Using Lacquered Furniture in a Space

I mentioned last week that I'm really starting to enjoy pieces with more texture, rather than just the lacquered look. As I went through my images, I also realized that my favorite rooms that have shiny, bright lacquered furniture, temper that focus with lots of texture throughout the space.

For example, this room has gorgeous, shiny bright yellow chairs. But you'll notice that the black trunk has a bit of a patina, there's a wood arm chair in the corner, and the wood frame on the wall, bamboo shade, and sisal rug all provide texture that tempers the intensity of the yellow. And the fact that the brass and those natural elements are desaturated versions of a yellow-orange help move your eye from the chairs through the space.

Via Elle Decor

This room below from Lonny has a gorgeous, dusty blue shiny finish, and shiny lucite chairs. But it also has those rich floors, full of variation and depth, and that painting on the easel, which also has a subtle, layered look to it.

Via Lonny

Even Jonathan Adler, who is well known for his bright, shiny pieces, uses many different textures to give spaces a curated sense of age in his colorful spaces. 

Via Jonathan Adler

A few more examples:

Via Jenny Komenda

Via House Beautiful

Via House Beautiful

Via Lonny Magazine

Obviously this isn't the ONLY way to use lacquered furniture in a space, but it's my personal preference. I also think that if you are someone who tends to end up with a lot of vintage pieces, found accessories, etc., it allows you to add contemporary elements to the space without having them look out of place.

What do you guys think? Have you used lacquered pieces in your home? Have you ever thought about how to use them?

Helping My Desk Chair Grow Up a Little

Confession: When I posted pictures of my desk last month, I was kind of embarrassed about the blue and green desk chair. The patterns in the fabric and on my desk competed with each other, the blue didn’t connect with anything like I expected it would, and the whole ensemble looked childish. I knew I needed a change.

Let me refresh your memory. Here's what the chair looked like when I first showed you my desk:

And here's what it looks like no that I've helped it grow up a little:

Adventures in Sewing a Zipperless Pillow

Like many women, I love me a beautiful throw pillow. Textiles are just so purty and pillows are one of the easiest ways to soften up a room. They’re also a great way to add personality to a basic couch or duvet. In the case of our house, they’re a way to dress up our hand-me-down couch.

Before I dive into this little pillow-making tutorial, first let me introduce you to my new(ish) friend, Suzy the sewing machine:

She’s a pre-WWII Singer Featherweight sewing machine. So she’s kind of a new-to-me situation. My grandma has a similar one that she and my mom have used to sew many beautiful things, including both of these lovely Halloween costumes:

That pumpkin isn't on my dress -- it was on the scanned picture. Side note: Don't ever dress your 5 year old up like a bride for Halloween. She will not know how to answer the question, "Where's your groom?" every time she rings a doorbell, and so she will get snotty. And if you are 5 and you're reading this, 1) how impressive and 2) definitely pick what you want to be for Halloween before your mom gets any ideas.

But I digress.

My mom always wanted my sister and I to have our own featherweights, and she saw this one at the shop where she took hers to get serviced. It was a very pleasant non-birthday, non-Christmas surprise. Suzy doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, so she’s very easy to use. I decided to break her out and make a pillow for my first project.

I bought this pink patterned fabric on fabric.com, but before you go chasing it down, you should know that I bought it over a year ago. That seems to be a theme this week.

I decided to do a zipperless pillow because, well, zippers intimidated me. My mom always made them sound hellish, but she was always sewing clothes costumes. I found out last month that when it comes to pillow sewing, zippers are pretty easy. But I consider this pillow more of a step one, so we’re starting here.

I picked up a 14” pillow on sale at Joann’s Fabrics. In hindsight, I wish I had splurged a little bit more because this pillow is very flat. Next time I will buy something a little more plush.

First, I measured and cut a piece of fabric about 16” square. That sounds like a lot, but, it’s better to cut too big than too small. And this was my first try, so I was leaving room for error. I cut the back pieces after looking at a flap-close pillow I had at home, and I determined that the overlap should be an inch or two. With about a ½” hem, that meant that I needed between two and three inches more than my initial 16” square, so I cut a piece of fabric to be 16” x 19”. Then I cut the 19” piece in half.  

Next came the sewing process. I needed to hem the overlap sides first so that it could be sewed into the square, so I folded one side of each of the smaller pieces over and sewed a hem. Once those two pieces were hemmed on the open side, I placed the 16” square face up, and placed the two back pieces face down so that all the sides lined up. Then I pinned around the sides, pointing the pins towards the center of the pillow.

 

Once all the pins were in, I was ready to start sewing. I started in one corner, reinforcing the initial stich by sewing forward, backward, and then forward again. After going around all four sides, I reinforced the last stitches and cut the thread. Then I picked another corner, reinforced the first stitch, and sewed around the square again.

