Tag: DIY

We’ve got Swag

Alternate title: “How to Hang a Light (non-Hardwired)“

Second alternate title: “Something so Incredibly Easy I Don’t Know Why We Were Intimidated”

This quick and cheap (around $30) project has already made such a H-U-G-E difference in our dining zone, that I don’t care if our apartment complex dings our security deposit for the two holes we put in the ceiling. Anyway, here we go– starting with the “before” photo:

Our table is the perfect size for seating four people. Four feet in diameter, it doesn’t take up a ton of space. Unfortunately, this section of the apartment is pretty “blah.” Personally, I love the mismatched chairs with the zebra rug, but the space needed something dramatic to be a focal point and to spice up the pale tones we had going on here, namely the light wood table, light green chair in back, and white walls.

As I touched on briefly Wednesday, this side of the apartment doesn’t get a ton of light after the sun goes down–these days, that means after 4 or 5 PM. (During the day, however, the sliding glass door lets in a ton of natural light, which I’m really grateful for.) I decided that it would be awesome to hang a light over the table so that at dinnertime we can actually see what we’re eating. Oh yeah, and add a little style.

Supplies:

Enter the light kit we found in the as-is section of IKEA for $2. Yes, you read that right, $2. We nabbed it up and began the hunt for a suitable shade. I was really trying to get away from shopping at IKEA for everything, so we checked Target and Home Depot for shades. Okay, so it wasn’t an exhaustive search… later, we did find ourselves at IKEA and got a lampshade from them. The KILSMO, to be specific. So much for my quest to liven up my shopping destinations. Next we went to Lowe’s (which is conveniently right next door to IKEA) and grabbed two kinds of ceiling hooks: medium-duty and light-duty.

Process:

We measured the room to make sure the unit was centered evenly between the kitchen bar and the glass doors, and marked the spot on the ceiling. Then, Doug volunteered to screw the driller hook in (his height gives him an advantage). With this particular hook, we did not need to drill a pilot hole.  At first it gave him some trouble but quickly it started going in tightly. Note: There were lots of other options, most of which including anchors. This one only holds 8 lbs. If you are hanging something heavier, please use one with anchors.

Then, I strung the light kit through the lampshade. This particular shade has a neat feature–it can be adjusted. The first time I strung the kit through, the light bulb peeked out at the bottom of the shade. So I pivoted the thingy (please forgive my lack of proper terminology) so that the bulb was positioned higher inside the shade. The following pictures will make more sense:

For the second hook, we selected a spot directly above the outlet we were going to plug the light kit into. The smaller hooks did require a pilot hole. After drilling that, Doug twisted the hook in. Since the main purpose of this hook is to swag the cord from draping across the room, it doesn’t bear a heavy load, and something smaller was OK. So, we pulled the light kit through the shade and strung the whole thing through the large hook, then the smaller hook–draping, or swagging, the cord (now the post title makes sense).

A good rule of thumb for hanging a pendant shade above a dining table is to aim for somewhere between 2 and 3 feet from the table to the bottom of the shade. Depending on the scale of the table and lampshade, this is a kind of fluid rule. Go with your gut. Ours is 28 inches from bottom-of-shade to table.

Before I reveal the after photo, I must confess our womp-womp moment. To get the right height, an attractive swag, and have the cord running straight down to the outlet, we, well, ran out of cord. We plan on getting a small extension cord, possibly with an in-line switch on it. For now, you can check out the “after” with our temporary fix: a janky surge protector. We will fix that issue soon but for now I can’t wait to share with you:

It is so nice to have a light in this quadrant of the room! It casts a lovely warm glow, thanks to the fabulous brass inside the shade. I love the way the dramatic black ties the zebra rug in. I feel like having this custom light addition is like jewelry on the room. And it was SO EASY!

Two Flops

I would be remiss if I went around here on blogland and pretended that everything I try to do to beautify my space went 100% according to plan, 100% of the time. So, as a kind of “wrap up” of my final week living here, I thought I’d finally get around to sharing two things that I thought were going to be totally cool and turned out to be totally meh…

  • A gallery wall full of frames and postcards featuring places we’ve traveled or places friends have sent us back notes about:

I was going to jam-pack the hallway full of color and interesting things (described above). Part of this was because I was getting nagged about wall-items hanging around on the floor of the guest room (when we first moved in) and part of it was because I had a vision of awesomeness–I wanted to evoke a cool, eclectic bohemian cafe or something. Well, once we put some stuff up on the wall, we kind of reached a standstill because Hobby Lobby is about 100,000 miles away and I was working too much to think about shopping at the end of the day. Isn’t that  the irony of having a good job? You make more money that you’re too tired to spend?

