DIY | Cape 27

Suitcase Toy Storage

May 20, 2013 by Jessie R. 17 Comments

A few weeks ago I shared a few finds from a local antique show, one of those being this set of suitcases (there are actually three of them).

I had planned to keep them in their original mustard yellow color and use them as toy storage for Zoey. However, when we got them home they were looking super dingy next to all the other bright yellows in her room. So, we decided to give them a new look!

I picked up a quart of basic latex paint in a coral semigloss, to match her ceiling color (BM-Pink Polka Dot), and painted away!

I completely skipped sanding and priming and did about two and half coats per suitcase. Really, I wouldn’t recommend skipping those steps. The paint seemed to need a bit more to cling to, so if I were to do it again, I’d sand and prime.

Since the suitcases have a texture to them already, using a brush didn’t leave any visible brush strokes.

After leaving them to dry overnight, I attached a few casters to the bottoms. We’re planning to use the luggage as storage for barbies, dolls, etc. under Zoey’s bed, so the casters make it easy for her to pull them out by herself. I suppose you could screw the casters to the bottoms, but I just used a little super glue to keep things simple.

And because I like to make all things pretty, I popped on a few bookplates to label each suitcase.

So much better.

Time to put these babies to work!

The insides of the suitcases were in excellent condition. A little musty, but nothing a little airing out couldn’t handle. I just wiped them down really well. I’m a little smitten with how they look placed under the bed.

And the colors tie in really nicely with the coral shades in Zoey’s pillow and the same shade on the ceiling.

How about you guys? Repurposing anything lately? Giving an old piece a new look? We hit up the antique show again this weekend.. no luck

Filed Under: Budget, DIY, Girls Room, Organization, Paint, Storage

Peekaboo Pallet Ceiling

May 13, 2013 by Jessie R. 27 Comments

If you follow me on Instagram than you may have already had a little sneak peek at today’s topic. It was a little spontaneous on our part, but super quick and easy!

Yep, we’re jumping back on the pallet wood bandwagon for a second ride. This time, with our front porch ceiling. When we wrapped up painting in the porch area it was still looking a little dull. We’d imagined painting the ceiling in a lighter gray (to match above the garage) and do something similar by trimming it out in charcoal.

But as we got to painting.. we realized the ceiling was in pretty bad shape. I mean, it’s a porch ceiling.. so really, we’re probably the only ones to notice. But that’s all part of making your home a space YOU love, right? So instead of just living with the “meh” ceiling, we put the leftover stack of pallet wood from the living room to work!

The wood was already disassembled, sanded, and stained, so the process flew by. Ricky just nailed each piece directly into the ceiling.

Since the ceiling was already sporting a few trim pieces around the edges, it would have been really difficult to get a clean edge with the new wood. Instead, we just cut the palette pieces a few inches shorter than the width of the ceiling and then sort of “framed everything out” with more wood to cover on top. Here’s a shot of the wood prior to the framing stage. You can see, the edges don’t need to line up because it’ll all just get covered.

It’s really similar to what we did in the living room. Of course, if you have a completely flat surface (no surrounding trim) then you could just cut the new pieces to size. I’m really liking the whole frame effect though (see below). Makes it feel a little more custom maybe? Oh and funny story about the light, we had always envisioned replacing it with something more fun, for a statement piece. But we’re LOVING the way it looks now against the wood. The black really pops. Consider it a keeper.

I call it the peekaboo pallet ceiling because from a distance you hardly notice it, if at all.

Closer…

But then you’re on the porch and BAM. Pallet ceiling, in your face.

I really wish I could share our house numbers project with you (from nearly six months ago).. but that would require, you know, sharing our house numbers. Basically, we took a piece of (guess) pallet wood, trimmed down, and glued a few of these super modern, yet inexpensive house numbers (if you know house numbers, you know that’s hard to find) on it vertically. It looks amazingly fancy and custom and I heart it. You can see where we have it below. The pallet really pops agains the charcoal porch column and the numbers are oil rubbed bronze, tying in nicely with the door hardware.. and everything else on the porch. And now I just wrote an entire paragraph about something you can’t see. Nevermind.

Something you can see – we finally got around to planting a few flowers in the vertical wall planter. We scored some all-shade flowers this year, so hopefully we have better luck.

Oh, and since this post has gone crazy random.. we also replaced the white doorbell with this one.

It’s the little things

Filed Under: Before & Afters, DIY, Outdoors

She’s Moody

May 9, 2013 by Jessie R. 18 Comments

We painted the house. And I’ll be honest, I’m really wishing I was our neighbor across the street, just so I could gaze at all of it’s loveliness every day. Every day, all day. It’s good. Really good. Of course, I’m biased. So, have a look for yourself

We shared the depths of our plans for the new color scheme earlier this week, so I’ll just expand slightly. Obviously, we went dark. The new colors are all neutral, but play off each other nicely to give quite the statement. We wanted something a little warmer than a true gray for the trim, so we went for a charcoal with some green/brown undertones. I can hardly say that though, because in person it just looks like a warm gray.. there’s no green or brown about it.

Dark & Moody Exterior Color Palette | Cape27Blog.com

The charcoal is probably my favorite part of the transformation. Which is convenient, since it’s the color we used the most. We’ve yet to paint the sides of the house, where we’ll use more of the charcoal to cover the soffits. The roof and gutters are also on the to-do list, needing a fresh coat of black. And we’ll be sure to share all of the roof details as we tackle them, but that’s a post of it’s own.

Dark & Moody Exterior Color Palette | Cape27Blog.com

You can kind of get an idea of the purple tones we’re hoping to bring in with landscaping. The flowers on that bright bush (below right) are the shade we’re going for, so we’re hoping to salvage it. Maybe just scale it back a tad. Everything else.. must go.

