I guess I'm a professional decorator now! ;) Dad's Office

Dad's New Office!

My dad is a physician who works out of Mountain View Hospital in Payson, Utah.  For the last decade or so, he has been in practice with 1-2 other doctors, who have shared an office, and taken turns having time off, etc.  About a year ago, he found himself the only doctor left in the office, due to retirement & a move.  It was an enormous office with lots of exam rooms, a huge nurses station, reception area, and break room.  Although he hopes to retire in the not-to-distant future, he didn't want to continue paying through the nose for a huge office that he didn't need anymore.  However, there aren't a lot of options in Payson for offices, so it was with trepidation that he decided to rent an older, run-down office on the other side of the hospital.

Now, I'm not really a professional decorator, but I do love to do projects around my home.  And having seen many of them, my dad decided to go out on a limb & ask me to decorate the new office for him, in hopes of getting it to a point where he could stand to work there every day!  Although I was hesitant to take on the project, I was also excited as I anticipated doing something with an actual budget, unlike the things I do around my home!  ;)  When I first toured the "new" office, it had been sitting empty for quite some time, and was not only extremely dated (think late 70s early 80s!), it was filthy & full of bugs & cobwebs.  But I could see that it had a lot of potential!  

My dad was quite busy, so he really didn't get involved in the decorating other than offering a few suggestions.  And luckily, I didn't have to do all the "bones" work, like painting walls, adding molding, enlarging the bathroom, and making repairs.  The landlord's son-in-law Trevor did all of that, and he was great to work with!  My niece Maddie was also a huge help in getting all the finishing touches put together: putting trees on walls, hanging pictures, ironing drapes, etc! 

Unfortunately I'm not a great photographer, and because the rooms in the office are quite small, it was hard to get pictures that have a good perspective.  But I'll post my before & after pictures & explain a bit what I did!

And, the reason I say I guess I'm a professional decorator now is because I've gotten paid to decorate! 

Before: the view of the front door, as seen from the reception desk

 I know drapes aren't standard fare in a doctor's office, but I added them in almost every room anyway.  As I thought of what I wanted to do, I asked myself, "If I was going to spend 8-9 hours every day working in this office, what would I want to look at?  How would I want it to make me feel?"  I also tried to keep in mind that the patients visiting here weren't having the time of their lives, and that if they have to go through some uncomfortable situations (ever had a rectal exam!?), it would be nicer to be in a place that felt comfortable and homey rather than sterile.  I felt like the drapes were a great way to add a pop of color or variety to doors and windows that might otherwise lack character.

After: View of the front door

After: outside the office

As you can see from the "before" picture above, the entry to the office is through an enclosed courtyard.  I decided to extend the decor of the office into the atrium with the bench out front, adding pillows that mirror the colors used inside. 

Before: the reception desk

The prominent feature upon entering this office is the massive wooden reception desk.  While we would have preferred to remove this completely, the landlord was insistent that it stay, but was finally convinced to let me paint it.  My dad & I had decided to paint the entire office gray with white trim, then decorate each room in different accent colors.  So I decided to paint the wooden reception desk in the neutral gray & white to match the other background colors.  I then used the drapes, carpets, paintings, and birds to bring turquoise into the room.  My dad had the idea to put the trees on the wall, so I was able to custom order them with the colors I wanted.  If you look carefully, you will find one of the birds has wandered from the trees!  The wooden reception desk had a little nook in the upper right hand corner, and I although I don't have a great picture of it, I found a birdhouse painted blue that fit just perfectly!

After: the reception desk

After: the reception area, as seen from the front door

After: another angle of the reception area

Before:  Exam room 1

 One of the first things I decided to do when I viewed the "before" office was to paint the cabinets!  My dad did not want to put the money into replacing them for the time he will be here, but they really reeked of early 80s, and would have tainted anything else we did to the exam rooms!   Also, an office like this is the perfect place to experiment with colors!  I wouldn't necessarily have the nerve to do an entire kitchen in a color like this, but for a small set of cabinets in one room, it wasn't too overwhelming.  The office staff now refers to each exam room by the color of its cabinets ("Mr. Smith is in the blue room!"), which is exactly what I'd hoped!

