Curtains on the Cabindo

The eagle has landed condo has been rented.

A very nice couple will be continuing the Cabindo love for a while, and I couldn't be more excited for them, and for me.

On the way to getting it rented, we had quite a time washing and re-hanging the curtains.

Let me start at the beginning: there were zero window coverings or even window hardware when I moved into the Cabindo. It was a touchy couple first weeks and months of changing in the hallway and hanging sheets via thumb tacks (with questionable opacity) before I was able to find affordable, attractive, long enough, and opaque enough drapes to cut the mustard. 

Ikea Lenda for $20 a set
Great 'linen' look like Restoration Hardware-ish products, for less than one drawer pull at Restoration Hardware

They hung on the cheapest walmart hardware for a year or more before I got around to building metal pipe-based rails for the extra wide sliding door walls in the dining room and master bedroom. 

4 iron pipes cut to my measurements at Home Depot  ~$40

Various fittings ~$15

Spray paint to seal the iron pipe - had it

Anchors & bolts - had 'em

Labor - had him (Al)

$55 and some mild cursing is MUCH cheaper than the West Elm version that would have cost me an arm and a leg, and been made of glorified aluminum foil. 

West Elm pipe curtain rod. $109.
I would have needed 4 of them. Uhhh... no.

The DIY version worked great and the curtains hung attractively and REALLY securely long enough to acquire a nice coating of cat hair.

To get them down and washed, I realised they had to be cut off at the tabs, as they were put up on the rails when the system was built, and it was bolted to the wall.
I'm not stupid (most days), and knew those bolts were staying put if I wanted the system to stay intact and secure.
So the curtains got cut down, washed, and dried by the ever helpful Mama P. 

I rigged shower curtain ring/track curtain clip do-hickies to hang them up again, since the tabs were now gone. (Mama P's idea. So helpful)

Yet again, thank you Ikea.
I actually really like how it looks.

Al, Pookie (the dog), and I set about ironing and rehanging the fresh and clean curtains.

Wrinkle free? Hair free?
Meh, close enough.

To our great consternation, we'd forgotten that cotton shrinks, and the curtains which previously had an attractively generous break on the floor, were now were waiting for a flood.

Since flood insurance is not necessary on a 2nd floor condo,
neither are annoying 3 inch slivers of daylight.

To say I was unreasonably upset is an understatement. There may have been tears. It's a theme at the Cabindo the past few months I guess.

I've shrunken other cotton curtains previously, and fixed them by rewashing and line drying. Figured it was worth a try on these suckers too.  

When that was done and we hung the first panel; they were better, but still too short. 

I was again thrilled and handled it exceedingly calmly and well.

Back to the washer they went to get wet, we had a soothing ice cream break, and then tried option 3 while the curtains were still damp:

Nothing to take out your anger like tug of war with purpose.
This of course turned into us trying to pull each other over.
No one was hurt, but Pookie was VERY worried the whole time.

Lo and behold, it worked: those suckers all touched the floor. We prayed they would not shorten up as they dried, and luckily they did not. 

There was no ironing of these babies and risk shrinking. They are rocking the 'crushed linen' look, and it actually seems intentional/passible. The new renters even noted that they liked them (even if they were just being polite: #kludgeforthewin).

The new folks don't have, nor do they plan on getting furry pets anytime soon. So as long as there isn't some errant spaghetti sauce accident: they shouldn't have to enjoy toil through washing the drapes. 

And they can change their pants wherever, whenever they please.

-Lindsay

Wainscotting Makes Me Feel Fancy

The image in this pin really got my motor going:

pinterest. duh.

And this this one sealed the deal:

A plate shelf on top? SOLD.

I would be wainscotting/board n batten'ing/panelling. Whatever you want to call it.
It had to happen.
My ugly bathroom depended on it.
I had already put in a new floor, so was ready to tackle the walls.

My dad was excited to help me execute the wainscotting/board n batten/panel walls after I'd showed him a million pictures and gushed like a rabid school girl with a Beiber crush. He might have been simply excited for me to shut up. If that was the case: worked like a charm!
He already had a bunch of lumber lying around that we could use. It was new and matching, but thicker than the MDF most tutorials floating around the blogosphere are recommending. This installation had to content with moisture, so it was just as well to go a non-MDF direction. And 'free' always sways my decision to: "ummm.. yeah we're gonna go with that."

I figured out how the spacing of each vertical board would work in the room by guesstimating how much space one hanging towel would take to look nicely framed (ala the top picture), then measured out as many of those panels as would fit on the large wall.  Turns out the answer was 4 panels, so there would be 5 'batten' pieces for the large wall across from the toilet and vanity with about 14.75 inches between each. The other two walls would follow the same batten spacing.
The elements of the wall are as follows:

shelf board needs to straighten up and fly right

The height of the top shelf is just above my shoulder height while wearing heels, so I wont ever smack into it. Cuz I'm a thinker. And a consummate klutz.

Action time:
We cut all the wood Dad had available, ran to Home Depot for a little more, cut that too, and ended up after dark with a big pile in the driveway. All the boards were given a good edge sanding to smooth out any sharp corners and prevent clothing or towel snags.

