DIY: Scenic Mural Panels

Remember those beautiful hand-painted Chinese wallpaper panels I had hanging in the loft? I'd been keeping them in storage while we lived in Brooklyn and had planned on putting them in our bedroom of our new house. As the Domino shoot deadline crept up, I was starting to get a little nervous about finding the panels. I hadn't seen them since the move.

We did everything we could to find them before the shoot - we turned the house and garage upside down, we called movers, we called NY neighbors and family that had helped us pack. No one had seen the panels. So I had no choice but to start from scratch with the bedroom and decided to make my own panels at the very last minute.

I looked online for some artist's paper in pretty colors, but everything felt too bright and too flat. I wanted the color to be soft and sort of mottled or worn-in looking. Then I saw this box of rosin paper in the paint section at Home Depot. The color, size and price were all perfectly perfect.

I went back online to figure out what to paint for our murals. This was about 48 hours before the shoot - and I wasn't feeling particularly creative or patient. More like exhausted and majorly nauseated from morning sickness. :) Good times. I think the panels came together though! I ended up deciding on a desert scene - it felt appropriate for this house. The older I get, the more I love and appreciate the beauty of the desert.

There are so many cool shapes in the plants and, surprisingly, a huge range of really beautiful, soft colors in the desert. Just to keep things simple for me though, I used only white paint for the mural.

I free-handed it, and it ended up being a pretty quick project. Just a couple hours all together. Part of me wishes I had had more time to spend on these, but I sort of like the simplistic quality. It does the job of dressing up and bringing in the big, long wall of our bedroom, and I think the soft mauve color is so pretty against the dark, moody Knoxville Gray walls.

Just like with installing the Chinese panels, I measured and marked out the spacing on the bed wall and hung the panels directly to the walls with picture hanging strips, and then screwed in the plexi sheets on top using pretty brass screws. It's a simple job, but definitely requires two or three helpers. Those plexi sheets are heavy and awkward!

DIY to the rescue again! Someday my life will not be so crazy and I'll have more time to plan these projects out a bit more thoughtfully. That's the goal, anyway. :)

The Entry - Almost Done!

I'm a little under the weather this week, but I wanted to share some photos today of how the wallpaper in the entry turned out. The pattern is Lotus by Farrow & Ball and I love how it is both so traditional and so modern. It's hard to imagine ever getting sick of this one.  :)

I think the paper works so well with the new chandelier we recently hung in the entry. It's the Tilda chandelier from Arteriors and it was a total splurge, even with my designer's discount, but the Lotus paper was just begging for something special I think. :)

I wanted a really unique chandelier in here, and this one definitely fit the bill! It has that same trad-meets-mod quality. There are five or six bulbs in the fixture, so it's not crazy bright, but it puts out a really pretty glow in the evenings when we have it on. I love it.

I'm still loving the black stairs, but I think it's about time to get going on the stair runner project, especially now that the paper is installed. I'll probably do something pretty neutral, like a sisal, to not fight the pattern of the paper and the Persian runner in front of the door.

We're getting there! Remember when the entry looked like this?

The Library Bookshelves!

If you've been reading LGN for practically any amount of time, you probably know that I love me a good bookshelf! In the past we've used a series of IKEA bookshelves to house most of our books (here's a link to the DIY arched version and the faux-built-in version). When we moved to this house though, I knew we were going to invest in something special for our library built-ins. I am SO happy with how these turned out! The shelves are pretty much the first thing we see when we walk in the door and they make me smile every time.

I hired a local company called Classy Closets to build and install the insanely huge shelves (they are over 16' tall!). I learned about the locally-owned company first when I was helping my friend Caitlin Wilson work on a show house for the Street of Dreams in Gilbert. Show homes are a great way to discover local companies and I saw Classy Closets' work and was super impressed.

They were wonderful to work with them from the get-go. They have amazing in-house designers that can take care of everything if that's what you need/want, but they also love to collaborate with designers. They also offer trade pricing or commissions, which ends up being really helpful for big projects like this one, though I will say their pricing is incredibly fair for the great, fast work they do. And actually, Classy Closets is offering a huge give away right now for a $2000 worth of custom cabinetry (they do everything from closets to kitchens)!

So the basic process was I came up with a few drawings and then worked with their production designer to finalize the dimensions and the plan. There were some pretty big tweaks to what I initially wanted because of the vintage library ladder I was asking them to incorporate in the design. The design team was amazingly detailed and careful about the ladder and how and where to install the rod to make the ladder run as smooth as possible.

