Oh, and let's not forget the light. It was a cheap plastic light fixture that had one big thing going for it: it wasn't a boob light.

About seven hours later, here's what it looked like. I love that this was one of those projects that didn't take too much time and made such a big change.

I painted the ceiling with the same method I used in the kitchen. First I sanded the whole thing. It's a pain, but it's key. Then I primed with BIN shellac primer. When I did the kitchen I just spot primed the knots with BIN, which seals the knots from "leaking" through the paint and then primed the entire ceiling with a standard primer, but the hallway was so small I just did the entire thing in BIN, which has the advantage of drying in 45 minutes. 

Then I followed up with two coats of semi-gloss paint. The first coat was Benjamin Moore Bird's Egg, but it turned out a bit too intense for me. So for the second coat I made a custom blend (this is not something I like to do because it's impossible to replicate the color in the future, but I really wanted to finish up this project that day) that was a mix of the Bird's Egg, Wythe Blue and Mascarpone, all of which I had on hand. That lightened up the Bird's Egg just a touch and the Wythe Blue added a bit of greeny gray that I liked as well. 

When the paint was (more or less) dry, we installed the new light, that I had purchased way back in spring. It's a capiz shell globe that I picked up on a great sale from Pottery Barn Teen. I was rather surprised when it showed up and found out it was only the shade, without a light kit, and I had a hard time finding a light kit that would work with it. I ended up finding one for a pretty good price from World Market, but it was irritating to me that it didn't come with one.

This is just stage one of what I'd like to do in the hallway. I want to paint the wainscotting the same Gray Huskie that is in the living room. Then I want to get rid of the icky wall texture. While just replacing the drywall is the easiest way to do that (and what we did in the living room), this is a small enough space that I'm going to try just sanding it all. It's going to create a hideous mess, but I don't think it will take that long. Once that's done the walls, all the trim and the doors will all get a coat of Mascarpone like the rest of the trim in the house (except the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom). And I'd really like to move the thermostat over a touch so I could fit some art on that wall. 

There's more work to do but I'm happy it's on the road to looking like more of a space and less of an afterthought.

New table, even newer color

Sometimes I think about my DIY journey and it sort of blows my mind. Six years ago I was scared to try to improve anything I didn't totally hate for fear of screwing it up. Now I have to restrain myself from NOT trying to improve things that are perfectly fine the way they are.

I think the first time I painted something brand new was when I took the can of spray paint to the speakers. By the way, they still work fine, they totally blend in with the wall and I don't regret doing that for one second.

Now I really have no problem painting something new if I can't find what I'm looking for. I've been wanting to get a new side table for between the chairs in front of the fireplace for ages. I had an overly contemporary el cheapo thing there for the last 10 years or so. What I really wanted to find was an old spindle table or maybe something with some faux bamboo that I could paint a fun color. I looked for a LONG time and found nothing that was the right size or in the realm of affordable. 

I orginally saw this side table on Joss & Main. And then I found it on Overstock for significantly less. Those daily sale sites are not always such a great deal, it turns out. 

Even at a really low price, I have to say I was not happy with the quality of this Safavieh table. It is really cheaply made. The top and the shelf on the bottom are made of luan and sort of feels like glorified cardboard. Still, it was cute and I was sick of looking (of course I found a table at Home Goods two weeks ago that would been equally good and was less expensive). 

It came in this perfectly fine gray color.

But you know it wasn't staying that color. I gave it a good dose of Benjamin Moore Cornwallis Red (which I also wrote about here), which is the most lovely orangey tomato red ever. I really have a thing for this color. 

I'm not going to give you a tutorial on how I painted it because you know the drill: Sand, clean, prime, two coats of paint, sand with 400-grit in between coats. Done.

And here it is in its new spot. With all the blue, white and gray in the living room, I think it's the perfect accent and it since its in the red family it works with the ikat dot chairs on the other side of the room too.

It's hard to get shot of our very long and skinny living room that give you an idea of what it looks like, but with the help of a tripod I was able to get one of this view, which is one I don't think I've shown you before. This is what you see when you walk out of the kitchen into the living room and it's what sold me on our house immediately. The lights you see on the mantle are from the track lights that hide on the backside of that beam. I'm still moving them around to figure out where to point them all. By the way, speaking of that painted speaker, there's one in this picture. Can you find it? Also, I am officially the worst mantel decorator ever. I'm actually thinking about making a temporary wood mantel sleeve to put over the stone mantel because I think it would be a lot easier to accessorize up there.

So have you ever painted or otherwise seriously altered something brand new? It's funny how once you just suck it up and do it once, it's not so hard the next time. Yet another slippery DIY slope.