After I finished sewing, I turned the pillow inside out so that it was, well, no longer inside out.  Then I placed my pillow form inside the pillowcase.

And that’s when I determined it looked really, really limp. No worries! I took the pillow form out and flipped the pillow cover inside out again. I did another two stiches about ½” inside the original stitches to shrink the size of the pillow. Then I tested the pillow again, and it looked much better. Once I determined that the pillow cover was the right size, I took it off the pillow, cut the edges to shrink the excess a bit, and cut the corners diagonally so that there wasn’t a bunch of extra fabric stuffed in the corner.

Now the pink pillow resides on our couch, but I’m thinking about snatching it for my bed soon. Of course, that will be after I sew some new ones for the couch. Oh, and don't be fooled into thinking that I still have my Christmas decorations up. This was just the best picture I have of our couch pillows right now. Which reveals that yes, I completed this project a little while ago. You caught me. 

Has anyone else taken up a new sewing project lately? 

Guest Post at Chic Done Cheap: Tips for Refinishing Furniture

Hey friends! Check out my guest post on Chic Done Cheap where I shared some tricks for refinishing furniture (like my coffee table)!

The Completely Clueless Car Buyer's Guide to Buying a New Set of Wheels

I’ve been wondering for a while when I would actually feel like a grown up. I thought it might happen when I got my first real job, but it didn’t. Then I thought it might happen when I moved out of my parents’ house. Nope, not that either. Then last Sunday, I finally found it. It turns out I just needed to buy a car. I guess there’s just something about committing to spend thousands of dollars that feels grown up-ish.

I have to admit, I had no idea where to begin when it came to buying a car. I did a little poking around the internet, but ultimately called my dad and straight up asked him, “What’s the first concrete step in this process?” So I’m giving you my firsthand account and step by step process in painful detail so that those of you that are about to embark on the car buying journey will know just what you need to do.

Step 1: Decide on a Budget

My day job is related to affordable housing, so when it came to finding a place to live, I knew exactly what I could afford (less than 30% of my income). When it came to buying a car I looked all over the place, but couldn’t really find a definitive answer on how much of one’s income should go to a car payment. So I ran my numbers and decided what I would be comfortable with. Here’s how I did the math:

I took my monthly take home pay, subtracted my housing costs (estimating the variable things like water and electric), subtracted other variable costs like food and gas (which I knew would change), and then subtracted fixed costs like my gym membership. At that point I was left with basically two line items: savings and fun. So I determined what amount I wanted my savings to be, how much I would reasonably need for fun (I know my patterns), and then determined what amount I had for a car payment. I determined that I could do between $250 - $300/month on a car payment, but preferred to keep it at $250.

Simple Budget Equation:

Take home pay – rent – utilities – gas – food – gym – savings = car payment + fun*

*fun = reasonable amount and not pipe dream

Note that I was not too focused on the monthly car payment, but I had to use it basically to work backward and determine what a reasonable total amount would be for my budget. At that point, I still didn’t really know how much total I could spend without having an interest rate in mind. That’s when I went to my bank and found out that they were offering as low as 3.99% APR on used cars. I plugged my monthly target, the down payment I was thinking about, and the interest rate, and a projected 4 year loan into a few of the many auto loan calculators online (like this one on edmunds.com) and determined I could very reasonably afford a car under $16,000, but I could go up to $17,000 if it was really worth it.

Step 2: Research cars

Once I had a budget, I could more realistically look at potential car options. Many websites offered the same advice my dad had: make sure you give yourself options! You don’t want to get your heart set on a specific model because you’re going to have a much harder time getting a good deal that way. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was originally interested in the Rav4 and CRV, but found out through my research that they were a bit out of my set price range. I did research on hatchbacks on Edmunds.com, US News, and a few other websites that came up in a Google search. That’s how I decided that I liked the Fit, but also wanted to look at the Matrix, Mazda 3, and other comparable cars that were on the used lot.

Step 3: Get pre-approved for a loan

I was able to fill out a form online, get pre-approved for a loan, and pick up paper work all in under 4 hours. Frankly it was a little scary how easily the whole process went. I felt like they were handing loans out like candy. But I also know that my credit is spotless and a loan and interest rate are all just formula decisions.

When I applied for the loan online, I actually asked for about $3,000 more than I planned to use. The bank came back and actually approved me for $3,000 more than I asked for, and approved me at 4.29% for up to 5 years (I had asked for four). I didn’t get the advertised 3.99% (I’m assuming) because I don’t have any debt history outside of credit card payments. This is the one time that NOT having student loans comes back to bite me. I could select the original loan amount over the 4 years that I had requested, but I opted for the higher pre-approval amount and longer term, knowing that there was no penalty for not using the full amount or paying the car off in less than 5 years.  

Note that you don’t need to be pre-approved to get a car loan, but it is nice when you can walk into a car dealership with your own financing ready to go if you need to use it.

