Guest Post: Decorchick's Molding Makeover

Today's guest post comes from Emily, author of Decorchick. Not only is she sharing a before + after but she was kind enough to show how she added architectural interest for less than a $100 (plus a little family time!). Loads of info in this guest post but check out her blog for all the deets. Take it away Emily.

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Hi there. It's such an honor to be guest posting on Brooklyn Limestone today! I just finished a big project (with the help of my Dad) and transformed our staircase wall with lots of moulding. I couldn't be happier with the results and I will be showing you the makeover today. :)

So, let's take a look at the before photos shall we?





And now....the after!





Ahhh, don't you love moulding??

We continued the rail to that little wall behind the cabinet and I painted it out in a semi-gloss white as well. We will eventually add a few boxes on that wall also.

I was actually smart for once and painted the wall white before we added any boxes. I know, can you believe it? I actually followed my own advice. :)

When you are trying to do wainscoting up a staircase, you are going to have odd angles and cuts. But this new little gadget my Dad introduced me to is so cool. You just set it on your angle, say for instance our staircase banister, and it tells you exactly what angle it's sitting at.







Pretty neat right? Oh, and those are my Dad's hands. I don't have man-hands and hairy wrists.

The angle of my staircase is 37 degrees, so the cuts were all made to compliment that.

For the moulding, I chose to use the foam stuff. The pieces I bought were 7ft in length and cost $2.38 for each piece. I ended up buying 27 pieces. So that is $64.26 just for the moulding for the stair boxes.

First thing we did was cut all of the pieces for all 21 boxes.



Then we used this make-shift template so we could glue each piece together at the right angle, and on a flat surface.




We glued 2 pieces at a time with hot glue, and let them cool.

Some pieces cooling...







And then we would glue a box together.



And eventually got all of these.



Then we put up the frames temporarily with double-sided tape to get the spacing correct, nailed them in with a nail gun, and added the chair rail. The rail is not an actual "chair rail" but is window casing trim. It is decorative like a chair rail and has a nice ledge to it.

Then came a LOT of caulking and spackling of all of the boxes and chair rail, more painting, and then done! And please, if you need to cover nail holes, use spackle and not caulking. I already knew this but for some dumb reason I used caulk and ended up redoing it with spackle. Caulk does not sand well and it gets rubbery. With spackle, it sands down nicely and you can't even see the holes. Just my little tip!

I'll just show you all more after photos because I know that's what you really care about. :)





So what do you think? I think this is one of, if not, my favorite transformation so far! I think I always say that though. :) This wall was always a challenge to decorate, so that's why it's been empty for 2 years now. I think having the wall more as an architectural feature was the way to go for sure.

To see how the design of the staircase came about, you can read about that here. To see a more detailed how-to of the moulding boxes you can read that here.

Source list:

• Starburst Mirror - Pier 1 for $69 (was on sale over half off! The original price was $149)
• Candle Sconces - Hobby Lobby $30 each (with half off)
• Flameless candles - Pier 1. I already had these candles but had to buy one more for about $14. Pier 1 flameless candles are my favorite because they glow from the bottom up, instead of just the top like a lot of others do.
• Materials - $64.26 for moulding boxes, and approximately $20 for the chair rail.
• Wall color - Baguette from Sherwin Williams
  

I hope you enjoyed my staircase makeover, and thank you so much for inviting me in to be a guest on this fabulous blog! I really am quite humbled. I would love it if you would come and visit my site too. :)

Guest Post: Mavi's Modern Pinwheel Nursery

Hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving. One thing I'm quite thankful for this year is having so many kind souls who have agreed to share bits of their home (and themselves) with me on Brooklyn Limestone. Since you've heard me blabber on for several months straight now, another guest post series is long overdue.

Kicking off today, I'm so thrilled to have Kelly sharing her beautiful and bright nursery. Kelly is a graphic designer by day and a mommy, wife and blogger by night. After you see the lovely job she did creating a warm and cheerful space for her little one, go check out her blog, Glamour This.

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Hi Everyone. I am so honored to be guest posting on Brooklyn Limestone, and I am really excited to show you my son Mavrick's (Mavi for short) nursery.

Inspiration :
It all started off with the already painted wall. Purple-ish gray hue with white wainscoting. We had painted this room when we moved in our house taking into account this would “one day” be the room of baby. I wanted something that was neutral so we could either go boy or girl with pops of color. I love gray so it was only appropriate to incorporate that in major elements in the room.

I chose tone on tone gray houndstooth fabric for the modern glider that would fit perfectly in the corner of the room. A gray shag rug which would be placed under the dark wood crib would accent the gray in the glider. I was getting custom bedding made and because it would be handmade, I wanted to choose colors that were gender neutral so that I can use this amazing bedding for baby #2 if we happen to have one I wanted modern prints; stripes and dots in bright colors ; blues, yellows and green.

The custom bedding:

Theme? Well you can say that I went pinwheel crazy. I guess that’s the theme. Modern Bright Pinwheel gender neutral nursery. Phew… that is a long title, but seems to be right on the dot. I loved pinwheels as a child and realized it was something that wasn’t being used much in nurseries (well anyway I haven’t seen any) … so I went all out.