The garage: A ticking DIY time bomb

Everyone once in a while a DIY project sneaks up bites me from behind. It's not even on my radar and then suddenly it's consuming my every thought.

That's what it has been like for the last few days with our garage. Our garage is not exactly the prettiest building ever constructed and we've done absolutely nothing to it since we bought the house more than 11 years ago. Actually, when we had the home inspection done we were told the garage roof needed to be replaced immediately. Long story short, by that point the previous owner had changed her mind about selling the house and was doing everything she could do to get us to back out of our contract, so she refused to offer any concessions for anything found in the inspection.

To be honest, I've been of the mind that fixing the garage would be ridiculous. Frankly, the thing looks like it's going to fall down. Turns out I was wrong. Two contractors and Mr. Much More Patient have informed me that garage is structurally sound. It's just ugly.

I think this picture proves my point. See that roof? There is an entire colony of moss growing up there. And that lovely green hue continues around the base too. That motion sensor light between the garage doors leaves a little something to be desired too. And you might notice the garage door on the right looks like a large animal is trying to escape. That's because I backed up into it when it was closed not once, but twice. Other than that, the garage doors aren't too bad so we'll probably just keep them for the time being. That red building looming behind is the neighbor's garage.

So a few weeks ago we decided to have the roof replaced before winter. We're going to use the same style and color of shingles as we used on the house, just in a less durable format (i.e. 20-year shingles instead of 40-year or whatever we put on the house). And here's what's happened since then:

Thursday
I start thinking that a new roof on that ugly garage is not really going to help appearances much. I also realize that I'm a little irritated about how ugly it is. Given it's location, it's actually the first thing you see when you pull in our driveway.

Yep, pull into the driveway, and this is the site that greets you. Ugh.

Friday
I start a blog post asking all my lovely readers to weigh in on what we should do with the garage. The big question is if garages should always match the house, even if, as in our case, the garage is detached and actually quite far from the house. By the time I'm done writing the blog post, I've already answers my own question: I've decided it is OK to have your garage be a different color than the house, so long as it coordinates. The color scheme I have in my head is gray and white like the deck on the house.

Saturday
It's a horrible, gray day so it's obvious there's not a lot of outside activity happening, but by 10 a.m. I already have paint samples up on the garage (fortunately I'm well stocked in gray paint samples from previous indecision). Sometime overnight I've also decided that we need a small pergola on the garage just to add something to it. If we do it in the same style as the one on the deck I think this could be another unifying element. Mr. Much More Patient is not a fan of this idea. To the point where he declares that he will have no part in a garage pergola. Since the one on our deck is a relatively simple design, I think I can replicate it on a small scale myself and I know he'll come around once it comes to actually putting the thing on the garage.

A shallow one sort of like this:

Traditional Exterior by Cincinnati Architects & Designers RWA Architects

Or this:

Contemporary Garage And Shed by Stamford Architects & Designers Colangelo Associates Architects

I have realized that straight men do not understand pergolas. In fact they get downright cranky about them. Then they demand to know what purpose they serve. Unless you live in a really sunny place, the answer is "None." Pergolas serve no purpose most of the time. But they are pretty, OK? And if this garage isn't a candidate for a little bit of pretty, than I don't know what is.

Looking at the garage I also realize that we need to trim out the garage doors a little better and replace a couple of trim boards that critters have eaten in order to get in the garage.

Sunday
Since we spent most of the day stacking wood (we moved the wood pile and stacked all the wood from the trees we had taken down in spring) I had a lot of time to think while stacking nearly three cords of wood (good exercise but holy smokes my back is feeling it). The realization that this garage project is going to be no small feat is dawning on me. Also, our neighbor, who happens to be the contractor who is going to do the roof, tells me that it's already getting sketchy to paint at this point. Particularly on our very shaded garage. There's a chance we could get it done, but as you can see, there is a lot of prep work that needs to be done to paint: pressure washing, scraping and priming.

The colors I sampled were, from left, (all Benjamin Moore) Smoke Embers, Silver Chain, Gray Huskie and Silver Chain again. I'm leaning heavily toward Smoke Embers but Silver Chain is a close second.

You can see that the prep work will be no small task.

So this MIGHT happen this fall, but if I think realistically about it, it seems unlikely. And that makes me sad. It also makes me wish I hadn't stuck those paint samples right on the front of the garage.

That's the path this rapid-fire idea took. In four days it went from lightbulb to excitement to a heavy dose of reality. But a girl can still dream and plan for spring, or if we're really lucky, fall.

