Yucky Closet Makeover

WARNING: On a scale from 1-10, the interest level of this makeover is about a 3. That's only slightly more interesting than sitting on the couch watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" and not doing the makeover at all. Scroll down at your own risk.

There's a reason it's been almost four weeks since we moved and several of our rooms still look like this:

I blame Hallway Closet.

Doesn't look too bad with those bright flashes, but that's some seriously scratched up 1950s lead paint in there!

And don't even get me started on that floor. I don't think it's been cleaned since they removed the original carpeting (I found a thread of it stuck to the inside corner. It was maroon).

Oh yeah, here are the shelves we took out. Sagging particle board with peeling contact paper, yum.

And now the after (let me just warn you that I could not properly white-balance these photos to save my life):

We bought some pine boards for the shelves (which we had cut at the store) and used the leftover sample paint from Sherwin Williams to paint the walls a nice light gray. The shelves were painted with SW's trim and door paint in a nice clean white (apparently it has enamel in it which makes it super durable). 

This one is more color-correct thanks to *twitch* camera flash.

Here's the floor. I was on my hands and needs scrubbing that shit with a sponge and it's still slightly darker than the rest of the wood floor in the house. Whatever.

Time for a budget breakdown!
Paint: $6 for sample paint; already had white paint
Shelves: $27
...Yep, only $33.
And then I messed it all up by going to IKEA and spending, like, $100 on closet organization accessories. Damn you, IKEA, and your cute but deceptively-affordable storage solutions!

P.S. Holy crap, I almost forgot to point out the gray walls in the hallway! We painted all that ugly yellow this weekend and it looks AMAZING. You can see the unpainted baseboard there that was the original color. More pics to come.

Peach Cobbler Bars

Did you buy a giant box of peaches from Costco that are fast-approaching mushiness?
I did...I never learn. They always smell so good.
Solution: I made these YUMMY things at the suggestion of a fellow Pinterester. They were especially delicious after adding a bit of tequila to the peach mixture and the glaze ;)

Find the recipe (and much prettier photos) here.

New House Tour!

As promised, here are some photos of the interior that I took hours before all our junk arrived. Appologies for the not-so-glamorous photos; these were intended as "documentation" photos for our move-in inspection (always always document EVERYTHING. CYA, cover your ass!).

So the house was built in the 40's, which I guess is when people really hated windows and natural light. Keep that in mind on our tour, since a lot of this is pretty poorly-lit

Here we go!
The living room and biggest window in the house. It's very yellow so that will be changing. Those dark curtains have already come down and I'm hoping to remove/replace/paint those dark blinds white to reflect more light.

I've got some cool plans for this wall! I'll be painting the backs of the built-in bookcases some bright color and (if they let me) those bricks.

View of the dining room. More yellow! Sconces will probably come down and the hanging light replaced with something awesome. Hey, check out those fantastic ceiling beams!

The kitchen was a big selling point. It looks very swank, but we've discovered that the dark wood cabinets are light killers! We'll be installing under-cabinet lighting so we can actually see what we're doing when we cook. We've already nabbed an EPIC kitchen island this last weekend which I will be showing you very soon!

Another view of the kitchen. Dark blinds = already gone. That door leads out to the laundry "room". You'll see what I mean.

Woahhhh laundry "room" indeed! For all it's ghetto-fabness, I actually really like this space. It's really bright and it acts as a semi-outdoor storage area so I don't feel bad about putting things like recycling, trash or Teako's pee pad out here. On the tour, the owners said something to the effe

ct of "you should've seen it before we did this!".....yikes.

Speaking of yikes, check out our bathroom! Is that pink? Yes, yes it is. Lots of pink. This is the original tile from the 40s. I guess I can appreciate that the previous owners embraced it by painting the walls to match, but at the very least, we'll be saying "bye-bye" to the pink paint. We'd like to do a whole reno with new tile, but old house = lead paint. We're not sure that's something we want to tackle in a rental. You wouldn't know it from the picture, but this room is tiny too. Basically it's my least favorite room in the house because I'm supposed to spend a lot of time in here, but later you'll see how I plan to fix that.

This is the 2nd smallest room in the house: the 3rd bedroom slash office. We're using it as an office. Correction: boyfriend is using it as a little mancave office. Not sure how we feel about the green paint, but we don't hate it. Let's just say there are no decoration plans whatsoever at the moment. Except to get rid of those curtains. 

Next up we have the master bedroom. Very roomy, but very dark. We're hoping to get a king bed to put in here as well as some awesome chandelier right plop in the center. For now, it's storing all of our unpacked boxes. I plan to have a "beautification station" in this room and the guest bedroom where people can primp and preen to their heart's content without having to occupy the tiny bathroom.