Making this colorful paper toys was a great inexpensive DIY project and I scattered them all around the room. I made a wall of custom art (all designed by me) framed in white frames (so that they would pop on the gray wall) and added a couple of pinwheels to the layout.

I also added some pinwheels in the pom clusters I also DIY-ed. I didn’t want to have a mobile in the room so I figured having a cluster would be a more modern way to go about it. I included 2 white paper lanterns I took home from my baby shower as well as green and blue paper lanterns I found at the party store. They fit perfectly with the greens and blues in the bedding. Lastly, I wanted to incorporate typography somehow, so I got custom letters made out of bamboo and hung them from the cluster.

I am really happy with the outcome of the room, I just hope when Mavi will look back at pictures, he will too.

For those interested in the cost break-down of the nursery decor, you can find all the details here.

Giving Thanks

Its that time of year again to reflect on what is right in the world. I am thankful for so very many things - too numerous to count or make you suffer through - so I'll keep it short and to the point.

Aside from the many wonderful things in my 'real life' - I want to thank each and every one of you who reads, comments, email, tweets, likes and all the other surreal connections made through this medium. It's hard to explain the special kind of encouragement virtual strangers can provide but I know its a very real thing that has been a powerfull positive force in my life these past few years.

So a truly heartfelt thank you from me to you. I hope you'll stick around for whatever tomorrow holds.

And speaking of the future, I am very excited to have 5 very lovely ladies guest posting restful room makeovers next week (you know how much I can't resist a good before and after right?). Feel free to get to know them better before they stop in to say hi.

GlamourThis /Decorchick /Rambling Renovators

Turn right at Lake Michigan /Casa Brasi

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

Freebie Christmas Card Mailing

Hard to believe that December is nearly here! My internal alarm is pinging me to get into high gear about my Christmas mailing. (I always make a promise to myself to finish before Dec 1 but that never happens). As you know, I tend to go one step further with my cards than most. Along with the greeting I send a little surprise. Last year it was screen printed tea towels, the year before retro bookplates - you get the idea. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the holidays.

I'm working on this years mailing now but in a fit of procrastination I worked up a freebie download for you to use (should you want to send out a little extra surprise to your friends and family this year).

Its a little self mailer just big enough to staple two bags of peppermint tea inside along with your personal greetings. Just seal with glue and drop in the mail. (In case you are wondering, peppermint tea smells just like Christmas!)

{ DOWNLOAD IT HERE }

Hope some of you can put it to good use. If you use my freeibe or you have your own unique twist on the holiday mailing idea, I would absolutely love to hear from you. Don't be shy - leave a comment here or drop me a line.

Chic on the Cheap: Vintage Fork Napkin Rings

With all the travel and holiday talk around here, a diy project has been long overdue. It’s a simple but good one because its relatively easy and (if you have the tools) cheap. Thankfully, I had the husband's brute strength to take care of all the hard bits.

More than a year ago, I picked up a little collection of vintage spoons and forks for a few bucks at a junks store. My plan was to make one of those cutlery chandeliers but that never quite worked out. So that flatware was staring me in the face, daring me to do something with them. It took me long enough but I finally came up with the idea to repurpose them into napkin rings.



Materials needed: Old forks, metal stamp set, (I have this one but it doesn't seem to be sold anymore so I imagine this one would also work.), vice, small section of galvanized pipe, vice grips, rubber mallet, sharpie marker, nail polish remover.

I should mention at this point that the cutlery I was using was quite heavy so it made this project more difficult than it had to be. If I were to buy more with this project in mind, I'd pick a lighter weight version. Also, if you have a proper workbench with a vice screwed into it (as opposed to the jimmy rig concoction we were using), this would be even easier. We made do with what we had.

It took some trial and error before we figured out the best way to get this accomplished. First things first, imprint the forks while they are still in their original shape.


Originally I wanted to stamp in the word for 'eat' in all different languages. Mr. L was wise enough to point out that managing to get 3 letters per fork in somewhat decent shape was going to be hard enough. Ok, point to him.

As you can see in the photos, this is a three handed job. I imagine there are better ways of doing this but we couldn't figure it out. Hand stampers - do you have any tips?

So now its time for the real hard work - bending the spoon into a ring. Holding a length of 2 inch pipe in the vice, bang the spoon against it with a rubber mallet until its in a semi - ring shape. We couldn't get them into perfect circles this way but that didn't really matter. As long is it held the napkin, I was happy.



Bang Bang Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. You get the idea. You'll want to start with the end of the fork so that you can turn it without hitting the tines.




At this point they are functional but the imprint is a bit hard to read. Enter a sharpie marker. Have a little cotton ball with some acetone on it standing by. Rub the imprint with the sharpie, let sit for a minute and carefully wipe the excess away with the acetone. This takes a bit of a finesse to get the ink off the face of the fork without removing it from the letter grooves but eventually I mastered it.


The ones on the left are about to be sharpied, the two at the right already got their treatment. Makes quite a difference.

After that was all done, I had 12 lovely vintage forks turned napkin rings. Or as Mr. Limestone calls them, Frings.



Next step is to have a matching set of 12 napkins and Ill feel much more like a grown up.