Woke up in the morning feeling like...

Well not P Diddy but woke up feeling pretty good. Husband didn't complain about being woken up by the sun. It looks like these simple creations will be sticking around and that I'll be producing more of them over the weekend. Still loving the look created by them, now for a wall color, decisions decisions decisions.

Drapery Progress

Wow, talk about a long process to get the drop cloths from stiff and ashy colored to a softer ivory color. My last post pretty much summed it up, I'm calculating that in one day I can get 2 drop cloths bleached and still have time for doing errands and family stuff. My warning is that you will burn through a lot of bleach (3 bottles of the non Costco sized bottles) and a decent amount of hydrogen peroxide(2-3 32 ounce bottles). I guess on the positive side the cost for these items is fairly low for the great end results.

Well today I hung up the hardware and I'm really pleased with my selection. The copper brown color goes well with the ivory drop cloths and I really like the matching clip rings. Thank goodness for the JC Penney's sale it really helped to off set the cost, but man it still expensive when your room have 3 windows to cover.
I clipped up the panels with 9 clips per panel and hung up 2 for one window, it gave it a nice full look, but since I only had 2 panels bleach I decided to move one over to the window next door, just to see how much light would be reduced. Well good news this morning, it did enough for me to realize which side was brighter and to roll away from it. 

So I have a third window and this one is big and faces the opposite side of the 2 that I just covered.Well I only got around to bleaching one panel today, so I guess half that window will be covered until next weekend when I can bleach some more drop cloths. So in total my goal is to have 2 panels per window on the ones are are already up, and on the big window I'm planning/hoping that 4 drop cloths will cover them nicely. The only downside is that I need a LOT of clip rings (72) and those add up too. But I guess there could be far worse if I accounted that similar styles drapes from Pottery barn run $60 + and instead I've spent $11 for each (8 total so far).
Now that they are up, I have to decided If I want to stiffen up the top of the panel to give better structure with the clips, and also decided if I want a color block on the bottom. Right now they're just puddling on the floor a bit to much and way to enticing for the kids to play hide and seek in.

A Bleaching We will Go!!!

Two tasks done to day, Bleached 2 drop clothes and picked up the hanging hardware.

Yesterday I surfed around the web and decided to check out JC Penney for hardware and stumbled upon something worth purchasing. These double rods in that color (Linden St Double), I wanted something that was sturdy (it had good reviews on the JCP website) and the hanging hardware shouldn't look cheap and difficult to install. Also a bonus is that JCP is running a sale so these babies were heavily discounted and with a JCP card you could get a extra 20% off. So I bit the bullet and bought them. But since I would have to pay tax I might as well buy them from the local store and save on shipping costs.

Next task of the day was bleaching those canvas drop clothes. I tore open the first package only to find that it had a joining seam in it, bummer so I tore open the 2nd, 3rd and 4th praying that these ones wouldn't have any issues and ...phew...no issues. Dug out a big plastic bin to do the long soak in our master bath tub, since I didn't want the kids to get in it.  Filled it up half way with hot water dumped 2 cups of Bleach in it gave it a stir to mix it and then slowly added the canvas to the water. With a handy paint stir stick I poked down the fabric until it all stayed under the liquid and let it sit for 5 and a half hours. Then dumping out the liquid, I carefully carried the bin and canvas over to our washing machine (careful because I don't want to bleach our carpets.). There I added a cup of bleach to the wash load and ran it on the Whitest White setting on our machine. Once that was done I ran a 2nd wash with soap and bleach on the normal wash setting, finally the 3rd wash it was 1 cup of Hydrogen Peroxide in the bleach bin and soap on the normal wash setting. Then off to the dryer and then iron.
Now I have these great whitish canvas with some character to work with. I'm a happy girl. Tomorrow its time to hang the hardware and see what additional mods I need to add to the canvas.

Wow LED street lights are bright!

