$2 ombré makeover

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in case you felt like i left you hanging (because, well, i did), our utterly unplanned kitchen makeover is still in progress. we definitely have gotten the big beasts out of the way (cabinets, countertops, painting, backsplash) but have a few more things to do (light fixtures, ceiling panels, barstools, decor).

we pretty much do what we want when it comes to these things. that is, we follow where inspiration takes us and not an inch further (the 84 unfinished projects can attest to this). hence the one week sprint that consumed us and then the 2 month hiatus wherein we havent furthered the kitchen at all.

well, one tiny portion of the kitchen caught my eye last week and i decided that i wouldnt be doing anything (eat/sleeping/showering) until it was transformed. obviously this all-or-nothing attitude is super healthy.

but my stalwart dedication to this little transformation paid off in the end:

BEFORE: our countertop canisters:

we received these at a wedding shower back in 2006. we had happily registered for these little black ceramic beauties and they have been charming us from waist-height ever since--keeping our flour, sugar, popcorn and coffee nestled and snug and spoil-free.

but, CATASTROPHE! when we changed the color of the countertops to black they kind of just...disappeared:

unlike the white detritus on the counter tops which i didnt bother to wipe up and which certainly do not blend in or disappear.

so i researched ways to change the color of ceramic. turns out it's pretty easy.

and instead of just painting all of the canisters the same color, i decided i wanted to dip my toes into the trendy pool of ombré and paint the canisters in a graduated color scheme.

besides being utterly a la mode (and sounding like "hombre," which joey's department store cologne-spraying nemesis could sell like none other...friends anyone?), ombré also satisfies my inner schizoid, whose preference is always to HAVE ONE OF THE SAME THING IN MANY COLORS! without being crazy rainbow lady, and while being somewhat on-trend (if late).

here's how i did it. this process would work on ANY ceramic (but dont use it on things that you put in direct contact with food...i didnt paint the inside of the canisters).

what you'll need:

-cotton balls

-rubbing alcohol

-paint brushes

-pliers (i needed these to take my canisters apart)

-gloss enamel paints ($1 each at joann or michaels...with coupon. $2 reg)

these were the two colors i settled on. my main blue, which would be my darkest color and then white to get the 3 lighter stepped-down tones of blue.

FIRST: remove all the non-ceramic hardware from your project (these will eventually go in the oven, so, besides making it easier to paint, you are taking off all the stuff that cant survive high temps)

wipe down all of the surface you are going to paint with rubbing alcohol and cotton balls and be grossed out by the funk that has gathered on your canisters in 6 years:

plan out your colors. make a little sample palate of the tones of each color you want to have so you can see if they are balanced from shade to shade (so they step down evenly) and have are sort of color roadmap to shoot for when you are mixing up the big batches for painting. (this step isnt pictured, but it would look like 4 little brushstrokes on a piece of paper. :)

mix your lightest color. i knew my darkest shade was going to be what came in the bottle so i mixed my lightest shade with enough white that 2 middle shades would fit in between nicely.

get your paint on:

(i stupidly didnt take off my hardward here until a few minutes later.)

it might take a few coats to completely cover your project. keep your brushstrokes neat and tidy (you could use a sponge brush too) and dont apply it too thick because this stuff will gunk up on you if you do.

repeat for your remaining pieces, saving leftover paint so you can go back and touch up or recolor once you see them all side-by-side.

then you need to wait 48 hours. this was the hardest part for a freak like me who wants it all DONENOW! but the bottle is the boss, so i followed its instructions.

pop everything into a cold oven and crank that baby to 325.

DONT open the oven during the process. it is going to stink to high heaven, but thats okay, we arent eating these things, we are basically making our oven a kiln for a moment. its not going to smell like delicious cake.

once the temp hits 325, bake those puppies for 30 minutes and then turn the oven off. when the oven is cool again, pull the project out.

wait until they are cool to the touch and then reassemble. maybe it was my oven, but my canisters had some dirty smears on them after baking and i had to wipe them off with a wet paper towel. no biggie though.

then you line up your little soldiers on the counter in descending size and color order and you become happier than any person should be over a $2 DIY project involving canisters.

i love these hard. and i would normally show you a zoomed-out shot here, but i dont want to jump the gun and pull a veritable nip-slip of the wall color we chose until everything is nice and sparkly.

turning these blue actually enabled us to see that the spoon lengths are kind of wonky (we never noticed when the spoon handles hid in the shadows of the black finish) and it was making my an insane person to see them dangling there all devil-may-care with their varying lengths rubbing it in my face and i just couldnt cope, so we said, "about face!" and made the spoons all face the side instead forward. it worked out nicely because the handles are more grabbable from this angle now.

are you on board the ombre train? whats your favorite application of this trend. (note: its possible that this train has already left the cool station, but i dont care. if it was on pinterest today, it has to be cool. these are my rules).

