Altering Furniture: An Undersized Urbanite Update

I started on the master bedroom furniture in the last couple weeks.  I've been really busy, as per usual, but stopped to add some paint here and there.  My inspiration for this room is very monochromatic neutral.  Black, white and grey with just a pop of yellow and turquoise.

I have a bedroom set-inherited from somewhere or another....It's a nice enough set but it was all in maple...

                                     
Paint to the rescue!!!

Each piece of furniture got 3 coats of black paint (Americana) white detailing in Snow White (minus the bed) and then a good coat of Delta Ceramcoat Satin Varnish.

 I love the clean modern look now!  And it will look so great with the wallpaper and linens I have picked out.  :)  That chair in the corner will not be staying.  I plan to make another arm chair for that corner.

 So sleek, so elegant!

 This room will be getting grey walls and a hard wood floor.  Possibly it's own rug.  I keep trying to remember that I am going to sell this house.... but I am loving the way things are turning out.  :D

Large Modern Flowers: A Punchneedle Rug

I finally drank the punch and took the plunge!

After a fantastic what-to-get-and-how-to-do-it post about punch needle from Brae, I ordered everything I needed, and impatiently awaited it's arrival.

I chose to do this rug:

And I think it will find a home in the teenager room in my Undersized Urbanite house.
I've had the supplies for about 2 weeks now and have managed to put in about 8 hours of work.

And here's where we are with it as of tonight!

Man Cave and Teen Room: An Undersized Urbanite 2014 Update

Finally got some work in on the Imagination House for the Undersized Urbanite contest this weekend.  I had so much fun trying out designs that I love.

Trying to keep the Man Cave masculine was hard.  I kept checking with James!  Basically, everything in there was man-proved by him as something he would have in his own room if he had one.  I knew that I wanted grey walls and wood tones and browns in there....I think I did alright!

 The walls look sort of green here, but they are actually charcoal grey.  The bookcase was stained with a mix of cherry and maple and then coated with satin varnish.  That table is a stand in for right now. I want something classier there.

 This bookcase got sanded and I put a new coat of Martha Stewart Lamp Black gloss paint on it and then camo paper in the back.  I love paper lined bookcases in real life!

 The desk is from a swap with a group of mini friends.  I added the handles- heavy duty staples- and made the keyboard drawer shelf thing.

This barrel table is my first random design for the house.....  I saw this on Pinterest one day and LOVED it.  Thankfully, so did James.  :)

from thediyshowoff.blogspot.com

I am working on a chair, but need to get more solder.  !!! That's exciting, eh?  And I have tiny things to come up with, too.

Both rooms still need to get white trim and crown molding (another first for me...!!)

As for the Teen Room, I knew I wanted all white walls and a grey floor....to balance out the color of the accessories.  Wait until you see the fabrics I have picked out!!!  Those aren't in this post.  :)

 Here is another of my "I Have To Make That in Mini" stumble acrosses.  :)  Randomly showed up in my Pinterest feed, and onto the board it pinned.  Yes.  It's a corner shelf made out of a door.  Awesome, right?

craftaholicsanonymous.net

I'm already loving the set up of this room and the colors found in it.  :)  I have bright colors picked for the bed and curtains.  Fun accessories for the shelves.  A lamp to add above the desk... and some more fun things for the walls.  Maybe this needs to be a tween room.... add some 1D posters?  ha!  I also plan on building a storage bench for at the base of the bed.

Desk was a gift from Cyd at minimodpod.  So glad to be able to use it now!

 And my favorite recreation so far!!!  This light!!  It isn't put into place yet, since I still need to put up the ceiling paper, but it looks.... Awesome.  I love the shadows it casts on the walls.    So pretty.

And, in true Lyssa fashion, there are no pictures of it being made... because I was terrified that it would end up being total sh*t.  :)  Now that I know it works, I will make a new one and share later!

Hope you are enjoying my work on this house so far.  I will be finishing up these two rooms before I move onto the others, as I am waiting on materials.

Making a Pool at Loblolly Westcott House

Here is what a lot of you have been waiting for!  How I made the pool at the pool house.  Well, it's really more of a hot tub.... the pool to scale would have made the base more monstrous than it is right now.

Anyway, I had ordered *soemthing* off of Amazon and it came in this really great plastic packaging that just made me think *pool.*  When I got my item out without obliterating the plastic I wanted to use (why are packages so damn hard to get into?!) I took it downstairs to measure the depth and size.  I got some Pink Panther insulating foam from Home Depot and had them cut the 4'x8' sheet into four equal sections of 2'x4'.  When I brought it home, I cut it to fit the base and made it 3 layers thick.

The first step was to place the piece of plastic on it and trace it and then I used a melon ball thingy and a utility blade to carve it out.

All cut out!  Just needed to clean the sides up a bit and there was some fiddling and sanding to get the opening just right.

Sweet success when it goes right in!!

