Super Simple Starfish Wall Decor

I know what you’re thinking….starfish aren’t really very ‘farmy’.  But aside from the facts that I grew up near the beach, and we’re in Los Angeles which is technically on the beach, these starfish hold some pretty heavy sentimental value.  You see, the Texan and I got married on the beach, and instead of flower petals scattered down the aisle, we had starfish and sea glass.  We tried very hard to gather up as many of them afterwards to bring home with us (I also have a large jar of the sea glass, as well as a small jar of sand from the very spot we took our vows….I’m not usually so mushy, but this was important to me!)

Here’s a few shots from our wedding:

Our ceremony site: on the beach in Los Cabos, Mexico.

A shot of how the aisle was set up.

Close up of the starfish in action.

Gotta throw one of these in!

And this one’s fun….this was about a thirtieth of a second before we both doubled over laughing.  (BTW, this was the morning after the actual wedding–it was our ‘wreck the dress’ shoot–good times!).

All right, enough of that!  Back to work!!

I really wanted to display our starfish in a unique way.  I didn’t want to do anything cheesy–framing seemed too obvious and we just have so many of them!  I finally decided that I just wanted to stick them to the wall, and at first, I put a glob of earthquake putty on each one and just stuck them up like that.  This was all well and good until we had a really hot day and I walked in to find that my painstakingly-lined up grid of starfish was now a detail from a Dalí painting.

It was then that I had my ‘Ah-ha’ moment.  Thumbtacks.  All I needed was thumbtacks.

Here is the world’s most complicated how-to:

Starfish, white thumbtack, and hot glue.

Put a decent glob of hot glue in the center of the back of the starfish, and sink your thumbtack into it so that the glue rises over the first lip of the head of the thumbtack.  Hold it in place until the glue is set.

Let that glue harden and cool completely.  Meanwhile, mark off a grid in the shape that you want it on your wall.  I did a grid of twenty-four starfish: four across, six down.  The marks represent the center of each starfish, and I went ahead and spaced mine six inches from each other (every starfish is, obviously, a different size, so this winds up being an imperfect science–but it works!)

Now, take your fully-dried starfish and gently press the thumbtack into your mark on the wall (if you have drywall–if you have some sort of paneling, you may want to pre-drill a bit so the thumbtack goes in easy).

Press into the wall straight-on–if you angle it at all, you risk snapping the thumbtack off.

There you have it!

The offset of the thumbtacks really makes for some amazing shadows on the wall.

DIY Weathered Wood Headboard

As part of our master bedroom makeover, the Texan and I decided that it was way past due that we have an actual headboard.  Our guest bedroom bed has a darned headboard; shouldn’t we?  How fancy of us!  That being said, we aren’t quite fancy enough yet that we want to spend much money on it (ie: any money, at all).  So we turned, yet again, to our scrap wood pile for a few leftover 2×4′s and some dinged-up pine boards (all of which can be acquired for a nominal fee at your local home improvement store).

We started by building the frame; this took a bit of baffled staring at the wall where the headboard was going to figure out the exact dimensions.  We’ve got light switches and window frames to factor in, but really, it boiled down to a personal preference on how we wanted it to look.  We figured out roughly where we wanted the peak of the arch to be, and roughly where we wanted the edges of the arch to be, height-wise.

Our professionally-drawn plans.  Hey, it isn’t on a napkin!

Once we had decided on all that, it was time to build the frame.

We cut the four pieces according to our height (42 1/2″) and width (72″) requirements, then screwed them together with metal straps from the home improvement center.

Next, we cut our 6″ wide pine planks all to length (29″, which is the length from the bottom cross piece of the headboard to the highest point of the arch).  Here’s a little tip: before you assemble these, use an electric sander or even just sandpaper (I used a Dremel) to knock down the corners along the lengths of the boards–even though they sit side-by-side, those edges still tend to be rather sharp….if there is one thing you don’t want your headboard to be, it’s sharp.

Line your boards side-by-side and face-down, and place the frame on top of them. Screw through the frame and into the boards, one screw in each top and bottom. We used 1-5/8″ length screws–long enough to go through the 2×4 and into the boards, but not long enough to go all the way through the boards.

Millie monitors the Texan’s progress.

At this point, the basic headboard is assembled.  But we wanted to get crazy with the top edge and do an arch.  Which is a little tricky.  This, I’m sure, could be done by one person, but it is a lot easier with two, trust me.

You want to start with the headboard laying flat, face up.  You also need a pencil and a long length of twine.

