Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

Last week I shared some inspiration for making over Sam’s study (or the “solarium,” as he likes to call it), and I’m happy to announce that Step 1 is now complete: we’ve finished painting! It was by far the easiest room I’ve ever painted, because mostly all I did was buy supplies and then hand them over to Sam’s younger sister, Maddie, who tackled it over the course of a few days. Thank you Maddie!!!!

As a refresher, Maddie moved in with us in August and has been living with us while looking for a job in Boston. I’m super excited to announce that she found an awesome role at an awesome organization (which just so happens to be the same awesome non-profit I work at, but besides encouraging her to apply I had no hand in hiring her) and she just started on Monday. But before that, she had a little downtime and so we asked if she might be up for painting the study — and she was quite agreeable! Maybe it’s because she appreciates the power of white paint, having seen what it did to the room she lives in now?

Light and airy attic guest room makeover -- Plaster & Disaster

The guest room makeover we did this summer in anticipation of Maddie coming to stay with us

Here’s where we started with the study — blue walls and wood trim:

It’s not that we hated the blue (we kept it for over a year), but it just wasn’t exactly right for the space — with so much color and clutter from our books and office supplies and such a small space, we thought a neutral color on the walls would work best (Sam wanted white, as I discussed in last week’s post). And since we’ve slowly been painting all the wood trim as we make our way through the house (unfortunately it’s just in terrible shape), “we” tackled that too while “we” were at it. “We” also painted the radiator, since all the radiators in our house are painted a pink/tan color for some inexplicable reason.

Here’s how it looks now, a clean white slate:

Painting the study -- Plaster & Disaster

The cats have totally destroyed this chair, but I love the shape so much that I will try to reupholster it. Should be entertaining.

Ignore the tan blinds, which we need to replace.

Is it ready for the cover of a magazine? No. Is this how real home improvement happens, one step at a time and everything looking messy until it comes together? Yes. Also, this room is so hard to shoot since it’s pretty small, so I’m actually considering whether for the final after shots I’m going to have to climb up a ladder on the outside of the house and shoot through the window. I’m not kidding.

The painting process was pretty straightforward. First Sam and I moved most everything out of the study, including unloading all the books from our IKEA expedit bookshelf onto the floors of the hallway.

It’s either super cluttered, or about to be featured by Apartment Therapy as a chic approach to storing books.

After moving all the books, we disassembled the bookshelf and moved the pieces into the basement — I don’t want to get rid of it since it might come in handy in another room down the road, but it’s not the right thing for the study.

We also took down the artwork and hammock, and I patched the holes in the walls. Then I put out all the supplies out for Maddie and she took it from there! She started by filling the nail holes in the trim around the ceiling just like I did in the hallway, primed all the wood trim and doors, and then painted the trim, doors, and walls. She did the walls and the trim along the ceiling and floor in Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace with eggshell finish (the same white we used in the guest room and the gym), and used a standard semi-gloss trim paint on the window trim, door trim, and doors.

In case you’re wondering why the floor and ceiling trim didn’t get the same semi-gloss treatment as the rest of the trim, it’s because I’ve developed a habit of doing the trim along the ceilings and floors the same as the walls in every room in our house — I think it helps downplay how low the (7 foot!) ceilings are to not have the walls sandwiched between differently-colored trim along the top and bottom, plus the trim along the ceiling is so dinky, it really does not need to be accentuated. Oh and also I’m lazy and painting them the same color as the wall minimizes the cutting-in required.

The one thing I did do myself was caulk, since as I’ve discussed before, caulk and wood filler seem to have been forbidden in the home by the previous owner (that’s really the only logical conclusion). It’s less noticeable when the trim is its natural brown, but when it gets painted white the seams become really obvious:

The power of caulk -- Plaster & Disaster

I like to wait until at least one coat is done so that I can easily see where the seams are going to be noticeable.

Caulking makes such a difference — it really helps the space feel more polished, even when the trim isn’t perfect.

And I am proud/ashamed to announce that this was my first experience using a caulking gun — I have always caulked by hand before. I never thought this was weird until Naomi and I were brainstorming for our “essential tools of homeownership” post in September, and she mentioned how much she uses a caulking gun. And I was like, “what?” And then she looked at me like I was crazy.

You see, back when I was first getting into DIY, I was taking on a board-and-batten project in our apartment (yes, I installed board-and-batten in an apartment…I also tiled a backsplash…I’m a rebel). I knew I needed to caulk but I’d never done it before, so I asked for some advice at a Big Box home improvement store that will remain anonymous (but here’s a hint: it starts with H and ends with “ome Depot”).

I pointed at some tubes of caulk and asked if that would be right for me, but the person helping me said “Oh no, you would need a caulking gun to use those.” And so I got it in my head that a caulking gun was some super intense thing, rather than a thing that costs $7 and is basically just a metal case and isn’t like a gun at all. Why the customer service rep could not have pointed to a caulking gun sitting on the same shelf and said, “here’s one, it’s super easy to use!” is beyond me. Thank god I found Naomi.

