DIY coffee table and living room refresh - Update!

We have a new coffee table! I mentioned here that we were going to DIY a coffee table. And we did it this weekend...

 

From my previous post, a lot of you liked the Peony fabric option - and I did too, but it would be much better in a room with lighter furniture. Since our floors are dark and our furniture is dark AND visually heavy, we really needed something to brighten the space.

This Centro Mist fabric from Tonic Living was the perfect solution. It's also an outdoor fabric so is a bit more stain resistant and durable for putting our feet up on the table (which we do all the time...)

We changed the pillows (thanks mom for sewing!) to give the whole room a bit of a refresh. The gray fabric is Cameron in Storm, and the toile is Neo Toile in Coral (I am in looovvveee with this fabric).

 

 What do you think?

DIY distressed denim shorts

This was an easy peasy naptime project - perfect for the upcoming summer weekend!

I had a pair of jeans that I held on to after my last closet purge (ok, the last 3 purges), but I hadn't worn them.Which means they had to go...ORRRR become useful. I chose the latter. I figured I could chop them into shorts and see what happened - if I hated them no harm done, right? So I chopped them, distressed them and here they are:

I used a few online sources to guide me - for the basic cutting I used the guidelines here and for the distressing I used this video (which is probably done by a 16 year old girl...who better to teach me how to be cool? ha. At least she understands the value of DIY!).

I started by measuring 18" from the waist band and using chalk to mark where I wanted to cut the jeans (no pics, sorry). Then I chopped them!

Here's how they looked then:

The general consensus on Instagram was that I definitely needed to distress them. First I practiced on the legs that I cut off, then I went to work on the shorts. It's a bit time consuming but made for a little project during one of O's naps.

You make two cuts to where you want the distressed section:

Then you use tweezers to pull out the vertical blue threads (this is the time consuming part...):

 

You end up with a section that looks like this:

 

I did a few areas of this style in different widths and heights. Then I scuffed up the jeans with some sandpaper, put in some tiny holes and tweezed the edges to soften them and they were done!

 

Nursery Reveal - BabyGroupie

The nursery was a long work in progress but we managed to finish it before Owen was 2 weeks old - with many thanks to my mom who came down to help with Owen, and ended up helping huge with the nursery! We had a lot of DIY projects in the nursery - namely the artwork and mirror, the fabric circles, the roman shade, and the chair cover. Here it is in full:

 

The chair was a Craigslist steal – it is a Dutalier glider, and is SO comfortable. I initially wondered whether I needed a chair for the nursery and was told by friends that Yes, I definitely needed one. I can now confirm for anyone wondering – YES YOU DEFINITELY NEED ONE! A chair with a high back so you can rest your head during late night feeding/rocking/comforting is an absolute must. I generally think gliders are ugly, and this one was no exception with cream microsuede cushions when I bought it. My mom is a great sewer so I knew I could ask her to make a cover, but I couldn’t find any fabric that I liked. Instead I headed to Target and bought 2 drapery panels that worked perfectly for the chair! The fabric is heavy enough that it will wear well, and I liked the subtle ikat pattern. My mom used this tutorial for the project and I think it turned out amazing!

 

The bookshelves are an Ikea hack of Bekvam spice racks – perfect size to put low to the ground for a child to have their own library. We’re in the works of building up Owen’s library – any favourite children’s books that you think are a must?

I shared a mini tutorial for the porthole mirror, and more details on this art in my previous post.

I think I came pretty close to my initial moodboards (still on the hunt for an area rug and a footstool for the space!), and I am loving the space. Owen is loving looking around and seeing all the different elements of his room!

 

DIY No Sew Roman Shade

I hope you all had a good weekend - weekends have taken on a new form since the little guy showed up - gone are the weekends of epic errands/running around and projects, and now we have leisurely, relaxing, weekends with walks, playing, and cooing. Kind of cool :)

I do have another DIY project from the nursery to feature - my no sew Roman shade!

