** H O L L Y W E S T -- Live, Love, Create **

The Reveal - Re-doing the Guest Room Part II

My new guest/work room has been done for a week now but I haven't had a chance to post the photos until today.  I am so pleased with the way it turned out.  I love being in that room now.

Here is the area where my workbench is.  As a reminder, I'm including the "Before" pics I used in this post.

Before:

  

It's kind of an awkward sized nook, but it fits my workbench perfectly and allows me to hang a curtain to hide it when guests are here.  In this photo, the curtain is pulled back.

After:

And here the curtain is closed:

 

One of the things I bought for the new room was a small desk, shown above.  It is the perfect size to hold my lap top, and I can use the additional surface space when I'm working on jewelry.

The most important purchase for the new room was the bed.  Previously, we had a sofa bed which was completely impractical.  The arms were huge and took up way too much space, and the bed itself was just a single, leaving any couples who visit us kind of out of luck in the bed department.

Before:

After:

I bought a simple bed frame and pop-up trundle from HumbleAbode.com.   Here is a photo of trundle set up to make a king-sized bed:



Here is the closet area, which stayed more or less the same.  I did purge quite a bit of stuff though, which left me with a lot more room:

Before:


After:

Here, the curtain is closed:

I truly couldn't be happier with this new room.  It is pretty, functional, and comfortable, both for me to work in and for my guests to stay in!

Odds and Ends

PAWS/LA's annual fundraiser, Pet Art, is on November 4.  It is such a fun event, and moi is a participating artist.

The work/guest room re-do is well under way and I love it.  It's amazing how much you can get done when you put your mind to it.  The only thing left to do is some furniture set up and some jewelry supply organizing, so photos will be coming soon.

Last night, we could see the fires in Malibu burning from our balcony:

Design Challenge - Re-Doing the Guest Room Part I

Here is my current challenge:  re-do my work/guest room so that it is both a functional workspace and a comfortable place for guests.

As daunting as this is for me (and it is daunting--this room has been a headache for me since we moved in seven years ago), I'm excited.  Because nothing floats my boat more than a good room re-do--I'm getting a little tingly just thinking about it.

This room has a history.  When we first moved in, I decorated it solely with guests in mind and it was fairly comfortable.  When I started making jewelry, however, I needed a space where I could work and it didn't make sense to devote a whole room to a purpose (guests) that was really only used maybe 6 weeks of the entire year.  I should add that when I have guests they usually stay for a week or more since Mick's relatives travel from England.  It's important to me that they have a comfortable space that will suit them for more than a weekend visit.

Mick has been doing some work with the lighting/wiring in the room so I have to warn you--while it's usually pretty messy, it's not usually this messy.  That said, let's start with a few photos of the space in it's current state:

This is the corner of the room that houses my jeweler's bench.  It's a little nook that fits the bench perfectly, and it's easily hidden with a curtain (which is not shown).

This small sofa has a pull out bed, which is only semi-convenient.  It's fine for singles, but when couples come we have to pull out the aero-bed, which I hate.  And by hate, I mean I hate sleeping on them, and I feel bad making my guests do it.

This is the closet.  About a year ago, I ordered custom cabinetry which has helped to cut down clutter in the rest of the space, but has become completely disorganized and full of things I never use.

Now for a Little Inspiration

I'm pretty sure what color scheme I'm going to use in the room.  I'm thinking a variation of this:

(photo credit:  HGTV.com, Designer:  Ammie Kim)

My thought is to paint the wall that the bed sits against a very saturated blue/teal color.  It's also a jewelry studio, after all, and I loves me some jewel tones.

That said, these three color schemes are also appealing:

(photo credit:  HGTV.com, Designer:  Nicole Sassaman)

(photo credit:  HGTV.com, Designer: Ammie Kim)

(photo credit:  HGTV.com, Designer: Andreas Charalambous)

Feel free to post your preferences in the comments section--who knows, you might be a guest at my house one of these days and you'll have to stay in this room!

Oregon House Re-do Part II

See living room and kitchen before/afters here.

I'm a little sad because the most dramatic transformation in the Oregon house took place in the bathroom, which was hideous when we bought the place.  Mick did so much work in there, re-tiling the floor and adding heating to it, re-tiling the bath/shower area, replacing the toilet and vanity.  The only thing I did was cut tiles and paint.

