New Room Board

Here's a new room board I did recently for my client Julie.  We just finished up actually completing the room as well.  I love how it turned out, one of these days I'll get it together enough to take some pictures of it.

Making Three Adjoining Rooms Cohesive

My client Katie has a floor plan with three adjoining rooms - her front room, her family/TV room, and her kitchen. We wanted each room to have it's own feel, however they needed to also be cohesive. We did this by using one main color scheme: yellow, blue, green, and gray. However, each room highlights the colors differently.

 The front room is yellow, gray, and blue.  (The quatrefoil pattern seen here represents a plastic room divider that Katie is custom ordering to be placed between her front room and family room.)

The family room uses mainly blues and greens.

And the kitchen uses all the colors; but sparingly so as to avoid the three spaces getting too busy. The kitchen also includes a small desk/office area.


Out of respect for my client who paid for the room boards, I won't be posting a full source list, but feel free to e-mail me if you have a question about a specific item. Thanks!

Recent Room Boards

I am alive! Here are a few room boards I did recently for my client Amber. She has four kids so we wanted affordable, colorful, and kid proof!

Her daughter's room:

The boys' room:

The kids' bathroom:

Bedroom Room Board

Here's a room board I recently completed for a client. She already had the headboard and bedding so I knew I needed to work in navy, and this artwork did just the trick! It had navy plus all the fun orange, yellow, turquoise, and green that I used for the rest of the accessories.

AZ Magazine - Melissa's House

AZ Magazine recently featured our work at Melissa's house in an article they did about budget decorating. Once I get my copy in the mail, I will scan and post the full size article so the text is readable. I thought the pictures turned out great, and Melissa looks so cute!





UPDATE: Click the below images to enlarge and read full text of article.



I've been pretty MIA lately - very busy being fat and pregnant and making my husband rub my feet. But don't lose hope on me yet, I've got a few posts planned for the next week or so. I'm trying to be a good little blogger again!

Before and After - Alex's Room

Recently, my mom and I helped with my little cousin Alex's room. He is 15 and needed something a little more grown up. He's also a huge fan of University of Utah sports - so he requested the room be themed around that; including a red wall! I'm usually not a fan of red walls, but I think for Alex's room it worked. It's a fun addition to this teenage boy room.

Here's the original room board I put together. We veered a little from this plan, which usually happens, but it gave us a good blueprint.


We did this whole room for under $300. My Aunt Chris did most the work - removing wallpaper, painting the room, and painting the furniture. Once she had everything prepped, we spent a full Saturday finishing the room. The morning was spent at IKEA picking up the last essentials, and the rest of the day we organized and rearranged, hung artwork, and begrudgingly put together our IKEA purchases.

BEFORE


AFTER


BEFORE - Desk


AFTER - Desk

Before Alex's desk held his TV for videogames, and there wasn't a lot of surface left for anything else. Chris painted the desk drawers, and we cleared it off so he can use it for homework now.

We purchased a $12 Ikea LACK table to provide a new spot for his TV. We also put a bin underneath to hold all his videogame systems.


BEFORE - Closet


AFTER - Closet

Alex purged a lot of his clothes he no longer wears, and we brought in a shoe organizer, a drawer system, and some bins. Much better!


We added a shelf above his bed for all his trophies.

We placed a chair here as a place for him to sit to play his videogames. For the University of Utah artwall, we found all the images online and printed them on a color printer. The frames are old ones that we painted black.




So there you go, a teenage boy room on an extreme budget!

Melissa's House

Hey remember when I used to post on this blog? Yeah me too. Well I decided to dust off my blogger dashboard today and show you these before and afters from my friend and client, Melissa. I've posted about the progress at her house a couple times, including the last post about the art I made for her kitchen. Today I'm showing you the pictures from her family room. This room is huge! We worked on it for a few months, and it's about 99% done now. She just has a few more pillows to add, her mom is making the covers for her and they're not quite done. But as you will see, it has come a long way.

Here's how it looked when they moved in, lots of red, lots of floral curtains.


And here's how it looks now, from the same angle.


View from the fireplace.




We stayed budget friendly by incorporating a lot of things that Melissa already owned like her apothecary jars and candle holders.










Picture of Melissa's parents, along with a bowl full of ceramic number balls representing Melissa's wedding date and state she was marrried, AZ of course. This moss bowl was probably one of my favorite finds for her room, it's from Home Goods.




Love it! Some of these pictures are by me, some by Melissa. Thanks Melissa!

DIY Art for the Kitchen

I helped a client with the space above her kitchen cabinets over the weekend. This is a tricky space, and brings visions of dusty fake ivy plants to many of us I am sure. We wanted to avoid that.

Here is the end result.


This particular kitchen has quite a bit of height above the cabinets so I wanted to put some artwork up there. I wanted something graphic and modern that would bring in some color; so I came up with this "EAT" sign. This is a quick and cheap project and I loved how it turned out.

Start with a piece of plywood. You can pick it up at Home Depot or Lowes, and they'll cut it to any size you want. This one is about 20x35 and I had it left over from another project.


You'll also need to print out whatever image you want to transfer onto the plywood. I typed "EAT" in a Word document in font size 600; each letter took up a full page. The font is "Fiesta" and you can download it free here. I also printed out the fork and spoon image which you can download here.

Next prime your plywood with white paint primer using a roller. This step isn't completely necessary, but I did it to make sure my green paint would be saturated enough.


Confession: I was going to have a nice styled picture for each of the remaining steps like a good blogger - but I ended up frantically finishing it at about 11:00 at night with no time or patience for pictures. This is how I do most of my projects. Whoops.

After your primer dries, apply two coates with a roller of your desired color. I used Olive Marinade by Valspar.

Allow paint to dry. Then, using graphite paper - trace your printed image onto the wood with a pencil. Lay the graphite paper, graphite side down, on the wood. Line up your printed images and place over the graphite paper. Trace the outline of each letter, and the fork and spoon, with a pencil.


Finally, fill in your traced outline with a paint pen. This is the easiest part. I'm not too steady with a paint brush, and so paint pens to the rescue. I picked mine up at Michael's.


And you're done! Really cheap, pretty easy.

Pillow Combo

So excited for this pillow combo I put together for our client Melissa's room. The green pillow cover is from Ikea (only $6.00!). The gray pillow will be made with Chipper fabric which seems to be popping up everywhere lately. I found it a few weeks ago at Home Fabrics (if you're local it's on Stapley and Baseline) for only $6 bucks a yard. You can also get it online here for $9.99 a yard. The blue pillow is from Cost Plus World Market ($19.99).

Melissa found the green damask fabric that we're going to use for her window seat. This room is almost done and it's looking so great! Can't wait to show it to you.



Here are some examples of the chipper fabric in action.


Caitlin Wilson Design




Domestic Adventure


Holly Mathis Interiors

Guest Room Makeover in One Day

A couple weekends ago my mom decided she wanted to turn my brother's old bedroom into a guest room. So I went over to her house, we hit up some shops, and decided to do it all in one day. We're impatient like that.

Here's the scary boy-dungeon before picture.


After.


We loved the bold graphic floral print of this cute pillow we found at TJ Maxx - we pulled all the colors for the room from this.


We brought this table in from another room and added some new accessories mixed with some things my mom already had.


And voila! A one day makeover.