Another reason for adding drapes in the exam rooms is because the honeycomb shades, and even the doors themselves, are totally worn and rotting!  Eventually they will need to be replaced, but in the meantime, no patients will have to sit staring at them and wondering!  

The doors in this room and the green room, as well as doors in the doctors office/break room open to a darling little patio surrounded by mature trees & filled with shrubs and flowers.  It was pouring rain the day I took these pictures, but if I make it out on a sunny day, I'll have to get views of the courtyard!  The office staff will enjoy it on warm days for lunch or breaks, but unfortunately the exam rooms won't likely open to it often.  It would be a bit awkward to be having that rectal exam with an open window!

After: Exam Room 1

Before: Reception desk

 Ideally I would have taken pictures of the entire office after I finished decorating and before all the "office" stuff was moved in, but reality was that they overlapped quite a bit, so I never had the chance.  The "before" picture captures the essence of the receptionist's desk as seen from her side: brown and boring!  Because this area contained the largest number of cabinets, I decided to stick with white so as not to overwhelm with color.  And seeing the area now with all of the office equipment in it, I can tell it was a good decision.  A bright color on these cabinets would have given the poor receptionist a headache!  I replaced all the faux-brass cabinet pulls with oil-rubbed bronze, with the Nantucket cup style on drawers, knobs in the exam rooms, and pulls on the reception cupboards.  

After: Reception desk

After: Nurses station (sorry, no before!)

Before: Exam room 2

 When I took pictures at the office, a patient was being seen in this room!  I wasn't able to take my "after" shot with the good camera, so I took this with my cell phone.  Hence the poor resolution and crazy red color!  I'll replace this pic when I can, as the red is really not that bright!  This ended up being the patriotic room, with the pictures of war memorials from the old office hung in here.

I didn't take my "before" picture until after I had removed the cabinet fronts to refinish them, but you can get the idea of the wood color and groovy cabinet pulls from the "before" picture of Exam room 1!  This room is apparently a favorite of the staff!

After: Exam room 2

 I didn't get any before pics of the 3rd exam room, but since it was pretty much identical to the others, you get the idea!  And I REALLY wished I could have taken these pictures sans medical equipment (NO ONE wants to see stirrups!!), but such is life!  I wasn't so sure at first about this green with gray, but in the end, I have to say I quite love it!  There were quite a few green-tinged decorations from the old office (not all pictured), and this was the perfect place to tie it all together.  And because this room has both a large window AND opens to the patio, it is a bright, cheery place on a sunny day, even with all the blinds closed.  May as well have a serene setting when you're in the stirrups!

After: Exam room 3

After: Exam room 3

I didn't take "before" pictures of the hallway or bathroom, but thought I'd include the "afters" anyway!  All of the doors in the office were the same oak colored wood as the cabinets, so painting them white seemed to widen the hall.  In fact, another tenant in the building, who was familiar with the "before" office, thought we must have widened the hallway by a foot or two!  And as elsewhere, a small rug in a fun color & pattern goes a long way in adding some pizzazz to an otherwise dull area!

After: Bathroom

After: hallway viewed from reception area

After: hallway viewed from the back of the office

 

It was an absolutely INSANE two weeks (the time I had to get it all together!), especially considering the number of cabinets I had to refinish!  But it was all worth it the day the staff began moving in the furniture & equipment, seeing their reactions to the "new" office, after having faced the move with such trepidation!  I truly hope it will be a happy place where my dad and his awesome staff will love going to work!

Master bed quilt

About a year ago, I was going through a difficult time, and I felt like I needed something to brighten up my outlook!  I had seen a display at Ikea of a darling yellow & gray bedroom, and I decided that would be just the thing!

However, it has taken me almost a year to complete a quilt to go across the foot of the bed.  I love having a quilt at the end of the bed: it adds variety, makes for cozy afternoon naps, and gives me an excuse to make another quilt!  ;)

So I don't have a lot to say about this quilt, except that I completed it in 2 weeks (because it was wintertime: no yard work needing done!).  It was a pretty quick quilt since it only consisted of sewing a bunch of strips together, cutting them at an angle, then sewing them back together again!  Also, I always wash and dry (yes, in the dryer!) all my quilts before I display them.  I like the way that washing gives them a puckered, vintagey look.

The final product!

Basement

We finished our basement 5 years ago to add more bedrooms, as we were expecting baby #5 and needed the space.  Until about 18 months ago, all of the furniture we had down there was stuff given to us by my parents.  I was grateful to have furniture, but as the kids got older, it was kind of embarrassing to invite friends to watch movies on a couch with stains & holes!  So we got rid of EVERYTHING used, and moved our leather couches down there.   It still seemed kind of sterile, though, so I decided to add a little character to the area.

Our basement family room is a long, rectangular room running the length of the house.  It is divided by furniture into 3 "areas": the couches & TV; a counter height dining table; and an exercise area.  Not very exciting!  I didn't really have money to to exactly what I'd like to do, so I decided I would do what I could with as little cost as I could manage.  

First, I painted our oak bookshelves black.  I've had these bookshelves since I was in college, and they were very trendy in the early 90's, but not so much anymore!  So I painted them & put a panel of fabric in the back of the bookshelf.  In retrospect, I wish I had picked a fabric with more color in it.  It would be easy to replace, so I may do that someday!
I also removed about 1/3 of the books on the shelf (getting rid of some, finding another place for others) so that I could arrange the shelved more creatively.  

Then I bought several secondhand frames & painted them black, and used them to make a grouping on the wall.  Using a can of paint, a few yards of fabric, & some used frames allowed me to make the middle section of our family room a bit more inviting.

For the TV grouping: 
Years ago when my 11 year old was a toddler, and before we had an actual "train table," I bought a cheap coffee table at Deseret Industries on which he could play trains.  It was made of cheap wood, had a natural-finish table top with hunter green legs.  He only used it for trains for a short time, then it became the piece of furniture on which everything got placed when he was required to clean his room.  It has floated from one place to another in our house ever since, never really fitting in anywhere.  Most recently, it acted as a footrest in the basement in front of the TV.   I decided that was actually a great place for it, if I could just make it look like it belonged.  The couches we have there are leather, and I have discovered that finding an ottoman to match leather couches is nearly impossible, unless bought at the same time as the couches (didn't happen!) (no longer available!).  So, since the rest of the basement has black furniture, and red drapes, I decided I would stay with that color scheme for my new ottoman.  

First I painted the legs black.  I bought a piece of foam at a craft store (about 2 inches thick), and cut it to the size of the table top.  I stretched a piece of rectangular fabric over the foam, and staple-gunned it underneath the table.  Finally, I added upholstery tacks around the outside and to the top of the table.  Because this was a very cheap table to begin with, and I hope one day to get an actual ottoman that "goes," I didn't spend a lot of money on any of the materials for my update.  I think the final product is CONSIDERABLY better than before, though, and adds some character to the room.  

As for the exercise part of the basement, I don't know that there's anything we can do for it!

Gretel's Room

In November, Gretel turned 15.  For her birthday, we gave her a "room makeover"; not a COMPLETE room makeover, but a minor making some changes that she has been wanting.  Unfortunately, we were so busy with Thanksgiving and Christmas that nothing got done on it for the next 6 weeks!  Finally, over Christmas break we began attacking different parts of the project.  At the time I didn't realize I would be blogging about it, so I didn't bother to take "before" or "during" pictures!  They would have been fun, considering that a lot of the painting was done by Gretel & her friends!  But I do have "after" pictures, so I'll show some of what we did!

Wait, why this picture?