Dark & Moody Exterior Color Palette | Cape27Blog.com

As far as the process went.. we spend about two days painting the front facade, using a sprayer. Outside of the specific paint colors, we used Sherwin Williams’ ‘Resilance’ paint in a flat finish. The spraying was super quick and easy, but the prep… ugh, the prep. We taped off every area using brown masking paper (around $2 a roll, which has covered everything so far) and some basic painters tape. Each color variation meant more taping, above and below. Mind you, this was also on the two windiest days Cincinnati has seen all year. We had to tape the paper on all sides to keep the wind from ripping it away. So yea, spraying paint in the wind trying to avoid destroying our home, neighbors’ homes, and cars. That was fun. Either way, it was much faster than using the good ol’ brush and roller. I think.

(our little helper)

With such an abundance of painting projects coming up, and large ones at that, Ricky and I had been discussing the purchase of a paint sprayer for quite some time. Well, we finally bit the bullet when we spotted the Ryobi cordless sprayer, marked down from $185-ish to $130 at Home Depot. It was an impulse buy. We needed a sprayer, it was on sale, we trust the brand for other power tools, easy decision.

Had I taken the time to look at any one single online review (there are pages upon pages) I would have quickly run in the other direction at the mass amount of negativity. Long story short (since SO many others have already covered this same topic) we made the same mistake and bought the crappy sprayer. It’s working okay for our outdoor painting, where the finish doesn’t need to be perfect, but it’s not going to cut it for nearly anything else. Furniture? Not a chance.

So, that’s my little vent. Don’t buy it. What should you buy? I’ll share it when I find it. Moving on.

Or should I say, backwards? You know I love a good side-by-side before and after. Let’s look back to to the day we closed on our home

BEFORE:

And AFTER:

Truly, it’s more of a progress shot, since we know there are plenty more updates in the near future. But, it’s come quite a long way since day one. Checking one more off the to-do list

• ~~Replace the rotting header above the garage~~
• ~~Give the porch column a smooth coat~~
• ~~Add a railing to the side of the porch~~
• Build new window shutters
• ~~Paint the exterior of the house~~
• Paint the roof (yes, we’re doing that)
• Remove ALL landscaping in the front yard and replace it with something more modern
• Landscape around the mailbox and post light
• Build window boxes for the front of the house
• Do something about that driveaway
• Hire someone to remove the FIVE trees that have fallen over during wind storms
• Replace damaged wood and paint the swing set
• Repair and paint the backyard shed

Now, we just need it stop raining so we can paint this mismatched sides of the house.. It’s like we tried to paint in the Spring or something?

Filed Under: Before & Afters, DIY, Outdoors, Paint

Let’s Take this Outside

May 6, 2013 by Jessie R. 6 Comments

Two weeks ago I declared our outdoor to-do list for this spring on the blogosphere, so it’s officially ON. No backing out now. We’re unbelievably pumped to get our paint on for the exterior of the house, so that’s priority one. BUT it just wouldn’t make sense to paint everything, only to add more architectural changes just days later, so we tackled those first. Three things: the garage header, the porch column, and the porch railing that did not yet exist.

Yes, this photo is from nearly a year ago and unfortunately that’s not very noticeable, except for the sconce lights on either side of the garage. That’s about to change

The header above the garage has been falling apart, piece by piece, since the day we moved in, so it was beyond time to replace that bad boy. And while we were at it, we went ahead and extended it beyond the garage and into the porch area. It just made sense to formally cap off the bottom of the triangular pitch in the roof. It’s an easy switch since it’s not technically a header or supporting anything, and more just siding. Basically, we just did a little of this:

Second, porch column. It’s tough to see in the photos above, but the porch column was made of some sort of super rough, very unfinished looking material. It wasn’t something that could be sanded down (we tried) so our next option was to cover it. We took a similar approach to John & Sherry, by just boxing in the previous post with a few pre-primed 1×8′s. It beefed it up quite a bit too, almost matching the size of the new header, which is an added bonus.

And that leaves us here:

Pretty right? Kidding. We’re getting there.

I always envisioned our forever home to have a huge front porch, so that was a definite downfall with this house. We’ve considered adding one down the road, but for now we’re making due. In order to make our tiny covered area feel a little more cozy, we added a railing from the column back to the front of the house. It frames the area in and makes it feel less… slab of concrete leading to the door.

Now, we’re even toying with the idea of adding a skinny bench with the railing as the backrest. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? PILLOWS. Or maybe a hanging flower box.. but that may be too many boxes since we’ve already set out to DIY some for the front windows. We’ll be sure to share either way.

So, next up is paint! I’ll be back tomorrow with our plan of attack in the color scheme department And hopefully some reveal pics very soon!

Filed Under: DIY, Outdoors

Lovin’ on Summer Nights

April 24, 2013 by Jessie R. 36 Comments

Last year we whipped up an art solution for the dining room, and as if that entire process wasn’t enough of a headache, we were still on the fence about the end result. I loved the pattern that the stencil brought to the space, but it still seemed a bit boring. The proportions weren’t right either. I had hoped for a piece that was wider, to better fill the space between the open shelves, but we struggled to find large enough paper to fit the bill. And strike three – I love color, but green wasn’t the way to go. I really wanted something deeper, with dimension to draw you into that back wall. Despite all of this, I convinced myself to live with the art for a few months and then regroup.

I finally just ripped the entire thing off the wall a few weeks ago, forcing myself to either come up with a new solution or stare at a blank wall. When I dislike something, design wise, going back to the blank slate is my best defense. It’s crazy how long I can live with something that I despise, but as long as something is filling the space, I make do. It’s probably not the best for my mental health, but removing the art all together was a new constant reminder to just figure it out already!

So, figure it out I did. SO. MUCH. BETTER.