This is what I was scared of?

To be clear, I love learning to use new tools, even when they’re outside my comfortable zone:

DIY metal modern coffee table -- Plaster & Disaster

I’m cutting steel with a jigsaw. Pretty badass, right?

And yet apparently I’ve had it in my head for years that a caulking gun is some serious and terrifying thing. If anyone is laboring under the same misunderstanding as I have been, let me be clear: a caulking gun is super easy to operate and so much faster than caulking by hand, and I blame that Big Box Customer Service Rep for wasting what probably amounts to months of my life. I guess I’ll just add that to my long list of condescending interactions I’ve had while shopping at Home Depot, Lowes, etc. Apparently it’s just unbelievably amusing/ adorable/ baffling when a woman is trying to do home improvement projects.

Making a Table From Scratch - Picking Wood - Plaster & Disaster

Naomi proves that women can be totally normal while shopping for home improvement supplies.

ANYWAY, I’ve gotten myself all riled up. Back to painting the study. Painting, caulking, etc. all went pretty smoothly, though of course the process wasn’t without its challenges. While Maddie was a real trooper, I couldn’t help but feel for her when she texted us this photo while Sam and I were at work:

The cat helps paint -- Plaster & Disaster

The text: “Not a big fan of Murphy right now.”

It couldn’t have been this innocent cat, right?

Who, me?!?

But she powered through like a champion. And now that it’s magically become painted, I get to take on the fun part! Stay tuned, many more updates coming soon — I want to have it all finished before Thanksgiving when we’ll be hosting a lot of family and putting the room to work as a back-up guest room. Thank you Maddie, we’re so glad we had the foresight to invite you to come live with us!

A few weeks ago I posted about my new DIY coffee table, which I made out of raw steel and plywood.

The coffee table photos also revealed that I had gotten a new rug. I had been considering this for awhile, since the light green was feeling pretty washed out with the light gray couch (we had a dark gray couch when we first got the rug).

I really wanted to punch up the living room with some more vibrant color, and West Elm’s Sivas Wool Kilim Rug in Macaroon Pink had caught my attention months ago and held it ever since:

But I knew I needed a 9×12, and at $849 plus tax and shipping it was pricier than I was prepared to spend — even though I had a $200 gift card to apply toward it. I kept watching sales come and go, but they never brought the price down to where I felt comfortable. And then one day, a 30%-off sale on rugs brought the price for the 9×12 down to $594. At $250 off the original price, I knew it was unlikely to go much lower.

So I pulled the trigger, and it arrived just as I was finishing up the coffee table. I absolutely love how they look together, and they bring so much life to the living room. Sam really likes the rug too, which is awesome because it was risky with so much pink.

The next step was to add some additional color through new throw pillows, since I’d sewed the other throw pillows ages ago and they were a pretty muted color scheme more fit for the dark gray couch. I bet you barely noticed them in the above pictures because they’re so dull.

Throw pillows are annoyingly expensive, though, so I decided to buy a few new ones but also sew some of my own. I thought that a variety of color-block patterns could be a fun way to bring in lots of colors that tie to the pinks, yellows, and blues in the room, so my first step was to buy an array of solid color fabric. I like Fabric.com for inexpensive fabric, and I ordered a yard each of 7 different “Kona Cotton” fabrics for $42.

I wanted to experiment with different color blocking patterns and combinations, and ended up putting together five different covers.

Here’s how I did it!

First, I collected the pillows I wanted to recover.

Then I removed their old covers, leaving me with their original forms.

I worked one pillow at a time. The first step was to measure the dimensions of the pillow I was working with, and cut blocks of fabric that would add up to the right length and width plus a few extra inches for a seam allowance.

I started with a simple triangle pattern in pink, cutting one triangle for the top and one for the bottom:

I placed them together outside-faces-in, and sewed them together along the long edge:

Then I laid them on the ironing board to press the seam.

For the back, I cut a square in the darker pink, and placed the front and back together with the outside faces together. Next I sewed around all the edges leaving a 1″ seam, and leaving a gap of about 8″ on one side. I turned the cover rightside-out, and then stuffed the pillow form in. Lastly, I hand-sewed the opening closed.

And with that, I had my first pillow!

I repeated this basic process four more times, playing around with different configurations of fabric.

Three triangles in blue and white:

The trick with this one is to first sew the two smaller triangles together, then sew that new single piece to the larger triangle exactly like in the pink pillow above.

Another simple triangle pattern in yellow and white:

Yellow stripes:

And lastly, a slightly more complex piecing.

For this one, I cut the pink piece first and then used a paper bag to help me cut a simple pattern to get the blue pieces to be the right size to add up to a complete square.

Overall, it took me a few hours camped out in the sun room, which was nice and warm with sunshine:

I put three of them in living room (the other two in the sun room), mellowing out their bright jewel tones with some earthier pillows I grabbed at Target on sale for $14 each: