Lots of Little things, In Such Little Time

I’m a band director, and so the fall is busy with games and rehearsals and competitions (which are going great this season!). But, it makes it really hard to find time to work on the house, but we’re trying! I really, really miss having time to work on it, even though I love my day job. Sometimes, I’ll get home at 9:30 at night after a rehearsal, and just spend 30 minutes or so painting. It really wipes my mind clean before I head to sleep.

The wardrobe project is still going, little by little. I’m still really excited about it, even though we don’t have enough time to really crank it out. The large boxes are DONE, which is so great!

I am a big list maker, and Doug is not. Or rather, I’m a super detail oriented list maker (Doug tells people I have lists of lists of lists). Doug’s list for the wardrobe looks like this :

• Build Wardrobe

Mine looks like this :

• Build Large Boxes (one and two)
• Build Small Boxes (one and two)
• Build Bases (one and two)
• Build Floors for Wardrobes (one and two)
• Attach boxes to walls
• Build Face Frames (one and two)
• Order Custom Doors
• Build mirrored doors for top boxes (one and two)
• Build a Bridge
• Install Electrical
• Install Crown Mouldings
• Paint Interiors
• Paint Exteriors
• Install Interiors (shelves and bars)
• Install Baseboards
• Install Hardware

So, we have a loooooong way to go.

We built the second large box last weekend, and this one is going in the corner, so it had a few more dimension quirks to be able to work around the existing baseboards. But it went together smoothly!

In fact, when making this last box, I made a time lapse video of putting it together – the dry fit, the glueing, and the clamping. Enjoy!

I’ve also been working on getting more of the room painted black. I am in LOVE with it, and shockingly, it only took three coats!

I’ve also been working on some of the architectural details, like painting the ceiling medallion, so it’s at the ready when we are set to install it!

These are going to be the doors for the upper part of the cabinet – they are old picture frames, and I love them. We have some mirror that we’ll cut and put behind it, so it should be a fun part of the room.

The wardrobes are being painted white, so white they went! This is just the primer, and not the final color.

I love the details and the cracks and the age of the pieces. Isn’t it great?

I’ve also been doing A LOT of sewing. This room and the front entrance hall mimic each other, and each have 6 windows in the room. Which makes for an incredible amount of light, and a horrendous amount of fabric needed for drapes. As a lover of mixing patterns, I settled on these two fabrics for the drapes. The one on the right, Calligraphy Swirl, came from JoAnn, and I bought out all of our local store, everything online, and STILL had to send my sister to her local store before I could get to my 27 yards needed. Yikes.

I’ve been sewing away, and think it’s a really lovely print.

I decided to inset the drapes into the windows, instead of around it. I really, REALLY love the woodwork in here, and when I realized that hanging curtains outside of it would hide the gorgeous contrast between the woodwork and the black paint, I had to readjust. Different, but I think it’ll be perfect.

The floral fabric will be a valance on top.

Nothing is tied back yet, but here’s the prototype! White sheers will be beneath this.

It’s a lot of fabric.

This is the fantastic air vent that was in the room. It was a bit crusty, and I didn’t want it to remain mint green, so I stripped it.

Some people think that the crockpot method of stripping paint is a relatively new thing – but it’s been around for EONS. I won’t go through the whole process since I’ve written about it before, but if you haven’t read it, you can see it here!

After a good long time, I worked on getting the paint off.

My plan was to repaint, but at least now I had a surface free of layers and gunk.

There is going to be a lot of gold in this room, so I painted a few things at the same time. A couple of yard-sale picture frames and the vent cover. The frames were originally a dull silver.

My first painting of the vent cover wasn’t so great. It turned out to be a pretty muddy gold. You can see it here on the inside, while the paint I brought to correct it is on the frame. SUCH a difference.

They all went SUPER gilded gold.

If you need to spray paint something that has screws (like the vent cover), use a styrofoam bowl to stick the screws into. Then, you can avoid getting paint on the threads.

THERE’S SOMETHING PRETTY IN THE ROOM. Also, you may not criticize the black paint job – that’s only one coat, so it’s not done yet.

Don’t worry – the hot mess of a turret is still there, too. Oy.

I’m going to work on painting the wardrobe soon, and I couldn’t decide on a paint color, so I took a vote amongst friends! I pulled three colors from the rug, and the lovely shade of blue won by a landslide.

That’s where we are! Close enough to see the finish line, but it’s behind quite a few bends in the road. I have my fingers crossed for a finish by Halloween – but I don’t know how likely that is…..

I know this wasn’t a barn-buster of a blog post – “YOU GUYS, SHE SPRAYED PAINTED THINGS! I LEARNED SO MUCH!” But, it’s the reality of life when you’re super duper busy. We’re so excited to get more of the big stuff done soon!