DIY Tiered Planters

For the past two summers, we have been on the lookout for some tall planters to put on either side of our front door. The ones we wanted were ridiculously expensive, and even everything we found that was "good enough" was over $100--which seemed way too much to pay for a resin planter.

Then a friend mentioned a project she had seen on Pinterest...a stack of plain old terra cotta pots, filled with plants. It seemed like a simple idea, so we decided to give it a try. In the end, they turned out fantastically...and we spent less than $100 total, including all the plants and soil!

The finished product!

The project was simple enough. We bought four sizes of terra cotta pots. The bottom one was an azalea pot...shorter in proportion then the others, and made for a great base. We wanted the pots to match our black shutters and door, so a quick coat of spray paint did the trick.

Starting at the bottom, we filled the pot with dirt, stopping a few inches shy of the top, and tamped it down by hand. We then stacked the next pot, pressing it into the dirt below until it was centered, level, and stable. Then just repeated the process until we got to the top. 

Then we filled the top with spikey decorative grasses and coleus, and filled in the levels below with creeping jenny, impatiens, and begonias. They filled in beautifully, and are now so full that the pots themselves are practically invisible...just a cascade of blooms and greenery. One thing we wish we had done was put the planters on some sort of casters. It would be nice to be able to move them to clean underneath. Otherwise, they turned out great! (Just pretend the welcome mat is turned the right way, won't you?)

The Fifth Wall

Today, in a few rare hours of downtime, we decided to take a tour of a model home that the builder of our house has on the other side of town. (In fairness, it wasn't REALLY downtime, as we were in that area to take a look at another house that I'm designing a poolhouse for.) The model, a 6,000 square foot beast of a house, used all of the usual model home tricks--most of the interior doors were removed, several rooms were clearly furnished for show and not function, a few pieces of furniture seemed just slightly under scaled. Overall, though, it was a beautifully decorated model, with window treatments to envy and a slew of trim details that I'm adding to my "wish list" for our house.

Most remarkable, at least to me, were the ceiling treatments in the house. Too often, a room's "fifth wall" is overlooked...painted white and forgotten. Now, I'm certainly not a fan of painting every ceiling a different color or throwing paint overhead just for the sake of doing it, but this model home had some very striking ceilings. Take a look:

In the dining room, simple flat moldings had been applied about a foot in from the crown to form a frame on the ceiling. They had then papered the ceiling with a shimmery geometric. (It didn't look as dark as the photo makes it appear, was more of a tone on tone) Wonderful, simple idea. Even doing the frame and then painting the center a slightly different tone would be a great idea.

In one of the guest rooms, they had created another frame around the space and then divided it with a large "X" of the same flat molding and painted the ceiling a contrasting color. (I would have loved to see a semi-flush light instead!) This could be done easily by most do-it-yourselfers in a day!

In another bedroom, they had used that same flat molding to create a "headboard" that ran up onto the ceiling. Painted this deep green, it really felt like a traditional bed canopy.

I really liked what they had done in the master bedroom. There was very little pattern, just varying golden hues. The three levels of picture frame molding on the walls was a great idea (and one I may very well be copying!) the only real pattern in the space was this great trellis paper at the top of the tray ceiling.

Nothing new about painting the insets of a coffer, but it worked particularly well to bring this soaring great room "down". Also love their answer to that age old question of how to decorate those big two story walls. Again, they just did some simple framing with stock moldings and paint to create a pretty striking graphic statement. I would think this is another project that could easily be done in a weekend.

So what do you think? Can you see yourself getting crazy with your ceilings? Or maybe tackling one of these molding projects? I think I see a miter saw in my future...

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Transforming the Study

The biggest do-it-yourself project that we've embarked on at my  house is the transformation of the study. It was originally set up for one person, and had a hodge-podge of furniture that functioned fine, but the room overall did not make an impression. And it needed to, as it is on the main floor of our house and guests walk right past it if they use the powder room.

We have more guest rooms than we will ever need, and had tossed around the idea of a home office for each of us. But as both myself and my other half work from home a lot, often right up til bedtime, we decided to create one office for ourselves otherwise we knew there would be days at a time where we only saw each other passing in the hall. This new office for two had to serve a few functions. First and foremost, it had to work for our needs. We took stock of all the things we needed to store and have within easy reach, all of our computer equipment, etc. We also wanted the room to have a spot for reading, and room for a television and space for all of the game system equipment. And it had to look nice.

It was a tall order. Here's a look at what we started with:

Builder white walls and unsubstantial furniture.

And only enough room for one to work!

I got to my drawing board and came up with a few solutions. Once we had settled on one, I had a cabinetmaker price the job for us. It was much higher than I expected, and more than we thought it was worth. So we got the bright idea to do a slightly simplified version ourselves. Using unfinished store-bought kitchen cabinets (which are a bit higher than a standard desk, but perfect for me because I tend to recline and sit cross-legged while I work, so my knees smash the bottom of a regular height desk) and a bevvy of unfinished trim pieces, we spent the weekend building a custom desk for two.

The number of trips to the home improvement store it took to do this project was almost comical!

We pre-painted the walls around the new desk area Sherwin Williams "Silver Strand"--a perfect soft blue-gray. Here, the base cabinets are in place. We stained them a dark mahogany to match bookshelves we already had.

We needed some overhead shelves for storage. I found some wonderful chunky "floating" shelves at the local home improvement store, and because we loaded them  up beyond capacity, decided to install soem sleek brushed nickel brackets for extra support. To give us a surface to tack reminders and notes to, I found a great framed corkboard at TJ Maxx that softens the whole composition up with it's curvy form.

Not bad for a couple of amateurs! Since this picture was taken, I've put a matching pair of lamps on the desk--repurposed from the living room.

The other side of the room.

I'm not a fan of rugs over wall-to-wall carpet, but I had this wonderful graphic rug ("Argonne" from Home Decorators Collection) that I just had to use. The drapes are Imperial Trellis-knock offs from Z Gallerie ($25!). I'm currently having an old shield-back chair reupholstered for this room. The one in here now is an antique from my great-grandparents farmhouse, and it's upholstered to match one of the guest rooms. Can't wait for the new chair to arrive--will be "unveiling" it in the next couple of weeks. The little silver tray table is a Target find ($30!) Having a lightweight arm chair here allows us to sit and read and also to easily spin the chair around to play Wii games on the television. The framed animal prints are from my college apartment--I bought them probably 15 years ago on clearance at Pier 1. The wooden tribal mask atop the bookshelves is a gift from a dear friend and quite a conversation piece. People either love it or find it completely creepy.

This is the room we spend most of our waking hours at  home in, and overall, I'm thrilled with how it turned out, particularly given how much we saved by doing it ourselves and finishing it off with bargain finds and repurposed items.

I am linking to the Metamorphosis Monday Party at Between Naps on the Front Porch.

And to the DIY Showoff Party:

And to the party at Addicted to Decorating:

And, one more at Passionately Artistic!

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A Table Transformation

I acquired a set of tables from a dear friend who had inherited them from her grandmother. I loved the lines of them, and they were the perfect size to be used as a cocktail table in my living room. The walnut finish, though, wasn't in keeping with the look of that room.

I was about to relegate them to use as side tables in one of the guest rooms when I decided I would try to remake them for the living room. I struggled with this...they aren't antiques, but I did not want to ruin something that had sentimental value. But, I bit the bullet and decided to paint them black with an antique silver rub on some of the details.

It was NOT an easy process. Three coats of black spray paint covered them nicely. (Anyone thinking about spray painting furniture, take this advice--get top of the line spray paint.) The silver rub was very time consuming--involving outlining the details with metallic silver paint, then hand rubbing the excess. It's not perfect, I'll admit, but once I get a coat of matte polyurethane on them and "merchandise" them, I think they will be perfect in the room.

I'm joining the blog party over at "Between Naps on the Front Porch" with this post. Each Monday, "Between Naps" hosts a "Metamorphosis Monday" where bloggers the world over post their before and after pictures. Might be something as simple as my table makeover or as large as a whole-house renovation. But definitely TONS of before and afters to check out!

I'm also linking to the Painted Projects Party at Centsational Girl!

DIY Ribbon-Edged Roman Shades

While the rest of the world was watching the Super Bowl, I tackled a little project I've been meaning to get to for a few weeks. Pottery Barn used to sell roman shades edged in grosgrain ribbon. While they are no longer available, they were around $100 a piece, and finding anything similar now means going custom at several hundred dollars a window. I love the clean lines of those shades, and found several DIY'ers on line who had tackled making similar treatments themselves.

So, armed with an off-the-rack JCPenny white roman shade ($20 on sale), a spool of pewter colored grosgrain ($3.50) and an assortment of no-sew products ($5), I got to work on my no-sew ribbon edged roman shade.

First, I lightly penciled in a line 3" in around the shade. (If you're planning to use these behind a drape, you may want to set the ribbon in more to account for the drapery hiding the edge of the shade).

Now, the next part is where it got tricky. I first tried to adhere the ribbon with a regular washable fabric glue. Bad idea! The dry time would have turned this into a multi-day project, and it soaked through the grosgrain and created permanent wet spots. (OK, confession, because of this I had to buy a second $3.50 roll of ribbon) Next, I tried heat bonding tape. It worked great for the first length of ribbon, but for whatever reason, there were spots along the second length that would not adhere. A little heat-activated liquid stitch did the trick. My final recommendation would be to use the iron-activated tape, but run a thin bead of the heat activated liquid stitch for some extra bonding strength.

I was hoping that making this shade for my guest bathroom would act as a dry run for doing four more similar shades in my living and dining rooms. Since I worked the kinks out, I figure I can knock those out in about a half hour apiece.

What do you think of the final result?

Incidentally, that trio of prints beside the window is one of my oldest cheap decorating ideas. Back in college, I found a set of different greeting cards and popped them into discount store silver frames. I hadn't used them in years, but they seem to work in this bathroom.

Linking to: Metamorphosis Mondays at Between Naps on the Porch