Wow never new our little town could afford a upgrade to LED street lights. I guess they can and they must have installed them yesterday because heading to bed last night I remarked to husband that it sure is bright outside, thinking the moon was the cause of it. But due to being restless with different Illustrator ideas flowing through my head on my Stella & Dot business, I got up and decided that sleep could wait and I'd work on my ideas instead. Holy smokes there was lots of light flowing into our hallways and it had a eery glow too, so I took a peak outside and that's when I realized that no it wasn't the moon's glow but actually new LED street lights. So now not only are we being woken up by the sunrise, but now its going to be difficult to fall asleep with the glow from outside.
More motivation to start those curtains I guess. So it's Friday afternoon, do I attempt to bleach the drop clothes?
Maybe I should actually pull them out of the package and see what needs to be done? Or how about actually ordering some hardware to hang these suckers up?
Oh where oh where can I find cheap double rods that aren't ugly?

Day Dreaming of Things to Do...The Powder Room

Oh that powder room, how plain and beige you are. Its a pretty basic bathroom, builder grade oval mirror, lighting, pedestal sink and toilet, with a little window for extra light. A good room for fixing up new color paint maybe a beach themed space since the fixtures are white.


  

A nice sea foam green on the walls? How about Sherwin Williams Green Trance -SW6462  and add a wainscoting for the bottom half painted in  Kelly Moore's Swiss Coffee-23 or maybe just paint the bottom with Swiss Coffee and add border to transition from white to green like what House Tweaking did in her powder room (she uses paper toilet rolls, talk about recycling, note I have a similar layout and design). How about using a sponge and blotting on squares instead of circles, could make a tiled effect. I might have to give it a go and see how my textured walls look after blotting it on.

SW6462

Also I'm toying with the idea of trying to find a framed oval mirror to replace the frame less one currently in. How about something like this from a Etsy shop BeachGrassCottage?

But that might be another project on its own. So for now I need to stop day dreaming about my powder room and concentrate on my Master Bedroom's curtains...sigh.

Decorating Wish List

Yesterday I wrote about unfinished projects, and I promised myself that I wouldn't start any more projects until I completed the ones I had on going. We since my husband has promoted our bedroom to be on the top of the list. I need to knockout that last chair, but the bathroom on hold and dive into the master bedroom.

But here's a list of items I'd like to tackle in attempt to making our house a home.

1. Paint and decorate the powder room.
2. Paint and decorate the boys bathroom.
3. Paint the kitchen cabinets.
4. Decorate and up date the office/playroom/study space.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but these are the major ones.

As for the curtains, I'm on the hunt for the right set of curtain rods, Overstock seems to have ones I like a double rod setup, the reviews of it seem good and maybe the black or pewter finish may work well with the canvas drop cloths once they are bleached and washed.

Its Wednesday and I haven't decided on when to attempted the bleaching of these drop clothes, do I start it Friday night let them soak and then wash, wash, wash and dry on Saturday? That probably seems like the most logical thing to do, so Friday night it is.

New Project Request - Drapes

Oh how many in progress projects to I have out right now.

1. Recover the dining room chairs (5 of 6 done)
2. Paint bathroom cabinets white (1 of 3 done)
3. Hem the curtains in my son's room

Just completed was my laundry room, a project that seems to have taken a year to finish.

But my husband has made a request that surpasses these. He wants to have curtains to reduce the light that floods our bedroom every morning. I told him that in order for that request to be fulfilled I would need to do a bedroom makeover, aka new bedding. So how can I pass up an opportunity to start a new project with my husband's permission. So curtains it is.

Here's my dilemma I want the perfect bedding and nothing off the rack is jumping out at me. I guess I need to visit Calico Corners and see what inspirational fabric I can use for our duvet and use that to build out our room. So what about curtains do I start them without having the perfect bedding? Yup, I'm going to use bleached painters drop cloth canvas as curtains. Cheap, effective, sturdy and I think it might fit in well with my idea of a French Country.

So today I purchased 4 drop cloths at $10.98 a piece (6 ft x 9 ft, beware it's actually 5' 9" x 8' 9") from Home Depot and a bottle of bleach. Now because I have a front loading washer I can't just dump everything in and let it soak so I'm going to have to improvise and get a plastic tub to do the bleaching. I chose the Home Depot brand because they came highly recommended by Beneath My Heart's Blog

And I'll be following Miss Mustard Seed instructions on bleaching the canvas, it was written for HGTV.com but it came from her blog, My change is that I'll be putting a plastic tub in my bathtub filled with hot water and 2 cups of Bleach mixed in, before soaking them, and then running the rest of the wash and neutralize in the front loader.