Mick, of course, was proud of his handiwork and took loads of pictures of the finished product which for some reason we can't find.  So I'll have to do a more detailed before/after of the bathroom when we go back and get more photos.

In the mean time, here are a couple of photos of the transformation:

Before:

During:

A little progress:

After:

My initial thought when I saw the bathroom in this house was gut it. The yellow bathtub really didn't seem to leave much of an alternative.  But there were practical considerations of course, the first of which being cost.   Then there was labor--removing a bathtub can be an arduous process, sometimes requiring the removal of walls.  My next thought was resurfacing or a liner.  There are companies that take molds of your bath/shower and then create a liner to fit over the existing tub and surround.  We did meet with someone and almost decided to do it, but Mick thought it was too expensive and it was going to take many weeks for the order to be fulfilled.  Plus, it was rather generic looking and for me didn't have a lot of design appeal.

Awhile back I'd seen an HGTV program which involved a bathroom re-do.  In it, the bathroom had a lot of tile work that was outdated but still in good condition and not cost efficient to replace.  The designers decided to incorporate the tiling in the design as if they'd chosen it.  The overall result was not necessarily to my taste, but the idea stuck with me and I decided to use it in this bathroom design.  Pretend I'd chosen the horrible yellow tub and work the design around it to minimize it's impact while allowing it to harmonize with the rest of the room. 

One of the best features of the bathroom is the natural slate floor with heating underneath.  Here is a look at the old, ugly, floor:

And here is a photo of the slate (which doesn't give much of a look--sorry):

The master bedroom is probably my favorite room of all.  When we first moved in, I decided to paint it a kind of aqua blue color to coordinate with some pillow I bought, so some of the before photos show me painting it blue:

Unfortunately, Mick and I spent one night in the painted room and decided it wasn't going to work.  So we repainted it a soft white color:

The biggest change in the room was the glass sliding door.  We replaced it with a single door with panels on each side that open.  It has a french-door look but isn't as wide.

This, of course, is the bed with the new headboard, which we completed the last time we were there:
Another change in this room was the closet, which we had replaced with mirrored doors.  It really opened up the room:


Finally, here is the guest bedroom, which also functions as Mick's office when we're there:

This isn't the greatest "after" picture, but it does give you an idea of the changes we made:
This is a photo of our neighbors.  Yes folks, a grave yard lies right behind our backyard fence.  I actually kind of dig it (tee hee, get it, dig it)?  It's fun to explore.

Decorating Our Oregon House

A lot of you know we bought a second house in Oregon last year so I could spend more time with my grandparents:

I have had lots of fun re-decorating it, and I thought I should post some before and after photos to show what we've done.

When we first got the house, it had some pretty horrible carpeting and needed a paint job.  The first thing we did was paint the living room, kitchen, dining area, and master bedroom.  Then we had the carpeting replaced throughout the house with laminate flooring.

Here is a view of the living room (from the kitchen) before:

and after:

We actually liked this sofa so much that we ended up buying the exact same one for our Santa Monica house.

Another view of this area before:

And after:

This is the dining area before:

After:

In the kitchen, we replaced the counter tops (with the Lowes equivalent of Corian, which I can't remember the name of), sink, and appliances.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

My plan is to paint the cabinets white, but Mick is against this, so I'm not sure if I will do it.  As of now we've only changed the hardware on the cabinets, which did make a difference.

Tomorrow:  Before/After of bedrooms & bathroom

Springtime Stacks and my Pot Garden

Errr, I mean container garden.

Ahhh, it's spring, that glorious time of year when I make a trip to the local nursery and buy new  plants for my balcony container garden that will eventually die from neglect. 

This is a blossom from my nectarine tree, which I've had for several seasons but have yet to get any nectarines from:

Here is the tree itself.  I love it, and it keeps coming back each year.  The fruit should come in July.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

My reading nook:

The view from the other side of the balcony:
And finally, the real reason for this post, before I got sidetracked by my gardening:

These are my Springtime Stack rings.  They are hand-fabricated in 18k gold and bezel set with pink tourmaline (left), diamond (center) and peridot (right).  While they were made to be worn together as a set, they are pretty on their own as well, especially the diamond.  They are some of the best examples of my work to date.

