Hand-Painted Moroccan-Lattice Wall Stencil

Way back in February, I decided my own home needed some attention.  When we first moved into our house 4 years ago I was 8 months pregnant, and whatever I was going to do had to be done quickly.  We gave the main floor a quick, neutral paint-job to make it live-able, and then I spent the next 3 years mentally toiling over just what I wanted to do with our space.  I finally settled on a plan about a year ago - but finding the time to implement it was proving impossible.

Finally, I decided to give myself priority for once and work for myself.  I shut down Metz Interiors for a month in order to focus on my own home.  My plan was to work like a mad-woman during that month and get most of it done then get back to business as usual - but things didn't quite work out that way (things never do!).  After a month of being closed I had to re-open my business.  I had completed most of the work on the main-level of my house, but not as much as I had hoped, and have since been picking away at it whenever time has come available. 4 months later my house is still not finished - but some things are at least finished enough for me to share.

This hand-painted Moroccan-lattice feature wall on either side of my fireplace pop-out is one of them.  I wish I could take credit for the genesis of this idea - but I can't.  I saw it first on Pinterest here, and kind of fell in love with it.  I am picky about patterns - and have generally avoided them in the past (they're often just too busy for me).  Nevertheless I have recently taken a liking to more modern, geometric prints, and a big goal for my living room was to get over my pattern-shyness.

Image from littlenannygoat.blogspot.ca

I really liked the hand-painted wall-paper, Moroccan lattice idea - but knew that it would have to be contained, otherwise it would overwhelm me (ie: a whole room is just too busy for me).  I chose to strategically place it on either side of my newly installed fireplace pop-out (tutorial on that later),  where it would be present behind some cabinets and shelves I planned to install in the space.  Here it would be present, would help draw attention to the main focus of the room (the fireplace), but not dominate and overwhelm the room.

Why paint?  Why not wall-paper?  Well, here again, my own personal fussiness is to blame.  I could have gone with a wall-paper if I could find one with the pattern and colours I liked - but I like the ability to customize.  Painting was more work - but if I painted it, could customize the colours and pattern exactly to my space.  I liked that.

When I followed the Pinterest link I found I was lead to another site which offered a printable stencil. That makes things easy - but not custom.  I wanted a custom stencil that would make the pattern fit in my space exactly - so I made my own, manually - the old fashioned way.  It wasn't perfect, but it worked.  Here's how I did it:

MATERIALS:

For Stencil:
- 1 piece of poster-board
- Pencil
- Eraser
- Ruler
- Measuring tape
- Round dish
- Scissors

To Paint:
- 1 1/2" wide, angled paint brush
- 2 colours of interior-latex paint (main wall colour, and stencil colour)
- Damp rag


METHOD:

1) Measure the height and width of your wall (subtracting the width of your baseboard from the height).  Using the measurements, divide your wall into an equal grid of same-sized, vertical rectangles (do this on paper!  In my case I wanted 6 shapes across and 6 down, so I divided the width of my wall by 6 to get the width of the rectangle I would need, and divided the height of the wall by 6 to get the height of the rectangle I would need).   Cut a rectangle out of poster-board according to your measurements.

2) a. Divide the rectangle of poster board you have cut out into a grid by using your pencil and ruler to draw a line across the center of the horizontal axis and the center of the vertical axis.

b. Use a round dish or round object of an appropriate size to mark the outside curve of the middle of your stencil on the left side of the horizontal axis (take it right to the edge of the poster-board).  Repeat on the right side of the horizontal axis:

c.  Use a ruler to draw a straight line across the stencil connecting the top and bottom, right and left sides of the curve.

d. Use your ruler to draw 2 more vertical lines on your grid where the edges of the curves meet the straight, horizontal lines that connect them.  Use your ruler to draw a straight, horizontal line connecting the 2 new vertical lines, creating 2 narrow rectangles of equal size above and below the curved shape in the center of the stencil.

e.  Use your dish, or round object to create an inside curve on the right and left sides of the top and bottom of the stencil, above and below the rectangles you just created. (Make sure you leave a little straight stem at the top for the stencil to continue - this is something I didn't do quite enough, but would do if I were to do it again) 

f. Cut out your stencil:

3) Trace your stencil onto the wall.  I started by going across the top first from left to right, then went down the left-hand side of the wall from top to bottom, and then filled in the rest going from top to bottom, left to right.  As with my Argyle-Feature Wall post - it is important to keep in mind that most walls in most homes are not perfectly square, and do not measure exactly the same all the way across and all the way down.  This can throw off your stencil a little, so be prepared to fudge, and compensate things a little this way and a little that way as you go along.  You can use chalk-lines if you wish to help you keep things straight - but I found that I was able to more or less eye-ball it.