Step 4: Get out there and look

I felt the same way about the car buying process as I did about finding a place to rent: I had to get out and see a few things I knew I didn’t want in order to really know what I did want. To that end, last Thursday my dad and I went down to Woodbridge to see a few cars before everyone closed. First we went to Carmax. I wasn’t impressed. The problem with a “no haggle” sticker price is that the prices, at least in our area, were kind of unreasonable. I suppose by agreeing not to haggle you also forfeit the ability to haggle a good deal for yourself. Also, they really didn’t have much in stock. I heard the Carmax out by Dulles is bigger, so maybe it’s a different story there. But used car inventory is down, so who knows?

After we looked at Carmax we went over to Hendrick Honda. Looking back, I should have approached the first dealer differently. Instead of telling them that I wanted to look around at their used cars, I told them right away that I wanted to see the Fit. Rookie mistake. Once you tell a car dealer that you’re interested in a new car, you’re really going to have a tough time getting them back onto the used car lot. Honestly, you really just have to walk over there yourself and leave them following you. This process requires a certain tolerance for being assertive almost to the point of rude, but once you’ve done it a few times you feel a lot more comfortable having taken control of the process.

I test drove a Honda Fit on Thursday night, and that’s when I realized that I wasn’t totally prepared for the negotiating process. It was also almost 9 pm, and I had hardly seen any other cars. I knew I wasn’t ready to buy. So we took the salesman’s card and went home. No love lost. It was valuable going out and looking at cars. It really prepped me to zero in on what I was most interested in and begin to think about what I should aim to pay on each various model.

Step 5: Determine what the dealer paid for each car and how much you should offer

When calculating what you should offer on a new car, you first want to figure out about how much the dealer probably paid for the car. Edmunds.com lists MSRP, invoice, and “true market value”. MSRP is what the factory is suggesting the dealer should charge for the car. Invoice is theoretically what the dealer paid for the car (although often the car cost less). True market value is about what you can expect to actually pay for the car and falls somewhere between invoice and MSRP.

The prices on the Honda fit were:

Invoice: $15,340

MSRP: $15,900

True Market Value: $15,701

You may have noticed that I mentioned that a car doesn’t actually cost the dealer the “invoice” price on the car. The dealer may have had rebates from the factory that knocked $100-$300 or more off of the cost of the car. They also have this thing called “holdback”, which is basically a rebate that the dealer will get something like quarterly, so that it looks like they paid more for the car, but they’re actually getting money back on it eventually. I read online that for Honda, holdback is about 2% (about $300 on the Fit). So while the dealer invoice price is $15,340, a dealership may end up paying less than $15,000 on a Fit Base.

Once you determine about what a dealer paid, you have to start adding expensive crap back into the equation. Once of the most expensive things is the freight fee, something I’m a little ashamed to say I knew nothing about when I started this process. Freight on Hondas appears to be $770 across the board. I still think it’s a little silly that the price a dealer pays to get a car to the dealership is considered an extra fee, but oh well.

Then you have to add in profit. I know, I know, those scummy car dealers don’t need profit! They’re scamming you already! OK, let’s be reasonable. This is still a money-making venture so you really do have to factor profit into the equation. I read that 3-5% is reasonable, so I added about $500 to the price.

Once you have the purchase price that includes profit and freight, you have to think about tax, tags, and fees. Tax is about 3% on cars in Virginia, tags run about $100, and many dealers charge $350-$400 in document fees. Once you add all this in, you have your “out the door” price.

In my mind, the “out the door” price is the only one that really matters to me. It’s the amount that I have to come up with between loans and a down payment—how it breaks down between the purchase price and fees is really the dealer’s problem, not mine.

If you’re following my math, you probably realized that we’re up to about $17,000, which was way too high for me to really consider. I determined along with my dad that I really wanted to be out the door at $16,500, and we used that number in our negotiating process.

The math on a used car is slightly different (and less complicated). Basically you go to Kelly Blue Book and Edmunds.com and use their tools to determine how much the car in front of you is worth. Both have apps for iphone and Droid, so definitely download those and charge up your phone for use on the car lot. Once you know what the car is worth you can determine whether the price on the car is completely unreasonable or right on target. Based on that information, you can make an offer targeting to pay about, or slightly under what that car is worth. Keep in mind that you won’t (or rather shouldn’t) pay freight, but taxes, tags and doc fees will still apply.

Step 6: Get quotes

I read on a discussion board that one buyer gathered quotes from a bunch of dealers via email, and then used the quotes they each gave her to negotiate the best deal. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, so I went to a bunch of different Honda dealers and requested a quick quote on their 2011 Honda Fit Base. Warning: when you request quotes online from dealers, you are letting the lions loose. They will hunt you down, email you auto emails, personal emails, and call you twice in one day and leave you two messages. They want your business. What they will not all do is give you a quote. With the exception of Hendrick Honda in Woodbridge, any dealer that gave me a quote pretty much quoted MSRP, some with freight included and some without. From what I could tell, they wanted me to talk to them really badly, but they didn’t want to give me a number. This is hilarious to me because I could’ve sold THEM the Fit at this point, I liked it enough. All I really cared about was the price they would give me and whether they had any Fit Bases in stock.

I had one dealer email me and say “many dealers will probably quote you a price that doesn’t include fees, so it will look artificially low.” Um, excuse me, but no shiznit, Sherlock. I asked you for a quick quote online, you think I didn’t read all about the pricing on these things? Sure, some of them quoted me under $16,000, but I could tell when the price of freight was included and when it wasn’t. Also, this was a dealer that avoided giving me a quote via email.

Sorry, I’ll stop venting. The only thing that getting the online quote really did for me was help me determine 1) who actually had the Fit Base in stock and 2) just how high some of these dealers wanted to start. It did not really get me anywhere in terms of haggling a price down, but it did help me determine where everyone was starting. It also gave me a contact to email at each dealer when I finally did get an offer from another dealer. It was good practice and prepared me for the aggression that comes at you when you walk through the doors onto the lot of a dealership.

Step 7: Get out there and mean business

There are various tips online that say the best time to shop is on a weekday, or at the end of a month when the dealer is trying to meet a quota or earn a bonus and therefore has a greater incentive to sell you a car. Well, I went on a weekend at the beginning of the month and still got a good deal. Granted, it was Labor Day weekend and car dealers are clearing their lots for 2012 inventory. But more than anything, getting a good deal is all about knowing how much the car is really worth on the market, and being willing to walk away. So it’s alright to get out there and shop at the internet-determined non-optimal time. As long as you know your stuff, you should be fine.

Last Saturday afternoon my Dad came over and we headed out car shopping. I decided to hit up Honda of Tyson’s Corner because they were supposed to be getting 5 Fit Bases in that day, and it was close to other dealerships. Before I stopped there, I went over to Koons Tyson’s Toyota so that I could look at their inventory of used cars. I actually found a 2008 Toyota Certified Used Matrix there with about 39,000 miles on it for about $15,000. I liked it, but I wanted to get a firm price on the Fit as a basis of comparison, so we went across the street to the Honda dealer.

Having learned from my experience Thursday night, when I arrived at the Honda dealer I started on the used car lot to see if they had any options. When I determined that they didn’t, I mentioned to the salesmen that I had been looking at the Honda Fit. They had literally just received a shipment of them, so I actually went into a garage and saw the car before it was prepped for the lot. I knew then that I definitely wanted the Fit and I was ready to make it happen if I could, so we started the deal negotiating process.

Step 8: Negotiate a deal

Because I haven’t mention it enough already, getting a good deal is all about knowing what price you should reasonably expect from a dealer. Don’t expect to be able to negotiate a good deal without doing your homework first.

The salesmen at Tyson’s Honda could tell we liked the Fit in the garage, but this was the part in the process that felt most awkward to me: throwing out a number. So I stood there looking at it for an awkward minute or two. Thankfully my dad stepped in and threw out my number, which I suspect made the offer sound more credible. He told him that I wanted to be out the door at $16,400. The salesman looked a little shocked and told us the usual “we don’t make much of a profit on these units” but went inside to talk to the general manager to see what he could do. The manager offered me $16,887 on the car, about $400 more than my high goal. I told him sorry, no can do, I had to draw my bottom line somewhere. He told me it was a great value and I told him I respected that, but ultimately I have to keep my finances in mind and look at significantly less expensive used options. So I walked away, just as I had been prepared to do all day. I took the writing in offer and the salesman’s business card and went on my merry way. On to the next, on on the next one.

Step 9: Make a freaking decision

Next, I went over to another Honda dealer near my house. I did the same thing: looked at their used cars, saw a few Matrixes (Matrices?) that were more expensive than the new Fit. I could probably have knocked at least $1,000 off of them according to Kelly Blue Book, but they still would’ve been a little pricey.

Then I went over to the new lot where, I’m sorry to say, a nice but painfully awkward young car salesman attempted to sell me on a car I already knew everything about. In fact, he didn’t even believe me when I told him the car has 10 cup holders. He told me he thought I was confusing it with a different vehicle. Here’s a tip for you, car salesman trying to bond with me over our mutual attendance of UVa: Someone who graduated from that fine University probably doesn’t enjoy being told she’s wrong about something that she appears to have studied more than you did. I know I sound mean, but dealing with these guys all day was like fighting off piranhas. Only there was way more awkward silence involved.

All that aside, Bill Page couldn’t offer even close to what I was willing to pay and what Tyson’s had offered me. When I told them I wanted to be out the door at $16,500, they brought me back an offer that was still well over $17,000. Having my other offer in hand, I considered this laughable. Also, I didn’t really want a black or bright blue car, and that was all they had, so I didn’t feel bad walking out on that either.

At this point, I didn’t quite know what to do. $16,887 seemed high, but it was so far my only option on the Fit. And according to the math I’d done earlier, it wasn’t completely unreasonable. My dad and I decided to come back to my place to run the numbers on my options. My only other real option was the 2008 Toyota Matrix I had seen at Koons Tyson’s Toyota. This is where the kind of cooler (yep, I’m a dork) decision making came into play.

We looked at Kelly Blue Book and determined we probably couldn’t knock much off the price of the Matrix. So we estimated that I would be lucky to get out the door with $15,500 on that car. There also weren’t any financing deals on it, so I would be using my preapproved 4.29% loan to finance it.

Although the Fit was over $1,000 more expensive, it was being offered with a .9% financing deal. Once I calculated how much I would save in interest over both 4 years with the lower financing rate, the difference between the Fit and the Matrix was only about $400. Keep in mind the Fit was brand new and the Matrix had nearly 40,000 miles on it.

After I calculated the difference with the interest rate, I went on Edmunds.com again and used their “True Cost to Own” tool, which factors in and compares the money you’ll lose in depreciation, and how much you’ll pay for insurance, gas, repairs, etc. over the course of 5 years on different vehicles. The price to own the 2008 Matrix was definitely more than the 2011 Fit, but a lot of that was depreciation on the Matrix over the first 2 years. I didn’t have to worry about as much because the car was already almost 4 years old. What I did notice was that the Matrix was estimated to cost about $2,000 more in gas over the 5 year period than the Honda Fit. With math like that, it was clear that while the Matrix would save me $1,000 up front, the Fit was a better value. The Fit also got higher ratings from many different sources, and has more cargo space.

With my value information in hand, I decided to call my guy Guillermo Murillo at Hendrick Honda and see if they could improve on the deal that Tyson’s had given me. “G” said he thought he could, but they weren’t going to get any more Fit Bases in stock until this week. He really did seem like a nice guy and I would’ve liked to work with him. I was willing to wait on the car for about a week, but the .9% financing, an American Honda deal and not a dealer deal, was ending on Monday night. So even though they could potentially bring my price closer to the $16,500 I wanted, I could end up spending more than $200 in interest if I ended up with a higher rate. Even Guillermo said I should take the deal from Tyson’s, which I definitely appreciated.

So I called up my salesman at Honda of Tyson’s Corner to tell him I was still interested in the deal and asked him if he still had any in stock. He did, so we arranged to meet as soon as they opened Sunday morning so that I could buy the car.

As a last ditch effort, I emailed a bunch of other dealers to see if they could give a better price. Had I not been so exhausted from car shopping I would’ve probably called them, but I couldn’t bear the thought of fighting off another salesman. Instead, I sent them all emails that said, “Thanks for following up with me on the 2011 Honda Fit Base. I actually have an offer in writing from Honda of Tyson’s Corner for $16,887 out the door. If you can do better, I’d love to do business with you.” Short, sweet, and to the point.

I heard back from a few of them that said they couldn’t match the price. Rosenthal Honda of Landmark told me that they had sold out of all their Fit Bases with the average price a little over $18,000. One dealer even sent me the following email on Monday, which made me feel great about my purchase:

I did hear back from someone at Pohanka Honda of Fredericksburg on Tuesday, and he said he could knock a couple hundred dollars of the quote I had too. But, the financing deal was over, so it didn’t make much of a difference anyway. It was interesting to note, however, that the two best quotes I got were from dealers somewhat significantly south of DC and right off I-95. I plan to keep this in mind when I have to buy another car.

Step 10: Arrange insurance

You have to give proof of insurance to the dealer so that they can register the car on your behalf and let you drive it off the lot. I needed to get new insurance for this car that was now in my name, so I got online quotes for that too. Esurance and Nationwide both quoted me over $100 a month, but Geico, using my discount as a Navy Federal Credit Union member, quoted me less than $900 for the year. This was definitely the lowest quote I got, and I was able to set it up over the phone with an agent so that when I got to the dealer I could call with my new car’s VIN number and get the car insurance on the spot.

Step 11: Purchase your glorious new set of wheels

My dad didn’t think I needed his help when I went to buy the car, so I was prepared Sunday morning to go alone. Then I realized that because they knew I was coming the night before, they would have the car prepped for me and perhaps ready to drive off the lot. I obviously couldn’t do that if I drove a car there, so the boy was nice enough to come with me. I was really happy he went because it was nice to have someone else “on my side” during the buying process. He was actually the perfect person to accompany me because he was just as foreign to the process as I was, and he just sat there and let me do my thing (which he is always quite good at). I think that had my dad been there, I would’ve been tempted to take a back seat to the process, and I imagine that the men in the dealership would’ve talked to him more than me. Oh yes, Kyle also provided plenty of entertainment and company for me while I was there, which was great because buying a car is not a quick process.

I carefully signed all my paperwork and managed to get out of there without signing up for an extended warranty (which I had discussed with my dad beforehand). Shout out to my car salesman Shabir Baba, who was really nice and helpful and followed up with me today to make sure everything is going fine with the car.

Step 12: Revel in your grownupness and badasschick self

The car buying process is stressful and there are plenty of places to screw it up. I didn’t quite realize it until I went out to dinner Saturday night and, still in car buying mode, was ready to fight off the waiter and see if he’d throw in dessert for free. But this process was amazingly empowering too. In less than a week I got preapproved for a loan bigger than I’ve ever had in my life, determined what car I wanted,  negotiated a great deal, and bought a brand new car pretty much all by myself. I couldn’t be happier with my decision and I’m so pumped about my new car. You better believe I celebrated with a few dranks and dancing Sunday night. Cheers!

Hardware Makeover

Last fall I purchased some knobs on HomeDepot.com for a dresser I had just snagged and refinished on Craigslist. At the time I had only begun to scratch the surface of the amazing design blogs I now read almost daily, and I really didn’t know what kind of hardware I wanted for this piece. I was so used to adding glass knobs to new pieces, but they just didn’t fit this piece at all. I also knew that this dresser needed 12 knobs, so I couldn’t afford to splurge on super pretty anthropologie knobs like the ones I just ordered for my desk. So I settled on brushed nickel flower knobs from HomeDepot.com and paid about $2/each for them.



After my room began to take shape and I started falling in love with a gold accent here and there, I knew that the knobs I had on my dresser weren’t working for me. I would love to put some gold O-ring hooks on the dresser, but I’m looking at buying a new car and a new computer soon (and possibly a new TV for my room—it just turned itself off twice in the last 10 minutes) so I really need to be budget conscious and work with what I have to the extent that I can.

Inspired by my recently purchased but not yet received anthropologie gold knobs with white patina, I decided to makeover the knobs currently on the dresser. I had actually been thinking about doing it when my favorite bloggers decided to spray paint some of their hardware. I took it as a green light from the blogiverse to start my project. Luckily I was able to complete with materials that I already had on hand.

First, I unscrewed all the hardware from the dresser. Then I stabbed holes in a box about 2 inches apart from each other using a screw driver. I then loosely screwed all the knobs into the holes in the box. Once the knobs were in the box, I set the box down and set all the knobs so that they were facing up.

I used two types of spray paint for this project: a white Rustoleum Painters' Touch primer from Home Depot, and a metallic Design Master Brilliant Gold spray paint that I picked up from Michael’s a while ago when I repainted some picture frames. Warning: This brand of gold spray paint smells a little funky.

First I sprayed a thin layer of primer on the knobs while they were facing up on the box. The layer didn’t quite cover, but that was OK because I planned to put another layer on it. After I sprayed the tops, I put my hand in the box and flipped them over, letting the knobs hang from the box so that I could easily spray the sides and skinny parts of the knobs. Then I flipped the box back over and let the knobs dry sitting straight up again. Unfortunately I was so focused that I forgot to take a picture of this step in the process L.

Once I had sprayed two layers of primer on the knobs, I moved on to spraying the knobs gold. I used exactly the same process to spray the knobs gold as I did with the primer. This type of paint dries kind of matte, so I didn’t have to worry too much about ruining the metallic finish. And because I planned to add a patina to the finish, I knew that if the gold finish had a few imperfections they probably won’t be visible.

After I the second layer of gold paint dried, I took the knobs inside and set up a work station with the knobs, a small paintbrush, some paint, and a rag that I cut from an old t-shirt. I used an off-white Martha Stewart paint sample that I bought over the winter from Home Depot (and also used to paint the IU on my boo’s chair).

To add the white patina, I simply brushed on a coat of white paint to the face of the knob, making sure that I got paint in all the crevices. Then I took my rag and rubbed off the paint, leaving a thick-ish coat of paint in the crevices and a light layer of patina on most of the smooth surfaces. After I got top painted, then I brushed paint onto the sides and the neck of the knob and then wiped it off, making sure to leave a light layer of patina. The knob looks especially good if you can get a little bit of shine through in some spots. I painted and buffed off the paint one knob at a time, as I found that the paint started to dry and was harder to buff off if I tried to paint two knobs at a time.

Once the paint dried (which didn’t take long), I put the knobs back on the dresser and admired my work. I also made a somewhat miserable attempt to photograph the finished product. Hopefully you get the picture. I’m much happier with this new finish. It has a bit more character and matches the style of my room better. Of course I’d still love some slightly more stylish knobs, perhaps of a different shape, but this is an excellent no cost alternative.

Before

After!

