Some sneak peeks for upcoming projects!

This is a little gem that I picked up at a thrift store for $10.  It's transformation is almost done.

Some patio love has been going on at my house!

The orange second bedroom is gone!!!!

This desk has gone from "meh" to yes!!!!

Look for details soon!

And it all comes together....

Sorry about the long hiatus.....Working full time and blogging is difficult!  Like I'm telling you something you don't know.  Here is the master bedroom finished....for now.  I actually just ordered some new sheets from West Elm and will update the photos when they come in.  I think they will be the "summer sheets" since they are citron and white stripes.

So to break the making of the slipcover down a bit..............

 I cut apart the old slipcover to use as a pattern to more accurately make the sides.   And many hours and much frustration later, voila!  (This is not a project for the faint at heart or those of you who think "sewing" involves an iron and stitch witchery....and you know who you are!)

This angle is so tight that it is difficult to get both the head and foot boards in the same picture!

This photo shows the sides but makes the foot board look really ill fitting.  My photography skills are going to have to improve!

What do you think?  Jeffrey says the pheasant is going to give him nightmares!  I like the pheasant, the pheasant stays.

I really love the graphic punch of the fabric of the slipcover.  I think it keeps the bedroom very modern and kind of groovy without being too retro or silly.

I'd like to thank the academy.......

I know. So original.

But really, huge props and good will to Tanya @ Dans Le Townhouse for the Kreativ Blogger award that she hath bestowed upon me!!  I do not deserve it...but I'll take it anyway!!!  So, the rules are that you must tattle three things about yourself, so here goes!

1)  Today was the first day that I had ever heard of bubble tea and actually had a mango bubble tea and am now officially obsessed!  Thanks anyway, Sasha!  OMG...who knew?

2)  I sleep with dogs and love it more than anything.

3)  I am currently enjoying the favor of 2 Buff Orpingtons and 2 Welsumers living in my back yard in a castle.  For the un-chicken-educated folks, that would be chickens!!  I grew up on a farm but never took the time to get to know the chickens.....I don't think it was PC back then, anyway but they are so sweet and funny!  Of course, there was always a very mean rooster lurking about in my childhood that would have prevented my friendship with the girls, therefore.....NO BOYS IN THIS CLUBHOUSE!!!!  Only the sweet Ginger, Maryann, Betty and Wilma.  Love, love, love them!

So, thank you to Tanya, who is so incredibly talented!  I especially love her felted art !  So gorgeous!

The Cat's outta the bag and onto the front porch!

When I bought my house, I offered to take care of the feral cats that the previous owner fed on the front porch.  There are three of them...Lizard, Cammy and Big Boy...I didn't pick the names!!  They are really sweet and I love taking care of them.  We have a food and water bowl on the front porch under a bench which works fine until it rains!  Then the food bowl fills up with water....not so great.  And on top of that little fiasco, the cat food was inside a cabinet in the kitchen.....so if we opened the door to go out and forgot to feed the crew, we had to turn around, get the food and turn around again and bring the cup back in.....Seriously, my life is way too busy for these shenanigans!!!!  I needed a solution to the water in the food bowl problem as well as one to make feeding the troop more convenient.  What to do, oh, what to do?

Here's what I came up with.  For $1, yup just one dollar, I purchased a vinyl, blue and white checked table cloth at a yard sale.  I immediately thought....hhmmmmm...this could be a water proof cover for the cat food. Slap it on a cushion, rain doesn't get through, cat food stays dry and the moocher cats are happy!   The only problem was that it looked a bit like a country picnic ho-down affair so.... I tried it on the diagonal, (better) and used some leftover white denim for the sides of the cushion (better still) and added a little orange flange for a pop of color (my front door is orange) and I think the result is kinda cute.  What do you think?

No, that is NOT one of the cats!!!  That is Max, with a terrible hair cut. :o(

On to the cat food storage problem.....On a trip to the flea market, I found a vintage diaper pail that had some really cute lines.

