Guest Room: DIY Nautical Chart Wall and Anthropologie Hack Duvet

Welcome to our downstairs guest room. Since it's below grade, I'm working extra hard to make it not feel too much like a basement. I'm aiming for wamth and spunk, not cold and sterile.

This started with sewing very basic curtains out of some gauzy Turkish towels we bought on our trip to Istanbul. They let in the light but cover up the not-so-lovely ground-level view. The lamps, wedding gifts, were made by Nate's grandmother out of wallpaper printing rolls. The mirror, also a wedding gift, was made by my friend Sarah's mom out of Duxbury oyster shells. 

The first big project was the DIY nautical chart wall. I have a stack of old charts that my uncle Frank gave my dad years ago, and I went through to find charts of emotionally significant harbors and coastlines. I did some Pinterest research and in the end followed this awesome tutorial from the SoPo Cottage blog for how to adhere the charts to the wall. The hardest part was deciding how to lay out the charts, and I was very happy to have a bag full of thumb tacks to arrange and rearrange the charts before making any permanent decisions. Then all I had to do was paint the backs of the charts with wallpaper paste (found at Walmart), fold them in half for a few minutes for even paste distribution, and then carefully place them on the wall.

The statement chart wall definitely helped. Added some funk. But the light in the room isn't great and between the blue Turkish towel curtains and the white matelasse quilts that I had been so excited to find at Marshall's this summer, the room didn't feel cozy or warm. Maybe I make different decisions in the heat of summer and the cold of winter? That would make sense.

I consulted my friend Lisa about the "missing something" feeling I was getting and she thought a bright color might help. "Since it's just a guest room, why not do something bold and fun?" she asked. "I always love a good throw or pillow." YES.  Now we're talking. 

Color, color, color. What to do? Then I stumbled across these amazing quilts at Anthropologie. If only I could afford this sort of thing...  Here's the inspiration:

Zocalo Embroidered Quilt at Anthropologie

Since two twin quilts at roughly $200 each are not in the budget, once again it's time to get crafty! I love the warm, vibrant reddish-orange color, and I particularly love it with that dark teal. Oh wait, I have a can of paint in that dark teal... Could I swing orange bedding and paint the dresser with the leftover paint from the sliding doors? 

I visited the Garnet Hill outlet in Franconia, NH and came home with four flat sheets: two in an orange ikat print and two in a darker red-orange solid flannel. Here's what I came up with:

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They didn't have four flats in any of the same sizes, which in the end was a blessing because the king ikat sheet left me enough extra fabric for pillow cases and shams! For the shams I used a combination of the ikat and solid fabrics with the little bit of leftover I had from the Turkish towel curtains.

How to Organize Cleaning Supplies

Got this idea from Pinterest. Thrilled about it. One over-the-door shoe organizer (found at Benny's) has opened up TWO under-sink cabinets in the guest bathroom! I got another one for the coat closet next to the front door, it now stores all of our hats, mittens and scarves!

Merry Christmas!

I'm using the table numbers from our wedding (gorgeous calligraphy by Dear Rose Studio) as Christmas ornaments! Also very excited about the new créche from Calf Pasture Woodworks! We're making new traditions in our new home!

New Pillows

Remember these awesome napkins from our wedding?

Photos by Maggie Conley Photography

They have a new life! And they look beautiful with the ikat-print silk we bought at the market in Istanbul!

Hosting Thanksgiving

We are hosting Thanksgiving for the first time this year! In our new house! With all of our new wedding dishes! And filling up all of our new guest rooms! I. Am. So. Pumped.

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DIY Craft Studio / Home Office: Before and After

With the new floors down in the studio I couldn't wait to fill it with furniture! My goal was to simulate built-ins with a desk/countertop that runs the full length of the room, supported by drawers/cabinets on the ends. I love the home office options at Pottery Barn but can't fit that in the budget, so here we go with another DIY project! 

The first find was a two-drawer file cabinet from Marshall's. No painting required. I'll take it.

The second find was a TV stand from a consignment shop. $40. I cut the top off with the circular saw so it's the same height as the file cabinet. White primer and paint, here we come.

Finding a countertop long enough to fill my 118" opening was a challenge. Home Depot linoleum options were outrageously expensive and all had a little lip on the back that I didn't prefer. I came quite close to an overstock piece of Corian I found online but even that was going to be about $100 and shipping was steep. In the end I went to the local lumber place, thinking I would buy plywood, but found they had an unfinished MFD countertop for $30. Into Nate's van it went with two 2x4s that I screwed to the bottom for support.

