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• GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, May 23rd at 8pm EST or at 10,000 entries (whichever comes first)
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Note: We aren’t paid or perked for hosting these giveaways, we just do ‘em to thank you awesome folks for stopping in. See our Giveaway FAQ page for more info. Pics courtesy of Comfort Works.

You can relate to that feeling, right? The whole something’s-off-but-I’m-not-sure-what-it-is thing? Moving the art together above the bed on Friday was a start, but we actually have a bunch of changes on the agenda for this week in the hopes of cracking the case and making “that room where we sleep” feel a little more like “that room that we love!” Of course we know that a big ol’ transformation doesn’t happen overnight, but we also have seen firsthand how a few updates and switcheroos can go a long way in remedying that “hmmmm, something’s just not right” feeling that has probably popped up at least three dozen times in our last five years of DIYing. So we know it well.

We’ve learned that the only real way to get any closer to something that feels right is just to play around and see what you like and what you don’t. The ol’ trial and error approach. Because if you’re sitting there frozen in fear or over-thinking things to the point that you’ve lost all momentum it can get sticky. So without further ado, let’s get into the first tweak, which has already taken place. And it’s kind of a biggie. It all started when we saw the rug on the bottom of this picture at an outlet liquidation sale…

We weren’t looking for a bedroom rug, although we weren’t ruling out the idea of changing anything in that room (because remember, everything in there was guilty until proven innocent- haha). I had actually said to John “the jute rug in the bedroom could always move out to the dining room since we’re planning on getting a natural fiber rug in there for under the table and it’s definitely big enough” – so I guess you could say we were open to anything. So when there was a big tent sale at our favorite lighting outlet (The Decorating Outlet), which also happens to sell rugs (it’s where we got the thick wool rug in Clara’s bedroom along with her blue capiz chandelier and the big glass pendants in our kitchen), we had to check it out.

And that’s when we saw the patterned blue rug in the picture above this one. And it was all over.

We love all of those colors (gray, navy, teal, white!) and the geometric pattern was totally calling our name. By now you know we’re suckers for a geometric rug, right?

They just do something to us. They make us feel alive. Oh yes, we live dangerously.

But back to reality. Since it was a thick 9 x 12 wool rug, we were nervous that even on sale it would be $700 or more, which is sadly way out of our price range. But when we checked out the tag, we almost couldn’t believe our eyes. Did that really say “was $1287.00, now: $250″ ?????!!!!!

That’s not 40 or 50% off – that’s over 80% off! So we asked the guy what was wrong with it to make it so cheap, since the tag said “soiled” as the reason for the discount. We hoped if it had a stain we might be able to hide that part of the rug under the bed or try to remove it with some crazy scrubbing ritual, but he actually told us it was ripped. As in, there was a hole right through it. Eeks. But thankfully the placement of the rip was in a corner, and although it looked like this if you picked it up and put your fingers through it…

… it looked like this when it was laid out on the floor. See the big gaping hole?

We didn’t either! The thick pile of the rug was so dense that the rip wasn’t even visible, let alone obvious. So you know what we did, right? We thanked our lucky stars that it was there. It was the only reason that we were able to get over $1000 off (!!!) and take home a $1287 rug for $250. We shoved that sucker into the passenger seat of the car faster than you can say “will-that-fit-in-an-Altima?” and I rode in the back with Clara, happy-squealing my way home.

To save you some scrolling, here’s a before pic of the old rug for ya again (remember we’re still missing major furnishings, like something in that nook, art on those bare walls, etc):

Next we pulled out the old rug that we’d love to relocate into the dining room under the table. We laughed at how naked that yellowed old floor looked. Someday we’ll refinish it, but until then our new rug will be in charge of de-naked-ifying things.

First John did some cute vacuuming to remove any dust/fibers leftover from the tent sale. Look how fast he is. He’s like Edward except he doesn’t sparkle in the sun or bite me for sport.

Next we shimmied it carefully under our bed. It probably took us a good twenty minutes to get it centered – just inching it back or to the side a little bit at a time.

We love it more than words can say. Although, to quote Tim Gunn, it’s a lotta look. Haha. Still missing major furnishings/art of course, but we’ll get there. So some folks might go for something less patterned or colorful for their bedroom, but we think one of the main “what’s wrong with this room” issues for us was that it didn’t feel happy or fun or “us” at all. And now it does. Oh happy day.

See how this room could almost be anyone’s bedroom?

And see how the room above it probably couldn’t be most people’s bedroom? Haha. That’s the beauty of a room that feels like you. It almost feels like it couldn’t be anyone else’s. So I’m sure there are lots of folks out there who would pass on this baby, but we decided when we moved into this house that we were going to make a playful, happy-go-lucky little love nest for our family. So we’re cool with waking up to a room that “smiles” back at us. Sort of like how we love our chipper living room and guest room (which have those other colorful geometric rugs going on):

I know, I know – things in the bedroom look a lot less polished or finished than those two rooms above. True dat. Look at that naked nook and those bare walls. But things always look crazy in the middle. Heck, sometimes things don’t really click into place until the very last tweak has been made, and I’d say we’re at least a dozen tweaks away from the final tweak (the pillows, curtains, and lamps might be the first to get some tweak-age now that there’s a new rug in town). But we’ll get there someday…

Nothing is safe when we have our tweaking hats on. Haha. But thanks to the new rug we’re invigorated and excited to play around a little more and see where we end up. So expect a few more changes throughout the week as we try our hand at a few other switcheroos and snap pics for you as we go. Some might fail, others might work- so it’s all about playing around in the name of figuring this room out a little more.