The roman shade was meant to be a simple DIY no sew project…I started it before Owen was born and my mom had to finish it! It was still pretty much no sew, but took a while to figure out the placement of the pleats and how to maneuvre the whole blind.  I wanted the shade to be functional to offer light control, but a lot of the tutorials I found involved mini blinds on the back and to be honest it was all just a bit too involved. I finally found what I wanted andused this Thrifty Décor Chick tutorial as our main guide. 

Since this window is right next to our neighbour’s window, I wanted to keep the slat blinds for privacy while still letting light in. This meant that I couldn't mount the roman shade within the casing, which would have been easy peasy. Instead we added a small block of wood to the top of the window frame and used a tension rod between that and the wall to hold the roman shade.

I wanted the shade to be blackout to darken the room for Owen’s naps and (hopefully) early bedtime when he’s a bit older. I didn't have the patience to wade through a bunch of fabric looking for the right price so I bought a white table cloth at Homesense, and some navy ribbon from Fabricland to get the look I wanted. I cut the fabric to size and added blackout lining with hemming tape. This was the part that I did...

Then the challenge of how to make the shade WORK. The tutorial uses eye hooks for ribbon, but I wanted everything on the blind itself. To allow the blind to be raised and lowered easily, my mom sewed 1 button on each side of the back of the blind, and then added ribbon (ribbon lengths get longer as you go down the blind) at three points to be our gathers.

 

When the ribbons are hooked over the button, you get the casual roman shade pleats, and it makes it easy to put the shade up and down. And finally, my mom added the lengths of ribbon using heming tape to adhere to the shade.

I’m really happy with how it turned out, but I definitely couldn’t have done it on my own (preggo brain / new mom brain did not make it an easy project! Aren't mom's the best??). Stay tuned for a full nursery reveal later this week...

DIY porthole mirror and nursery art

You know my baby's growing up little by little when I actually have a few moments here and there to blog :)

Here are another few touches from the nursery - full reveal coming next week! I wanted some art over the change table, and had 2 gold frames that I wanted to use. I also had the idea to do a round industrial looking mirror...I looked everywhere for one but I couldn't find one (that was less than $100), so I took matters into my own hands and made one.

 

What kicked off the whole DIY idea was that I found the perfect round mirror at an antique store on Queen St East after a glorious pre-baby massage.  There is no doubt in my mind that it is not an antique given it had a made in China sticker on the back :) 

 Thus, no guilt in spray painting over the tortoise shell finish!

I taped it up and the Mr spray painted it for me since I was pregnant.Once it was painted, I got my glue gun and some large twine, knotted it and got to work.

 I wanted it to look like it was hanging from a knob but knew my glue wasn't that strong (or the plaster walls for that matter). So, I hung it using the notch on the back of the mirror, and then spray painted an extra cabinet knob I had from our old kitchen cabinets. I put the knob on the wall hanging on a nail to use as the fake hanger, then I laid the rope over top (hang the knob first so you know how much twine you will need when attaching to the mirror). Faking this is a reeeeaaalllyyy important step for it to stay on the wall and not crash on the change table :)

The gold frame closest to the mirror is Ikea and has card stock and a heart I cut out from a paint chip (I did the art once Owen was born so I went with blue). The top mirror was a Goodwill find, as was the bottom one.  I did simple blue and coral paint chip art in the bottom frame to finish it all off.

Simple, cheery, and cheap!

DIY Nursery Fabric Art

I'm finally getting around to posting about nursery projects! I completed a few while I was off before Owen arrived, and my mom was a huge help with a number of projects (to be revealed)...

With the nursery we decided to keep the paint colour that we had on the walls - it's a gray-sage green (I could look up the Benjamin Moore colour...but I'm not...), and we thought it would work for a boy or a girl (babygroupie was a surprise for us!). That cut down on some of the baby room prep, and to keep it gender neutral, I decided on a navy and coral colour scheme. To add some interest to the walls I did a simple DIY art project - it's all over pinterest / blog land and is the easiest craft ever.