I painted it navy with spray paint specifically meant for plastic.  Then added stripes in a brighter blue, epoxied pieces of orange folder over the ventilation holes and voila.....instanteously convenient cat food storage that is beside the cat food bowl.....how cool is that?????  Very.

All in all, a big improvement to the front porch and the convenience of kitty care.  Life is good.

Thanks for the mention!

Thank you to Rachel at Southern Exposure!  She mentioned my cute little up-cycled table on her blog today.  Rachel has an amazing design aesthetic and you should really take a look at her work!  I am honored to be in her company.

I don't know if you had a chance to check out the latest Lonny.  It came out yesterday and it is loaded with gobs of great inspiration....LOVE the new Lonny offices!!  AND it features a couple of homes from New Orleans as well as an article about our fair city...so take a look.  

This is one of the rooms in Lonny's latest issue about which I am completely and utterly obsessed.

Lonny - Lisa Sherry, designer

I don't know how practical that lucite bubble swing is but it is freaking ridiculously gorgeous!  And that patterned wall is stenciled.....not wallpaper.  Again, FRG....freaking ridiculously gorgeous.  How amazing is the mix of all of those patterns?  And yet, it doesn't feel chaotic or overwrought at all.  In fact, I think this room, even with all of its bright pops of color is very soothing.  I truly love it.  Here's another view of the amazing wall....

Lonny

I'm also really digging that kelly green printed pouf over to the side.  It looks like one that I saw on Etsy by Aletafae.  These are a really great alternative to the Moroccan poufs that are all the rage right now.  I like that they are a bit more timeless and nicer to the pocketbook!!!!  You can also have them done COM and that's always cool.

Ciao!

Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.....

So I propped the Draperesque mirrors against the wall on either side of our bed to see how they looked.  Fabulous except now they totally dwarf our vintage Paul McCobb night stands....

As you can see, the slipcover for the bed was not finished in this picture.  Also, the white spot on the left side of the frame is the area that was melted when I purchased these mirrors.  I used a product called KwikPlastik to repair that area.  It is available at Home Depot.   The repair is not perfect but you wouldn't notice unless you were being icky-picky.

OK, so now that I had the seven two dwarves for night tables....what to do?  I decided to put the two Paul McCobb night tables together on one side of the bed.  Making them one wider night table would balance the mirror better.  A piece of glass on top to "marry" them, some cool fabric from Ikea under the glass and voila....a perfectly proportioned night table under said fabulous mirror!  

But then, what to do on the side left "unattended"?

At first, I considered buying something new, possibly from Ikea since I am in love with Ikea and the price is right.......really, everything is right about Ikea......did I say I love Ikea....IloveIkea!  One of the possible candidates from Ikea was the Edland shown below.

But, then, I remembered that I have a zero dollars budget and really didn't need any new furniture.  I went shopping in my house instead.  And found this......

.......in my foyer, (please, excuse the mess and the darkness), a little cabinet that I purchased years ago from Wisteria.com called the "Snappy Red Cabinet", we'll call her "SRC".  SRC is no longer available but I still really love her.  Obviously; however, she (mainly her R portion) was not going to work well in the master bedroom so I decided to perform a little makeover magic.

First, the loopy trim across the bottom needed to go.  Here is a photo of SRC with the trim in place.

OK, so I almost forgot to take a before photo...it really is hard to remember when you're all involved and working hard!  Luckily for me, it was a separate piece so it was easy to remove it. Bang! Yank! gone.

Here's what she looked like without the curvy trim.  She's much cleaner and with some open space at the bottom, she's less weighty in the room.  I just think her proportions are better as well. (Sorry, old girl.)

After sanding and priming, I painted SRC and now she is the SGC...the sedate grey cabinet. 

And to make me happy, I papered the inside of the drawers and the cabinet with this beautiful peacock feather paper from Paper Mojo.  You don't see it when it is closed but it's just one of those details that make me happy every time I open the doors.  I think every one should treat themselves to a beautifully lined cabinet and all it takes is some beautiful paper and a can of Super 77!