And can we talk about how plush this guy feels underfoot? Excuse me for mentioning the original price again, but have you ever walked on a $1287 rug before? We hadn’t either. It’s what we imagine the carpets in The Donald’s house might feel like. Super super plush. Like double thick. Burger even lounges on the rug now (he used to lounge exclusively in the bed, so it’s funny to see him sprawled out on the floor these days). It’s nice to know that we have the doggie stamp of approval.

What did you guys do this weekend? Any deal hunting, rug rolling out, or super fast vacuuming? John also ran his buns off at the James River Scramble (it’s sort of a rocky trail run/10K) and we loved cheering him on. We also squeezed in a stroll around the art museum (Clara loves VMFA) and dropped in on a new doughnut shop that opened. Good times. What were you guys up to?

Well, over us.

Shall I explain why these Beatles lyrics are so apropos? I think I shall. But first I shall stop saying shall. Do you remember these puppies that we picked up at a yard sale last year for $10 a pop? They’re old professionally framed prints of the berries and wildflowers of Alaska, which we thought were sweet since we honeymooned there.

So we spray-painted the frames (and mats!) and hung them on either side of our bed. If that doesn’t jog your memory, perhaps this old pic from that post shall will.

Well, recently they’ve – say it with me now – come together.

Here’s how it all went down. Actually, speaking of going down – it kinda started when a certain ram went down during our book shoots.

Since neither all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men could put Ramsey back together again, the space above our bed has been a devoid of anything for a couple of months. We’ve contemplated tracking down a similar animal head (an idea Sherry practically salivated over) but you know we like to use what we have, so we decided we should just try rehanging the prints we already had there. Before making any unnecessary holes, we took them down and just propped them up like this to try to visualize them there.

We originally thought the chandelier might block too much of them, but it looked promising so we decided to just got for it. But this was no easy task because those heavy suckers need two anchored screws to keep ‘em in place. Plus we had to be careful to get them centered within the bed and level with one another, all while not putting too many holes in the wall.

Thus began our not-so-scientific, but no-less-intricate system of rehanging them. It started by connecting my existing holes (which I had meticulously measured the first time) with a piece of sewing thread taped to the wall to create a nice level guide.

Just to be sure, I checked that it was level before basing all of my marks on it. Phew. Level it was!

Now that we had the height marked, we had to figure out where the holes needed to go side-to-side so that the frames were roughly equidistant from each other and the bed posts. So I drew a sketch and unleashed my inner math geek. Yep, I think that what I did qualifies as Algebra. Well, except for the part where I solved “X” to equal “7-ish.” Sorry Mrs. Montgomery.

Knowing how far apart everything should be allowed me to start marking. The hole that the ram hung from was my center guide, so I measured out 13.5″ (half of 7 + half of 20) on either side to mark the center of each frame (#1 in the pic below). And since we hang these guys by two screws (it not only supports the weight more, but keeps it from hanging crooked) I made marks a couple of inches out on either side (#2). Sherry wanted the frames to hang slightly lower than they did before (since we no longer had to clear the table lamps and didn’t want them to be blocked too much by the chandelier) so I also marked down a bit using a taped guide on my level (#3).

Confused yet? Me too. So let’s just skip ahead to the after pictures. Okay? Okay. We ended up tweaking things a bit so the frames were a smidge closer to each other, so the space between them is about 5″ and the space on either side is almost 8″.

We’re digging the change so far. We feel like they fill up the space nicely – much more so than the ram ever did (not to speak ill of the dead or anything).

Although the chandelier does overlap them when you face the bed at normal height (these pics were taken with our tripod, which is only about four feet tall) it’s a nice layered look. Nothing too crazy or cramped looking.

Wish we had thought to snap a pic at our height for ya from head-on. We did get this guy from the side though. And there’s always next time.

But yeah, this room is so not done. Look at it wide. Um… we have a lot to do before it makes any sense. Seriously, I know you guys are staring at this bed in a sea of emptiness and wondering what the heck we’re doing. But in the words of $herdog: we got planz for dayz.

In fact, we have a few other things planned this weekend- and you know we’ll keep you posted! What do you guys have going on this weekend? Any house stuff on the agenda? Have you ever had to do math to hang pictures? Or tried using string to keep a level line on the wall? It actually worked surprisingly well.

Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner, click here to see if it’s you.

It’s time for our monthly showing of thanks to our sponsors (the folks who help make the other 30+ posts happen). This time we took Clara’s recent par-tay as an excuse to celebrate all of the worm-like objects they’re serving up. Just kidding, we went with our favorite pink and orange items since those were Clara’s colors (none of which have been gifted to us – here’s our no-swag policy). And as always, if you’re looking to save some loot, don’t miss the round-up of special discounts at the bottom.