Let's back up a little though and savor the project reveal! :) If you'll remember, we had a big empty wall here before. We pulled off the old moulding, had an electrician move the wiring up to where the library lights would be, patched the walls and holes with drywall mud, and then primed and painted the whole thing the color of the bookshelves (Ben Moore's Chantilly Lace).

Once the shelving design had been finalized, it only took a couple of weeks for the Classy Closets crew to build the cabinetry. The installation took almost two full days for an entire team though! This was a huge project and they were wonderful craftsmen. I couldn't have been happier with the work they did - clean and efficient.

At the end of the second day, the library ladder track was installed. I chose an iron rod to match the hardware on the rollers of the ladder. I thought about doing brass to match the lighting (which was a sale find at Restoration Hardware) and the large ring pulls (which are from Liz's Antique Hardware), but I like how the metals and finishes mix. 

The ladder, which was a $250 Craigslist find (apparently inherited from a famous race car driver in California? Here's the back story there.), runs as smooth as butter. It's hard to not hop on for a ride a few times a day! :)

It's pretty amazing that we have all of our books in one place finally. Even in Brooklyn, we ended up having to store some books in other rooms. But having this much storage space is completely amazing. 

We did my trick of organizing by genre and then very loosely by color. And then I just added in a few little containers here and there to break things up a bit.

These built-ins are such a big part of our home now. We all love spending time in the library. It feels homey and cozy and comfortable. A big thank you to Classy Closets for being so generous to me with their time and with their designer discount. I am happy to have found another great local resource! And locals, don't forget to enter the $2000 master closet redo give away here.

The (Mostly Done!) Kitchen

If you've been following along, you know we've gone back and forth a lot on what to do with this kitchen. Here are the posts, in case you're in need of a catch up:

Kitchen Tour (right after we closed on the house)
Open Shelving Inspiration (before I decided on the single shelf look)
The Rough Initial Plans (only about 50% of this ended up happening!)
After painting out the floors and the brick range surround
A big recap of thoughts and plans and details on the Shaker-style cabinet DIY
Black concrete counters DIY and single shelf inspiration

I finally decided though that we would just work with the existing layout and cabinets and use my favorite concrete overlay technique to make this kitchen work for us until we can do a big upgrade.

I'm still hoping for a full kitchen reno sometime down the road, but at least for now, the space feels clean and bright! DIY wins again! :) Here's a little more on what we ended up doing and where I bought everything...

One of the splurges of the reno was this farmhouse sink from Signature Hardware. We had some sort of funny dimensions to work with and this one was the least expensive of the options that would fit right. I love the clean lines! I also bought the faucet from Signature Hardware and had a local plating company (Papago Plating) strip off the lacquer finish. I love it.

The black concrete counters are holding up really well and I love the dramatic look. The waterfall edge is so pretty, and I think with the creamy white cabinet color and the lighter gray on the floors (Ben Moore's Galveston Gray), the black is not too dark for the space.

My favorite part though is the little shelf we built with pine boards that I covered in concrete too. I hung them with simple black gloss brackets from Home Deport with brass screws. I wanted the brackets to just sort of go away, which they do! The shelves are super sturdy though too. We have all sorts of heavy things on top (tons of plates on one side and a 20-lb cactus planter on the other!) and it's sturdy as can be.

You can see in this photo too that we beefed up the trim on the doors and added trim to the windows (there was nothing there before). I LOVE how the trim addition completely changed the space!

We made a few changes to the lighting too. Just getting those super frilly and outdated pieces out was a huge improvement! 

We took down the too-low ceiling fan and the chandelier over the table area and replaced them with two of these lanterns I picked up for a song in New Jersey before we moved. I painted the pink parts white and sprayed the sleeves gold.

I think a little white paint and round bulbs can make any fixture prettier! :)

I got three of these brass tilt cone sconces from Cedar and Moss. They are beautiful.  I really love them and think they are a steal for the price!!

One of my favorite little details of the space ended up being the cabinet hardware! I really wanted something a little different. I searched high and low and finally, finally stumbled on these white milk glass bin pulls. They are so perfect. They just sort of glow! We used brass screws to install them to the drawer fronts, so brass accent is there, but it's subtle.

It's (clearly) not perfect. We did this project fast and furious, but the improvement to me is huge. We are loving it and are so happy we could make the room work for us for as long as it takes to save up for the kitchen of our dreams. :)