Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

My big problem with decorating the house is that I want everything to end up perfect. Too often, I leave rooms undone instead of doing something that might be 90% right. In my (ridiculous) mind, seeing the potential of a space is just as good as having it actually come to fruition.

So, having a charge to actually get get my bedroom fully decorated will either be really healthy or really painful. (Or both.)

A couple of weeks ago I shared some thoughts about finally finishing up this room, which has been living a sad, half life for the couple years we’ve been in this house:

I had hoped to have a cool furniture project to share with you today, but shipping times got in the way, and I only have so much time when I am not working or pretending to have a social life to devote to DIY (which is a total bummer). Instead, this weekend I decided to give myself a quick win and get some shelves up on the wall. It feels great to knock out a relatively easy project and see results!

The shelves were actually Brad’s idea (gasp!). My original plan for the bedroom was to have mismatched nightstands on either side of the bed, and tie it together with matching art above them. But Brad suggested shelves in the corner, and the idea stuck with me. A major goal of this room makeover is to gain more storage, so having a place for more books and plants was a big draw. It is perfectly good space that wasn’t being used!

Of course, doing so means that I’ll need to give up on the mismatched nightstands idea. A little asymmetry is good, too much asymmetry is…. not so good.

I took advantage of my new job’s proximity to a Home Depot to pick up some supplies after work on Friday. I had been obsessing over shelf brackets online for a few days (a few of my favorites here, here, and here) but hadn’t found anything perfect yet. Rather than delay the project a year while I attempted to find the platonic ideal of a shelf bracket, I just bought four of the ones I liked best from Home Depot’s selection – Black Arch Steel Decorative Shelf Bracket by Rubbermaid.

Yes, it really is me.

I also picked up wood for the shelves, deftly avoiding the helpful employees who tried to assist me in finding my way out of the lumber section. Since I didn’t need much length (5′ for two 2.5′ shelves) and this would be a feature of the room, I sprung for a pretty board of red oak.

Beyond the personal and patriarchal hurdles I had to overcome for this project, there was another one: fear. This was the first project on which I used my new circular saw, which the amazing Sage gave me as a gift.

Isn’t it pretty? I was a little intimidated given all the warnings about these things, but I knew that this was the right project to get started on (just one cut!). I read the manual carefully as well as a few online tutorials. I won’t tell you anything about using it because I am clearly no expert, but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use and handle!

I even let Brad go back upstairs and stop watching me with “9-1” dialed into his phone after I tried out my first test cut.

Once I had my board cut in half, I gave the shelves a good sanding, preparing the surface to take stain and softening the edges.

I stained them with Minwax’s Golden Pecan (which is quickly becoming my favorite stain) because it is light and would still let the beautiful wood show through. I let that dry, and then coated them with a clear poly in semi-gloss.

Meanwhile, I mapped out the shelf placement on my wall using painters tape. (The lower piece of tape is the planned height of new bedside tables.)

The bracket width and placement was determined by the wall studs, and I just played around with the overall height until it felt right, keeping in mind that they’ll have stuff sitting on top of them, too. I then spent a little quality time with the brackets and a level making sure I would install them straight.

No one needs a shelf installing tutorial (I hope). The only annoying part of the whole thing was that my drill couldn’t fit into the space to attach the upper screw on each bracket, so I had to do it by hand with a screwdriver like they did back in the stone-age.

It really wasn’t a problem except that I had just gotten back from the gym and was feeling a bit wimpy.

The brackets were up…

…and then so were the shelves!

I’m really happy with them. I love the tone and the beautiful wood grain of the oak. I am also really happy with my (hastily selected) brackets… which might be an important life lesson for me.

I think the look is simple and will allow me to style them however I want – although I am waiting to put stuff on them until the poly fully cures and I have finished some other projects in the room. That makes the after images for this post pretty boring, but I’m not going to ruin the finish on these shelves just for blog content (#notarealblogger).

So that is one step down in the bedroom makeover! It’s nice to start out with an easy one to get me excited about the progress of the room. I’m assembling materials for some fun furniture projects as well as facing some major existential questions (i.e., bedside lamps or scones – give me your advice in the comments!). I can’t wait for this room to come together!