• Confidence-boosting art prints from Silhouette Blue (hello right back atcha!)
  
• Nice Girl Notes. A blog so hilarious I LOL-ed at a post about wearing shoes.
• These colorful kids’ growth charts from Petite Lemon.
• Little White Chapel‘s vintage-style (and not budget busting) wedding jewelry.

• Half-off Safavieh indoor/outdoor rugs currently on Joss & Main.
• Z Gallerie‘s bold orange and cream summer throw (kinda worm-ish…).
• Shades of Light fueling our pouf addiction with this Gracian Maze pouf.
• These stone and glass mixed mosaic tile sheets from The Tile Shop.

• Finding cool applications of WallQuotes’ removable decals on their Facebook page.
• Jilly’s Happy Home living up to its cheerful name with these bright rose-shaped bowls.
• Watching artisan hardware being made on Liberty Hardware‘s Homegrown website.
• Three Designing Women & The Paper Cafe‘s pre-packaged address stamper gift sets.

• Fun old books that are waiting to be discovered on Ruby Lane. Don’t mind if I fondue…
• Heart & Stone Jewelry having even us dads covered for our upcoming holiday.
• Dot Coms For Moms rundown of 10 cool printables for kids. Howdy pinwheels!
• This simple but cool furniture stencil design from Royal Design Studio.
  

• This notebook from Smock Paper (it actually makes us want to take more notes).
• Personalized mini notes from Fabulous Stationery that would make great gift tags.
• Chic Shelf Paper‘s lollipop swirl pattern, which I know Clara would be a big fan of.
• This warm mood board from Bien Living Design – especially that print in the corner.

• This fun “kitchen cutlery” tote from Jenna Lou Designs (it’s on sale too!).
• Grown-up stuff from Sarah + Abraham, with chic initials and patterns.
• Madcanvases photo collages, which can also be custom ordered with personal photos.
• Making waves with this FLOR design in fun hues like Clementine, Sky, & Earthen.

And here are the deets on those DISCOUNTS:

• Shades of Light: 10% off using code YHL0811
• WallQuotes.com: 15% off with the code YHL15
• The Tile Shop: 10% off when you use the code YHL10
• Heart & Stone Jewelry: 10% off your with the code YHL10
• Royal Design Studio: 10% off stencils with code YHL10
• Jilly’s Happy Home: 10% off with code SPRING2012
• The Paper Cafe & Three Designing Women: 15% off with code PCYHL22
• Little White Chapel: 15% off with code YHL15
• Bien Living Design: $50 off a Long Distance Design when you mention YHL

Hi guys! I hope all is well in the Petersik house. I wanted to show you my 11 year old niece’s room that we helped her makeover. She would be so excited for her room to be featured! This was an accumulation of four very long months worth of work. We converted an old laundry room…

… into a little girls paradise. We patched holes, rewired lighting, installed ceiling speakers, re-worked the duct work, added FLOR tiles, and painted all of the trim and walls.

Then we added fun touches, like…

… new lighting and furnishings…

… like a brightly colored armoire that we painted a bold magenta color (it’s extra functional for clothing storage).

All in all, it was a labor of love and she’s so happy with her new space. I hope you love it as much as we do. Thanks so much! -Courtney

Thank you for sharing, Courtney! Not that I’ll even pretend to relate to an 11-year-old girl, but I can see why she loves it. It feels like a nice middle ground between all-grown-up and fun-and-youthful at the same time. Bravo! You guys can see more about the makeover here on Courtney’s blog. And so many of the ideas like painting that armoire bright pink and adding some over-sized art and a sculptural chandelier just might inspire some other tween room upgrades (or even a master bedroom reboot if you’re feeling bold). Let’s play the favorite part game. Sherry is in love with “everything in the second after picture” while I’m coveting that old-looking geometric sculpture in the last photo.

Which meant it was time to schlep his 31″ x 31″ creation up into the sunroom for some priming and painting. Just like our office cabinets, kitchen cabinets, and the play kitchen we made for Clara, I used a coat of Zinsser Smart Prime (it’s no-VOC but amazingly good for blocking bleed through when you’re painting raw or stained wood) followed by two coats of Bejamin Moore’s low-VOC Advance paint (really durable and awesomely self-leveling). I went with Decorators White since we had it leftover from painting the office cabinets and the play kitchen, so this step didn’t cost us anything. Here’s our little house when it was primed but not yet painted:

And here’s my first coat of paint going on (I used a brush for some of the hard to roll places and a small foam roller for the more expansive roll-able places – like the sides, roof, and back).

Then I gave it about 30 hours to cure up before it was…

… wallpaper time!