If you were to tackle this yourself without already having the materials, you should be able to get spray paint for under $10, so it wouldn’t be an expensive upgrade at all. Next time you see beautiful hardware you love but can’t afford, look around at Home Depot or Lowes and think about how you can upgrade that inexpensive hardware to look more like the designer pieces!

A Place to Hang Your Hat (or Coat) Up

We really lucked out getting a townhouse with as much space as we have for the price we pay. But the problem with having a lot of space is…well…it’s kind of an invitation to fill it. And no one can fill up extra space like four girls. So while we have a spacious coat closet right in our entry way, we found pretty quickly that there was no room for guests’ coats and some of our coats in the closet. So rather than continuing to pile up coats on the chaise lounge my roommate got out of her parents’ basement, I decided to make a cheap/simple/stylish fix.

The solution: a coat rack in the form of a rack of hooks that can hang on the wall. I came to this solution for a few reasons. First, we wanted something wall mounted, and we needed one that was 40”+ long. Those are hard to find and can be pretty expensive. Second, I didn’t want to put a ton of holes in the wall right there because we are renters and it’s always good to minimize the number of holes we have in a wall when possible. Third, I wanted to be able to customize the coat rack so that it was non-ugly, and so that I could hang it on studs rather than having to use wall anchors. And oh yeah, there was also the entertainment/fun value of me taking on another project.

I could've gone for ordinary hooks in this project, but I have a slight obsession with hardware. As in I have been known to go on trips and snap photos of cool doorknobs.

One of my many hardware pics. This one is a beautiful doorknob I saw on a house in San Juan, which is full of awesome hardware.

World Market has really cool anthropologie-esque hardware that I’ve always wanted to use in a project, so I went over there and snagged 8 hooks and knobs for about $27. I got three hooks (two the same color) for $1.99 each, a set of two glass flower knobs for $4.99, a cool blue knob for $3.99, and two pretty cool ceramic painted knobs for $5.99 each (they were a splurge, so they were just so cool!)

Once I bought the knobs, I took them home and laid them out on our floor. To give coats enough space to hang, I decided to hang the knobs about 6 inches from the center of each one. This made the space from knob 1 to knob 8 42 inches (because you multiply 6 inches by the number of spaces between knobs, which is 7, not eight). I then added 3 inches on either side of the knob and determined that I needed a board 48 inches long. I measured this length out on the wall I planned to hang it on, and it worked well for the space.

Because some of the knobs had screws built into them (as opposed to just running through them so you could remove it and use a shorter screw), the board had to be deeper than the screw itself in order for the board to lay flush with the wall. I measured the screws and determined I needed something at least 1 ½ inches deep. I went on an adventure to Home Depot and found a 2x4 stud, which is about 1 ½ inches deep, and had it cut to 48 inches. I used a medium grade 2x4 because I was worried that the nicer wood was too dense and therefore heavy to hang on the wall. Plus the medium grade was cheaper and it’s not like we’re attempting to furnish the White House here.

I measured the holes out on the front of the board and drilled holes large enough for each screw to slip through. That wasn't too tough. 

This is the part of my story where I tell you that a $15 drill from Target that you may have hanging out in your toolbox from college is not powerful enough to bore large holes in a piece of wood. Because I needed to wood to be flush with the wall but I also needed to secure the screws to the wood, I had to drill holes 1” in diameter into the back of the piece of wood. I went to Home Depot and got this drill bit that it supposed to do the trick, and would’ve, except that my drill wasn’t quite powerful enough. So I ended up starting with the drill bit, drilling a few random holes in the circle created by the drill bit, locking the drill and manually twist the drill bit in order to create the hole big enough for each screw to connect through with enough of the screw sticking out for me to attach a nut to it. I definitely recommend investing in a better drill for this, since my process took forever. After that battle, the rest of the process was pretty easy.

Since a stud is meant to be inside a wall and not hanging on it, the wood was pretty rough and had a few stamps on it. To prep the wood, I sanded it with 120 grit paper, followed by 220 grit. This gave me an opportunity to smooth the wood and off some of the stamps that were on the wood.

Once I finished my sanding and removed the dust with a damp cloth, I applied a General Finishes water-based espresso stain, which I had leftover from another project. I used a foam brush to apply the stain because I find that it goes on a little more evenly. I let the stain sit for a minute or two and then buffed the excess off with a piece of an old t-shirt (from my pile o’ t-shirts-they-handed-out-like-candy-in-college that I don’t wear anymore).

The great thing about water-based stain is that you can pretty easily apply it indoors. I started this project on a nice day outside, but brought it inside when I ran out of time to add another coat before it got dark. I set up my $19 pair of sawhorses and the drop cloth that my nurse roommate brought home from the hospital, and added the second coat in our basement/beer pong room. After I applied two coats and let them dry overnight, I covered the entire piece of wood with three coats of MinWax Polycrylic Protective Finish in Satin. I really wanted a matte finish, but Polycrylic is also water-based and can therefore be applied inside, so I made the sacrifice. I also don’t expect this thing to take a beating; otherwise I would’ve used a more durable oil-based finish.