Let's get bold

Slowly but surely the living room transformation from a warm modern French country feel to a more casual, slightly nautical feel has come together.

I showed you the new main seating area (our living room is long and narrow so we have three seating areas). I also showed you how I reupholstered the set of chairs by the game table over near the front door. In between those two areas is the fireplace.

We've had two Pottery Barn Malabar chairs there since we bought the house. PB stopped making those chairs after everyone in the world bought them and there was no one left who didn't own one. I don't care if they are ubiquitous, I still like them and they are one of the few wicker chairs on earth that is actually comfortable.

Here's what the living room has looked like for the last 10 years. 

When I redid the main seating area of the living room I was hoping that the old rug in front of the fireplace would still work, but it quickly became obvious that was not the case. Fortunately I've found a good home for it (I really loved that rug) at my brother and sister-in-law's house. With all of the pattern happening between the striped rug and the navy chair and ottoman I was looking for a rug that was a solid color but with lots of texture to keep it from looking boring. Jute or sisal would be my first thought but our light floors rarely look good with natural fiber rugs. When I found this chunky braided wool rug (at rugsusa.com at a really nice price thanks to a good coupon) I loved that it picked up the off-white from the stripe of the main rug and reminded me a little of a fisherman's sweater.

The chairs before with the great cushion covers my mom made for me, on top of the new braided rug. It just doesn't work.

So the rug was a keeper but then it became obvious that the yellow large-scale floral on the chair cushions wasn't going to work. That made me sad too because my mom made those covers for me out of leftover fabric from her family room couch and I still really like the pattern. Also, as you can imagine, even though I got pretty good deals on almost everything new in the room other than the sofa, the "budget" (I use that word loosely because I never really set an amount to spend on it) for this room was pretty much used up. Fortunately I remembered that I still had the original cotton canvas cushions that came with the chairs.

But off-white canvas on an off-white rug? Boring. So a little cushion sprucing up was called for.

I really liked the racing stripe pillows from Serena and Lily, but at $64 a pop, I wouldn't exactly call that budget-friendly.

Serena and Lily racing stripe pillow

I've painted a few strange things (including speakers and hinges), but I have never been really keen on painting fabric. But I couldn't possibly add another sewing project to my rapidly growing list of things that need to get done when I finally pull the sewing machine back out.

So paint it was. I sampled some fabric paint on a canvas drop cloth (I figured that was close to cotton canvas) but I hated how crispy it was. Plus I was not satisfied with the colors I could find in true fabric paint, so I bought acrylic craft paint that I mixed to a color I liked and fabric medium, which is sort of liquidy white stuff you mix with paint so it stays somewhat pliable on fabric and doesn't crack like a bad 1980s T-shirt.

I marked the center of the pillow and then measured 4.5 inches on either side for a 9-inch stripe. Later on I got smarter and put a piece of tape vertically down the center and drew the centerline on it to make it easier to get the lines straight all the way down.

After washing and air-drying the covers just to make sure they were clear of any kind of coating that might keep the paint from sticking, I used 3M high-adhesion painter's tape and after I figured out how to keep the line straight and centered (the hardest part of the project by far), I used a flat wooden spoon to run over the edge to make sure it was really stuck down. For the most part the line stayed pretty crisp, but there was a little creep under the lines where I couldn't push it down as well, such as where the box cushion covers curved. You can't really see it unless you look very closely.

I mixed together three different colors of blue Martha Stewart craft paint to get a navy I liked, then followed the instructions on the fabric medium and mixed it in 1-to-1 with the paint.

Although I've read about a lot of people rolling paint on fabric, I used a broad cheap artist's brush I picked up in a three-pack at Michael's.

I let everything dry overnight just to be extra safe, then I just followed the directions on the back of the fabric medium bottle and ironed everything at medium for 3 to 5 minutes. To be extra sure that the color was set, I also threw the cushion covers in a hot dryer for about 15 minutes.

When I pulled them out of the dryer they were soft and you couldn't even tell that there was paint on the fabric, but as they cooled they stiffened up a little. If you run your fingers across the pillows you can tell its paint, but it's not an unpleasant crunchiness like I was worried about. And you can't tell at all when you sit in them.

Before

After (P.S. When am I going to learn to pick up the house before I start taking pictures? Yes I iron in the middle of my living room.)

All in all I'm really happy with how they turned out and even more happy that I was able to transform those chair for about $15 in supplies and maybe 90 minutes of work. Everything is looking a little too neutral to me now so I really need to get on my pillow making projects and get some pillows sewn for on those chairs (as well as a few others).

Have you ever painted fabric?