Just so this picture doesn't throw you off: to create a single-lattice pattern like I did the stencils should trace right up against each other (there should be no gap between them like in this picture - I screwed up the first time and had to compensate for it later).  To do a double-lattice pattern as shown on the other blogs, you'll want to leave a gap in-between the stencils, and trace your stencil in an alternating pattern, see below picture for double-lattice only.  This does effect your original grid measurement, and kind of throws things off for a perfect fit - which is why I didn't do the double-lattice.

For double-lattice only - you would trace your stencil in an alternating pattern like this - I DID NOT DO THIS, I went for a single-lattice for a less complicated exact fit.

4) Now, on most of the other blogs I read about doing this they left it here and just started painting.  I'm a little bit fussier than that.  I like to have lines to paint within to keep everything even.  So I took my stencil, hollowed it out and then traced it again on to the wall to give me an interior and exterior guide to paint within (I probably could have done this in the first place - but it didn't occur to me at the time).

5) Once all that tracing was done, I was ready to paint!  The other blogs I read suggested painting the stencil using a small artist`s paint brush.  I started out that way - but it was taking forever - and the quality wasn`t great (paint was too thin) - so I soon switched over to using a house-painter`s method.   To do it this way it does require some cutting skills (ie: painting a smooth line around edges), which is I suppose why the other bloggers went with the artist`s brush.

Basically, I took a 1 1/2" angled paint brush, dipped it in paint about 1" deep, wiped the excess paint off my brush on the edge of the paint can, held my brush at an angle with the bristles aligned, and gently followed my pencil lines.  I kept a damp rag handy to wipe of the areas where I went over the lines (this was particularly useful for the square corners). Here is a less-than-glamorous video of me showing the process in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2-a80nzPAE&list=HL1371590912

Once it was all done, I had to repeat it all again for a 2nd coat!  It was still a lot of work, but was way faster than using an artist's brush.

6)  Despite my best efforts to be careful on my 1st and 2nd coats of the stencil's themselves, a number of the outer edges did still require some touch-up.  Once the 2nd coat on the stencils was dry, I got to work with the same 1 1/2" brush, but using the main wall colour now to clean-up the outside edges of the stencils:

After touch-ups.

7) Celebrate the fact that you're finally finished, and admire how good it looks!

Free Glasses From Firmoo.com!

Ever since my blog has been receiving some decent traffic, I get emails from folks asking me to feature "this" on my blog, or mention "such and such" in a blog post.  For the most part I just end up deleting these requests, but one from Firmoo.com offering me a free pair of glasses in exchange for an honest review of their  eye-wear actually caught my attention.

You see, a little while back I was working on a DIY project, spray painting some furniture.  I was wearing my glasses instead of safety goggles, and well, my glasses got coated in paint droplets.  This has happened before, and I have been able to wash them off, so that's just what I thought I'd do this time too.  Trouble was I left it a little too long and wasn't able to simply wash off the paint.  So I made a totally idiotic, impulse decision and grabbed the steel-wool that was sitting in the corner of my sink and used it to scrub the paint off of my glasses.  That worked - but it scratched the be-jeepers out of my lenses!

I am pretty heavily dependent on corrective eye-wear (ie: without the advent of the corrective lens, natural selection would've weeded me out long ago), and while my husband has a great job with good benefits, our optical coverage only renews every 2 years, and at the time I destroyed my glasses we still had a year to go.

I thought I'd just make due by wearing my contact lenses more, but let me tell you - sitting at my computer doing design work in the midnight hours with contact lenses that I'd worn for probably 16 or so hours already that day was beginning to take it's toll (burning, really).

To do my job - I need to see.  Beyond that, as this diagram clearly shows, a fashionable pair of glasses is an essential part of my professional attire as an interior designer:

Other by Durham Architect Coffee with an Architect

The Firmoo.com offer hooked me.  I responded and within a day or so, a representative from Firmoo contacted me with the information to claim my free glasses.  It had been awhile since I had seen my optometrist, so I booked an appointment and got my prescription updated.  Then I went to the Firmoo website to pick some frames.