After I let the protective finish dry overnight, I attached the knobs using a combo of a wrench and need-nose pliers to tighten each nut onto each screw. After securing the knobs and hooks, I used my handy dandy stud-finder (no, I haven’t used it to find a studly man friend, and yes, that’s a super cheesy joke) to find where the wall studs were closest to the end of the boards but within the 48” piece of wood (hehehe…get your mind out of the gutter). That way I could attach the wall-mounting hardware to my new coat rack so that I could screw the hardware into the studs, making the piece of wood hung sturdily (this just keeps getting worse) to the wall, and also preventing me from having to use wall anchors, which create holes that would be a major bi-otch to patch when we move out of our rental.

The hardware I used was the type that has one piece that you screw onto the thing your hanging, which you then slip down over the screw you’ve anchored into the wall. I know that is an incredibly confusing description, so just check out the picture below. Make sure that when you use this you hang it with the hole that the screw can fit on the bottom, otherwise the screw won't attach to the hardware.

Now we have a place to hang our coats and a pretty decoration right inside the doorway, which apparently doesn't get fabulous light as it appears in this picture.

This entire project only cost about $39, and a rack this size (ha!) would’ve probably cost a lot more than that in a store, if I could even find one I like. Here’s a list of materials I used: 

• Knobs/hooks from World Market -- $27
• 2 x 4” wood stud -- $3 (and I still have about 40” left over)
• General Finishes Water Based Espresso Stain – had already, but you can find a small can of water-based stain at Home Depot for under $10, and have plenty left to tackle another project
• MinWax Polycrylic Protective Finish (Satin) -- $8
• Mounting Hardware – about $1 (can’t remember exactly)

Total for this project: $39

Next time you're looking for a quick storage solution, consider this one. It could easily be done in an apartment as long as you're cool with sanding in the bathtub and staining in your living room. Who are we kidding? In the spirit of this innuendo-filled post, you've probably done weirder things there before anyway.

Easy Christmas Decorating Ideas: Ornament-Covered Tree

I bought a cardboard cone from Michael’s in November with plans to make some kind of tree out of it. I determined late in the game that I wanted to make an ornament tree, and am slightly ashamed to say that I didn’t finish this process until Saturday. At least it’s done and sitting beautifully on my coffee table in time for Christmas.

After waiting too long to determine that I wanted to cover the cone in glass ball ornaments, I ended up going to multiple places looking for mini glass ball ornaments to make the tree. I ended up snagging some small ornaments from Michael’s, some from Target, and some from Merrifield Garden Center, a local nursery that has a beautiful Christmas shop in season. At first, I was just going to do red, silver, green, and white. After purchasing ornaments in these colors, I called an audible and decided to add some color to my tree. This process resulted in an ornament assortment of different colors and sizes.

First, I prepped the cone by painting it with silver acrylic paint, which was only about $1 from Michael’s. I applied the paint with a foam paint brush and let the paint dry overnight.

First, I removed the “crowns” of the ornaments, which are the little metal pieces at the top that hold the metal loop on the ornament. You can usually just pull these right off. Be a little careful because the ends of the metal loop are compressed into the ornament and will expand when you pull it out of the ornament. I only removed the crowns two or three ornaments at a time because I didn’t know how many ornaments I would be using for this project.

I used a glue gun to attach the ornaments to the cone. For the first row, I picked two different sizes and alternated them around the bottom of the cone. To attach the ornaments, I put glue around the surface that the crown was attached to and held it to the cardboard cone until the glue solidified enough to hold the ornament on.

On the second row, I tried to alternate sizes, but wasn’t quite able to stick to that pattern. I made an effort to place ornaments so that I created as few gaps in ornaments as possible, but that wasn’t always doable, so the tree did have some gaps. I kept going around the tree, attempting to vary size, color, and texture of ornaments close together. To make some ornaments closer together or fit better, I glue the side or the ornament directly to the cone, rather than using the end of the ornament. I also glued some smaller ornaments to each other rather than to the cardboard cone.

This process proved to be a lengthy one, and took the better part of an entire evening. I have to admit, I was a little discouraged when I was only part way through this process.

I kept plugging along, being mindful of which colors I was using most frequently and which ornaments I needed to conserve.  As I neared the top, I paid close attention to the way ornaments were fitting. Once I got to the top, I clustered ornaments to eliminate as many gaps as possible.

After covering the tree with ornaments, I used the same silver beads that I used in my tree-topper to cover large gaps between ornaments on the tree. This actually added another dimension to the tree.

To make this project, I used a ton of mini ornaments, which included about 34  larger ornaments and many more small ones. If you wanted the tree to have a more uniform look, you should choose two different sized ornaments and stick to them. I ended up using four different sizes altogether.

I’m quite happy with the festive finished product!