Start with wooden rings that you can get at any fabric store - i lucked into a buy one get one 50% off at Fabricland, so I picked up a number of rings in different sizes.

From there, cut your fabric to size for the loop you are filling. Tighten the wooden loop over the fabric, and trim the excess fabric.

To lay the art out on the wall, I cut out circles in newsprint and taped them up until I was happy with the arrangement.

And voila! DIY nursery art that adds a pop of colour (and catches the little guy's eye!)

Bathroom update - the demo!

Ok...first off, there is snow on the ground. In Toronto, in April. Less than a week from my birthday. Not cool Mama Nature, not cool. It felt like we skipped spring and fast forwarded to december. Without the Christmas pretty. Bleck....

Onto other things...things that will make my bathroom oh so pretty - DEMO.

This bathroom reno is the first real "reno" we are doing to our house. Don't get me wrong, we have done a lot (A LOT) of work to our house since moving in: painting top to bottom, re-wiring, new boiler, a/c, new closet, and a kitchen uplift.

But besides the closet, we haven't done any other demo. We certainly haven't done any demo that includes a bin.

We can now scratch that off the rookie list!

The bin arrived at 7:30am on Saturday and the Mr. spent a solid 10 hours on Saturday demo'ing the bathroom, while I ran around picking up our tub, vanity, mirrors, etc. We could have had delivery but it didn't work with our schedule so pick-up it was.

Plus, I got the surprise of the guy at the pick-up desk who said "Ok you're picking up a tub and vanity...{looks at me} Are you here on your own? Yes. {looks at me again} What kind of car do you drive???"  I wish I could have been swift enough to joke that I had a Honda Civic with me or something but I had to tell him the truth that I had a cargo van (thank god for Autoshare).

After all the Mr's hard work and some timely help from his cousin towards the end of the day, we had a lot of dust (and a lot of it contained within plastic!) and this:

Our new bathroom!!

OK, space for our new bathroom. I think it's all very exciting. The Mr is a little freaked out about how it is going to be put back together, but I just keep on reassuring him that's why we hired some folks to put it back together for us. (Easier to day since i didn't rip it apart. Let's hope i'm right on this one). In terms of our plan for the work, we have a plumber, electrician, and "finisher" coming in (tile, drywall, etc) so I think we will be in good shape. If the plumber can make everything happen with the radiator pipes and sink moving we should be good (fingers crossed).

 Oh yah...and as a tip...when demo'ing a tile floor on a floor above another one...it's probably best practice to remove light fixtures, or else this can happen:

woops.

Bathroom Update - We have a new (framed) wall!

A long overdue hello again!! We have been pouring our time into the bathroom reno and a couple of other projects we have on the go, so my at-home computer time has been taken up with research and ordering (online shopping with store returns makes my life sooooo easy).  Fortunately "research" tends to involve Pinterest so I've been getting my fix.

Ok now time for the real updates - a couple of weekends ago the Mr and his very handy friend framed the new wall for our bathroom. Our main change to the bathroom is moving the wall into our guest room by 20 inches. 20" is a lot of added space to our teeny tiny principal bathroom.

Exciting, right!??! As you can see, once the wall is down the bathroom will have a nice amount of space for a proper vanity and space for good old moving around. We aren't going to be able to tango in the bathroom but that's a good thing considering the maneuvers we have to pull right now if we are in there brushing our teeth at the same time.

The wall was framed in advance of demo so we could wrap it in plastic in hopes of containing SOME of the mess to come from demo (demo in a 90 year old house with plaster walls will always be messy).

Oh - and an update on the light fixtures - we ordered both the top and side fixtures to see what will work best in real life with all of the other finishes we have (and we can return the ones we don't use directly in store...so easy).

Hoping to put together a mood board soon so you can see where I am going with all of this!