Find the midpoint of the top edge of the headboard (which is where the highest point of the arch will be), then measure straight back a ways (we used an extra board as a straight reference, because the eventual point you are looking for will fall somewhere below the headboard).  The farther back you go, the more gradual of an arch you will wind up making–you’ll have to fiddle with it a bit and figure out what shape arch looks best for what you are doing.  But basically, you just need to have one person pin one end of the string down (this effectively, is the center of the circle that your arch is a part of), and then tie or hold the other end of the string to a pencil, carefully drawing your line by moving the pencil along in an arc at the end of that string.  You’ll have to practice a few times without making a mark to really figure out what works best.  I am sure there is a more precise way of doing this, but I was never any good at math, so this is quite mathy enough, thank you!

You’ll wind up with a pretty legit arch:

You can see I screwed up a few times. (meh.)

It was time for my favorite tool: the Dremel Trio, which is a handy-dandy little multi-function router-thingy (it routs, it sands, it cuts, it slices, it dices!  JK on the last two–I got carried away).  Carefully, I cut along my not-so-painstakingly-done guidelines.  You can see I didn’t make the cleanest cut….

The arch I wound up cutting was wobbly, at best.  But I figured that because I wanted this headboard to be pretty weathered and beat-up looking, having a wobbly top edge wasn’t the worst thing in the world.  I did sand the living daylights out of the top, which took the wobbliness down quite a bit.

Next, it was time to beat the wood up.  I wanted some glaring imperfections, so I gathered a few weapons and took my aggressions out on this poor, innocent headboard.

Some of my favorite distressing techniques/tools include: tapping a nail in little clusters to emulate worm holes, letting a grinder skip across, repeatedly hitting with both ends of a hammer, etc. Distressing wood is fun.

If there are any splintered wood bits from all your abuse, be sure to give those a quick sand.

Time for stain!  I began with a layer of grey stain (Varathane Weathered Grey).

Next, I layered on a basic brown stain (what we had sitting around: Minwax Early American):

I hate the smell of stain.  I cannot think of anything worse than that smell, right next to my head, soaking into my sheets, as I try to sleep.  Ugh.  So, at this point, we left the headboard outside for several days to air out.  I’ve also read that if you scrub white vinegar on it, it helps to neutralize the smell.  So I did this….a few times.  I like to believe it helped.  Honestly, I think it did.

As is typical of most of our projects, there was no rain in the forecast, yet it began to rain, so we had to move the operation into the garage (which ain’t great for photos).  The next step was to do a white-washed effect over the top of the stain.  I used some semi-gloss Behr Swiss Coffee white paint that we had sitting around.  Using a cheap wooden brush (I like the effect the coarse bristles create), I would load it up with paint and then brush most of the paint off into a rag before rubbing and brushing it onto the headboard.

This is what a ‘drybrush’ looks like. You can brush this on for a streaky, wood-grained effect, and you can also use it to smudge areas and create a sort of color haze.  You don’t want there to be any areas of thick paint–if you accidentally get some, use a dry rag to rub it off as much as possible.

Finished white-washing.

Again, we let this sucker sit in the garage for a few days to air out (also, before I started painting, I mixed a tablespoon of vanilla into the gallon of paint, which helps neutralize the paint fumes without affecting the color).

The final embellishment came in the form of metal star ‘nailhead’-looking trim.

My source for these little pretties is one of my best. kept. secrets.  And I’m gonna go ahead and reveal it to you….deep breath: King Architectural Metals (www.kingmetals.com).  This is where I acquire all sorts of metal bits and bobs (wrought iron fence pieces, cast iron star washers, barn stars, etc.) It is pretty much my most favorite, random, wonderful place to shop.

I went ahead and drilled a center hole in each little star (taking care to remove or sand off any resulting sharp spurs).  I then pre-drilled a hole into the headboard where I wanted each star, and then nailed them each into place with a little furniture tack (acquired from the home improvement store).

We finally placed the headboard and secured it to the wall with a couple of screws in the legs.

There you have it!  A nice little addition to our nice little bedroom, if I do say so myself.

Close-Enough-to-Finished Master Bedroom Makeover

Well, it’s finally pretty darn done.  I can barely believe it.

Let’s do the before and after tour, shall we?

Master entry hallway, before.

Entry hallway, after. Closet curtains are still there….the closet deserves its very own makeover post when our bank account recovers from this one.

A close-up of our hallway photo wall. It is my intention to fill this whole wall, but all things in due time!

Remember this? The main bedroom, before.

The main bedroom, after. Love that plank feature wall. Love it.

A great shot of the ‘starfish wall’ (tutorial coming soon!).

The opposite wall, before.

The opposite wall, after. Those collage photo frames? I was never really in love with them. But I had to use them somehow! See how I hacked them into this ‘stained-glass window’ wall decor in an upcoming tutorial post.

Remember this before?….the all-important dog bed and cluttered nightstand.

Same view, after. It wouldn’t be fair if Chance didn’t get a dog bed makeover, now would it? Those are the same ole Ikea Hemnes nightstands, with a bit of a color and distressed-finish upgrade.

Here’s a good shot of our DIY weathered wood headboard (tutorial coming soon!). It’s nice to have an actual headboard….such grown-ups, we are!

Here’s a little close up of the vignette on my nightstand. I heart pink peonies in a blue mason jar. I just heart them.

Remember how the wall opposite the bed looked before? Abbie does.

After. It’s amazing what a little bold color and crisp white trim will do to a wall, eh?  Although, it feels like something is missing….

Ah. There we go.  Now we can move on.

Tree branches: no master bedroom is complete without.

The french door leading out onto what will soon be a lovely pergola-covered back deck. Right now, it is the deck of death; old and rickety and consummately terrifying.  We don’t go out there.  We don’t look at it.  We don’t even speak of it.

Before: the view back down the hall towards the living room–aka, the escape route.

Alas, the unfinished closets still require our attention, as does the attic hatch in the ceiling. Such is why this post is called ‘Close-Enough-to-Finished’. Close enough, it’s close enough.

That’s about the gist of it!

A few random notes here:  after doing our master bathroom makeover, and slapping that dark, dark, dark grey on the walls in such a small space, I arrived at two decisions.  The first is that I love dark walls with white trim–I adore the contrastiness of it (I like to make up words).  The second is that since the master bedroom is also a small and innately dark room, we should just own it and go dark on the walls there, too.  If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Of course, we tempered the darkness a bit by making the plank wall, as well as a lot of the linens, white.  That always helps.  So do pops of cheerful color.  I think part of the reason I drug my feet on this room for so long was that the voices in my head were at odds with each other over painting the walls some light, gentle color (as logic would dictate you do in a small, dark room).

We were also on the fence about whether we wanted to swap out the existing blue glass pendants for something else.  And when I say ‘we’, well, you probably know what I mean.  Functionally, the pendants are completely awesome–it is brilliant to not have a lamp to knock over on the nightstand (I may or may not flail my arms when I am asleep).  I personally love them, but I’m not 100% sure that they are 100% what I am looking for in those spots.  But do I ever need to be 100% sure about any design choice?  Nope.  I’d say pulling the decision trigger at a respectable 85% is fine.  So the pendants stay; I like the color, I like the transparency (they do, after all, hang in front of those windows), and I like the price tag (ie: already bought).  Works for me!

It is abundantly satisfying to be sleeping in a ‘finished’ room.  The bare drywall edged windows, primed walls, and mish-mashed furniture were great and all, but….change is good.

The Start of the Finish of the Master Bedroom

For those of you who have been keeping tabs on us, you know we’ve been through a pretty serious top to bottom renovation of our 105-year-old house.  After five years of of these shenanigans, we have finally gotten to the master bedroom, and as we put the finishing touches on it, I thought I would regale you with a series of ‘before’ shots to really get you in the mood.

The photo above shows the original master bedroom of the house when we bought it….I didn’t take many photos because we ripped into that part of the house so fast the ink was hardly dry on our escrow papers.  This isn’t a totally fair ‘before’ shot, either; you see, we didn’t even make this the master, or even a bedroom.  But you can see the master bath there, leering at you from the right-hand door….that awful, awful bathroom–we let that stay where it was, but did some pretty major tweaking to it (see that makeover here).  We chose to put the actual bedroom on the other side of the bathroom, in a room that was….well, we don’t even know what it was.  And strangely, I took no photos of it until we started ripping down ‘walls’ (I use quotes because what we found was that most of the walls in this house were actually 1×12 boards nailed up and covered with wallpaper.  The structure of the house defied physics and basic common sense).

As you can see, we started a touch of demo when I snapped this picture.

Here’s a photo of the original master bedroom once we had started our gleeful destruction:

Here, you can see where we are opening up the hallway that will lead to the new master bedroom.  You can also see the shards of ‘wall’ that are coming down.  Good times.

So eventually, we got some legitimate structural walls put up, you know….since this is a house with a roof and all, and arrived at a master bedroom that was finished but not finished.  You feel me?

For five years, the master has looked like this:

The entrance hallway: to the immediate right is the master bath, and to the left is a series of curtained closets. Curtained closets are for people who can’t afford closet doors.

I give you….the bedroom. In all it’s primed-wall, trimless, paintless glory.

A hodge-podge of cast-off furniture completes a very sophisticated college-dorm look. Dang, this place really needs some black-light posters. The white dog would look pretty epic in black-light.   I digress.

The all-important dog bed and cluttered nightstand.

Looking back towards the hallway and closets.

The escape route back to the living room.

I hate to do this to you, but this is it for now.  I just wanted to set the scene and show you how we’ve been living for the past several years.  The Texan is constantly baffled by my lack of initiative with this room and how I have let it stay like this for so long.  It’s very unlike me.  But I only just found my inspiration….so stay tuned, because the ‘After’ post is coming soon!  I swear.  Really, it is.

DIY UpCycled Vertical Planter

After doing so much renovation work on our house, there’s quite a few bits and pieces sitting around that didn’t get used.  A couple of windows, two sinks (yes, two sinks–don’t ask), and a gable vent.  What’s a gable vent, you ask?

That’s a gable vent.  It’s supposed to vent our attic.  But we thought–eh, no thanks, vents are overrated.  (JUST KIDDING–we wound up using a different vent than this one).  The second it went in the ‘leftovers’ pile, I knew I wanted to plant it–just look at it!!!  It’s begging to be planted.

The first thing I decided to do was remove the flanged edges, because they are a little sharp and added an unnecessary element of mortal danger for a planter.  In my opinion.  They are just spot-welded on in a couple of places and with a flathead screwdriver and hammer, it’s pretty easy to pop those suckers off.  And gloves.  Wear gloves.  Sharp edges.

The edgeless vent looks much cleaner….

….and much less finger-cutty.

At this point, I strung a heavy-duty wire along the upper edge of the backside of the vent (just strung it through the grating), as I intended to hang the finished product.  I neglected to get photos of this step.  FAIL.

The next step was to line the backside of each vent pocket (there is metal grating across the entire backside of the vent).  I decided to use coffee filters.  I wet them and stuck them inside each section along the inside of the grating.  I also neglected to get photos of this step.  Double FAIL.

I then filled each section with potting mix, and selected my plant material.  I decided to go with succulents, as I intended to hang this on a fence and knew I would forget to water it most of the time–so I needed to go with something that would cut me a little slack.  Yay, succulents!

For the ‘stripes’ I chose two different types of sedum, and then as an accent I tucked in some random echeveria and aeonium ‘blossoms’ (at least I think that’s what they are–I am no succulent know-it-all and these were unhelpfully unmarked at the nursery).

That bottom ledge wasn’t very conducive to planting, so I decided to display some seashells on it. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I should probably tell everyone that I laid this flat for a couple of weeks for the roots to take hold.  I should probably say that.  But I did not.  I am impatient.  I packed those suckers in there and hung it on my fence post-haste.  It’s holding up just fine!  But for best results, you might want to let yours sit and marinate flat for a bit.  I’m just saying.

I love this so much that I think I am going to go to Lowe’s and get me a few more of these vents and hang several along this section of fence.  The expanse of white fence makes me nuts.  I must fill it with randomness and apologize to no one!!!

Scrap Wood Garden Edging

We have a very long driveway.  Along this driveway runs a very long planter bed.

This is what it looked like when we bought the house:

So originally, we built a raised bed of pressure-treated wood to hold in all the dirt.  For the last few years, it’s looked like this:

Nevermind the squirrel-hunting hijinks happening here (and also nevermind the pre-renovation ramshackle garage).

When we acquired the chickens, there was a whole lot of this going on in those beds:

And this:

It looks bad, I know. This looks like roadkill. But this is a seriously contented bird lolling in the warm dirt.

And this:

And so, most days, our driveway winds up looking like this:

And this:

Because of some very serious neat-freak issues, this just wasn’t working for me.  The obvious solution is to fill the planters with so much vegetation that there is no free dirt for the ladies to get into….but this is a huge bed to fill, and, though I am working on it, I needed a quicker solution (and also, I happen to get a kick out of watching their dirt bath antics).

Enter our ever-expanding piles of scrap wood:

With so many projects going on all the time, we are constantly collecting remnant wood….in fact, most moments, we are completely overrun with scrap because I refuse to throw it away.  So when we can come up with a use for it, especially a cute use for it….I get unnecessarily excited.

The scrap that I used for this started in all shapes and sizes: slabs of plywood, bits of 2×4, planks ripped off the side of the old garage, cedar fencing, and more.  You may remember this photo from a previous post about our scrap pile.

