E's Room Finale {Beware: long rambles!}

Finally, a post all about E's room makeover. It was the first room that we've painted... and even though there are more rooms that I want to paint, that just hasn't happened yet. 

A little at a time. A little at a time :)

Anyways, the main reason that we needed to paint E's room was because it was very much a boy's room before. Those dinosaurs may have only been on one wall, but oy! I believe they are painted with chalkboard paint, and if you look closely enough, you can still see their outlines after being painted, but there's enough stuff on the wall now, that you would probably never notice.

I chose the almost-white-cream-color because I love the idea of white walls, but I know that with the cherry wood trim and cabinets in this house, I doubt I could ever pull it off. This cream is the next best thing! I cannot wait to use it in other rooms to brighten things up! (the main color in the house, which included two walls in E's room, is a much more yellowish/tannish/beige... I want to get rid of it!).

You can see above that the walls used to be a dark brown below the bright green. I chose a aqua-ish blue. Much to my dismay, there are three bedrooms in this house that have chair rails. Now, I love the idea of chair rails, but they only put it on two of the walls in those three bedrooms. If I'm going to do chair rails, they'll go on all of the walls or none of the walls. So.... now we have the joy of trying to match detail and color. I wish the previous owner would have left some information on their trim purchases!!

But enough about paint... you remember the wall art from a previous post... 

... and that I hung a quilt on a wall... and painted my old bed...

... and I painted a rummage sale shelf.

Well, here is E's new desk/vanity! It used to be mine when I was little... and it used to my mom's before that. When I was little Mom painted it white with yellow tops and blue horse stencils. When I was in middle school, I repainted them white with some blue/pink/purple sponge details on the top. It was time for another refresher! The main color is a shade away from the walls, and the pink is a fun pop! I first found the spray paint for the handles and then matched the paint for the top and bottom to that. (Same story with the dresser below).

 The chair came from a thrift store. It was a dollar. I originally passed on it, but then I told my mom about it, and she went and bought it for me, ha! I painted it black when I had it in my old apartment. But, to make it fit perfectly in E's room, I painted it a shade away from the blue paint on the bottom half of the walls.

 Here's the dresser, and you can see where we need to find the chair rails still! The mirror was a wedding present that I spray painted the same as the bed. 

Overall, I love E's room!!! Now, it's time to start thinking of Gus-Gus's room... only a few months left!

A Window Project

While my photography of this project is not as good as I would like it to be, I've decided to share the project anyways! 

I'll chat about the whole window process a little next, but since you can see it the best in this picture, I'll just talk about the saying here... I used my same go-to method of charcoal transfer before using a black paint marker. The lyrics are from one of my favorite hymns :)

Dan saved this window for me from a building they were tearing down on the farm. Isn't he thoughtful?! He even helped me by caulking the panes to the frame, as they were quite loose. 

(Look how little E used to be?!) At one time, we thought to paint it, but we decided to keep the rustic finish on it instead - one less step... yes, please!

I added burlap to the back and used upholstery nails to attach it to the back. Also, a few sawtooth hangers to help hang it up on the wall. Of course, I had to add the 8x10" photos prior to adding the burlap (the three pictures are from my photo collection... two are of Montana scenes while the sunrise is from my parents' lake cabin). 

The first way I tried to attach the pictures was to use double stick tape between the pictures and the burlap. This worked for awhile but they eventually started to sag. Then I bought some clear photo corners (from Walmart) to use to attach the photos to the glass. If you look close enough, you can see these, but at least they won't be sagging anytime soon!

Ignore the few totes/boxes that I still need to organize, but otherwise the photo window looks quite nice in our bedroom!

Quilt on the Wall {E's Room}

 Evelyn's room is the only room that we have truly made our own... paint and all. 

Eventually you'll get all the details, but for now, I'll show you how I hung a quilt that doesn't have a quilt sleeve.

 

 This is the quilt that my mother-in-law made for Evelyn when she was born. After we painted her room in our new house, I realized how well the quilt matches the color scheme! However, there was the slight problem. This quilt wasn't intended to go on the wall, so Kari didn't sew on a quilt sleeve. I wasn't about to possibly ruin her beautiful work by added a sleeve after the fact, so I came up with a plan.

 

 I spent a long time searching home improvement stores for fancy nails (because really, what kind of mom wants to go traipsing around mutliple stores with a young toddler searching for something that might not be in stock?!). I finally found these on the Lowes website. When they arrived, I realized they weren't exactly what I had in mind, but they do work perfectly! 

I put two regular nails into the wall and tied on a double thickness of a thin twine I had on hand. After attaching the quilt with regular clothespins and seeing that my vision was in fact going to work, I finally nailed in the huge, decorative nails with a rubber mallet.

 

Doesn't it look so great about Evelyn's future bed?? I may eventually paint the clothespins or at least decorate with washi tape, but for now, I'm in love :)