Turkey Painting, Apparently

As part of our basement renovation project, I wanted to make a large abstract painting. I just used some paint samples we had around the house.

There's not too much narrative to add here, so here's a gif of the painting as it evolved.

When I finished it, I sent a picture to Eddy, who promptly informed me that it looks like a turkey. Or possibly a vulture.

Here's what it looks like on its shelf in our basement with some other very random stuff that's just sitting around downstairs waiting for the walls to be skim coated and wallpapered and painted.



So much fun to be had in the basement!

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I Saw the Signs

One thing about me is that as an adult, I like Ace of Base.  What are you going to do about it?  I also like wooden signs.

Now, another thing about Eddy and I is that we've read more than our fair share of Victorian novels and we love when people name their houses, so we decided to do it too. We named our current house Maplebrook because of the Japanese maples growing here and because of the "brook" in "Westbrook." We've been going back and forth about how to declare to any weirdo walking by that we have named our house, and when we had a few planks of leftover pallet wood from the new pallet wall in our basement I figured I'd make a sign or two.

I did a pattern transfer using pencil lead and then hand painted the lettering.

Eddy hung it for me because even though I'm a lady who knows her way around a power tool, we wanted to pick the perfect spot on the porch together.

The second sign I made is more of a functional piece. As part of our ongoing basement renovation, we wanted a new and improved entryway organizer by the door leading to the garage. I also wanted a Tolkien thing.

I used the same transfer method as before.

Then I tested some paints we had around that match the new wallpaper we've chosen for the basement.

And I got busy painting!

Finally, I mounted it near our garage door and now we're ready to pile our stuff around in a more organized fashion.

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20 Pallets

We're SLOOOOOOOWLY working on decorating our basement.  It's always been a place we hang with the dogs and binge Netflix and all that good stuff, but until recently it's been relatively untouched and one can stand only so much tan.  Tan walls.  Tan floors.  Tan, tan as far as the eye can see.

The first wall we claimed from the tan is the wall our TV is on.

We love hanging in the basement, but we never bothered to even hide the TV cords. For three years, people! That's how very oppressed we were by the blandness of this basement. What's that you spy in the left of the picture above? Why, it's wooden pallets! We scrounged around Portland one weekend for free pallets and amassed around 20 or so.

The first thing we did was tackle cord management. Look how excited I am to cut into that wall!

THAT'S HOW SICK I AM OF LOOKING AT TV CORDS AND TAN WALLS. Eddy's excited too, but maybe sliiiightly less excited.

He did get excited about using a reciprocating saw to disassemble all those pallets, though.

He was especially excited to break down all the pallets into an "E". That's my Eddy.

Once we (ahem, Eddy) broke all the pallets down, we were left with just this little pile of wood!

We painted our wall black so all those delicious cracks and knot holes would really stand out.

Then we started applying the wood.

We got about halfway finished and then we had to give up and reinstall our TV for awhile because we had tons going on this winter.

But we got back at it after a few weeks.

We're still wearing the same clothes even though weeks have passed like they do on fancy reality TV. We're professionals like that. Here's the finished wall!

I know, I know. It's a bit tan. However, there's tons of texture and once the rest of the walls are no longer tan, it's really going to look great.

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Grown Up Nightstands

For some reason, we've never had nightstands.  We've had many a faux nightstand over the year ranging from just metal garage style shelves to convenient window sills to wall shelves (that constantly hung loose and fell down.)  When we moved into this house, we used this little matching set of tables we bought from IKEA many, many moons ago.

Not very pleasing to look at and lacking in storage space. One frustrating day, I realized that we're actual adults (not graduate sudents anymore) and we could actually just get some nightstands. Seriously, though. It did not occur to me that we could actually just fix this problem with furniture. Like, for years. Anyway. The search began. Then the search ended because I couldn't find anything I liked. Finally, I bought these un-finished numbers from IKEA.

I filled all the screw holes and some of the grooves between the wood.

Then I began painting. And painting. And painting.

Because purple paint requires one million coats. I stained the drawers to match some of the other woodwork in the house.

And I painted a simple design on the front of each drawer.

I added some spare knobs we had around the house.

Here they are in their new homes! Much more tidy and stylish looking. Plus, now we can actually put our bedside stuff away!

Imagine that!

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They Wore Blue Velvet

You guys.  I'm learning upholstery.  Our scrappy, mildly-neglected library started out with these sloppily upholstered chairs we got for free on Craigslist.

They were in such rough condition that the first thing I did when we got them home was patch them just so the stuffing wouldn't hang out.

They're actually a his and hers pair, so each chair is slightly different. They sat in our sad, unloved library like this for a looooooooooong time just waiting for me to get up the gumption to learn upholstery. Finally:

And all that was just building back the seats and structural components. On a side note, when I bought the velvet for these chairs, the woman at the cut counter called it "dreamy."  I can't agree more.

Next came the inside arms.

Then the backs, which in this case are channel backs.

Then came the fun part: using this Rifle Paper Co. fabric to close up the outsides of the chairs!

Finally, I finished the pair and moved them up to our now much-loved library.

Complete with Nancy Drew mural!

And a newly curated landscape artwork wall.

It felt way great to spend our first lazy Saturday enjoying our brand new library!

We read The Spider Sapphire Mystery, of course!

Tons of people on Facebook expressed an interest in upholstery, so here are some links to Kim's Upholstery, which is basically how I learned every single thing I needed to know along the way. She's incredibly generous and helpful as is the community of upholsterers you will find on her various pages, so feel free to check her out!

• Kim's Upholstery Website: https://kimsupholstery.com/
• Her Facebook page, where she offers a free live course every Wednesday morning: https://www.facebook.com/kimsupholstery/
• Kim's DIY Upholstery Hangout, where you can ask and answer questions with other upholsterers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/172433936288031/
• Kim's YouTube Channel with tons of free videos showing how to re-upholster: https://www.youtube.com/user/KimsUpholstery

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