So, you're probably wondering why I have this 10 year old picture of my dad and my now almost 12 year old son?! I want you to get a look in the very back of the picture, at the brown corner hutch.  This hutch was made eons ago by my great-aunt Grace's husband, Tom Brady.  When she passed away (around the time this son was born!), we got  the hutch.  It worked great in that corner there, but we have had a hard time finding a place for it ever since we moved to our new home in Cedar Hills.  So it has been in Gretel's room.  And she was TIRED of it!  (It didn't match anything!)

So, the first part of the makeover was to paint the hutch white.  During the break from school, Gretel had her best girlfriends come over to help paint!  It was too cold to be outside, so they painted in our finished basement.  I laid out a TON of drop cloths, which MOSTLY did the trick.  I only had to cut out a couple spots on the carpet, and the bench of an organ is now splattered with white paint. (But I don't feel bad about that!  Another story for another day!)

I went back & touched it up a bit, and when it was dry, used spray adhesive to attach fabric to the inside of the hutch.  It fits in much better now in Gretel's room!

The finished hutch

And a closeup

Part 2 involved painting a chalkboard on Gretel's wall.  I had done one of these in the playroom a couple months before (I'll post that another time!).  In doing that, I discovered that textured walls do NOT work well for a chalkboard!  So after a little searching online, I discovered a way to make a textured wall into a chalkboard.  I ordered a roll of wallpaper liner from Amazon.com, then was supposed to paint the chalkboard over that.  However, the wall we had designated for the chalkboard was so terribly textured (my fault, but that's yet ANOTHER story!), that within hours of hanging the liner, it began to peel off!  I realized that the texturing would have to be sanded before putting up more liner.  I HATE it when things like this happen in a project, because suddenly it's out of MY realm.  And I don't like to have to rely on someone else for a step in a project, because I feel like I'm putting them out, and I become dependent upon their availability, & not just my own.  Actually, I was willing to do the sanding, but I think my husband decided he was better suited for it.  So he spent an afternoon sanding the wall.  As you can see, the walls are bright yellow, so just imagine what the room looked like after sanding a 25 square foot area!  I still find yellow dust in my vacuum cleaner!  

Once the sanding was done, hanging the liner was easy, as was painting the chalkboard.  I had intended to buy moulding to make a frame around the chalkboard, but then discovered an easier idea.  I had ordered a roll of gray vinyl with the intention of using it in Gretel's room to make stripes or something on the walls, but we hadn't gotten around to using it.  So I used part of the roll to cut out a border which we attached around the chalkboard.  This was much easier than nailing moulding, and we like how it turned out!  

The last step was Gretel's headboard.  Her bedroom set is another hand-me-down from my Aunt Grace, and while it was charming in the 1970's, I'm sure, it is a bit dated now.  I guess that is the problem with hand-me-downs: they're handy when you have nothing else, but then you tend to never get around to buying a new one because you have one, even if it is rather dated!  So, I told Gretel we could paint her bed frame, too.  We painted the whole thing white to match the hutch, then painted a chalkboard on the headboard!  I have to admit, with this whole project, I did not bother to sand or prime any of the things we painted.  I also just used white paint leftover from when we finished our basement 4+ years ago.  The reason I was not too concerned with preparing all these surfaces before painting is because we really aren't attached to these things anyway, and if it doesn't last forever, that's OK with me!  In fact, the hutch was already slated for Goodwill when we decided to paint it, and like I said about the hand-me-down bed, if it doesn't last, we'll probably be glad to have an excuse to buy something new!  The only problem is that now the bed does NOT match the nightstand or dresser, and they are both so elaborate that I can't bear the thought of painting them!  Maybe someday....

So, here is the finished product (including Gretel's secondhand records & purple fluffy pillow!)

It is certainly a bright, fun room!

(And it is bigger than it looks, but I tried not to get any of the mismatched furniture in the picture!)