Dog Mural for Baby Room

Back in August, a friend asked me to paint a simple wall mural (more like a border, really) on the walls of her babies' room (twin boys).  At first I was reluctant;  I have no problem painting any number of things on my own walls, but there were numerous reasons why I didn't want the responsibility of painting on someone else's, especially since in this case the walls had just been freshly painted and looked lovely and pristine.  She assured me that even if I made a mistake, it could easily be rectified with more paint, so I decided, Why not?  Here is the result:

I have to apologize for the poor pictures; they're the only ones I have.  Here is a close up of a couple of the dogs:

It is difficult to see, but there is a dotted white line that goes above and below the dogs, as if they are batting the ball back and forth.

The original design came from a Pottery Barn catalog and I modified it to include a white scottie because they have a white dog.  I made cardboard cutouts of the shapes of the dogs and traced them onto the wall, then added the details by hand.

The finished room was more than I'd hoped for and I was very glad I'd agreed to do it.  The entire project took about two afternoons, and as a thank you, my friend made a donation to PAWS/LA, which is an organization near and dear to my heart.  Everybody wins!

Making an Upholstered Headboard

Last January, my husband and I bought a house in Rogue River, Oregon so I could spend more time with my grandparents, who live very close by.  Much of the time we spend there has been taken up by home improvement projects.  On this last trip, we made an upholstered headboard.

There are lots of tutorials online for making an upholstered headboard.  Here are two I used:

http://interiordec.about.com/cs/diybedroom/ht/ht_uph_headboar.htm
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/dc_furniture_beds/article/0,,HGTV_3439_1391743,00.html

While we didn't follow the instructions in these tutorials exactly, I kind of used ideas from both in our headboard.

Here's what we did:

1)  Took the measurements for our headboard using the size of our bed (California king) and how high we wanted it to rise above the bed.

2)  Went to Lowes, found the lumber section, and asked the nice man to cut us a piece of 1/2 inch plywood to our measurements.  We also picked up a couple of 1x4s while we were there, which would be the legs of our headboard.  We cut the 1x4s ourselves when we got home.

3)  Went to the fabric store, picked out our fabric, and asked the nice lady to cut enough of it to cover our headboard, allowing for about a 4-5 inch "overhang."  We also bought batting here, which came in a package large enough to cover our headboard (and probably a couple more).

4)  Mick figured out where the legs to our headboard would be attached.  Here's where we made our first mistake--originally we'd intended to attach the legs of the headboard to the metal bed frame.  However, in measuring for the wood, we didn't account for much beyond the edges of the mattress.  When we got home, we realized that if we wanted to attach the legs to the bed, the 1x4s would have to be attached to the plywood at the very edges of it. 

In retrospect, we should've done one of of two things:  One--decide we weren't going to attach the legs to the bed at all, or two--measure the plywood a bit bigger so that the legs wouldn't have to be attached to the edges.  In the end, we attached them right to the edges, still intending to attach it to the bed, but when we actually set it up we ended up just resting it against the wall and pushing the bed up to it.

5)  Mick drilled holes and attached the legs to the plywood using woodscrews, thus finishing the wood frame that the batting and fabric would be attached to.

6)  Here's where the fun part began.  I measured out the batting that would be stapled around the frame.  I wasn't too exact about it, but left about 4 inches all around to allow it to be stapled to the back.

7)  Next, I got out my handy-dandy staple gun and stapled the batting as neatly and tightly as I could around the frame. 

After doing this, we weren't happy with the thickness of the padding, so we stapled another layer of batting around it.  Note:  Some tutorials for upholstered headboards say to attach rubber foam to the plywood using spray adhesive, then covering that with batting.  In retrospect, I wish I would've done that, but only because I think it would've felt a bit more luxurious.

8)  Finally, it was time to attach the fabric we'd chosen, which was a gorgeous taupe ultrasuede.  As you can see, we kind of had to work around the legs.  In the tutorials listed above, the legs are attached after the batting and fabric are done, which is a better method, but since we'd had the problems with the placement of the legs and knew the 1x4s would show if we didn't cover them with fabric as well, we attached the legs first.

9)  The finished headboard, which Mick caresses lovingly:

10)  And here you have it, our lovely new bed:

Mistake #2:  We need to put another 1x4 near the top of the headboard so it all sits flush against the wall.  It's not a big deal but it will make it feel more sold.