bold2boss

  Since the premature death of my beloved industrial fridge (well, actually its extended temporary convalesce, since really we just need to repair its compressor) I have embarked on the search for a satisfying alternative. This is a big challenging for me 🙄 All of the tantalizing fridge options that I love love love are outside of our limited budget (I want to retire before I’m 90!) and  I have an intensive aversion to inserting a big huge rectangular box that I don’t love into my kitchen that I do love… I mean, really, fridges are big huge expensive pieces of ‘furniture’ that grab the focus in the kitchen, so inserting some huge expensive focal point into my very personalize kitchen is not a simple task for me! Plus, none of the options provided enough storage space – our milk and cheese stock alone overwhelms the fridge, never mind the toppling bundles of veggies…so stressful!

I’m completely flummoxed by our downstairs layout and features. I feel like I’m going to go crazy trying to figure out the best layout to best use the current elements AND create a beautiful space.

I love the textural organic rustic feel of brick…and big statement brick fireplaces, like the huge 14’ x 10’ mid-century modern fireplace in my living-room…but I don’t love how the dark brick color sucks all the lightness out of the room.  You know how much I love light, airy spaces! To lighten up our brick fireplace while keeping its beautiful textural feel, I needed a solution….so many options… …white painted brick; whitewash…kind of hard to keep from looking a bit pinky; and oh so many complete overhaul options involving sooooo much work….cement facade, tiling, drywall… …Hmmmm… I finally settled for my ‘tried and true’ plaster finish which I’ve used before and still love it.  It has the look of mortar-washed or limed brick (there is a proper name for this technique…anyone know what it is??) or of brick that has been exposed after having the plaster chipped away. I love that beautiful texture and distressed feel.

I want to share with you the results of our redo on these adorable children’s bedrooms.  I love the soft airy lightness the rooms have and their simplicity. The dormer ceilings lend a lovely cottage-like vibe perfect for a child’s room The rooms are situated side by side, joined by a jack-and-jill closet, so the little ones can have their privacy or leave the door open between them. the jack-and-jill closet, with sliding barn doors, provides a perfect peep-a-boo view into the second bedroom soft fluffy pillows and stuffies provide a snugly reading spot I love these pineapple lamps with their soft grey shades, perfect for the simplicity and airiness of the rooms …all that’s needed now is some messiness…a wee bit of real life. I still have so much more of this little rancher reno to share with you… livingroom, bathrooms , kitchen and more!) have a beautiful week! xo shelley

do you have these??  Dirty smudgy fingerprints on your walls and doorways?   I have a life hack – a simple design technique that works great for dealing with all those dirty little smudgy finger prints and making your home look even more beautiful…and as a result, stress free and zen 🙂 . Dirty smudgy walls…help me! Dirty, smudgy fingerprints adorn my walls. I don’t know why, but my adorable children (…maybe not just the children but us big people too) are compelled to leave dirty finger prints all over my beautiful creamy white walls…long smears up and down the stairwell, little lines around door frames and flowing swirls around the pillars. Although these little smudge lines do make me smile …memories of the kids doing their acrobatic dances… …playing ‘catch me if you can’ through the house… Laughter music and dancing feet. however…they otherwise are a bit embarrassing (no, I haven’t gotten over having a messy home). In an effort to disguise the mess in the stairwell, ...

...dings and finger prints...reminders of the kid's happy frolicking...love the frolicking but not so much the evidence - help!  Our house is full of life...kids happily bouncing, running, swinging through doorways - yes, still, even though Madeline and Benjamin are now in university and Sammy is well into high-school! My walls and doorways show the evidence of this - smudges, dings and all sorts of other representations of their happy frolicking. So I'm always on the search for a solution to keep the walls and doorways from looking like a haggard mother. The doorways 'mid-house' were a hug mess, needing serious attention...and since I had just redone Sammy's room, they were really screaming for attention. I set to the task of creating a solution for around the doorways that wouldn't require a whole wall treatment (no matter how much I love painting, the memory of painting those huge walls was too painfully fresh). I'm inspired by this Ralph Lauren picture b...

Finally I can share the beautiful results of our year long project! Here are a few pictures of the living room transformation…(there is so much more of this little rancher reno that I will share soon… bedrooms , bathroom , kitchen, and more...) ...beautiful transformation into a light-filled home notice the popcorn ceiling, lighting fixture and yellow walls…the cheap yellow laminate flooring isn’t so obvious in the picture but is a glaring element that set the color and visual tone Prepping the floor for beautiful white-washed oak hardwood scraping the popcorn ceiling and prepping it for pot lighting  such messy work but so worth the result…and fairly quick…a good shoulder workout I used a process of coating the popcorn with non-caustic stripper (…at the time this seemed to be the best technique I’d tried yet, but not so now – see my painted popcorn ceiling removal  post) notice all the trim and crown molding removed…lots of drywall patching on the ceiling and walls Calculatio...

I love the look and feel of finished concrete –  the texture and feeling that is both organic and industrial – and although typical in modern and industrial design, I think it works really well in many other genres…it reminds me of old French farmhouses and converted barn spaces. I used concrete for a fabulous countertop in my bathroom – it is easy, flexible and creative.  There are tons of instruction online…but it is super easy, just trowel several coats of a feather finish (made to be able to be trowelled on very thinly) concrete product onto a rough material, such as plywood, and seal. I wanted an especially distressed look with some efflorescence and color variation so I faux-finished using drywall compound and some cement powder, troweling it into the surface to highlight the texture (I used drywall compound because it is what I had available to create needed a white color – applied in this very thin way and mixed with the cement powder it has been durable). Many of...

I love painted wood floors…its a perfect fit to that farmhouse, beachy, creative aesthetic I love…and a large canvas to express your unique and personal creativity. I have done this quite a few times…some as temporary measures on the sub-floor while we waited for our ‘real’ flooring and other times on hardwood permanent flooring – either way, I love the results (and love getting to do the paint too…the possibilities!). Painting the sub-floor with paisley designs on a painted creamy checkered base…waiting for our final flooring material Painted wood floor in our sunroom sub-floor painted faux wood, pink and blue checkers, and faux saltillo tile…waiting for our real flooring material white-stained distressed wood floor with hand-painted scroll designs Have a beautiful week! xo shelley

As part of my ongoing project to address the narrow hall entrance in our house, I’m doing a subtle plaster finish on the walls. The lovely soft mottled colors and texture adds to the layers of subtle colors and textures throughout the room. I added a thin patchy layer of drywall compound in it’s natural color, an off greyish white, on the entire wall surface. Most of my wall was fresh drywall, but on the already painted sections the drywall compound needed to be slightly thicker to smooth the orange-peel texture of the paint. My second coat of plaster (drywall compound) is mixed with approximately 20% latex paint in a soft grey and covers approximately 50-75% of the wall. The coats are of various thickness. For the third pass, I alternate between the two mixtures, adding texture and color where it looks like it is needed. I lightly sand out the few lines and areas that need texture adjustments and then wipe on several coats of glaze – this glaze has about 10% of iridescent glaze mixed ...