Separated side curtains

I sewed curtains for Likka's room, which she does not yet have. Perhaps not the visest thing to do. Before she gets her own room I might change my mind about the style of the room or we might even move (well, that is very unlikely).

We visited Alvar Aalto house in Helsinki over a year ago. There in the office quarters of Alvar Aalto house was a curtain between two rooms from Siena fabric. I fell in love with that fabric right there, but it took me quite a while to decide where to use that fabric.

Lately I have been thinking about Likka's future room, I like to ponder on future projects, which of some I never even start, but this one we will sure start although not very soon. At least so far our sleeping arrangement feels good and I'm in no hurry moving Likka to her own room or more accurately me and A will move out of Likka's room.

But I already have an image in my head of Likka's future room and the curtains made of Siena fabric are included in that image. So since I had time and inspiration I bought the fabric and sewed the curtains. Now since we already have curtains in the room that will be Likka's room and I like those curtains there for now I hung the other curtain to the office where we had no curtains and the other to the kitchen were we had a curtain, but a really dull one. I hope I don't change my mind later about the curtains, the fabric was not cheap.

PS. If you have been very perceptive you have already seen the curtain here

Uh-oh, it wont hold

Don't worry, we still have the headboard canvas. This post is about the bedside tables, I just used the above picture to show those bedside tables, incase you've forgotten what they are like.

After painting the bedroom and reinstalling the bedside tables the old fixings didn't hold up anymore. My bedside table, on the left, was a bit loose even before the reinstallation. But now even A's side was coming off from the wall.

See, it's loose and it was starting to feel bit scary, I was afraid to place my drinking glass on the table, it felt like that could collaps the whole thing. So off to the hardware store I went and I bought special drywall anchors, I had previously used just regular plugs, which even might had been too big. I don't think they squeezed the wall well. Then I removed the tables and I saw that the old plugs were definitely loose. I pulled out the old plugs.

The drywall anchor was screwed to the drywall. It seemed really solid, I guess sometimes buying the right gear makes all the difference. 

No gap anymore, whew!

More painting - corridor

I must have complained to A that I have nothing to do because he suggested that I could paint the corridor while I'm on the maternity leave. And so I did. Besides it desperately needed painting. It had holes and scratches and it looked quite horrible. Under is an example.

Prep work started with removing the moldings and spackling the holes. Once the spackle was dry I sanded those and then washed the walls. Then I taped all the egdes and covered the floor. The taping is something I hate, it takes such a long time and usually the paint egdes do not end up that nice even with the tape.

Next day I started to paint, first the edges, then the bigger areas with a roller. I usually paint the edges first twice then the main wall, then again the edges and once more the main walls.

Third day was spent to attaching the moldings back and placing the picture ledges back. (The picture ledges by the way have pictures of our family. I've made a post about it long ago, it can be found from here. It is still missing A's photo, he has not chosen a photo to show.)

Loving the crisp white. Wonderful to have that done. And don't you just love our ceiling light in the corridor? Changing the light fixture has also been on the to-do list forever. I wonder when I find something there.

Head"board"

Creating a headboard for our bed has been on my list of to-do's for years. Now because the kid is on it's way and we have placed the crib in the bedroom in the foot of the bed, there really is no room for a headboard. There is only a narrow path between our bed and the crib and even with the slimmest headboard the path will get too narrow, we need every cm/inch we can have there.

Instead of a proper headboard I thought of hanging a canvas on the wall to represent a headboard. I had bought a Marimekko fabric Räsymatto long time ago for a totally different project, which I then desided against on. Since I had that fabric and I still like it a lot just not with the project I originally thought of, I used that for a headboard.

I bought a piece of molding, cut that a bit wider than the fabric, then drilled two holes on the ends of the molding. I painted the ends of the molding with the same paint as I had painted the bedroom walls.

I sewed a casing on the top of the canvas where the molding goes through. Then drilled two holes high on the wall and hung the canvas with screws. I did also touch up the heads of the screws with the wall paint so those would be less visible.

I have seen these types of fabrics hung on the head of the beds in various design magazines. I must admit that I'm quite sceptical if these are very handy. I know they can look good, but what will happen when we lean onto the wall? Because I do not know anyone who will just lean, people will also slowly slide down against the wall. Will the fabric stretch or even rip eventually? Any experience, anyone?

Bedroom painting is done

Remarkable, only a week and the bedroom is all painted. Wohoo!! Last week I wrote a post about starting the painting. So I removed the moldings and teared the loose wallpaper away. I again did not remove the wallpaper fully. From the experience from the office I know it just is too much of a hassle. Besides the result with the wallpaper under the paint is not bad at all, maybe the edges can be seen a bit, but that fine for me.

I spackled the edges and the holes of the wallpaper and then sanded the spackle smooth. The amount of dust from the sanding was overwhelming, luckily I had covered the bed with sheets so it did not get dusty.

Then some covering of floor, taping some edges and then finally painting. I almost run out of paint so I had to water it down a bit for the last wall but the coverage was still good, so I was lucky that I did not have to get another bucket of paint. I had chosen a very light gray colour for the walls.

The window wall did not have any wallpaper and it was originally painted white, but after I had painted the wallpapered walls the window wall looked really dingy. I tried washing it but it did not help, so I painted that too. But I used plain white on that wall.

Once all the painting was done I attached the moldings back. I was luckily wise enough that I had written on the back of the molding which piece goes where. The molding were originally nailed on the walls but I prefer screws, those are much easier to handle especially if those ever want to be removed and put back again. 

Bit murky picture above but there is the corner of the window wall painted white and the wall painted light gray. The gray I chose does in my opinion have a slight green tone, which was not my original plan. According to my sister all the walls are white and according to A the walls are gray, but once I mentioned the green tone, he said that he might see it there. So maybe it's gray enough.