Honestly, I was a little skeptical about the process of buying glasses online.  I have worn glasses since I was 8 years old, and I have always purchased my glasses from my optometrist's office.  I am really fussy, and I didn't think I would like a pair of glasses that I didn't have the opportunity to try on.  So as a back up - I tried on a bunch of frames at my optometrist's office and finally settled on a pair that I liked.  When I went to the Firmoo website, I looked for a similar pair of frames, and found one.

I used the Firmoo website's feature of uploading a picture of myself so I could "try" the frames on my face.  This was useful when selecting my frames, but I still wasn't sure about how accurate it would be when the glasses actually arrived and I had them on my face.

 I settled on frame #: CP6061 in black:



I ordered them in my prescription and held my breath while I waited for them to come.  A couple days later they arrived, and I anxiously tore open the package and ran to the bathroom to try them on.

Much to my surprise, I LOVED them!  I actually liked them better than the pair I had selected from my optometrist's office.  The prescription was bang-on (which was great because I wasn't sure if I had entered the information correctly), the quality was just as good as any other pair of glasses I have ever owned, and the fit was fantastic (not too tight, too loose, or crooked, or anything like that) - another thing that I was really surprised by because I wasn't able to actually try these glasses on before I ordered them!

I was not expecting to be so happy with glasses that I got for free!  Even if I had to pay full price for them, they only would've cost $62.90 (including shipping) - which is nothing coming from a woman who has paid over $500 before for glasses!  Firmoo.com offers a FREE first pair of glasses to all of their customers (you just have to pay for shipping), and I have no hesitations in sending everyone their way (I'm going back for sunglasses)!

After all, less money spent on glasses = more money you can spend on your house!

How To Fade Fabric

Sometimes you find something that's just perfect for what you need - but, it just needs a slight alteration.  Sometimes making that slight alteration yourself can get you exactly what you want, and save you a lot of money.

Case in point: I had this apricot fabric on hand, but needed it to be just a couple shades lighter for the ruffled pillow shams I was making.  I set out to see if I could fade the fabric myself to the shade I needed.

Here's how I went about it:

TOOLS & MATERIALS:

- Fabric
- Rubber gloves
- Apron (to protect your clothes)
- Bleach
- Measuring cup
- Bathtub or other large wash basin


PROCEDURE:

1) TEST:

I mixed 1 cup of bleach with 10 cups of hot water and fully submerged a small scrap of my fabric in the solution for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes was up, I removed my scrap from the bleach solution, rinsed it thoroughly with cold water, wrung it out in a cloth, and laid it flat to air dry.  Once my scrap was dry, I checked it against the rest of my fabric and found that it had worked perfectly, and was just the right colour!

If you don't get lucky the first time like I did, leave the scrap in the bleach solution for a longer period of time until you achieve the shade you desire, or increase the amount of bleach in the solution.  However, I wouldn't use more than 2 parts bleach to 10 parts water because if the bleach is too strong it can eat away at the fibers of your fabric and decrease it's quality.

2) CUT YOUR FABRIC:

I was working with raw fabric, not a finished product (if you are fading a finished product you would just skip this step), so I decided to pre-cut my pieces before fading them. I probably could have just left the fabric in one piece, but I was worried that I would have difficulty fully submerging a larger piece of fabric evenly in the solution (might create air-pockets, or folds that would absorb the solution differently in different spots).  My worst fear was that the fabric might fade un-evenly, and would not end up all the same shade, so I took this extra step to try and avoid that.

3) MIX YOUR BLEACH SOLUTION:

Using the same recipe from my test, I mixed 1 part bleach to 10 parts hot water in my bathtub.  When I was certain that I had it mixed well, I quickly added my pieces of fabric 1 at a time, making sure each individual piece was fully submerged in the solution (if you do it this way, you want to be quick about it so that the first pieces you put in aren't in the solution for too much longer than the last ones).  Once all the pieces were submerged, I set my timer for 15 minutes and let it all sit.

*Note* If you want everything to be the same, you'll want to do all of your fabric or items in a single batch.  Slight variables can make a difference in between batches, so if you want it all to be exactly the same, do it all at once!

4) RINSE:

I drained the bleach solution from the bathtub and squeeze out as much of the solution from the fabric as possible.  Next, I turned on the shower and rinsed the fabric out under cold running water as well as I could, and squeezed out the excess water from the fabric when I felt it was sufficient.

Next I filled the bathtub with cold water (fully submerging the fabric) and swished the fabric around in it for about 10 minutes.

Then I drained the water and squeezed out the excess water from the fabric.