I actually used the following things that I already had in the house (I just ransacked my craft bin/gift wrap closet) to wallpaper the dollhouse:

• Top left: Gift wrap sheets picked up from a local place called Mongrel a few months back
• Top right: Decorative paper from Michael’s leftover from some other project
• Middle left: A roll of leftover decorative tape from Michael’s (I just taped four strips of it to a piece of card stock)
• Middle middle: More gift wrap from Mongrel (this one’s actually from a few years back)
• Middle right: More decorative paper from Michael’s
• Bottom left: Even more decorative paper from Michael’s (I have a nice pile of leftover paper under the bed)
• Bottom right: More gift wrap from Mongrel

As for how I did it, I cut templates for the back wall of each room using regular old printer paper (taping a few sheets together if it was bigger than one sheet and trimming things until it was a nice snug fit). Then I just used that paper template to cut out the right sized piece of gift wrap or decorative paper. I used double sided tape to affix them to the back wall of the dollhouse, and then brushed a thin coat of matte Mod Podge over each of them – just to give them some protection from being scratched or ripped (except for the room with the decorative tape, which was already shiny).

As for furniture, I bought a big “mixed lot” of old dollhouse furniture (most of it from the 50s/60s) from eBay for $30 including shipping. Oh and for those wondering about scale, it’s 1/2″ scale. This is what it looked like after it came and I soaked everything in hot soapy water to remove years of grime.

But since those colors weren’t exactly what we were going for, I turned to my good friend spray paint. We knew spray primer and spray paint was the best way to permanently update the furniture (no-VOC paint would most likely scratch off within one or two play-sessions – and we really want this to be a durable and long-lasting gift) but we didn’t want the dollhouse to smell all fumey like spray paint, so I actually ordered this furniture in February and sprayed it all in March so it could be left in the sealed off sunroom (and brought outside on sunny days) to off-gas for a nice long time. Thankfully there’s nothing stinky about it after all that curing time, and it actually looks pretty convincingly done – as if that’s the color the manufacturer sprayed on it a few decades back. Speaking of color, some of them got leftover dark brown spray paint (with built-in primer by Rustoleum) for the whole “wood look.”

But most of them got white primer + paint as a base (Rustoleum Universal in Satin White) …

And then some of them got a shot of bright color on top of that primer + paint base, just for fun (thanks to leftover cans of random colors). Who doesn’t love a yellow washer or fridge? They’re Sun Yellow by Rustoleum, and the turquoise dresser in the background is Lagoon by Rustoleum.

They sat around in the sunroom after their March paint job so long that they actually got dusty by May. Haha. So here they are after a little rinse-down in the sink.

I couldn’t wait to finally get things into the house…

I didn’t put much thought into what went where since I figure Clara will be moving things around, and we’ll probably add some more items (like some much-needed wall art – maybe by laminating photos that we’ll print).

Oh yes, but what about dollhouse people? We couldn’t find many that we liked (they either had ceramic faces that we worried Clara would shatter or were a bit too big for the scale of our furniture, or were just kind of scary looking) – although I later learned about these, which are pretty darn cute… so we went with Olivia’s family.

Clara loves Olivia, and when I saw a family set at Toys R Us that looked perfectly scaled for our house, we scooped them up. They’re bendy plastic so they seem pretty indestructible and Clara has so much fun putting them in different rooms (ex: “Olivia’s daddy is taking a nap” and “Olivia’s mommy is in the crib – so silly”).

Although everything changes each time Clara rearranges things, the room above is sort of a nursery with a crib, a vanity with a happy yellow chair (and tin foil that I added to make the mirror look more like a mirror), a baby piano (Clara loves playing one at Grammy and Tom Tom’s house) and a dresser. There’s even a little airplane “toy” for the nursery, that I found at Michael’s (it’s really a charm for a necklace, but the scale is right so I went with it). But more on how we’re keeping the super tiny things in the dollhouse Clara-safe in a second.

Speaking of scale, as John mentioned yesterday, we opted for an 8″ room height on the first two floors and a sloped attic that’d go from 6″ to about 10.” This was all a bit big for the scale of our eBay furniture, but we wanted to err on the side of giving Clara plenty of room to move around rather than being sticklers for scale – and who doesn’t love a room with extra high ceilings anyway?

The room below is sort of a playroom/ extra bedroom without a bed (remember this whole thing is still evolving, haha) so it’s mostly filled with random furniture, a fabric rug that came with the dollhouse lot, a small frame that I found at a thrift store for a nickel with the glass removed and a piece of tinfoil in there to make it resemble a leaning mirror, and a small potted topiary that I found at Michael’s from the wedding aisle (it’s actually a place card holder).

Oh and see those “ceramic animals” on top of the blue dresser above? They’re just plastic beads I found at Michael’s. I thought it was cute to add some animal friends to Clara’s dollhouse, and although Clara’s past the putting-things-in-her-mouth stage, a few smaller accessories like these and the previously mentioned toy airplane get put away in a box that only comes out when we’re playing together (so if she’s playing alone they’re not in there for her – just in case she gets any crazy ideas…).

The laundry room might be my favorite room. The metallic tape I used for the wallpaper doesn’t photograph as great as it looks in real life, but in person it’s kind of swanky and geometric. I loved spraying the utility sink and the washer bright yellow and adding that cute pink basket on the floor. And see that black thing hanging on the wall? It’s a thrift store find for 10 cents (it was some sort of plastic frame ornament or something) but I used leftover chalk board paint to make it into a hanging chalkboard by just painting the plastic disk inside the frame and hanging it up.

I love that we can change the message whenever Clara asks me to write something new (it actually says “Moooo!” right now at her request).