While I'm at it, why not paint the inside of the sliding doors as well?

Now things are really getting fun. The inside of the sliding doors, which will only be visible from inside the studio, are going to be Aruba Blue by Benjamin Moore. Wahoo!

Things are starting to come together!

This awesome doorknob was a wedding gift. I'm so excited it has a new home!

When in doubt, add bistro lights! And a strip of LED tape under the bottom shelf. I also added moulding across the front of the desk and the base of the shelves for a cleaner, more finished look.

DIY Flooring Project: Wide Plank Pine Hardwood

We decided to pull the trigger on replacing the old carpet in my studio/office with hardwood floors. After a lot of research and contacting a bunch of different flooring outfits (Home Depot, National Floors Direct, Riverhead Building Supply), we decided we were up to the challenge of installing something ourselves with wide-plank pine boards from Lumber Liquidators. Youtube has excellent videos on the installation, and we had particularly good advice from our friend Brett.

Here we are at step 1: Pulling up the old carpet. This took us one evening to complete and was not too difficult, but very dusty. The hardest part was prying up the little strips of nails that held the carpet in place. We ran into trouble when we got to the built-in bookcase you see in the corner, we couldn't get the carpet out from under it.

I can't tell you how liberating it was to get the carpet out! Even the plywood subfloor looked like an improvement!

Here you can see that we decided to cut the bottom off the built-in bookcase. The goal is for a desk/counter to run the full width of the room, and the bookcase was in the way. We did this with a Multi Tool (or, as Brett says, a "silly saw"). Really we just cut the inside edge off the bookcase and left the back and outside edge where they were. This left us with an ugly and uneven wall situation.

The flooring we got from Lumber Liquidators really is beautiful! Unfinished pine boards that are just over 8" wide (we were looking for wide planks), and it was only $1.79/square foot. It was almost absurd how much less that was than anywhere else we had looked. We also ordered underlayment, quarter-round, and t-moulding for the doorways. We stacked the wood inside the house and left it for about a week for it to acclimate to the appropriate humidity.

After pulling up the rug we ran the silly saw around the edges of the room to create a little space under the moulding at the base of the wall. We also could have pried the moulding off, but we were worried we'd do more damage that way. 

After sweeping and vacuuming, we laid out the underlayment. This took all of about ten minutes. It had some adhesive along the edge, and we periodically hit it with the staple gun for good measure. You can also see in the picture above that I have started to put up white beadboard along the wall. This will cover the messy remains of the bookcase. I cut the beadboard panels to fit with the silly saw and was quite surprised by how dense and difficult to cut (and also nail into the wall) the beadboard is. Sturdy stuff.

Now it's time to lay boards! Note the fun tools: miter saw, air compressor, flooring stapler (rented from the Depot)... this was a gadget-heavy operation. Cutting the first board to fit in the doorway took some careful work with a circular saw.

Nate's pretty pumped to get this show on the road. It was a lot of prep. Once we started putting boards down, things went more quickly. By this time I had also put up the rest of the beadboard. I filled in the joints with spackle but learned later from Hank that I should have used caulk to avoid cracks.

 By Sunday night, the floor was laid! Apologies for the poor lighting, it makes the room look yellow.

I forgot to take pictures but there were a couple more steps before coating the floor. Upon Brett's advice, we decided to secure the boards to the subfloor with a screw and bung technique in addition to the regular floor staples that were in the edge of each board. We ordered a bung-cutter bit for the cordless drill from Amazon and put two screws in the end of each board, covered with bungs. It was a little tedious but has a nice, nautical feeling and makes us a little more confidant about the security of our 8" wide boards. The next step in the process was to sand the floor. We rented a floor sander locally for half the day and with such a small room, it went really quickly. The hardest part was getting the sander up and down the stairs, it weighed a ton!

After much deliberation and testing stains and sealants on wood scraps, we decided on a clear satin finish polyurethane. We applied it with rollers and used a brush around the edges of the room. We even attempted to pour it into a few knots in the wood, with moderate success. After 6 or 8 hours we did another coat, and then a third.

So. Weekend 1 we did prep. Weekend 2 the boards went down. Weekend 3 we sealed the floor. We're pretty excited about the results!