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alright, who gave the mouse a cookie? (a PG-13 ode to my living room's makeover)

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when last i showed you, our living room looked like this:

not impressed? well, ya best step off, homie because--lest you forget--3 days prior it looked like THIS:

oh, the shame.

i knew once the floors got down (go head girl, go head, get down), it would trigger a chain reaction of home improvements comprised of late nights, pinterest mining, and dirty fingernails.

this motivational rube-goldberg of updates still has us firmly in its grasp.

once we got the carpet out and the floors in, we HAD to paint. 

once we painted, we thought the gray was too light on its own and could be confused with white. it couldnt, really, not if you looked at the trim around the doors and windows in comparison. but i found myself thinking, "hmmm, if only we had some white trim in the middle of the walls for the gray to push off of and exert its grayness." 

ah-ha! we added horizontal white stripes on the accent wall by the entry!

and then i started falling into HARD love with this room.

but oh, that old plaid couch was chapping my hide. i mean that literally. 3 years worth of crusted peanut butter stains and decades of wear had rendered the cushions quite soft, yet the upholstery a little rough. and my eyes, oh my eyes were trying to climb out of my face to escape the horror of that print in that room.

so o-baby-o, when i our new rooms to go couch arrived (here's to you, a million months no interest!), we gleefully kicked the plaid wonder to the curb. again...literally (except we have no curb).

i was not emotionally invested in this purge, despite my long relationship with this couch (it was one of the settings for jesse and my first kiss. it was a very mobile, 4 hour kiss that left me with facial rug burn courtesy of his stubble. he made me wait a week into dating to give it up, so it was...intense).

but epic makeout sesh aside, i was not emotional about saying goodbye to this couch until 2 fairly hilarious things happened:

1. someone took ONE seat cushion from it while it sat on the curb for free. just one. let me tell you: i KNOW it was our across the street neighbors.

they are amazing corn-pone rednecks. approximately 18 of them live there at once with no family structure that we have been able to discern. when we got rid of the first plaid couch in exchange for the best garage sale deal ever, we put it on the curb with a "FREE" sign and it was gone when we came home a few hours later. i happily wondered where it had gone to live until i spotted it in the driveway of the neighbors being used as a charming outdoor all-weather settee. 

they never speak to us or make friends, but boy do they snatch up our freebies like whoa when we're gone.

in addition to our couch, they also have our old TOILET (!!!) in their front yard being used as a charming planter in spring/fall and a festive pumpkin holder during the harvest/fall season. i also suspect they snatched up our two cats for the hell of it. apparently anything at the foot of our driveway is the "up for grabs zone" and, as such, we do not let the children venture there.

so i suspect that these colorful neighbors (whom i love) have since stained a cushion on the first couch they snagged with what i have to assume was either chaw spittle, squirrel meat grease or lotto scratch-off shavings (am i stereotyping a bit?) , and so when they saw the twin, they grabbed up an extra to replace it. 

this made me sad because whoever took the one cushion essentially rendered the couch un-adoptable now that it's missing a seat. 

so it still sits in our driveway waiting for the monthly junk pickup, getting rained on.

and there it sat until the #2 reason for me to get a little weepy about it happened. i watched jesse RUN OVER it with our van. he was backing out the other day and i was leaving too in that other car, and at that moment i was seriously thinking (as i nervously used the yard to turn around), "jesse is such a badass at reverse!" when he plowed into the couch. 

i actually laughed hysterically because a wreck with a sofa is on my list of funnies, but then i started thinking about it and felt bad for old Couchus McMagmus (he's scottish, you know). 

so let's take a moment of silence to honor the injustices Couchy EmCee has enduring in his retirement....

