Office Project: Map Wall

When last we visited my front-room-turned-office project (seen here), I left you with a little teaser of the wall treatment for the desk wall:

Yeah, I’m kind of ornery that way!

I really wasn’t particularly planning on doing something special that wall, except maybe painting it a to-be-determined accent color.

But there I was, minding my own business, and my latest Pottery Barn catalog arrived…and there was this picture:

Oh, I fell…and I fell hard!

Oh, how I love the look of that map-covered wall.  The problem?  The Pottery Barn decals are $129 each, and to completely cover my wall, I would need…four. 

Yeah, that’s a little out of my budget!

I will spare you the details of my long and exhaustive search for a reasonably-priced alternative, and just share the good news…

I found one!

Target carries a map wall mural for about $89.  With an on-line coupon code and free shipping, I was able to get it for about $80—and it’s 8’8” x 13’!!  (It’s also easily trimmable.)

Can I get a woo-hoo??

So I ordered it.  And here I am “testing it out” by holding pieces of it to the wall with painter’s tape!

I think…I like it.

Here’s the kicker…the wall mural comes in 8 sections.  They are NOT pre-pasted, although the mural does come with some mix-it-up-yourself paste.  I have put up a fair amount of wallpaper in my time, but pasting your own is a MAJOR PAIN.  After a panel or two, I discovered it was better to paste the panel AND the wall, but it was still really, really tricky to get everything to line up.

Since the desk is going on this wall, I am counting on it to cover my flaws!

Here are the first two panels in place:

And here’s a peek at the completed wall!

I think it’s an improvement over what I started with, don’t you?? 

And here’s a peek at the adjacent wall…more on that to come!

  (hint:  no matter what the picture looks like, it really isn’t just painted white!)

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This project was featured at Simply Klassic Sunday.

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Linking up here:

Coastal Charm’s Nifty Thrifty Tuesday	Elizabeth & Co.
Mod Vintage Life	No Minimalist Here’s Open House Thursday
Friday Remodelaholic	2805
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Decorating Insanity	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	{Primp}
Simply Klassic Sundays	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	It’s So Very Cheri
Common Ground	{aka} design

Spring Suitcase Wall

Among other changes I have been making in our home, I decided the suitcase wall needed a little updating.  Can you see the difference?  (You can see its debut—and the “how to--here, or its Christmas look here.)

Look down….look down…look down…

Yep, the little green suitcase is a new member of the family!  I never did figure out what to do with the awkward space at the bottom…so I put a suitcase in it!

Then I moved around some of my favorite vintage goodies, and added a bird nest or two…  (And notice the canvas I had made of Bubble Boy!)

It’s probably hard to tell, but the wall color is actually different (more on that later).  It took me a long time to work up the nerve to paint the suitcase wall!  I had to take all those suitcases down…then put them all back up…  Ugh!

Since I had to go through all that trouble anyways, it seemed like a good time to cut another suitcase in half!

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This project was featured at My Repurposed Life and Elizabeth & Co..

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Linking up here:

Coastal Charm’s Nifty Thrifty Tuesday	Elizabeth & Co.
Mod Vintage Life	No Minimalist Here’s Open House Thursday
Friday Remodelaholic	2805
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	{Primp}
Simply Klassic Sundays	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	It’s So Very Cheri
Common Ground	{aka} design

Chelsey’s Bookcases

My friend Chelsey has had these Grandma-bookcases (literally) for quite some time now.  Probably two years ago we talked about the “how-to’s” of painting them—but this year, she finally decided to just have me do the work!

The bookcases have some really pretty details on the doors and on the crown molding.  The right one is actually more of a “secretary” with a pull-down work surface.

Chelsey thought all the brown was bringing her living room down, so we went white!

She may not know it, but the white I used is the same color that is on the trim in my house!  When you find one that works, I say, stick with it!

I will admit that this was NOT my favorite project.  Unfortunately, the main construction of these pieces is laminated particle board, and it did NOT want to be painted!  It took one coat of primer (which obviously wasn’t sufficient) and FOUR coats of paint to cover!