SRC did not have a shelf below so I added one during my little makeover.  It completely makes the storage so much more usable.  I also drilled a hole through the back so that I could feed my laptop's power cord into the cabinet for charging.  Now, my laptop charges while it is out of sight.....and I can pretend that I live in a magazine where mundane items like computers are not on display.  My world is a happy world.

Yes, that is my trusty back scratcher that must stay within arm's distance at all times!

What do you think?  I really like mismatched bedside tables....how about you?  Are you a "like them to match each other" gal or a "give me some variety" kind of girl?

I invited Dorothy Draper to my house.....and she accepted!

I love Dorothy Draper.  Not only was she a pioneer of the interior design industry (at a time when very few women were pioneering anything) but she was bold, dramatic and a little "in your face" about it.  I love that about her...her bold, graphic, over the top, grandiose neo-traditionalism.

The lobby at the Greenbrier Hotel.  Notice the pops of bright color that she juxtaposed with black and white.

(Photo: Van Nes-De Vos/Courtesy of the Collection of Dorothy Draper & Co. Inc and the Carleton Varney Design Group)

The Crystal Room corridor at the Greenbrier Hotel.  How current is the Moroccan inspired lighting?

(Photo: Van Nes-De Vos/Courtesy of the Collection of Dorothy Draper & Co. Inc and the Carleton Varney Design Group)

A Draper designed console at the Greenbrier Hotel.  She used a lot of painted furniture.

(Photo: Van Nes-De Vos/Courtesy of the Collection of Dorothy Draper & Co. Inc and the Carleton Varney Design Group)

The lobby in New York's Essex Hotel.

(Photo: Van Nes-De Vos/Courtesy of the Collection of Dorothy Draper & Co. Inc and the Carleton Varney Design Group)

The Hampshire House, 1937

(Photo: Van Nes-De Vos/Courtesy of the Collection of Dorothy Draper & Co. Inc and the Carleton Varney Design Group)

Enough of the interior design history...back to Dorothy Draper coming to my house.  While my fabulous friend Nora and I were thrifting at our local flea market, I found two fabulous Draperesque mirrors.  They were probably from the 70's, so not truly Drapers but oh, so close!  Made of resin (chi-chi-fon-fon for plastic!) and suffering from way too many layers of paint and close contact with a heat source (see close up photo), they needed me to channel Dorothy to save them.

Here is a pic of what they looked like when I bought them.

This is a close up of the melted portion of the frame.

And the detail of the top of the mirror-

And with a bit of clean up, some light sanding and 3 coats of Garden Sprout by Behr....they really are fabulous!  Have a look.....

I definitely have to improve the photog skills!!  Please let me know what you think! 


Ciao,
Melissa

I am definitely making progress...

And from the discontent of man the world's best progress springs.

- Ella Wheeler Cox

The master bedroom is finished!  T'is  a long tale, this bedroom.  One that starts with a bed and some beloved fabric.  My very good friend, Theresa, gifted us our bed, the Ikea Floro.  It comes with a solid, dark taupe cotton duck canvas slipcover.  In our apartment, I made draperies from an Ikea fabric that I really, really love.  In my house, I didn't need the draperies but still wanted to use the fabric so I decided to make a new slipcover for our bed using the fabric.  Here is a photo of the fabric as draperies in our old apartment-

Very graphic, bold pattern of black, charcoal, chocolate and a gold-y chartreuse on a white background.  Now remember, we're just looking at the draperies!

This is the bed from Ikea-

Because of the nature of the print on the fabric, I had to consider how the slipcover would be constructed.  I decided that the print was too large to have it on the "bed skirt" of the slipcover....that it would get lost and wouldn't make sense.  So if I didn't put it on the bed skirt portion, then would it look disconnected from the head and foot boards?  I finally decided, after much thought and "drawing"(in my mind) of bubble diagrams, that I would run the print up the head and foot boards only and use white canvas duck on the skirt.  Since the width of the fabric was not sufficient to cover the width of the head and foot boards AND the fabric was directional so I couldn't just "turn" it on its side, I had to come up with a way to make it wide enough and still look intentional while also pleasing to the eye.  So I centered the fabric on the head and foot boards and used the white duck to extend it to cover the width and added black welting between to aid the transition.




