As I start to work more and more on my creative experiments my quaint little townhouse feels less and less spacious. I’ve decided that my next big project is going to be converting my office’s closet into a sewing/craft station. And what does every sewing/craft station need? A chair, of course. ha.

The back of our old computer chair broke a few months ago and I realized that the base of the chair was still in good condition. I decided to keep it and shoved it under the desk where it became my new foot rest for months and months and months. Then, when I decided to create my new office closet I realized, as my feet were comfortably perched, that I could make use of my old chair. I needed a chair to slide right under the desk that was in the closet so I could close the doors and hide all my mess. This was the perfect solution.

It was ugly. Really ugly. I thought I would try to tackle the task of recovering the top of the chair. Sometimes if I’m in the fabric store I’ll buy the scraps that are half off if I like the pattern. I went through my box of scraps and found the perfect fabric.

It actually was pretty easy! All you have to do place your fabric on the floor, flip your chair upside down, pull your fabric tight and staple! Seriously, that is all. It took me maybe a half an hour to complete. Seriously, that is it. I actually couldn’t believe it worked! A trick I found was to staple one side then pull it tight and stretch it across and staple on the opposite side. Keep doing that until you have a base stapled. Then you can go in and add more staples in between.

Also, for the corners I found it was easiest to stretch the fabric and twist it under the side. Then just staple the twist into the bottom. That will secure the corners without putting creases in the fabric.

Now on to re-doing the whole closet…

I’m pretty sure that will take longer than a half an hour.

finished product

This project had been lingering for a while. When we moved into our town home 2 years ago we acquired a back patio that faced out to nice private woods. Having a little piece of nature was a big selling point for us especially since your privacy is somewhat limited when  living in town home communities. Never having any outdoor space before caused us to not have any outdoor furniture. We were given a wonderful hand-me-down dining room set so our little table and two chairs that we used to use as our dining room furniture were suddenly without a need. They sadly sat in our living room for months not knowing their purpose until one day while thinking about how expensive outdoor furniture can get I realized that I could possibly make those over into our much needed patio furniture.

What a beautiful flower I received from one of my piano students at our recital last Sunday! I just had to share.

A new year always brings resolutions; how are you going to make your live better this year, seriously this time. This new year brought a lonnnng to-do list for me. 2010 is already set to be a big year in this household; a long vacation in the spring, a wedding in the fall, a honeymoon in the winter, and TONS of planning in between! That being said, it was a big ol’ slap in the face when that ball dropped that I need to start organizing!!

My M.O. has always been that I never finish ANYTHING. I scheme up these grand ideas, start them, but then nothing ever gets done. Ever. My house has turned into a graveyard of my past ideas. Cut fabric, saved scraps of furniture, old paper, all waiting to be used to make something beautiful. I can’t throw them away because I know one day I’ll get around to them and when that complete project is revealed it will be my best masterpiece. Well, that day never comes and my house is still littered with these unfinished projects. There lies my resolution: FINISH. My goal is to finish every project I’ve ever started before I go out and start a new one. This has already been hard for me. I have a new project brewing in my brain as we speak and I’m having to consciously keep my excitment contained. So, as a little sneak-preview, below are a few of those unfinshed masterpieces that you’ll see FINISHED in the upcoming weeks (hopefully)…

My fiance and I bought our first townhouse fully equipped with white walls in every room upstairs. Both of us, having lived in white-walled rented spaces for years, were ready for some color! Our house is flooded with amazing sunlight throughout the day so we decided to go with a vibrant color palate that could soak in that sun. After gathering countless color swatches and spending hours pacing in the paint aisle at our local hardware store, we came up with this…

He calls it our M&M house, chocolate hallway center with candy coated rooms. Needless to say, I crave chocolate constantly!

This was the master before…

and after (with orange bathroom to match)…

This was our guest bedroom before…

and after…

This was our hallway before…

and after…

We LOVE it! Here’s a breakdown of colors plus more photos…

Hallway = Chocolate Brown
Master Bedroom = Blue
Master Bath = Orange
Guest Bedroom = Lime Green
Guest Bath = Yellow
Office = Red

After three coats of sealer (I don’t want ANY mold getting in!) the tile is complete!! The total cost for this whole project was only $78!!!!! With a little resourcefulness and willingness to get dirty an extremely custom tiling job can be done anywhere!

Enjoy the final pics after the jump:

Well, it is actually happening… there are tiles on the wall!! What a journey I’ve had with this project. Laying tile is not at easy as it may seem. Follow the steps I took to lay the tile after the jump!

First you have to spread the adhesive to the wall, then you have to lay your panels onto the adhesive.

Since the side of the tub was so narrow, I had to mosiac it by hand to make sure everything fit perfect.