*Note*  I have read that it is a good idea to submerge your fabric or item(s) in a chlorine neutralizer solution before this step to make sure the bleach stops fading and to eliminate the bleachy smell- however I didn't find this to be necessary.

5) DRY:

I debated whether or not to just throw my fabric pieces in the dryer, but instead I decided to roll each piece in a towel and air dry them. It probably would've been fine to dry them in the dryer - but again I was worried about uniformity and wanted all the pieces to dry evenly just in case that somehow effected the fading process.

When all my pieces were dry I ironed them and proceeded to sew my pillow covers with all my fabric just the right shade!

Closet Bookshelf

Most often we don't pay much attention to our closets.  We just stuff them full of junk and close the doors.  Usually we complain that we don't have enough of them, or that they're not big enough, but lately I have been thinking about closets in more unconventional ways.

It started with a brilliant front-entry closet to mud-room style nook conversion that I saw from House of Smiths and replicated for a client of mine who had a very narrow entryway, and didn't really need a front closet, but did need a place for visitors to sit and shed their coats and shoes.

Click here for tutorial

The fact of the matter is, sometimes, depending on your needs in a particular space, a closet can be better used for something other than a closet.

One of the things that really bothered me when we first moved into our house was the upstairs hallway. It was straight, narrow, dark, and full of doors.  30 years ago the builders of my home sought to try and include everything a family would need into the space available and for the most part I am happy with that, but in the hallway, it just felt like they were trying to cram too many things in.  My small hallway contained: 3 bedroom doors, 1 bathroom door, 1 small coat closet, 1 narrow broom closet, and the most ridiculously undersized linen closet I have ever seen.

Broom Closet BEFORE

Functionally, these 2 skinny little closets just weren't working for me.  Sure they existed, which I guess was better than nothing at all, but the narrow size coupled with bi-fold doors limited what could actually be stored in the closet in the first place and made it very difficult to put things in and pull things out.  From a design perspective, I had a rectangle full of rectangles.  It was too much repetition.  It felt crowded. I couldn't stand it.  But what to do about it?

Kinda-Custom Storage Cabinet

First, I needed to create a different storage solution that worked better for my linens and cleaning supplies.  This is when I came up with my Kinda-Custom Storage Cabinet which gave me all the storage I needed and more.  With my stuff out of the way, I could concentrate on improving the aesthetics of my hallway.  I had 3 main goals in mind for my hallway: light, space, and variety.

In order to create some more breathing room between all those rectangles crowded together, I took out the broom closet.  I dry-walled over the existing closet opening in the hallway, but didn't eliminate the closet all together (because, I do need some closets).

(New tutorial coming soon: How-To Drywall)

Instead I cut a hole in the side of the closet which then made it a much needed bathroom closet instead of an impractical hall closet. Eliminating this impractical closet from the hallway cut down on the number of rectangles crowding my hallway, and created a little more open wall space for artwork which will bring  more variety and balance to the space.

Broom closet AFTER 

Next I replaced the trim and doors with brilliant white, which automatically lightened and expanded the space.  I chose a 3 panelled door, instead of the pre-existing flat doors, which brought more lines, shapes and interest into the space creating more variety.

(New tutorial coming soon: How-To Replace Doors)

Next on my hit-list was the skinny linen closet.  Like the broom closet I had considered removing this closet from the hallway as well and using the space to expand my daughter's bedroom closet, but it didn't quite lend itself as well to becoming a closet in a different room like the broom closet did.  Besides, I had another problem to solve.

We had a fair number of books that had no official home.  My children's bedrooms didn't have space for bookshelves, so their books just got tossed into their closets with their toys.  My husband and I ended up keeping our books in our nightstands (which we were increasingly running out of space).  My empty linen closet was looking more and more like a built-in bookshelf.

It was a super-simple conversion.  The shelves were already in place.  I just removed the doors and hardware, filled the holes, and painted the closet interior white.

I could have just re-used the existing shelves by painting them white, but I wanted them to come all the way to the edge of the opening, so I bought some slightly wider shelving material, cut new shelves and put them in.

The only part that was a little tricky was the bottom.  Without addressing the bottom, it did just kind of look like a closet with the doors removed, and I didn't really want to put my books right on the floor.  So, I built a 4" kick out of scrap lumber and custom fit the bottom shelf around the closet opening.

I eliminated another blank rectangle from my hall, added variety, and solved my book storage problem.  Win, win, win.  Love it!