...and then move right into how SEXY the new couch is!!!!

and now, an inappropriate open letter to my couch:

damn, boo, you're so fine, looking all come-hither with your grey fabric. and that 3-year stain force-field warranty of yours tells me you're down for anything! and what's that, girl? those lovely lady lumps of yours that are driving me wild are throw pillows that were included standard with my purchase AND right on the mark style-wise?  i think you were meant for me!

i love a big-boned woman, and that frame of yours is SOLID! those legs are long and strong, but they support a world of curvy softness. i am already daydreaming of the things i am going to lose up in that deep cleave, girl: spare change, cheerios, and if things get extra wild, maybe even a sheriff woody action figure. you just never know, baby. 

yeah girl, i know you've got that elegant and chic exterior, but when a guest comes over, you let it ALL hang out. i've seen what's under those cushions, and baby, you may look like a living room piece on the outside, but on the inside, you're MADE for the bedroom with your plush fold-out queen-sized mattress with inner-spring support and room for TWO to tango.  

rrrrrawr! go, on, girl! 

from afar you are a beautiful charcoal grey, but when i get up close to you, i see that you are really so much more and baby, i have never felt this way about herringbone before. 

i used to think that this pattern was just meant for business suits, but you've shown me that herringbone is really meant for business time:

(is it possible that i had coffee today and have perhaps veered off course and taken this a bit far? i'll never tell!)

the last major element we needed for the room (for now...eventually we have plans that involve de-kidding it, turning the yard sale armchair into a loveseat that coordinates better and adding some flair to the walls) was an area rug, for softness during play and lounging and to break up the wide expanse of wood.

first, i got this one because i LOVE the popcorn rug texture and it came in gray and was on mega sale at target last week.

 

it was really nice but a little too big, too dark and too unlikely that the popcorn wouldnt get trampled, smushed and destroyed by all of the traffic and chaos of dukesdom.

so we returned it and got this one from home depot for cheaper. it was a nice comfy shag that would hide crumbs and stains, was a lighter color, smaller size and came in a cool ombre effect:

but as soon as we laid it down, i didnt like it. it looked cheap and the ombre effect came off as just dingy and dirty in real life.

we we returned THAT and got our keeper from lowe's instead based almost solely on how amazing it felt in the store (it was just me running in for 5 minutes to look and i couldnt even see the real color because it was so dark in the rug file-o-folder display area).

it's greyish cream and so deep that you could get lost in it. it is beyond soft and every member of out family has been caught rubbing their face and limbs on it as some point. its a wonderful surprise for bare feet when you cross onto its territory and it makes me look forward to when jesse's chest hair turns white.

a girl really could get lost in there.

so here's a view of the stripes, the couch and the rug all together:

and naturally, i decided i liked what the stripes did on the walls so much that 2 days later we went ahead and did the facing wall with the same effect:

i am a very happy girl in this room (even though it has a ways to go before its' perfect)

and because i am a sucker for some time-lapse collage action, here is the transformation over 8 days:

happy is the home

where the magic happens

remember MTV cribs? (does that nonsense still happen?) every stupid celebrity would be showing off their tacky-ass mansion, and when it was time to show their bedroom, they would say, "and here's where the magic happens!" and think they were so clever. because of, you know, the sex.

so if that's magic, then i guess harry potter got a degree in the art of "random hookups with scores of strangers who only care about my fame/money/status."

yikes... so i guess day #13 of my menstrual cycle is clearly the "jaded, cynical, snarky" one. noted.

annnnnnyway, have you ever seen our bedroom?

it's so totally my favorite room in the house and has been for years.

my friend debra joy came over to my house for the first time a few months ago and reminded me that she had never seen our bedroom before because i hadnt blogged about it.

well dang. it's the shining star of both my house and my heart, so it's time we changed that.

ok, so maybe i should cut those celebs some slack. being all, "hey, here's our bed, everyone" does make it all too tempting to make sexy times jokes.

-the bed is from ikea and is the MALM in king size with the attaching nightstands.

-the red linens are also from ikea. we've had them on there for years and they had gotten a few holes (we'll chalk it up to raucous lovemaking, mmkay?). well, my heart broke to see IKEA had phased out this design, but good old ebay came through and we got a brand new replacement set.