A close up of the transition- and a tiny hint of the finished project!

More later!!  Thanks for stopping by!

Melissa

Where, oh where to begin???

I have been stressing over where to begin my blog.  Well, I'm going to take Nike's advice......and Just Do It!!!

I really love the whole concept of "upcycling" objects, furniture, clothing....you name it!  I appreciate how you can take a piece of furniture that most might feel is irrelevant and suddenly it is the hippest of hip!  My design aesthetic is modern with clean lines and breathing room.  That is why it is so much fun for me to take a very conservative, traditional piece and completely make it fresh and relevant.  I have been collecting furniture at estate sales, yard sales and ebay with plans of upcycling them.  This sweet, little coffee table was purchased at an estate sale a couple of weeks ago.  Here is what it looked like when I bought it:

The table was structurally sound but had years of dirt buildup on the wood surfaces as well as the little brass feet.  The glass was intact but appeared to have cracked veneer under it???

Here is a glar-y close up of the "cracked veneer" ?

So I proceeded to completely dismantle it so that I could paint it and found that the glass actually had a film of printed veneer under it and that is what had cracked!  My plan was to put a beautiful handmade paper under the glass but that certainly was not going to happen with the faux veneer/glass that I uncovered!  Off to the glass shop I went to have a piece of glass cut to the exact measurements of the faux veneer/glass.  I then sanded the piece really well with a 220 grit sanding sponge after removing the brass feet. I then primed and painted the table in a high gloss white.  Using Brasso to shine up the feet was a snap and they look awesome.  I ordered my paper from PaperMojo, cut it down to size, dry-matted it to the masonite board that held in the old faux veneer/glass and then put it all back together!!!  And here is what she looks like today!  What do you think???  I could totally see this in a shabby chic living room or a teens bedroom in their very chic sitting area.

This shows the bright and shiny newly polished brass feet that were original to the table.  I even nailed them back in with the original nails.  I also kept all of the original hardware with which to put the table back together.  For some reason, paying respect to that detail just makes me happy!!

The glare is awful in this photo but it shows her beautiful legs and woodwork!

This photo shows less glare.

This view shows how really beautiful this handmade paper is!! The movement in the paper is really phenomenal, don't you think?

So, this is my first upcycled piece of furniture that I have posted on my blog!  Please feel free to comment on content and photos!  I promise I will show it as part of a room.......just as soon as I get one pulled together!!  Thanks for stopping by!

P.S.  I first found out about Paper Mojo from Jenny at Little Green Notebook.  If you haven't had a chance to check out her fantastic blog.....wake up and smell the non-VOC paint!!!!!  She's great and I have learned so much from her.

I bought a house....now the fun really begins!

I purchased a very cute little bungalow in the Fountainbleau/Marleyville neighborhood in New Orleans, LA.  I had been looking at houses for only a short time when I saw the listing for what I like to call, "the cuteness".  Actually, I was not drawn to my house when I saw its pictures on the real estate website.  It goes to show you that while a picture may be worth a thousand words, the real thing is always better!  It was at the end of a long day of house viewing when we decided to "oh, we're in the neighborhood and we have an appointment" see one more house.  As soon as I walked in, I knew I was home.  It had such a great feel to it, welcoming, warm and cozy!  And best yet, I could move right in and "make it my own" slowly.....no need for major wall moving or tearing out bathrooms or gutting kitchens!  I have done all of these....and loved every minute of it, don't get me wrong!  I just wanted a little less chaos and a lot more enjoyment this time around.  So, as soon as I figure out how to post the pictures that I have of the house, I'll let you in on the progress and hopefully get some much needed and looked forward to input!  See you soon!