The next room is the bedroom, complete with a paper rug (I thought laminating it would make it last longer, but Clara has yet to pick it up and crush it so we’ll have to see if I get around to it). I’d also love to make fabric rugs from old scraps from her monthly pics someday, so I’ll keep you posted.

Oh and see the tiny metal camera on the dresser and the small flower pot on the other dresser above? Those are little doodads I found for a few bucks at Michael’s (the camera is a charm for a necklace actually – it’s another one of those things I tuck away when Clara is playing by herself since it’s so small). They also sell tiny flowerpots and fake flowers so I made that little potted plant and painted the terra cotta pot with the same pink nail polish that I used to make chevron pillows and a matching pink duvet skirt on the bed.

Here’s the bathroom with a mint green sink, and the other one of those plastic thrift store frame ornaments. Instead of making this one another chalkboard, I just put some tin foil behind the plastic pane and made it into a mirror for over the sink.

Oh and Clara was sad the potty didn’t open at first, but then was very excited when I taught her we could flush it by making a swissssssshhhhhhh noise with our mouth. Now Olivia and her family hang out in the bathroom a lot.

The living room is in dire need of some art on that blank wall, but it does have a funny little retro record player/TV cabinet (the white thing) with a “ceramic” rhino on top of it, so that tickles me.

My favorite guy in there is the tiny Burger I found on eBay. You bet I paid $3 plus $3 shipping to have him represented in the house. Haha. Clara was pretty psyched to see him. She calls him “Baby Burger.” It’s very sweet.

Next to the living room is the kitchen, with an oven/stove and a sink (complete with tiny dishes in it, which also go away when Clara plays alone because they’re pretty small) and a happy yellow refrigerator. I also made the table with the top of a little wooden box I had lying around and used a small paper gift box as the base. Another homemade flowerpot + faux flower combo went on top along with chairs from the eBay lot of furniture. Oh and that’s another paper rug I just quickly made and might get laminated for protection (or it’ll get replaced with a fabric one I’ll make down the line).

After loading in all the furniture, it was time to top it with a bow…

… and carry it out of hiding and into the living room for Clara to discover after her nap.

She ran right in as if it had always been there and picked stuff up and got right down to the business of playing.

We even captured the whole thing on video for ya:

It was so cute to watch her little brain work out that things were too small for herself, but perfectly sized for Olivia and her family.

The little family of pigs was definitely her favorite part at first and slowly she picked up on things like baskets and chairs and the crib, bed, and toilet- which became fun to work into Olivia and her family’s routine.

I was happy that she seemed equally comfortable playing with things on the top, middle, and bottom sections of the house. Just like her parents, she seemed to like hopping from room to room when it came to rearranging things. Haha.

We love that nothing is too precious to worry about because we really wanted it to be something she could go to town on without fearing that delicate things could be broken.

Thankfully since the furnishings are all plastic or metal, they should hold up to Hurricane Clara.

Oh yes, and the fact that Olivia is holding a kitty = Clara’s favorite part (other than discovering Baby Burger). The girl loves her animals!

Here’s the family congregating in the living room…

In the end, Clara decided everyone was tired and they should all take a nap in the crib.

So it’s safe to say that she likes it. Whew. The next morning it was the first thing she talked about as we got her our of her crib. And we might like it a little more than adults should too (not that we played with it after she went to bed, ok maybe we did just a little).

As for the budget breakdown, here ya go:

• Wood: $35 (we did get to reuse a scrap piece we had for the back to keep costs down)
• Nails and wood glue: $0, already owned (but they might run you $5 if you don’t have them)
• Primer & paint: $0, leftover from painting other things like cabinets & the play kitchen ($70 would get you a gallon of each that would probably last for a ton of furniture painting projects like ours have – even big ones like cabinet painting)
• Dollhouse furniture: $30 (including shipping) bought as one “lot” on eBay
• Michael’s doodads: $5 (small flower pots, faux flowers, beads, camera and airplane charm, etc)
• Baby Burger: $6 (including shipping) on eBay
• Olivia’s family: $10, Toys R Us
• TOTAL: $86

Thanks to having lots of those odds and ends on hand (primer & paint, decorative paper and gift wrap, Mod Podge, and even a piece of scrap wood for the back of the dollhouse) we were able to come in almost $15 under our $100 goal. Actually $86 is lower than all of the used wood dollhouses that we found on Craigslist. Which I think means that momma should get $15 to spend on future upgrades and furnishings, right? Haha. Can’t wait to see how this thing evolves as Clara grows!

Have you guys used things like gift wrap and decorative tape as wallpaper? Any other plastic-beads-turned-ceramic-animals out there? We heard so many awesome ideas in yesterday’s post, from carpet samples or even wood/tile on the floor to using tongue depressors to make shingles. Love it all.

More accurately, those cold sweats turned into regular sweats since starting this project required a bit of basement cleaning first. Remember this mess?

I didn’t get rid of much of anything yet, but I did give it the ol’ “quick tidy” so I’d at least have a clean workspace to get a-dollhousing in. Here’s the “not-after-but-not-as-bad-as-the-before” result:

After giving myself a brief pat on the back for that, I moved on to dollhouse planning and material buying. Sherry loved the idea of priming/painting/decorating the dollhouse, so she called those parts of the task while leaving the entire design up to me except for very casually suggested a three-story house with seven rooms. After some thought I landed on something most similar to the Under The Sycamore’s version show above, except with a different room arrangement.