-the shelves are IKEA too as are the little postcard art print betwixt them and the lamps.

-it was totally jesse's idea to paint the stripe along the side blue walls and i LOVE it so much.

-the painting.

oh, the painting. this story is hilarious and awful. ok, so you see how it matches the room to almost an uncanny degree? well, would you believe that the room was 10)% already like that when we discovered the painting?

we had another print in that place and were perfectly happy with our room when we went out to dinner during the summer of 2007. we were foolish DINKS (double income/no kids) at this point so when we saw the work of some local artists for sale on the restaurant walls, we thought we might get something if we fell in love with one.

well, when we saw the freaking red trees in a couldy sky painting, our jaws dropped. it was PERFECT for our room. i was sitting at our table and sent jesse over to check out the price and info tag on the canvas.

he came back and was like, "eighty dollars! we should totally get that!" i was dumbfounded since big canvases can cost that much BLANK, but whatever. we gave the manager a check and toted that bay home.

it looked so meant-to-be in its new home that we looked up the talented artist and sent him a picture of the painting in our room and raved about how talented he was and how in love we were with the painting.

well, a few days later he writes us back. he had gone to pick up the check and there had been a mistake. the painting wasnt eightY dollars, it was eight HUNDRED!!!!

i almost passed out. even in full blown DINKage we could not afford this by any means. but, oh we were crushed, having spent the past few days utterly in love with "our" painting on our wall. we wrote him back and explained that simply could not afford that and was there anything we could do to possibly work something out so we could keep it?

he wrote back and said he would knock a few hundred off the price and we could pay over 6 months. so in the end the total price would be $580. we could make this work.

even still, we are not art collectors and have much trouble spending money on things that do nothing but look pretty. especially since we love jesus and want to be good stewards of his money and love.

we decided that if we could scrimp to make the painting affordable, we could do the same for our giving. so we decided to double down: every time we made a payment to the painter, we had to give the same amount to someone in need (on top of our monthly tithing).

well, 6 month later we had given away $580 and spent $580 on the painting (making it far and away the most expensive non-appliance or furniture item in our lives). whereas it would have given us guilt every time we looked at it had we just bought it straight out, it's now a reminder of how blessed we are and how much we really can give out of our abundance (even when it might not feel abundant).

and that's the story of how we accidentally bought an $800 painting. 

it's turned out to be win-win situation (and the painting wins too since it gets box seats to all the sensuality that goes on below).

here's the view from the bed:

all the furniture is IKEA malm

the tree stand is ikea (intended for jewelry i think, but i just like it bare)

the art prints are from urban outfitters

and here's the thing that MAKES the room for me:

the gallery lights above the bed!

i am 100% dependent upon reading at night. i havent fallen asleep without a book in my hand in YEARS. i dont know if i even could. growing up i always has a bedSIDE lamp. this meant that i would have to un-drowse myself and reach over to turn off the light (god forbid i was facing the other way) OR it meant falling asleep with the light on a lot of nights.

in college, when we would travel for volleyball, we would stay in hotels and share a room with another player. this meant that if i needed to read to fall asleep after my roommate was asleep, i had to wear my headlamp.

my team mates found this hilarious for some reason and thought it worthy or photo ops:

i'm just straight chillin' on the order of the phoenix, what?

good times.

so when we were shopping for our married life, i grabbed these and clung to them like grim death, insisting that we MUST have them within reach about our heads, or else the wedding was off. it actually didnt go like that because the idea is so prime that, duy, m'soulmate instantly got it.

there you have it. do you feel special now that you have seen our bedchambers. it's very "song of solomon" up in there, let me assure you.

bonus question: which side of the bed do i sleep on? (dont let the bottle of lotion sway you either way...that is laylas and she carries it around to lots of locations in the house, moisturizing her hands like a nut. she put it on that side when i took these pictures).

i'll have you know that i am a very firm believer in assigned sides. i have only slept on jesse's side of the bed 3 nights in out life and that was due to medical reasons. when we travel, i dont necessarily stay on the same side, but i do have strong opinions as soon as i walk into the hotel room as to what side is "mine," even if it's on a different side than at home. maybe i am aligning with some constellation or something.

i have a nameless friend who says it varies almost every night which side she and her husband pick. those swingers!!! that is positively torrid!!!