learn how to make things pretty

I am super excited to be teaching two classes at the Visual Art Center this summer. I am always telling you about how I re-do furniture pieces and now learn how to do it yourself.

The first class is a week long from August 27 – 31. It is during the day, from 9:15 – 11:45 AM. The class is in the same time slot as their kid summer camp classes so you and your kid can take a class at the same time.

The class is going to cover all aspects of a furniture re-do from start to finish. You can bring in your own piece and we will re-do it together learning about paint techniques and basic upholstery along the way. We will also talk about the best places to buy furniture to re-do, the tools you need and the best products I have found to use, how to match paint and fabric to the style of your piece and how to make basic repairs on furniture.

Furniture Redux Intensive

All Levels

Bring in your own piece of furniture and learn how to turn it into a beautiful, unique piece. We will go through every step of the process including how to chose a piece to re-do, picking paint color and fabric, basic re-upholstery, priming and unique paint finishes, and the final step of protecting your new paint finish. The $10 materials fee includes all supplies except your choice of fabric and paint. Each student will purchase these supplies that will be unique to their piece. This class runs along side our summer ArtVenture program – a perfect opportunity for parent and child to take separate, but equally enriching classes!

5 days
August 27 – 31
9:15 – 11:45 AM, daily

The second class will focus on paint techniques. Instead of re-doing one furniture piece we will cover several different paint finishes working on small wood tiles. This class will also include a basic upholstery demonstration and we will go over all the aspects of re-doing your own furniture pieces.

Paint Finishes and Techniques for Furniture

All Levels

Do you have some old furniture you would like to fix up? This class will teach you several paint techniques to help you get you on your way. After we go over what you will need to know to get your piece ready to paint, including fixing small imperfections and priming, we will get to the good stuff! Painting, distressing, and antiquing will all be covered in this weekend course. Students will also learn about how to choose a furniture piece to re-du, how to do basic re-upholstery and finishing your painted piece to ensure that your paint finish stands the test of time! Using wood test tiles, you will get to try all these techniques yourself.

2 days
Saturday, June 30 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Sunday, July 1 1:00 – 4:00 PM

make me pretty – a ton of furniture

I have been very busy lately re-doing a bunch of furniture for one of my favorite stores, Covet. They are located in Arlington but the owner is a VCU alumn and has a Richmond sense of style. If you are in NOVA you should swing by Covet this weekend for their May Market where all of these furniture pieces will be available for sale. But Friday night sounds like the most fun! They will have an exclusive preview Friday evening from 7-9pm – with a taste of Paris in spring with champagne and French inspired treats.

I only have a couple before pictures but I thought I would show you all of the afters anyway!

chalk board

darling octopus and r•home magazine – may issue

My article in this months R•Home magazine is all about closet doors. I re-did these door in my basement and they might be the most elegant doors to hide a hot water heater!

We are just finishing a bathroom remodel which included a bonus closet in our master bedroom. (I use the word “master” loosely – it’s the largest bedroom in our house but come on, it didn’t even have a closet!) Anyway, at the end of the remodel, and over budget of course, we don’t really have $400 dollars, or more, for cool closet doors. So my plan is to buy the cheapest doors around and fancy them up!

I bought these hollow core doors for less than $60 for four panels at Lowes. They are hideous, I know! But they are totally flat. A blank surface for my creativity. I am thinking about wallpaper with molding around the edges. I will make sure to post a photo when I am done. Here are the doors that are inspiring me:

from S. R. Gambrel

From House Beautiful

From cococozy.com

From Houzz

From Martha Stewart Living

my favorite salvage yard – s.b. cox

This weekend I went to one of my happiest places – the salvage yard. So much cool old stuff just waiting to be re-used. I find the salvage yard super inspiring and I love to just wander around. My favorite RVA salvage yard is S.B. Cox. They might not have as big a selection as Caravati’s but it has a much more laid back feel and most importantly – it’s cheaper. Now you will have to be willing to do a little digging. And nothing is priced, so you have to ask – but that means they are ready to negotiate. I hate to haggle but I actually find it kind of fun at S.B. Cox. Several negotiations have ended in a coin toss which is just so fun! So if you are looking for some old stuff to add character to your home – check them out. They have a huge door selection – we have replaced two doors in our house there.

make me pretty – our bathroom, part 1

We are in the middle of a bathroom renovation. It is taking a long time. We did it to ourselves – we have friends helping us and they are doing a really good job, and the price is right but we have to work around their schedules. So four weeks in they say it will probably be another week till we can start tiling. I just want to take a bath in my new bathtub!