~~Hang shelves in the corner~~
Buy and/or DIY matching bedside tables (ideally with loads of dresser-like storage)
Buy and/or DIY a bench for the end of the bed (ideally with storage)
Buy a new rug and bedding
Install new overhead light
Decide between lamps or scones for beside the bed, and buy/install
Buy and/or DIY several pieces of art for the walls
Hang window treatments
Fix gaping hole in the wall by installing grate
Finally paint wood window sashes

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a proper disaster confessional post here on the blog. We’ve been distracted by shiny new features, like our truth behind the photo posts and the great amount of joy that we get from doing fake craft projects and writing about them sarcastically.

But the disaster confessional was one of our first series ideas, and it is one that we love. Quite simply it is where we get to tell you all about things that are messed up about our houses or that went wrong with our projects and then not have to do anything to fix them. That’s right, we just confess it is a disaster and move along with our lives. It is freeing and therapeutic, and hopefully makes you feel superior (or at least better about the disasters that you are ignoring, as well).

In the past we’ve shared the whole truth about holes in our homes, we’ve minded the gaps that lurk in old houses, and we’ve caused you to shed your preconceptions about what sheds should actually look like. Today, we’re going tell you about things that fall apart or don’t work out.

“My tiny house leaks” – Naomi

Yeah, I was pretty pleased with myself when I made a planter that looked like an adobe house. I worked on the plans for a while, and when it was done I was so excited to display it in my house!

And I did for a while. However, over time, the wood dowels which were in contact with the damp soil, expanded and contracted enough to crack the clay and cause a piece to break off.

Bummer!

I called out this issue in my original post (there were a few cracks showing by the time I wrote it up, so I proposed the solution of making the holes bigger and setting dowels in with a bit of caulk so they would have some give.). I still think that would work, but if I were making this project again, I would probably just waterproof the whole inside so the wood wouldn’t touch the soil at all. But as it is, the cool look I was going for is sort of ruined.

I may get around to gluing it back together to see if it can look alright. Or I may give up and trash the whole thing. But I haven’t felt like repotting those little plants (who still seem to think it is a fine place to live) so I’ve just been ignoring it.

“Now they’re just tiny shelves” – Sage

Okay so I’m going to cheat a little and not share a project that has actually physically fallen apart. But this is a project that definitely didn’t turn out the way I’d hope, and I have pretty much declared a failure at this point. *cue temper tantrum*

The project in question is my impossibly adorable cat shelves:

So cute, right? But the reality is that Cat #1 (Owen) has only set foot on these once in the six months we’ve had them, the day I put them up.

Cat #2 (Murphy) is a bit more adventurous, and he does spend some time on the top shelf. It melts my heart when I see him up there.

It’s helped that I put a scrap piece of carpet on that shelf — at first, he would go flying off every time he jumped up there. It was hilarious but also a little terrifying….

But the only time he ever goes on the other shelves is if we put cat toys or catnip on them.

Catnip:

Toys:

Cat shelf disaster -- Plaster & Disaster

Please ignore the very dead plant….

These are the only two times I have ever seen him on anything but the top shelf.

The reality is that the shelves are too small and closely staggered for the cats to really navigate. I was working with the space we have, and with our low ceilings (7′) we really don’t have room for a cool ledge or something along the ceiling of a single wall like I know the cats would love. Instead of the shelves I so lovingly built them, they would rather sit here:

And here:

And here and here and here:

I get it, you don’t like the &*$%ing shelves.

So now they’re just strange, small, useless shelves. We can’t put plants on them because they get terrible light, and putting anything else there for display purposes is a recipe for disaster — the one surefire way to get Murphy to go on them briefly is to put something there that he wants to knock down.

One of these days I will probably remove them, but I don’t feel like patching the walls so I’ve been procrastinating. Why can’t my cats just appreciate what I’ve made for them?!?!?

Have you had projects fall apart or not work out after you made them? What did you do — re-do it better, or give up on the whole thing?