After I adhered everything I had to let it dry for 48 hrs. I came back and then had to go back over everything with grout.

A HUGE time-saver that I figured out with this project was using a freezer bag to grout with! Because the spaces that I needed to grout were so small using my finger or another tool to spread the grout did not work. I then thought of putting the grout into a plastic bag, cutting the corner and squeezing it out like icing on a cake into the creases. It worked amazingly; saved me so much time!!

The final thing looks spectacular! I have to wait another 48 hrs until the grout is completely dry then have to go back and seal it. I want to save the final photos as a surprise for my next post when I can actually say it is COMPLETELY done! Stay tuned…

STEP 1: I start by finding tile pieces that have straight edges and I edge one side. I then put two larger pieces on the seams at the other end to hold everything in place as you mosaic the strip.

STEP 2: Then you just work your way over adding in pieces as you go!

A helpful hint… find pieces with straight edges and edge your strip first and fill in the middle second. It is easier to fit in awkward shaped middle pieces after everything is edged. Its like a puzzle!

STEP 3: Finish your strip but don’t put it aside yet…

STEP 4: If your project requires you to make multiple strips and put them together like I am doing I have found it helpful to continue mosiac-ing the seam of the two strips. This helps for a much nicer transition between the strips when everything is installed. You’ll need to make up another set of drywall strips and connect it to the unfinished side of your previous strip. Then overlapping the tiles start to tile along the seam.

You can see how the tiles are overlapping when the two strips are broke apart. Once you have a good seam made you can disconnect the strips and put the finished one aside and continue working.

So why not just mosaic one long strip?? There really is nothing stopping you from doing this. But I find 1 foot sections a lot easier to work with then a 5 foot long section. My professional (ha!) opinion would be to follow the steps above with a more manageable length.

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…and finally an update on the project…

I’M FINISHED!!! I’m planning on installing it tomorrow (hopefully!). You’ll see a gap on the top. That side will be the far wall at the back of the tub. The wall is flanked by 90 degree angle corners on each side. This makes it very tricky to get an exact length of tiles. So I am going to install from the corners inward and then free-hand the mosaic tiles between the two so that I don’t have to worry about the strips of drywall mosaic being the wrong size. I am also doing free-hand tiling down the sides of the tub because of the same reason as above. I don’t want to worry about fluctuating widths and lengths.

I’m SUPER excited to actually install everything; hopefully I’ll do it correctly! I’ll keep you posted. :-)

As promised, some pictures of Thomas’ beautiful landscaping in our backyard…

… and also some progress on my mosaic-ing. I’ve been working on putting the tiles on the adhesive sheets and came across a problem. The sides of the tub are not even (of course!) so I’ve decided when I put the tile adhesive up I will just quickly mosaic right to the adhesive. The space is only between 2″ and 3″ wide so it isn’t that much to just tile right on the wall. Lets hope I don’t mess up when it comes to that point though!! Thomas and I were thinking it would be a lot better because there is no real exact way to measure that inconsistent width.

This is what my table in the living room looks like…

Part of the border is going to be a gradient from blue to yellow to striped tiles. You’ll see above part of that gradient. I’m getting EXCITED!!

Also, a few months ago Thomas did a little bit of landscaping off of our back patio and our little bushlets (as my friend Emily from work calls them) are flowering!! Its so exciting! I’ll take some pictures of those as well and post them tonight. Be on the lookout!

Okay, so here is my idea. I want to tile a 6″ border around the tube to give the bathroom some personality. Some would argue that its orange paint job is all the personality it needs, but I want a little extra something. Here is my plan (ignore the bad quality, I need to perfect my “blog-picture-taking” abilities)…

Going to Lowes to look at tiles launched me into depression. The prices of tiles were outrageous! Having a bit of my mother’s resourcefulness in me and Thomas’ encouragement I went to the flea market to look for some old ceramics to bust apart. No luck there. On my way home I stopped at the Dollar Store for some carpet cleaner and found exactly what I needed in my price range… one dollar 10.5″ plates!

I went out on our back patio and took a hammer to them! You’ll be surprised at what you can get out of 20 plates.

I went back to Lowes to get myself some backing to glue the pieces on. I did this because I thought it be a lot easier to just tack up strips of the already mosaic-ed tiles instead of doing everything while I’m racing the drying time of the tile adhesive. To my luck I found self-adhesive drywall tape that is working SUPER well. I just peel the backing off and stick the tiles right on, no tedious gluing quite yet! (that will come later i’m sure!!)

I’m doing them in 1 foot by 6 in strips. I got 3 1/2 done last night (which is one of the shorter walls). This is going to take me a LONG time!!