We decided on 1 x 8″ basic white wood as our building material. It was cheap and light, but sturdy and wide enough to make for easy play. We also opted for an 8″ room height on the first two floors and a sloped attic that’d go from 6″ to about 10.” This was all a bit big for the scale of furniture that Sherry had found on eBay (more on that in her Part 2 post) but we wanted to err on the side of giving Clara plenty of room to move around rather than being sticklers for scale – and who doesn’t love a room with extra high ceilings?

My total for all of my building materials (just wood since I already had nails) was about $35 and I started off by cutting everything except the roof pieces to size, creating a box that was roughly 30″ wide and 24″ tall. I also cut the walls for my first two floors (not shown) to 8″ tall and used my table saw to shave a bit off the side so they were slightly narrower than the floors.

I wanted to affix the walls to the bottom and middle floors first, so I measured and marked where I wanted each divider to go. The two marks on the wood below represent each side of the wall board so I knew exactly where I wanted it to sit.

I’m usually a screw guy (that sounds weird, I realize) but I didn’t want Clara’s dollhouse to be riddled with screw holes and potentially split boards. So I opted instead to use a combination of wood glue and nails. I know lots of people swear by wood glue, but I just find it messy, time consuming and harder to reverse. But I put our differences aside and squeezed a line of it on each wall before putting in place. It actually worked really well.

I clamped two scrap pieces of wood (those two pieces of wood under the clamps weren’t part of the dollhouse, they were just pinching the perpendicular piece of wood to hold it up). This method helped keep things steady for a couple of minutes while the glue got a grip.

And since I’m impatient, I carefully tipped the whole thing over so I could drive a couple of nails into the wall board from the bottom. Now it’s hopefully more clear that the perpendicular piece of wood is the wall and the piece of wood on the bottom is the floor of the dollhouse (those two pieces of wood clamped above the base are just there to steady the wall I added while the glue dried and I banged in those nails).

So here’s what I was left with after putting up walls for the first two floors. I hadn’t tackled the third floor wall yet since I wanted to wait to finish the sloped roof to make sure my cut was accurate to a real roof, not my roughly sketched one. Oh and the first and second floors weren’t attached (hence them looking skewed in the pic below) – they were just both placed on the floor in a rough little layout of sorts.

Next I used the glue and nails method to affix the two sides, using another scrap board to help keep my corners at 90-degree angles. I also glued and nailed all of the walls into the floors above them.

One thing I didn’t point out earlier is that when I cut my side boards to length I actually did a slightly angled cut on the tops using my miter saw. The 15-degree choice was kind of an arbitrary “this looks like a nice shallow angle” decision, which I hoped would help my sloped roof rest evenly on the side boards.

I tried drawing some complex diagram of angles to figure out exactly how I needed to cut the peak of my roof, but I quickly realized how rough my 9th grade geometry was. So I figured I’d start with two 15-degree cuts butted up against each other and go from there. Luckily it worked out perfectly and I could scoff at Euclid as I glued the two pieces together.

Once my roof had dried enough I sat it in place to help measure the height of the center wall that would support it. Once that was cut (using two cuts of the miter saw to create a close-enough point at the tip) I glued and nailed it into place like the others.

With the roof also secured in place, this collection of boxes actually started to resemble a residence suitable for dolls.

But I still had to add a back side, which can be filed under the “two birds with one stone” column because I was able to take some thin plywood from my messy scrap pile (bird one) to make the back panel (bird two). I didn’t have a piece tall enough for the whole thing, but I was able to cut this one big piece so that the seam would be hidden behind the third floor board.

As for attaching it, you can probably guess the words about I’m about to type since I used the same method… I applied glue to the backside of the dollhouse frame, put the plywood down, and nailed it into place.

For the rest of the top I had to assemble a few scrap strips, which did create some seams. But we were already planning to caulk some other corners so it wasn’t a big deal to have a few other places to patch up before priming and painting it all to get a nice seamless end result.

Here’s the whole house after it was constructed. The last thing we wanted to do was affix the whole thing to a larger base to give it more stability. So this is a piece of 1 x 12″ that I cut to size and sanded so it had nice rounded edges.

A few more squirts of glue and swings of the hammer later, the construction phase of the d-o-l-l house (as we were calling it at this point to keep the secret from Little Miss Hears A Lot) was c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e.

It was actually surprisingly straightforward and took me about three hours in total (after about an hour of basement clearing out before I got down to business). And not that I’m gonna get all Victorian mansion on it, but it has given me the confidence to try to add some details like doors and windows (decorative, not functional) on the so-far blank backside at some point. But since all of this happened just a few days before Clara’s birthday, that’ll have to wait since the first priority was to get it all painted, decorated, and gifted by this past Monday (which was the bean’s big oh-two).

