2015/06/23

Outdoor living

Nice to meet you here again! Since April the weather has been a little warmer hear in Southern Finland so gradually my decorating focus has shifted from indoors to outdoors. Usually in June we have a full summer temperatures going over 20 degrees (Celsius), but this year it´s been only few days, when it´s been that warm. I really look forward all those warm summer days relaxing and gathering with friends in our back deck.

In April I took all our outdoor furniture and gave them a good clean. I placed them in our back deck, but it takes a little more than that to beautify the space ;) We also have a small front porch, so I decided they both needed to better match our style and give a nice first impression! We also have a metal pavilion in the back yard, which I eventually want to decorate, too. For now I concentrated for the front porch and back deck.

I began by making some inspirational mood boards. One for relaxing and other for eating and entertaining.


When we moved here over five years ago, the first two summers were really warm and my back was in bad shape. I wanted to be able to enjoy the summer outdoors, so we decided to buy a metal daybed frame and a mattress! It´s been the best purchase for the space and we plan to spend a night there this summer (if the weather gets warmer) after purchasing a mosquito net to hang over the bed. Our bed frame is the same as in the picture, but black. To complete the look and the relaxing feel, I planned to buy big grass-like plants, jute rug, white curtains and of course some pillows on the bed :)


The back deck isn´t very big, about 3 by 5 meters and it has a see through plastic roof. So besides the bed and of course grill, there isn´t room for a big table. We have four white rattan chairs and a round table there right now. After reading Jackie Hernandez new book Free decorating, which is the best decor book I have ever red, I started to think which of those furniture pieces I really love and want to keep and which ones I plan to replace. I want a space, which I love and which has a staying power so I don´t have to do makeovers every year! I knew I wanted to keep the daybed, but the round table we have is going to go, when I have enough money to buy a new one and the chairs - well..I thought I should replace them too. I found a nice also round table from Trademax, which has those Eames DSW chairs look a like legs. I instantly fell in love with that table!

The chairs were a trickier part. I love the look of Ikea´s black rattan chair as well as a poly-rattan ones you see practically everywhere. But I was left thinking, what it is in our rattan chairs I don´t like! Color was the obvious answer! I would also like to have a chair with arms, but our current chairs don´t have them. In a small space, those armless ones are in fact better, because they don´t take so much space, and they are easier to sit in. So, I decided to keep the chairs, but paint them to better match my vision. After sawing them painted I´m so glad I kept them, because they are like new chairs! Those chairs a the very first chairs we bought with my husband, then boyfriend, when we moved together in 2002. In 2006 I painted them white to match my style then and now they got a black update! I´d like to all my furniture choices to last time and trends like those chairs!

Besides the furniture I wanted to continue the same look as in the first mood board, after all it´s one space! White curtains, jute rug, plants and some pillows would finish things off. I also dreamed for decorative lights and some big lanterns. I´m saving for the jute rug, but in the mean time, we have there our previous living room wool rug.

It´s been enough words, don´t you think? Time for some photos :) First the back deck! There you can see the almost new black chairs and the current table as well as our daybed. Just in time for big Finnish Mid-summer festival on 20th, I bought those string lights. If you look close enough, you can see a mirror there! I´m planning on hanging it to the wall, so it reflects all the green in our back yard. I plan also to hang there a few picture frames to form like a gallery wall - bringing the inside out ;). To get a better idea of our layout, that window and door next to it, lead to our fireplace room. You can even see our front door there in the other end :)


Here you can see some of the roof. It lets some of the light in, blocking the UV-rays. I had cream white curtains, which I didn´t need inside any more and which I had kept to use outdoors. I used a white plastic covered wire rope designed to hang curtains and some hooks to hang them. I also used the same wire rope near the floor to attach the curtains there too. It´s quite windy here so it´s nice to know those curtains stay in place! And hey- did you noticed the lights? LOVE them.


This is the view from inside out. Our gas grill and our "Muurikka"pan, a large round cast metal piece. It´s kept over a fire so you can use it to make food and  Finnish delicacy "lettu" a type of pancake resembling crêpe. I´m planning on replacing that awful lid over it ;) I love the fact that the grill and the muurikka are on carts, so they are easy to move around!


Here is another photo of our favorite spot! A nice breezy warm summer day, a good book or a good blog to read and a cold drink - perfection!