This stuff.  Amazing.  I used it to apply the tile sheet to the pool.  There aren't any pictures of this process, because of the sticky ickies, but it should be easy to explain.

I cut out a section of the blue tile scrap paper (purchased at Michaels) and then sprayed THE PAPER with the Loctite and immediately stuck it to the bottom of the plastic.  You have a few seconds to move it all around...

I also cut a strip to go around the top edge of the pool and adhered it in the same fashion.  When it was all dry, I turned the pool upside down and spray painted the rest of the exposed plastic with Krylon white primer.  And once that was dry, I slipped it back into the hole.

Throughout the drying times, I also worked on the deck and drains.  This drain here is a left over scrap from the privacy fence.  I carved out a little spot, painted it black and then put the lattice in place.  The lattice was painted Snow White.

I also carved the tiles for the patio under the roof, using a utility knife and a cork backed metal straight edge. I widened the cracks with a tiny paintbrush so they could be seen.

The following colors were used to make the tiles for the patio.  Several washes and custom mixes to get different colors and form a sort of checkerboard looking patio.

                                         

Then I fit in the porch posts (that required lots of maths and I messed up a LOT) and trimmed out the edges of the patio with scrap wood (bought this at HBS. LOVE their strip wood!) I also added a step.

The final installation of the pool included me rolling out, placing and carving the rest of the deck.  I used paper clay and loved how it was turning out at this stage.  I made sure to go right up to and over the edge of the pool and soften the edges there.

I looked at a lot of different pool decks and liked the ones that had the tile sections separated by timbers, so that's the look I was going for. I was only annoyed at this point at the gap that had formed in the base... there was some shifting and it was unfixable.... so I had to work around it...  this ended up becoming a separate piece that fits on like a puzzle piece.

When it dried some, I started to cut the grass to fit around the deck.

The flower beds were made out of foam board and then covered in paper clay.

Then, a few days passed and when I got back down to it.....HORROR!!! This is what I saw.  Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

Severe shrinking had occurred and the clay was splitting all over.  I had cut deeper into the clay in sections apparently, which made it worse.

I had neither the time nor the finances to redo it, so I just pushed ahead and thought of how to deal with it...  (in the future, you have to glue paperclay down to foam... It doesn't just naturally stick)

This was my fix!  Fill in the cracks with dirt and grass and weeds.  Actually cam out pretty well.  We all know that tiled patios don't last forever!

Once everything was good and dry, I scrubbed off the extra dirt and sealed the whole thing with a very light coat of Satin Varnish.  

All it needed now was a beach ball and some water in the pool!  And you can see in the background of this shot, I change my furniture layouts a zillion times before I decide on a final one.

New Year, New House-Undersized Urbanite

Happy New Year to you all!  I hope you had a fantastic holiday. :)  Mine was spent with family, friends, champagne and board games.  Didn't do too shabby in The Game of Life, but got my butt handed to me in Monopoly.  HA!

After such a raucous night, yesterday seemed like a good time to bust out the Imagination House and get started on this years Undersized Urbanite.  As usual, I will be trying out some decor ideas that I would like to have in a real life house, but am too broker joker to manage.  LOL.  I am also going to *GASP* refrain from bashing major bashing.  I haven't built ONE single kit straight from the box.  

All I have planned so far is to eliminate the stairs and put in another wall.  The stairs just get in the way in this build and I don't want the front door coming straight into the kitchen, so I will make shift an entry way.  As far as plans for decorating?  I am so excited!!!

There are five rooms in this build.  I will be, as stated before, making a kitchen; master bedroom; t(w)eenage girl room; craft attic and Man Cave!

Here is what I have so far:

Kitchen
Modern, but fancy.  Subway tiles will be used. A unique, repurposed island. White, black and lime green. Tons of fun accents.  Wood floor.

Man Cave
Dark grey walls.  Wood tones through furniture.  Fantastic office chair. Fun accents. Fun chair.  Books. Carpet.

Entrance
A really COOL light fixture (I hope.... I *think* I can pull it off)
Unique repurposed entry table.  Light and airy, because it's a small space.

Master Bedroom
lt grey walls.  Wood floor.  Color pops.  Very sophisticated room.

Teen Room
White room.  Grey carpet.  Neutral palette will allow LOTS of color accents.  Bench. Bright curtains. Radiator. Fun wall art. An accent wall. Canopy. Unique repurposed bookshelf.

Craft Room
Wrapping Station. Scrapbook table.  Bright walls and floor.  All shelves and tables white. Memo boards. Unique repurposed tables.  I will also be adding in knee walls here and flattening out the ceiling a bit.


My plan for the exterior is very classic. White and black and red. Great porch.  Small, cute yard.

I'm excited? Are you?!  Oh.  I also have no intentions of keeping this one.  It will go up for sale this summer.  So I am going in with the reminder that anything I put in it.... won't be staying!