So Sherry will be back tomorrow with a giant breakdown of what she likes to call “the fun part.” You know, the priming, painting, furniture-ing, and decorating (there were too many pics/descriptions to squeeze it all into this post, but she’s working on it right now and can’t wait to share). Hilariously enough, I thought the fun part was building it, so I guess we’re a good pair. And in case you’re wondering, Clara is obsessed. As is Sherry. Even I want to play with it sometimes.

So it went over really well. And we all know that a happy wife/kiddo = a happy hubby. So… score! Has anyone else out there built a dollhouse? Or some other fun kid thing? Or been obsessed with hunting down eBay dollhouse furniture like the wife? Let’s chat… about dollhouses. Haha. Oh yeah, I’m man enough to say that.

The funny thing is that we realized I’ve been cutting John’s hair for seven whole years! And I’ve probably dished out 50+ other haircuts to other friends and family members throughout the last ten years (why yes I have cut my brother in law’s hair in the backyard of John’s parents beach house). So take this post for what it is, one not-professional gal’s take on how she grooms her man. An above the neck manscaping lesson if you will.

But since it’s extremely impossible to tell you how I cut John’s hair and a lot more descriptive to just show you, we actually made a video, thanks to the help of our handy little tripod. Look at that shaggy hair John had going on in this “setting up for the video” shot:

It’s amazing what a little at-home clippage can do. How YOU doin’ hubby?

But on with the video! Let’s get up close and personal with those light brown locks, shall we? Oh yes, and I have primer/paint all over my hands from Clara’s birthday dollhouse (more on that tomorrow).

For anyone who can’t watch the video with the sound on (mehaps you’re at work?) it’s actually still pretty easy to understand on mute (since you just have to see what my hands are doing to get the gist). And I’ve included a few written tips in bullet form below, just to help anyone with a sucker on standby who’s ok with you experimenting on their head. I say that in the most kind and loving way, since all of my friends and family who have let me go to town on their hair are pretty darn awesome. I actually haven’t had an oopsie since college (I went a little shorter than I meant to on a gal in dorms, but she totally had the bone structure to work it). Although now that I’ve made that claim I feel like I should knock on wood. Or John should, since he’d be the most likely person to have to walk around with a potential hair snafu if it ever were to happen. Anyway, on with the tips:

• I cut hair when it’s dry or very lightly misted with water because my experience when cutting wet hair has been that it “shrinks up” and is always shorter than I mean for it to be – which can lead to profuse apologies. Also hair that’s wet might not “lay” the way it does when it’s dry (ex: a cowlick might make itself known when hair’s dry and result in an uneven effect).
• I cut John’s hair at night after Clara’s off to bed so we can get ‘er done without distractions (no toddler running through the hair pile on the floor- which Burger thankfully avoids like the plague).
• I don’t use a buzzer and just shave John’s neck for him after the haircut with a regular shaving razor. That always makes things look nice and polished, and this way we don’t have to store a big hair buzzer (or pay for one).
• I use hair-cutting scissors that I got for like $5 from CVS. They don’t even have a brand name on them to pass along. Sorry!

• I use my fingers to keep things even. For example, when I cut John’s hair I cut it one-finger-length from his scalp, so it all stays that length. I go a little longer on top – maybe two finger lengths (see the video for more on this).
• I always try to cut hair vertically (ex: parallel to John’s spine) – except for trimming the line around his neck – since it can look dorky and block-ish if you cut things horizontally (parallel to the shoulders). It’s really hard to explain in words, but the video makes this much more clear.
• I’m not a pro, so this isn’t real hairdresser scoop. Haha. I’m just a crazy girl with a penchant for pickles and cutting hair – so this is just what works for me (and John, my sweet hair-model hubby).

Oh and here’s an after pic from the back, since that might help you guys visualize it from that angle.

Hope that helps any DIY-haircutting-hopefuls out there! Does anyone else host haircuts at their house? The craziest thing is that I just calculated that we have probably saved at least $700 in the past seven years just by me cutting John’s hair (not counting all the times that I cut my own hair or ask John to snip a straight line in the back when I need a little trim and can’t reach – which might be an additional $500 in savings over the years). That’s a lot of cheddar ceramic animals…

There was nothing especially offensive about the existing fixture – nor anything especially exciting about it. It felt sort of builder basic to us. And kind of “backstage make-up room” to us thanks to the long line of bulbs (long vanity + long mirror + long fixture = lots of long things). So we always told ourselves if we saw something that we liked better (maybe with more height and less width, without looking too pidly and delicate over such a large vanity and mirror) we’d upgrade and then donate the original – since we’re sure someone else might love it more than we do.

We randomly checked out a few home improvement stores over the past year and a half, but nothing really got our figurative motors running. That moment finally came about a month ago while Sherry was on Joss & Main and saw this:

We obviously liked the dark bronze finish and also liked its sort of industrial / outdoor feel. It was mildly reminiscent of both our guest bathroom light (an outdoor fixture we installed inside for that industrial feeling) and our front porch light (which came with the house).

And at $60 (down 40 bucks from the original $100 price) it was less expensive than a lot of the alternatives we hadn’t liked as much at the home improvement store. So we pulled the trigger.