I selected my victims and cut the wood into completely random bits, all roughly around a foot or so tall (but sometimes as short as 6 inches tall, just to get a really good gap-toothed vibe), varying widths.  There was really no rhyme or reason, at all.

Then I gathered up all my miscellaneous cans of leftover house paint (my theory was that these were all colors I had used throughout the house and garden and so, therefore, they’d coordinate.  Right?  Right.), and painted them randomly and sloppily.  A lot of these pieces already had old paint on them–I slapped new paint on a few of them, but mostly left the old weathered pieces alone.  Also, I left quite a few pieces completely unfinished.

I wanted the paint finish to be patchy on these, because I want them to weather a bit naturally–I like the look of old, chippy weathered wood.  Obviously, if you want these to last a good long time, you’d better seal them up really well and not follow my lead.  But I want mine to weather.  I may seal them once they’ve aged a bit.  We’ll see.  I get distracted pretty easily.

After the bits and pieces dried, we screwed them in, in random order to the inside edge of the pressure-treated wood curb.  Obviously, not everyone has such a curb–I share my recipe for a stand-alone version down below.

The real point of this edging, for me anyhow, was to keep the chicken dirt bath spray somewhat contained.  Remarkably, it’s totally working!

The chickens don’t seem the least bit fazed by it.

The varying heights of the edging allows for some very lazy bug picking maneuvers.

Squirrel hunting is a much tidier affair now that the edging is in place. Chance approves (actually, it’s quite obvious in this photo how much he could actually care less).

We are currently in the process of turning our back garden into a ‘Chicken Garden’; what was once my enchanting, flower-filled oasis has literally gone to the birds.  As part of this do-over, I want to use this scrap edging back there, as well.  The only problem is, there’s no wood curb to attach it to….we needed to modify it so that it could be free-standing.

From Home Depot, I grabbed some cheap garden-variety garden edging that comes in two foot strips that click together on the ends.  I also got me some metal garden stakes.

For my purposes, the metal stakes needed a couple of holes drilled into each of them (though I am sure there are stakes that come like this, I just haven’t found them yet).  This is a little time consuming, but easy enough with a metal drill bit.

Now lay out your wood pieces and attach the plastic edging to their backsides with an industrial stapler.  Let the pointy side of the plastic edging stick out beyond the bottoms of the wood pieces–this goes into the ground and helps stabilize the whole thing.

Now screw in your stakes, one on each end of the two-foot length of edging.

Finally, pick your spot, and pound that sucker into the ground.

Unfortunately, the Chicken Garden is a work in progress….you’ll see the final results of this edging project when I do the reveal post on that.  Soon!  Very sooooon.  Bear with me.

Butterfly Wreath

It’s about that time of year when I start to fiddle with things on my front porch.  We’re through Easter, on our way towards summer, and I want some seasonal decor that will carry us along till those reds, whites, and blues start popping up.  After considerable consideration on where to go with this springtime spruce up, I decided that I wanted to run with the ‘Farmhouse Red’ of the front door (which is really a saturated orange), and do a decor scheme based on that.  So what to do for an orange-y springtime wreath?  What to do, indeed….

I feel that it is necessary for me to state that I have a bit of a closet butterfly obsession.  I love me some butterflies.  I should also state that I have a plethora of craft butterflies leftover from my floral design days (and when I say ‘plethora’, I mean plethora–ask the Texan….they are everywhere) that I am always trying to figure out what to do with besides sticking an occasional one in a whimsical flower arrangement.  So, well DUH…. butterfly swarm on a wreath.  I’m surprised it took me this long to figure it out.

I started with a wreath form that I actually made myself, from grape and wisteria vine, but any old craft store-type grapevine wreath would work great.

And then, of course, I selected my victims: you know the ones, those craft-store beauties made from painted feathers with wires attached.  I chose to go with a mixture of orange, yellow-orange, and coral, both large and small variety.  Those wires often come in handy, but for this project, I popped them off.

I fired up the glue gun, and began to glue them in a random fashion to the wreath form.  I wanted this to look like a natural cluster swarm, which meant that there was no rhyme or reason to the orientation of each butterfly; some are right side up, some are pointing down, some were glued to the sides and top of the wreath.  Asymmetry is key here.

Additionally, I did not want the whole wreath to be filled up; I felt it would look more natural for part of the grapevine to be showing.

An unexpected bonus of this particular wreath?  The view from the inside of the door:

Love.  It.

Stay tuned for a full disclosure of the rest of our spring porch mini-makeover.