The guest bedroom is where we currently sleep since that's where the bed was going to end up once we got a king for the master. It's a cozy little room with nice windows (good bye, dark blinds) and a closet with a built-in shoe rack. We'll be painting it something a little brighter to reflect more light. 

The owners left these paper lanterns behind, and we kinda like them.

Now for the big selling points. The yards!
We love sitting out in the backyard and just chillin'. There's a lot of potential here as far as landscaping and gardening are concerned. I don't have a picture of it, but the view from the upper terrace looks over the house and on to the gorgeous hills.

The owners left us their BBQ grill and we definitely plan to put it through its paces for our housewarming party. 

The front yard is actually larger than the back yard by at least 3-4 times. We just added that fence this last weekend and will be finishing it up soon. Why a fence? Look at all that grass/fetch turf! Totally unusable without a fence since Teako would probably run out into the street in a blink. Once we get the fence secured, not only can we chill out here and play fetch with her, but we can also invite her friends over for play dates in our mini "dog park" :)

That concludes the house tour! We love having more space, a yard, friendly neighbors, sunlight and--perhaps most of all--peace and quiet! Stay tuned because we've got a lot of projects planned for this little abode.

COMING SOON: fence-building, epic islands and DIY composters.

WE MOVED!

That's right. We traded the train-plagued Berkeley apartment for a great house in Oakland. It's an old home from the 40s with some serious renovation-potential, so get ready for some hard-core blog posts!

I don't have very good photos just yet since we're still in the process of unpacking, but here's a sneak peak at the living room/dining area. And yes, that is TOTALLY a backyard!

GET EXCITED!!!!

Felt Lampshade DIY

I bought this beautiful wrought iron lamp from a coworker several weeks ago because I loved the design of the base. At $10 it was a steal, and after reading this blog post from BossyColorBlog (If you see a table lamp you like, BUY IT), I didn't really hesitate. In fact, I think it only took me less than 2 minutes to reply to her email once it hit my inbox. 

Though the base was beautiful, the lamp shade was um....underwhelming. First of all, I prefer barrel shades to conical ones. Second, it was crudely painted and you could see the paint streaks when the light was on. Makeover time!

Young House Love posted a call-to-action asking their readers to complete a project they had found online (and specifically had pinned on Pinterest). Not too long ago, I had found these great lamp DIYs on Design Sponge that covered a lamp shade with circles of felt to create a very cool textured pattern.

A reader's successful attempt

I also found this lamp shade originally sold at Anthropologie that I loved even more (the colors in particular).

So with these two in mind, I went shopping to see what I could find. I searched Target and the interwebs for a barrel lampshade with the proper frame attachment (it's the kind that doesn't sit below the light bulb, but rather above it). I couldn't find ANYTHING that was plain and cheap enough with the right frame and barrel shape.

When we were out apartment hunting, I saw a sign for a yard sale and on a whim asked Boyfriend to stop. Wouldn't you believe it, they had the perfect lampshade for $1? What are the chances?? Okay, it wasn't completely perfect, but for $1 you can't really care too much. The shade was a bit too long, so all I did was trim it and glue the lower ring back on with some hot glue.

The ring was slightly too large for the trimmed edge, so I simply put a thick bead of hot glue around the edge and let it dry to add thickness. 

On to the decorating! I originally wanted to use ribbon and make the Anthropologie version, but I failed to find the right kind. So instead I went for a mashup between the felt and the ribbon. I bought felt in three different gray colors and used a jar as a stencil to create circles. Then I cut them out. Lots and lots of cutting. Hours actually. I even splurged for some really sharp fabric scissors to make it easier on my sore hands. So much cutting.....

I ended up needing about five times this amount of circles

And then came the gluing. Let's just say that I SEVERELY underestimated the amount of time it would take to glue hundreds of little felt circles onto a lamp shade.

This probably took 1-2 hours. I lost track.

Many episodes of The Office were watched.

Over the course of the week, my lampshade slowly took shape. There was much TV watching (Battlestar Galactica, Camelot, The Office, random comedians). With the circle-cutting and gluing together, this project probably took me over 10 hours to complete.

BUT without further ado:

Here it is in a room! (I'm still working on that painting. Don't look)

Project budget breakdown: 

Lamp base: $10

Shade: $1

Felt: $15 (I bought 3 yards total and used about 1.5)

Glue and gun: already owned

TOTAL: $26, score!

There you have it! I love how it turned out and I think it compliments the base very nicely. However, I will most certainly NOT be doing this again. I think my OCD made this project take WAY longer than it should. Thank goodness the lamp base is one-of-a-kind!