I used a dark-brown glaze (antique walnut stain mixed with Martha Stewart glazing medium) to bring out the pretty details.  Plus, there was lots of “natural distressing” on these pieces already—the glaze makes it look like it’s on purpose!

…and I played with PicMonkey’s “Urban” effect for the following pictures!

I miss Picnik—I felt like I was just starting to get the hang of it!  But PicMonkey is very similar, so that’s good—for me!

Anyway, I think we brought Grandma’s furniture into the new millenium!

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This project was featured at Decorating Insanity.

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Linking up here:

Coastal Charm’s Nifty Thrifty Tuesday	Elizabeth & Co.
Mod Vintage Life	No Minimalist Here’s Open House Thursday
Friday Remodelaholic	2805
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Decorating Insanity	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	{Primp}
Simply Klassic Sundays	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	It’s So Very Cheri
Common Ground	{aka} design

Saturday Shopping: Flea-o-logy

I have to share what we did on Saturday--we drove 85 miles to Payson, Utah, for the Flea-o-logy Flea Market!  I had three kids that wanted to come (three stayed home with daddy), so we made a day of it.  We went from a flea market to IKEA to Pottery Barn to Restoration Hardware—we really covered the whole spectrum!

ANYway, I didn’t remember to take along my camera, so imagine my surprise when the Flea-o-logy blog included this picture:

The three chicklets looking at the metal toilet plunger (what IS that thing?) are mine, and so is lovely pink…back. 

Then I also noticed we made an appearance on the Pollyanna Reinvents blog (she’s one of the creators of Flea-o-logy):

I hate to admit it, but I didn’t buy…much. I am *terrible* at making snap decisions, so I tend to make no decisions at all! The things I thought I couldn’t live without—were always in other people’s arms!

I adore just “looking” though, whether or not I buy anything.

How about you?  Are you a flea market fan?

Office Project: 3D rendering & more!

I know this is going to sound utterly ridiculous—but I have worked on SO many little (and not-so-little) home projects over the past couple of weeks that the prospect of “blogging” about them is overwhelming!  I think that’s why I like furniture—each one is a discrete project with a beginning, middle, and end.  It makes it much easier to write about!

So I’m going to try and break things up a little, rather than remain silent any longer!  Believe it or not, the office project is actually on-going!  When last we visited this project, I was in the room-planning stage (see here).

I shared my “design” here, as follows:

…and Sheri from Sean’s Woodworking (a local furniture builder in Salt Lake City) turned my little sketch into a 3D drawing:

Isn’t that amazing? 

As you can see, we made one minor change, which is trading the drawer bank with the cupboard where the printer will go.  It seemed to make more sense to keep the CPU and the printer next to each other.  I also gave up on the seeded glass (it’s expensive!), but other than that, its pretty true to my “vision.”

While the desk is being built, my job was to set up the front room with Internet access—would you believe it’s the ONLY room in the house without a phone jack??—and to move an outlet from where it would have been covered by the desk.

That was a big deal!

You-Tube and a wonderful friend (Zack’s dad) were invaluable in figuring out those projects!  A You-Tube video helped me learn how to remove--and replace--our vinyl siding so we could daisy-chain a new phone jack off of the adjacent room’s jack.  It was a (fairly) simple matter of running the wires underneath the siding rather than through the walls.

Rather than splicing electrical wires, we were able to remove the old outlet box and just “stretch” the wires to a new box.  They were just long enough to give me the six inches I needed!

I was left with some pretty funky holes from that job, so I turned to You-Tube again to learn how to patch dry-wall.  As you can see by all the screws, I attached short pieces of wood to the existing dry-wall, and then used them to anchor the patches.

Don’t laugh.  It works!

Next step was to tape…

…and mud everything.  I think I used two coats of joint compound.

Then I had to figure out how to give some matching “orange-peel” texture to the patch.  I used an old terry-cloth washrag and “pounced” more joint compound onto the wall.  I can’t say it was perfectly successful—but good enough for me!

But the best part is that the new wall treatment hides my patching job very well. 

Want a peek?

More to come!