I do my wooood cutting at night, so I can, so I can.....
watch the sawdust swirl past my eyes

It made me a bit nervous that this mass of wood was going to be put into my smallish bathroom. As it made its way onto the wall though, the pile (& anxiety level) quickly shrunk as the wainscotting began to take shape.

framed out large wall

All of the boards were held up in place first and given several small pilot holes. A big thanks to my Dad and the Bf for holding up the big horizontal header boards as I leveled and drilled! Each corresponding hole in the wall got an anchor, and the holes in the wood got countersinks.
I put up a frame of the header, footer, and outside vertical boards first, then repeated the process with the remaining vertical battens. These got attached to the wall in about a million points so that even with moisture in the picture, they would not warp.
The top moulding was screwed into the header board, and the 3.25" plate shelf (same width as the vertical boards) screwed into the wide supportive surface created by the tops of the moulding and header board.

Wood filler x a $#!+ ton of holes = a crazy long time

As you see above, all those holes got patched with wood filler. Every place where wood met the wall also got wood filler (ex. sides of the battens), as well as every place a piece of wood met another piece of wood (ex. batten to header board).
Sanding all of the wood filler spots, refilling, waiting, and re-sanding was by far the most tedious part of this project and dragged on for about a month because I was not a fan and kept avoiding it.
I learned afterwards that you can do the edges and joins with caulk.... :|
If I ever do wainscotting again: I will definately be doing that to minimize the sanding portion of the project.
Once I put my big girl pants on and finally finished the sanding, it was time to paint. Everything got a coat of white primer, followed by a slightly off-white semi-gloss to match the color of the tiles. This helped to unify the room and avoided making the tiles look dingy.

For the towel hooks: Ikea's BLECKA hooks had the modern look and inexpensive price I was going for. But what a terrible name!! Poor towel hooks, they are going to get a complex.

$5 for 2 - 2.75" hooks
$5 for 4 - 1..5" hooks

I used 4 of the large ones on the long wall for bath towels, 2 of the smaller ones on the toilet/vanity wall for hand towels, and 2 more of the smaller ones on the back of the door to replace the existing rusted hook.

Fancy, fancy!!

This project gave me a huge boost of confidence that I could see something I liked, and translate it to my space in a high quality and inexpensive way.

Price breakdown:

Wood - Free! (probably would have been about $80)

Hooks - $15

Paint - $20

   Hardware - $15  

Total - $50

(if not for Daddy-o's lumber: $130)

-Lindsay

Articipation. Articipaaa-aaation.....

I make up words.

Articipation [ar-tis-uh-pey-shuhn]
noun
1.   the act of articipating.
2.   realization in advance of the awesomeness of art that is in transit.
3.   expectation or hope of beautiful walls.

My master bathroom has a lot going on: wainscotting with a shelf on top, bold flooring, bright colors, shelving, a huge mirror, yadda yadda yadda.

I've needed some art on the walls to compliment and calm the visual attractions going on elsewhere in the room. Because the wainscotting is up the traditional alley, I wanted something fun and modern to work with the colors of the room (teal, white, grey, black, silver), and balance everything out. The wall on which art should go is about 6 feet long and on your left when you walk into the room.

So I played with existing pieces I had, and nothing worked quite right. I sat and waited for the right thing to come into my life and get me excited.
Enter HouseTweaking, a blog that I follow. Dana has a fantastic sense of style and utility as she manages three young kids and a total house renovation. She has been recently styling her nightstands and posted about some beautiful handmade block prints, which happened to be on a 50% off sale.

reminds me of indecipherable street signs in europe you look at and go:
'huh? balls bouncing down a hill next to a railroad crossing? TIMES THREE?!? oh dear....'

I'm not a huge abstract geometric fan, but I liked the impact they had in her space enough to go click through the etsy page. Therein I continued to not like them: I loved them. Many had blue/silver undertones that would both work well among several pieces, and compliment the color of the wall. Due to my art school days, I'm admittedly a bit of a snob: I don't buy reprints, only original medium work; so I cooed at the wood print-tastic depth of surface texture and dynamic sheen. There were lots of different patterns that suited my sensibilities and I could truly enjoy looking at every day, not just fake enjoy because they are hopelessly chic and I feel that I should. I struck while the 50% was hot and ordered the following prints:

I thought they were a good combination of repetitive shapes, curves, lines, and colors; all in a semi-organic theme. Then I realised all but one was a 4x6, and that the single 5x7 would look out of place. I also thought some more neutral dark tones were needed, and quickly (truly, it was about 30 mins later) placed another order for some square black/grey prints:

That last one is more geometric that I thought I would go, but I like how art deco it looks.

I will be grabbing some Ribba frames in 4x6 and 5x7 sizes for $2 each.

I'm thinking high gloss grey as shown above would look fantastic, but I wont know for sure until I have those prints in hand.
This leads me back to the word of the day: articipation. I've been unreasonably excited for those prints to arrive. UPS tracking number stalking indicated this morning that they were out for delivery. Whoohoo!
Instead I went home to a notice that the prints are sitting and waiting at the post office. SO CLOSE.... yet so far. Protecting the contents, yeah yeah yeah, I get it. pffft.
In the meantime, I will just think about what a pretty wall it will be:

pinterest, of course.

and sing that dang song, substituting 'anticipation' with 'articipation'. #nerdalert.




-Lindsay