Master bedroom Before & After

Hi guys! I've been so excited to show you this room in our home for a while now. I started adding some color to our light and airy white bedroom a few months ago, and little by little, it's had a nice transformation! By a handful of DIY projects and a World Market gift card I got for Christmas, the room went from this...

To this:

The wall color, the duvet and a couple other pieces remain the same, but it's astounding how different the room feels with a few snaps of color here and there! So what exactly changed?

1) I painted our leaning wall shelves, (the thin, cheap, assemble-yourself kind we found on Amazon several years ago), in Chateau Grey by Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. Then I heavily distressed them for a charming aged feel.

2) I bought a 1/2" sheet of pdf board and had it cut at Home Depot to fit over our floating bedside tables. I stained them before fitting them on and am loving the touch of natural wood flanking the bed.

3) The pillow shams and curtains came from World Market, (thank you for the gift card, Casey)!

4) The decorative pillows are from Home Goods, (both were in under $10 clearance)

5) I spray painted a few small accents on the leaning wall shelves gold. Love the warmth of a few hits of gold around a room!

6) The homemade headboard, (tutorial here)

7) The lampshades! Our lamps came from Crate and Barrel as wedding gifts 7.5 years ago. I wanted to give them a slightly industrial feel, so I covered them in chicken wire.

Here they are before:

I measured and cut a length of chicken wire

Folded the top and bottom of the chicken wire over the edge of the shade.

Love, love, love how this turned out! 

Thank you so much for coming by! Up tomorrow is a new piece available for sale. Production has been slow during this severe winter but it certainly hasn't stopped!

~Chelsea

This post was originally published on Chelsea's Garage, now affectionately known as StyleMutt.

Want a daring DIY? Paint a rug!

Hi all! So, here's a fun fact; boys are weird! If you married one, grew up with one, and/or are raising one of your own, this is no shock. If you are a man, this should also be no shock. Your kind is downright crazy.

Ridiculous.

We've bunked our boys, (ages 4 and almost 3), in one room together for the past year and a half, (not literally; they're in my husband's old bunk beds but for now they're not stacked). For the most part I've kept their room pretty simple for the obvious reason that putting two boys of this age together in one space is like cornering wild animals. Their sudden, desperate impulses to start wrestling are baffling. We'll say good night to them and they'll seem really tired, snuggling into their pillows, and then 5 minutes later it literally sounds like a zoo. I'll see one on top of the other rolling around, fighting for position and laughing. See? So weird!

But I digress. The point is, for their own protection I haven't decorated the room much. I made some paper airplanes to hang from the ceiling, painted stripes on the curtains, hung a couple pieces of art and called it a day. I love their room; I love seeing them play in and enjoy it, but sometimes it felt a bit sterile. Because I didn't want to put more up on the walls I figured an area rug would be a great way to add a bit of warmth. But let's be honest. They're little boys and I didn't want to invest in a nice rug for their room just to worry about it getting ruined. So, I found a simple navy rug on sale at Home Depot, (brand is Heavy Traffic, so perfect), and painted my own design on it!

For a 6' x 8' rug that cost $19.40 I felt pretty comfortable slapping on some paint. I started by taping off three stripes on the ends.

I used watered down white latex paint and a regular bristle brush, (2"), to paint the rug. After I painted between my blue taped stripes, I started free-handing the diamonds. I really didn't want it looking too perfect, so I let the paint go on unevenly and didn't worry about making exactly straight lines. I did, however, measure off where I wanted the points of the diamonds to be, (every 12"), and marked those off with a piece of blue tape to use as a reference.

Here is the whole rug before, (before I vacuumed, too)

And after!

Another little look around their room 

I painted the stripes on their white curtains using Country Grey by Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, (I used the same color for the stripes on their lampshade).

I used a black paint marker to write this verse on canvas. Don't use a black paint marker on canvas. Use a thick Sharpie. It won't smudge every time sweaty little fingers touch it and will save $!

The propped up xylophone has been in my husbands family for at least 50 years!

Paper flag garland was a gift found at Paper Source and my Dad put together the red model plane hanging in front of the closet.

Final note: The bedding. Their coordinating gray sheets are from Target's Threshold collection, as well as the matching dark red knit blankets.

So there you have it! A painted rug. Could you, would you paint a rug? (Reading lots of Green Eggs and Ham lately).

Thank you so much for stopping by!

~Chelsea

This post was originally published on Chelsea's Garage, now affectionately known as StyleMutt.

Make your own pattern + recover an ottoman!

Hi friends! Today I've got an awesome ottoman transformation to share with you! It's a two-fer, actually - I'm going to show you how to recover an ottoman using your own homemade fabric pattern! The overall vision was inspired from browsing Urban Outfitters' Apartment section. I've been loving their use of geometric patterns and color!

I actually had recovered my ottoman, (a $5 thrift store find last year), once before. The first time around I used a curtain on clearance from Target, but the pattern quickly started to rub me the wrong way. I recovered it before I painted the walls in the space, before gathering accent pillows, before finding a decent rug, and after I accomplished all those tid-bits that pull a space together, the fabric just wasn't working. So, I decided to start over again! (Isn't it totally worth putting a bit of time into something to make it right for you and your home?!)

Here is the true before - hard to tell here, but that leather looks and feels more like a basketball and is tearing away at the seams. But it's so sturdy and such a fantastic size...and Good Golly, Miss Molly! It was $5!!! Which reminds me, I had a lot of comments about my Before / After feature on Apartment Therapy, (see their facebook page for the 100+ comments) about the $15 price tag of my piece. I have two things to say:

1) Prices like this on good, solid pieces are not frequently or easily found; it takes work, and 2) You do need to have a good eye. It's a bit of luck, yes, but with a little practice, you do start to see things that no one else does. You see things as they can be, not as they are. Such was the case with this basketball-made ottoman!

I keep this piece in the basement and we are in desperate need of some more color down there! Since the basement is in a bit of transition right now, (which is coming together so stinkin' awesome I can't wait to share with you), I brought my ottoman upstairs for some after pictures. Love how it looks in the living room, too!

Have you ever seen such a happy looking ottoman?!

Here's the whole low-down for this project:

The real step one for this project, (which I didn't get a picture of), is removing the legs. Just turn the piece upside-down and unscrew them. They should come off pretty easily.

Next, remove your tuft buttons:

Then, remove your existing fabric. Mine was in such bad condition it actually pulled off pretty easily, and where it didn't, I just used regular scissors to cut it off.

Next, recover the ottoman with your new fabric. I used a plain white bed sheet, folded over so its double layered. This is most easily done by placing the piece upside down on the fabric, then attaching the fabric to the underside, (which is facing up at this point), with a staple gun.

Okay, so I miss-numbered my steps. I was definitely putting this tutorial together while playing balloon volleyball with my three goofballs. Multi-task fail! Anyways, now you can apply your design! I cut a triangle of cardboard, (from a diaper box, go figure), and used a gold metallic marker to trace the design.

Gold metallic marker found at A.C. Moore for $1.39

 Almost finished!

Let's take a look back at the original piece....

And NOW!

Oh yes, and the legs! Right after I removed them I took them outside, layed them on cardboard, and gave them all a coat of spray paint. They were done drying by the time I was finished with the recovering!

This transformation was just too fun. Creating my own pattern on the fabric really makes the piece feel completely unique!

Thank you all for stopping by! Happy weekend!

~Chelsea

This post was originally published on Chelsea's Garage, now affectionately known as StyleMutt.