So above the bedroom wall first with the light on and then with the ceiling light off. The pictures are a bit grainy, sorry about that. And underneath is the wall before.

One room per summer?

Last summer I had a project to renew the office, now I started to work on painting the bedroom. One has to have projects, doesn't one?

Sofaside wall lamp

Yay! I got rid of a floor lamp that had been on the side of our living room sofa and replaced it with a wall lamp.

I love things that are attached to the walls (or ceiling). I do not mind drilling gazillion holes to our walls especially when I can get rid of things that need to be kept on the floor. Also the floor lamp we had was not really of my taste and I bought this Ikea PS lamp to replace it. 

I fell for that lamp already sometime last year when I saw it the first time, but then I did not know where I could use that lamp. At some point this year I had started to think that the wall lamp could be good in the spot we had the floor lamp. I did not run out to buy the lamp but waited till I had something else to get from Ikea. Now after many months we finally had to give in and did need to get some baby gear from there so I at the same time bought the lamp.

I'm really really happy about the wall lamp, it has good cool light and it's modern. Looking at it from a distance makes it appear as it is attached quite high and it is, I just don't want to hit my head to it when I sit on the sofa or that any of our guests would hit their head to it.

New night stands with painting disaster

So... the night stands, or the lack of them that I mentioned here are now ready and on their right places. This Ikea hack I made with the new night stands didn't seem to first work out at all. I bought two Expedit Cubes that can be attached to the wall (I can't find the cube from Ikea's webpage? Whaat!?) and the drawers to go inside the cube. My point on getting new bedside tables was that I wanted something that could be attached to the wall so vacuuming would be easier and also I wanted the new night stands to be slightly smaller ones than the old ones. Also I wanted them to be shiny white, the old ones we had were brown.

I forgot to take any proper before photos. But here you can somewhat see what we had before in the bed room. The picture is taken on spring when I was doing the spring clean.

Also I took a photo of the cabinet which I used when I placed the cabinets on sale in the web.

Dull thing was that the cubes I bought did not come in shiny white like I wanted but instead in the mat yellowish white. Also on the cubes the top and the bottom was supposed to be attached with screws through the boards. That would have meant that the screw head would be visible. Which meant that I needed to do some hacking.

I don't know what went through my my head when I started to assemble the cubes. Because for some odd reason I desided to attach the parts with plugs instead of making a deeper hole for the countersunk screw which I could have then spackled over. That would have been so much easier.

Anyway I was a jackass, because of course I was unable to put the plugs exactly on the same line so the sides of the cubes are now just a tiny bit closer to each other than they should and now the top drawer in the cube does not slide as well as it should. I would have never thought that the tolerances in Ikea furniture is this tight.

Once I got the cubes assembled I desided to spray paint them to shiny white. I started with a primer. I had bought one primer and two shiny top paint cans. The painting was a total disaster! It was just horrible! The primer spread out everywhere, luckily it didn't stick to anything I didn't want it to stick but the dust spread all over. And the smell, awfull!

Then I started with the top paint, it would have been okey, but from somewhere I got dust on the painted surface and the result was just bad. There were tiny pieces of dust on the surface and it looked horrible. Also I run out of paint, two cans was just too little. I had killed half of my brain cells in the smell and the result was horrendous. I was so annoyed that I didn't even take a picture of the horrible finish.

Then after listening to some advise from my colleaque I returned to using regular paint. I sanded the spray painting I had done and painted with furniture primer. I sanded again and then painted with shiny oil based paint with a mohair roller.

And the finish was so nice! I love the result I got when using the regular paint, I didn't have any dust problems either. Just look how shiny it is.

Then was just left to hang the cubes on the wall and assemble the drawers. I would have wanted to hung the cube just a bit lower but under the other cube is a socket which defines the hight.

Because I did not paint the underside so here you can see what the screw would have looked like if it was on the top.

After all the trouble I still do think the painting was worth it, I do love these cubes. I love the airy feeling they have because they seem to float next to the bed. If I would have been happy with the shade of white the cubes were I think I could have just covered the top to hide the screws. Like a glass plate that has a painted underside or a painted board.

The office tour

Hello and welcome to the office tour! The office is finally finished, at least I'm calling it finished even though there were a few things on the to do list that I am still left to do. Hover over the next three pictures to see the before picture. (Thank you Christina for the tutorial about the animation)

I couldn't be happier about the new office space, we have so much open floor area and I have plenty of work surface for taking photos, sewing, crafting and working with the computer. I now have the table higher than it was before so I can also stand while working.

 

I'm still so in love with my wall cubbies. I placed in them stuff I use most often. One of the clear boxes holds glues and other different tools. I have my sewing toolbox on the top cubbie and there is also some yarn. On display I have my tapes, so I remember to use them.

The door side of the room has A's shelf and the guest bed that I bought and attached the Sesam wall bed mechanism to. Now it takes so little space, I love it. I am still planning to build a closet to hide the bed, but I'm not hurrying that, I will build it when I have some time and motivation for it.

I was also planning to get a new office chair for A, but we have not find any that both looked good and was functional. Many nice looking chairs lacked some ergonical issues like armrests and the adjustments were poor. I might make a slip cover for the chair later.

The other side is mostly mine. The narrow shelf part on the right holds more of A's stuff. But most of the shelf holds my things. When I planned what I should keep in my shelf I desided to give some area to the unfinished crafts projects. So I added one wooden box and two baskets on the bottom of the shelf on the left. Now I'm happy to say those are mostly empty, but usually I have many craft projects going on at the same time and previously I had no place where to keep those so they just sat on all horizontal surfaces which did not look good.

Lastly, this is my view to the garden from my work space. I love being able to see outside while creating.

 

Hope you enjoyed the tour. I certainly did.