Le Boudoir

I've been making progress on my great Anthropology inspired bedroom do-over!  I don't know about you but the whole Anthro design aesthetic makes me happy.  I love the mix of rustic, artsy, glamour.  This picture really sums up the look I'm going for.

The chandelier and the ottoman play with the rustic walls so nicely!

I've been wanting to try planks somewhere and yesterday (my day off)  I hit the road to scope out my options....


First it was Lowes, then Home Depot, then the lumber yard.

My top priority was affordability.  I really wanted to try these Hardi planks as done by Lauren Leonard interiors.

 I went everywhere looking for them and could only find them at a local lumber yard.  Problem was they had the words Hardi embedded in them all along the plank as nailing lines.  They couldn't even be cut off.  Maybe she had them installed on the reverse side. 

Anyway, I couldn't wrap my head around the Hardi plank dilemma so back I went to Home Depot!

I ended up getting these tongue in groove five and a half inch planks.  I'm only doing the one section for now and plan on painting the whole thing off white including the other walls.    This 8' X 5.5' section cost $100 including the nails.  I left a spot at the top for trim moulding.  If I end up wrapping around the other walls I'd just do it to the trim height and carry that top trim all the way around.

So here's where we left it last night.  Holes filled and primed!  I can't wait to get the table back in with a cute little skirt.  I'm going to hide all my make-up, hair dryer, etc under the skirt. 

I alway thought I'd put some kind of drapery in this opening but I came across this picture and really love the architectural interest it would add.

picture via

Oh well, off to my day job, no more dreaming today!

Aged Brick Fireplace

I've been in a flurry of activity on my days off lately...  and I must say that blogging has inspired and encouraged me to finish things on my to do list!

I was hanging on to this for a future blog post but was perusing my favorite blogs this morning and came across a post on Pure Style Home about this very subject.  If you're as addicted to design blogs as I am you most certainly know about Lauren Liess at Pure Style Home.  Her Mad Hatter Chair and fabric line are gorgeous!

I just love her natural, organic rooms that somehow have a touch of rustic glam and industrial chic!

If, per chance,  you haven't seen her room from the D.C. Design House you must go see it now! HERE!

Anyway, just so I could pipe in, I thought I'd share my experience with whitewashing brick.  As you can see I have a giant, DID I SAY BIG HONKIN' GIANT, fireplace.  It's kind of crazy and takes up the entire wall.  I have been working to improve this fireplace since forever.

Here's the before, before....

First I ditched all the fake ivy!  Yay!  and, built a new mantel all by myself!  Yay! 

This is the brick prior to my very light whitewash.

This is the after.   I know it's almost imperceptible but it does make a nice difference in person.   If you scroll between the two pictures you can see where I lightened the bricks.   In fact I plan on doing even more lightening and highlighting when the moment strikes me again. 

I started by taking some Martha Stewart Heavy Cream diluted with water.  It was very watery.  As it turns out the whiter, lighter paint (I tried a few) was too light with the tones in the brick.   I decided to go with the more golden, brown, camel tones in the brick and happened to have an oops sample from Home Depot. 

You can see here that I started on the left side with the whiter tones (too white for me) 

 Then, I transitioned to the more camel tones.  I even threw in a bit of grey here and there.

I just grabbed my kitchen sponge (I know, yuk!) and started splotching and dabbing the paint onto the brick to highlight it.  I thinned the paint a bit with water but not too thin.  Like pancake batter.  Then, just to be authentic (Grout has lime in it), I threw in a bit of unsanded grout that I had hanging around.   

As i said, almost imperceptible, but it really did make a big difference.  It has a more character.  I'm definitely going to lighten it a bit more!

Just looking at the pictures I can see a few spots that need a bit more highlighting.

Anyway, as I said I'd been thinking about this for a long, long time and have collected a bunch of brick pictures for inspiration in my pinterest


and, I also remembered that I had this book!

 There's a great recipe for painting bricks.  The recipe Kathryn uses is more layered with mauve paint as the base coat with highlights of grey, white, and more mauve.  This would be a great option for someone who doesn't have a good base to start with. 

Junk Chic is still available on Amazon      It has many great decorative paint finishes and I've referred to it quite often.

My best advice to anyone living with ugly brick is to be fearless!!  Get up, grab your brush, put on your favorite song, don't take a shower, wear messy clothes and Go for it!    

Freshen up!

I have been dying to paint this chest for so long.  But you know how it is...you get stuck sometimes. 

I can't tell you how many similarly painted chests I have in my pinterest

So, when I was out with Bandit this morning my daffodils just swept me away

I'm so glad I finally grabbed the brush.   What an improvement.

and all my stuff just goes with it!   The old purse I bought in Savannah, my old sconces, even the more modern crate and barrel vase...

O.k. Mom I approve

But now it's nap time...zzzz

You'll never see it from Staten Island

This is hands down the best window mistreatment I've ever done!
The silk draperies are done properly with interlining, hand sewn hems, hand sewn rings, but the sheers in the bay are a great disguise.   (ugh, note to self, take down the wire cover on chandelier!)

 I can't tell you how many compliments I get on the header of these sheers.  The whole thing started as a solution to a problem with my window.  The entire window is foggy and needs to be replaced.

But I've got many things to spend money on and replacing this window is not in my immediate future!

I ordered some very inexpensive (CHEAP!) sheer material from fabric.com

Then I cut a piece of 1X 2 to fit over each section of the bay and covered it with lining so the wood would not show through the sheer.  You can glue or staple the lining.

After that I gathered and stapled the sheer to the top of each board

Then I just screwed the board to the wall right above each window.  You can see the black screw in the middle.  I did that with each section of the bay.  The left side, the middle, and then the right.

I didn't even finish the raw side selvedge of the drapery!

Be sure to iron and sew your bottom hems.  I hand sewed mine but you could try iron on seam adhesive like stitch witchery.

When all the pieces were up and in place I just glued some gimp to the top edge to camouflage the upper edge.  It finished it off quite nicely.

I get more compliments on that little piece of gimp!

The Great Mantel Cover-up

Wow, what an undertaking that was!  I finally installed the mantel yesterday and I was relieved to be done with it...

It started out like this, with a simple idea to just cover up the existing concrete slabs poor excuse for a mantel!

It would have been a piece of cake if it wasn't for these weird corbel brick thingys 

I had to do several trips back and forth to do fittings of the bottom piece that had to be notched around the corbels.  In addition the depth of the right side was a half inch different than the left side, yippee, $%^&

you can see the cutouts for the corbels

Here it is all put together and on my dining room table

The crazy thing is 12 feet wide!

Here it is all glazed up.  The base color is Martha Stewart Brown Alpaca with a thin choc glaze over top.

Sorry for the fuzzy pic, my finger must've slipped.  I had to put a few pieces of 1 x 5 on the top as spacers for the mantel to lay on.  The whole thing was mounted using two wood blocks that are screwed into the wall on either side of the existing mantel.  Of course there were no studs anywhere to be found so I had to use giant butterfly toggle bolts.

All I did was slide the whole thing over the top and screw the new mantel to the wood blocks from the side.  


The room will be painted in the same Brown Alpaca color next week.  The pictures are not really reading true with the color.  In person it blends perfectly with the fireplace.  For some reason it looks different on film.  

It really turned out great.   I added a little extra glaze on the mouldings after it was up so those areas are still wet and look a little shiny.    I'll post some more pictures after the room is painted.

Phew!  I'm glad to be done with that!