But there have been complications, of course. An old house, two layers of tile, an un-level floor, crazy plumbing. So the pictures I am about to show you are not super pretty but any of you who have lived through a renovation will recognize this stage of joy! When the room goes from a giant pile of rubble into a room again. You can start to see how it is all going to come together and it is exciting!

Here’s a link to the before pictures if you missed all the green and yellow loveliness!

This is the granite we picked for our vanity counter top.

Look at all of these buttons! We have so many things to control. Things we have never had before, like a vent and a heater!

And, super bonus, we are also adding a closet into the master bedroom that was formerly closetless. A closet in our bedroom, amazing!

darling octopus and r•home magazine – march issue

Pick up this months R•Home magazine and you will see one of my chair re-do’s step by step. I give you all of my secrets!

Everything looks so pretty in the magazine but it’s not all so glamorous behind the scenes. The photographer had a special assistant at this photo shoot – frankie!

That’s right, not only did he have to worry about lighting and composition, he also had to work around this snorting, snaggle tooth pug who thought he should be in every picture. Or we should at least stop everything and rub his belly!

The other two guys around my house who are always trying to get in on the action are Jasper and Emerson. Here they are posing with the chair before her big makeover:

One more thing that I wanted to tell you is that this chair is not alone! I have three more just like her and a dining table that are all going to get the same treatment and become a set. If you are going to paint your furniture the pieces don’t need to match perfectly. The table I have is not originally part of the set with the chairs but once it is all painted the same I doubt you will be able to tell.

make me pretty – mid century modern chair

I recently had the chance to re-do this mid-century chair for a friend. She found it at a thrift store and the wood frame is in super good shape. The cushions needed some help. You know I’m not the biggest fan of sewing intensive projects but I do love a dramatic make over so I decided to take this on.

Here is the before:

If you feel intimidated by sewing projects just remember you can take apart the old cushion covers to make patterns for the new ones. Just take lots of pictures of how the cushions look before you take them apart. like this:

And here is the finished chair:

And part of the happy new chair family:

make me pretty – vintage mirror

I stumbled across this pretty mirror at the thrift store and couldn’t believe it was only $12! It was so coming home with me! Some misguided person had painted it with horrible thick, gloppy, high gloss beige paint and then added even worse blue and green highlight colors. This was not a job for sandpaper alone. I had to bust out stripper. I scraped and I brushed with a wire brush and then I decided to just leave it. I love the weathered look – paint layers, natural wood. I also put a light blue glaze over it – just to add another layer.

Here is the before:

And after:

I found this cool stamp on the back of the mirrors. This mirror was made two years after our house was built – super cool!

Sorry these aren’t the prettiest picture. It is really hard to take a picture of a mirror (can you see me in the first picture?) and the mirror is in my basement so there is no natural light!

make me pretty – green chair

When my friend, Leslie, sent me a link to the blog Nine Red I fell in love with this green chair.

Photo from Nine Red

So when I stumbled across this chair in the alley, I knew I would have to make it green. I know that this chair is missing a seat, the top piece of wood is busted and it’s, um, metallic gold. But it is so cute! Even in this state – can’t you see the cuteness!

So I chiseled off the broken wood piece, sanded down the metallic gold and got to painting. When I distressed the chair some of the gold peeked through and I kind of love it! I might just have to put a layer of gold paint after priming in some future projects to get the same effect.

So I’m guess this chair once had a cane seat and that is why there are all of these holes. I cut out a piece of wood for my seat base, added foam, batting and fabric and then secured it to the chair using these handy “L” brackets.

We have gotten in a new habit during my photo shoots. The boys like to climb up and get in on the action. Jasper has gotten really into dressing up lately, this week he has been a power ranger, iron man, a ninja and today he was venom (spider man’s enemy – I can’t believe I know this!)

make me pretty – the boys room, part 2

I’ve finished the boys room! My favorite project is the rug I made from a thick piece of upholstery fabric. I bought 2 yards of the fabric at u-fab and sewed the edges. I put one of those non-slip rug pads underneath and I’m done. But how cool does that rug look? And it cost less than $25!

I also added a shelf for all of the stuffed animals. My kids don’t really play with their stuffed animals but they still like having them around so we put them up high where we can see them but they don’t make everything seem so cluttered. I got some wood and brackets at Lowe’s. You probably already know this but they will cut the wood for you – so awesome! And Jasper picked out the paint color. Light purple is his favorite and it just happens to match the rug!

After that we hung up our artwork and we are done. We got these Warhol cat prints on a recent trip up to DC. Such fun memories every time I look them.

And the cuties who will be enjoying the room.