Anyway, that’s where we ended up. Some cool stuff on the wall with some stupid awkward blank space. So when we decided to move out and the in-laws decided to list the house, instead I hung some rad art painted by my great-great aunt in the 1930s. So, still awesome.

  • Secondly, an awesome mini-dresser turned “landing strip.”

I nabbed this bad boy girl in Lawrence, KS for about $10 which made a very, very, awkward ride home for the person in the back seat (3 hours). The bottom drawer was in pieces so I decided to just chuck it altogether, and salvage the hardware to put into the top drawer. Let me tell you… this little dresser was filthy. I cleaned it with some hardcore chemicals and it still didn’t feel clean. I scraped about a zilion Hello Kitty stickers off of it, but my ultimate goal was to paint it anyway.

Finally, one day during a huge tornado warning we were stuck inside and I decided to crack open the paint cans. For a bit of fun, the drawers were painted teal and the outer was painted dark gray. And it looked fantastic! Then I had to go ruin it by filling in the scrollwork with gold paint. I hate how the gold turned out. I was going for a bright, brassy gold leaf effect and it totally turned out wimpy, cold, and pearlescent. Then I lost motivation and it brings us to where we are today.

I admit that it looks better in gray, but also that it’s half-finished and not worth the effort to move with us to CA. But, I’d like to point out that lacking one drawer does not need to be a death sentence for a dresser like this–it held shoes famously in the bottom section–a much better alternative to piles of dirty shoes clogging up the entryway. So I call this one a half-win, half-lose. If you live in town and want this, it’s up for grabs until Friday.

We’ve all been there–right? Got any stories of DIY-gone-awry? 

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Bedroom.

Truly, I couldn’t come up with something funny and/or non-creepy to title this post about the bedroom.

For many, many months after we moved in, this continued to be my least favorite room in the house. The paint color and the grey comforter we had in the old place clashed, clashed, clashed. Fighting shades of gray are almost as bad as fighting shades of black. So, one temporary comforter and one new West Elm comforter later, things started shaping up. We removed the headboard and made the room feel way bigger. I finally love this room :)

First, a shot right after we moved in. It will make you understand why the room made me so depressed:

Second, in case you were wondering: we did not paint! Natural light works wonders. Unfortunately the room gets natural light pretty much only while we’re at work. Anyway, getting rid of the headboard and hanging cream curtains helped, but the temporary comforter was NOT what the doctor ordered:

Now:

Now, I feel like gray, cream, and white can coexist in a small space, with the blue pattern on the comforter playing referee between the three neutrals. The yellow helps lighten the mood! Across from the foot of the bed is our IKEA dresser. Believe it or not, the dresser was easier to assemble than the wardrobe we bought the same day! Here’s a shot:

Here’s the view of the wardrobe (hanging those doors and making sure they were even was the WORST!). The doorway at the left edge of this photo leads to the hall :) I’d like to get more globes to fill up the top of the wardrobe like you see on home interior blogs sometimes. Haven’t come across any while thrifting lately, though!

And a little source list, since I ended up the guest room tour that way… I like to try to prove that a house can look stylish on the cheap. This room, by FAR, we have put the most money into. The mattress, bedside tables, wardrobe and dresser were all bought new. A mattress is not really something you want to buy used, and it is impossible to find dressers at the limited options of thrift stores we have here. These items are, however, more or less the ONLY furniture items purchased new in our house so far!

  • Bed, rather, mattress and box spring on the floor, from Ashley Furniture
  • Comforter, West Elm organic ironwork duvet cover, snagged on SALE for $65. (Can also be seen on the not-very-funny new show Are You There Chelsea?)
  • Wardrobe, IKEA ENGAN $179
  • Dresser, IKEA TRONDHEIM. I guess it doesn’t come in 6-drawer anymore? I think it was somewhere around $175.
  • Bedside tables, Target (Wedding gift cards! Woo! Don’t remember how much they were.)
  • Yellow pillows, Dwell Studio for Target. I waited years for these to finally go on clearance! $17 ea.
  • Curtains, Target $24 per pair (3 pairs, ordered online to get the extra length)
  • Chair with green cushion, found for F-R-E-E at the re-use shed at the dump, reupholstered with materials from JoAnn.
  • Tennis Racquets, thrifted, $3 for 3.
  • Red lamp & burlap shade, both from target, somewhere around $30 together?
I am not putting the dollar signs in to show off how much we’ve spent/invested (depending on your POV). What I’m trying to show is that, minus the mattress (which rang in somewhere around $600 I think?) the room was well below $1000, which seems to be the approximate amount TV shows budget to redo a room “on the cheap.” Personally, I feel like the room looks great, and I’m not sure putting more money into it would even improve on it. What do you think?

There you have it! Questions? Comments? Favorite part? Mine is (obviously) the duvet cover :)