New Stockings for Christmas

When my first child was born in 1996, I had a neighbor who had cute patchwork-looking stockings, so I bought the same pattern and made Christmas stockings for myself, my husband, and my son.  Through the years, with the birth of each child, I pulled out the pattern again and made another stocking for them.  By the time my last baby was born in 2009, however, these stockings no longer seemed as cute; rather, they looked very dated!  I decided I would make updated stockings for the entire family, so I never made baby #5 a patchwork stocking.  The problem was, I never thought about stockings until it was Christmas time, and then I was too busy to sew anything, let alone take on such a big project!  I also wasn't sure exactly what the new ones would look like.  So for 4 years, we hung a store-bought fleece stocking for the baby!

This Christmas (2013), I finally decided that my "baby" would notice that his stocking did not match the others, nor did it have his name on it!  So I pulled myself together in November, and began scouring Pinterest for ideas.  I finally settled on burlap-based stockings, knowing that they, too, will look dated in a few years!  (Good thing I like to sew!)  I found all of the fabric I needed at my local Walmart, and embellishments at Hobby Lobby.  Rather than have names embroidered on the stocking, I chose to hang a gift tag from each one with the first initial of each person on them (luckily we don't have any repeated letters, at least if you count mom as "M" and dad as "D").  I finally felt like I was living in the 'teens when I hung my new stockings this year!

Quilt for a friend!

I'll be backtracking for a little while here!
About 18 months ago, a friend of mine (Jenna) saw some of my quilts.  She mentioned that she had been collecting fabric fat quarters for years hoping to one day make them into a quilt, but that she doubted she would actually ever get around to actually doing it!  At the time, I didn't have a need for any quilts myself, and couldn't justify the expense of something just for fun.  So I offered to make a quilt for her!

When she brought the fabric pieces to me, I was thrilled, as they were so colorful and happy!  I was excited to figure out what to do with them!  She wasn't picky about what I did, so I decided to try something I had been wanting to do for years: make a quilt where each block of the quilt is a different pattern.  Jenna wanted a lot of white in the background, so I began going through my quilt block book and choosing designs, then matching them with different fabrics.
It took me quite a few months to piece this quilt (including summer vacation, during which I really don't do ANY sewing! :(  ), but during Christmas break of 2013 I buckled down and finally got it finished!  I gave the top to her to be quilted, as it would be too difficult on my machine.  I do all my own quilting on my regular sewing machine (a Janome Craftmaster), but a quilt like this has SO many corners that I knew it would just break my needles.  When I quilted my own Postage Stamp quilt (I'll post it soon!), I had to replace my needle numerous times from trying to sew over so many corners!
Jenna was thrilled with the quilt, and I had so much fun doing it!  She has decided that what she really likes to do is pottery, so she gave me hand-thrown pottery pieces that she has made in exchange for the quilt.  I LOVE the pottery, and whenever I have guests, they always ask about getting her to make them pottery!

Myself and Jenna with the quilt top

Back at it!

Years ago, I started this blog as a way to post fabric that I had purchased wholesale so my friends and neighbors would have a way to look at it and decide if they wanted to buy anything.  Obviously I haven't used it for that in a LONG time.  But recently I've been doing little projects around the house, and I sometimes want to tell my mom or friends about what I've done.  I know I could take pictures & email them, but I had the thought that I should just post stuff on a blog.  That way, I could show people my projects, but also have a record of them myself!  I'm not sure why I want to keep a record of my meager attempts at creativity.  I guess part of it is because it brings back memories of times in my life.  For instance, the crib sets I made for my babies remind me of the excitement of anticipating a new baby, the nights getting up with them, and the sadness of finally putting all of that away.  I remember certain projects that I worked on during a difficult time, when I needed a project to take my mind off other problems.  So here it is, my very amateur record of what I like to do in my free time.  I've hesitated to take on making this record, knowing that I'd much rather be doing a project than blogging about it.  I'm also not a great photographer, and I don't have the patience right now to take photos of the entire process, so I apologize for my lack of professionalism.  But like I said, the doing itself is what I enjoy, and blogging about it is just a side note!  Enjoy!