The breaking news is that we finally got around to putting this baby in (first it sat on the counter for a few weeks, taunting us). Thanks to the position of our mirror, I had the pleasure of photographing myself a lot in the process. And thanks to the bathtub being in my way, I also got to play the role of the tripod a few times. Apparently my head isn’t very level…

You guys have probably seen me remove a light before, but if not – after turning off the power to the whole house (our fuse box isn’t labeled carefully enough for us to trust it blindly) I carefully removed all of the glass shades and bulbs (I’m a smidge accident prone around those things) and unscrewed the fixture from the wall.

That revealed this big metal plate that was secured to the wall… along with lots of nasty dust (hence my expression).

When I unscrewed the plate I was left with this imprint of what once was: some unpainted areas, a bit of rust, more dust, and some old paint drips.

After Sherry broke out a lead paint test stick (we got a pack of them from Home Depot about a year ago and they’re still coming in handy) we were relieved to get a negative result so I broke out my cheery little palm sander to smooth out those ridges left by the previous paint job so that our re-paint job will have a better chance of looking seamless. But re-painting’s a future task since we still have to settle on a color for this room (but you know we’ll keep you posted!).

With the old fixture successfully down, we brought in the new guy. Here’s what he looked like out of the box.

I screwed in the mounting bar (a simple task that took longer than usual because the included screws didn’t fit my junction box so we had to run to the hardware store to get different ones).

Then I attached the wires and screwed the new fixture in place. Pretend that giant unpainted spot isn’t there.

Once the metal shades were affixed and the bulbs were back in place, we had our new and improved light ready to go. My head-tripoding skills also appear to have improved.

We’re charmed by the extra bit of character this light brings to the otherwise still-ignored bathroom. Thankfully, the two 100 watt bulbs are more than enough to illuminate our small bathroom, and we’re excited about how the dark color of the fixture balances some of the dark accent tile around the room. We also like that it looks sort of old (like our house and many of the other industrial lights we’ve brought in). We have big plans for framing out the mirror, painting the walls, painting the vanity, getting new vanity hardware, doing something to the window, hanging some art, etc. So although it’s not looking too amazing right now, we’re inching towards something that might look cool someday. We hope. Haha.

We like how our new fixture better fills the space above the mirror (thanks to more height, which balances the ceiling-height shower curtain on the other side of the room). And we’re actually really happy with the quality of this light. It looks a lot more expensive than 60 beans, just because it’s not flimsy and the dark color is really matte and authentic looking if that makes sense. The little distressed areas don’t feel too country for our tastes, but they make it feel less mass produced and more “oh this old thing, we actually inherited it from Uncle Merlin and it has some great story to tell” – even thought that’s totally not the case.

And we already dropped the old light off at our Habitat For Humanity ReStore, so the switcheroo is officially complete. Hopefully we’ll have another update post with a paint color sometime soon-ish. And that giant mirror will look a heckova lot more legit once it’s framed out. But at the rate these hall bathroom posts have been appearing so far (along with posts about the guest bathroom, the playroom, and the sunroom – which are our other virtually untouched spaces thus far), I probably shouldn’t make any promises. We’ll get there someday!

What have you guys been hanging in the bathroom? Art? Lighting? Mirrors? Any favorite bathroom paint colors to share? Do you get nervous ordering a light you haven’t seen in person? We must admit we were a little sweaty when we clicked “buy” but we’re glad we took a chance.

Random.org did his duty once again and picked our winner of this pair of prizes as… Sarah (whose recently two-year-old daughter insists on telling everyone she is “mean”, and her response to everything is “You’re womp womp (you’re welcome).”) Congrats!

Since Clara is officially two years old today, we’re celebrating with a kid-themed giveaway featuring two $200 prizes. Are you sensing a two theme yet? The first comes from Sarah + Abraham who offer a slew of customized treats, including party supplies (banners, invitations, cupcake toppers), housewares (personalized plates, pillows, place mats) and more (stationery, water bottles, magnets, etc). They have fun modern patterns and custom silhouettes and we especially love their cartoon-y Olliegraphic plate that’s designed to look like your kiddo.

Our second $200 prize comes from Oilo Studio, who designs chic housewares for nurseries and kids rooms that are totally worthy of a grown-up room too. So you can make like some of their celebrity clientele (Christina Applegate & Rachel Zoe to name two – there’s that number again!) and score some lighting, pillows, furniture, or bedding. They offer bedding in crib, twin, and even queen sizes so you don’t even have to have a kid to enjoy the 200 beans they’re tossing your way.

• PRIZE: $200 to Sarah + Abraham and $200 to Oilo Studio
• TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “TWO ME!” and tell us…
• BONUS QUESTION: … your latest / favorite funny kid moment. We’re sure most of you have a good tale of something hilarious your (or someone else’s) child did, said, or wore. Heck, you can even share something wacky you did as a kid.
• GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, May 16th at 8pm EST or at 10,000 entries (whichever comes first)
• NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
• PRIZE SHIPS: The United States & Canada (although we do try to wrangle as many international giveaways as possible)
• USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here on Thursday for the announcement of our winner. Good luck…

Note: We aren’t paid or perked for hosting these giveaways, we just do ‘em to thank you awesome folks for stopping in. See our Giveaway FAQ page for more info. Pics courtesy of Sarah + Abraham and Oilo Studio.