I bought a few different grasses, because I love the geometric look they have and one Japanese maple, which I´m planting on the ground in fall. They bring just enough of that green, lush feel to the deck I wanted.


Here´s one shot from the deck to our yard. Behind those spruces we have those big crack willows just in the border of our yard. You can see glimpses of a white house. It has only few windows facing us, and they use that small part of their lot only when mowing the grass. So we have enough privacy on the deck. The curtains can be moved to control the privacy and the sun light, too.


There is also a little water feature in our back yard, which we absolutely love! Water comes out on top of the "ball" and runs back down, where is a small pump circulating the water back to the top. The sound of water is very relaxing and that´s one reason why we wanted the feature near the deck! It´s also pretty to look at ;)


You can see on the above photo an area covered with filter fabric. It´s a place to cart tons of gravel and where we are going to build a storage shed for firewood. I hope we still have some time to spend in the outdoor bed reading ;) and enjoying summer! I first planned to show you our front porch too, but I keep you in suspense till next time ;)

See you here again! Hope you are all able to enjoy warm sunny summer days wherever you are :)

Warmly,
Jenni




2015/06/12

Quest post: Petra´s DIY Headboard

Hi you! Nice to see you here again :). Today we have here a dear friend of mine, Petra. She recently decided to test her construction skills and I can say the outcome is amazing! I´m glad to have her here to explain how she, for the first time in her life, built a headboard! 
To start with, I should tell you that I have never done anything like this project before.  I have no wood working experience and we have only very limited basic tools.  For us to even consider making our own DIY headboard was a bit of a leap of faith!

After just over a year of living in our new home, I was ready to tackle our master bedroom decor.  The room has a nice big window and great natural light but rather dated huge rolling mirrored closet doors trimmed in brass finish.  

I had purchased a new duvet cover that I thought I would love but it never really felt right in the space.  Then to try and salvage it, I added contrasting colored toss pillows that really did not work.  The room was certainly not working for me!



What I wanted most of all to transform this space was a HEADBOARD!  I always wanted a headboard but they are expensive and my go-to cheap furniture store (Ikea) did not have any models that fit our home and our Honest Charm style (think modern cottage).  So I resorted to propping the pillows up as high as I could get them.  Yep, I wasn’t fooling anyone! 

Since I was temporarily unemployed, there was really no budget allowance for furniture shopping.  What I had for pretty much the first time in my life was plenty of extra time.  So that is why we started considering making our own headboard. 

Plus I had my support team at School of Decorating to bounce ideas off.  These ladies were so encouraging to me.  They really believed I could do this!  I was SoD member Rose who helped me see the reason why I never loved that duvet.  It was a lot of pattern for my taste and the huge mirrored doors multiplied the pattern so that it just overwhelmed the space.  I knew my new bedding would need to tone it down.

I did tons of research on the web and found lots of great tutorials.  Ana White has some amazing examples but the construction seemed difficult with our limited tools and the styles were not quite right.  I found a few examples where people built the headboard right onto the wall like a modified board and batten.  I like that simplicity but worried that I would never really like the look.

Finally after many weeks of planning, we decided to make a freestanding headboard of our own design.  Since keeping the budget as low as possible, I planned to make the headboard out of the least expensive wood I could buy.  It also meant we could not buy any extra tools to put it together.  We only used a super old circular saw and belt sander borrowed from my mother in law and a very inexpensive drill we had purchased a few years prior.  I did buy a carpenters square to help line things up mostly because I could not figure out how to do it without one.

Before we started on the project, I had to remove the wall sconces put up by the prior owners.  They were really stuck to the wall and had cord covers attached with adhesive that did quite a bit of damage when they came off.  That was a great time to hone my puttying and sanding skills as the headboard would take lot of sanding!

I measured and measured again and sketching out the plans.  Our bed is a Cal King size by the way.  Then we were off to the Home Depot!  I bought the cheapest 2x4s that they had and inspected a big stack to try and get the least wonky looking ones they had.  Since we were making it up as we went along, I just bout the 2x4s first and went back later for the large plywood piece and the final 1x4 that became the top.

 

Hopefully these photos give you an idea of how we put the pieces together following my plan.  The very last piece we put on was the 1x4 that topped the headboard.  As you can see, it was a whole family project.  My son and husband enjoyed using the drill together!  Since we did not have a fancy kreg drill, we selected steel mending plates and brackets to connect the 2x4s.  Once we had the plywood back on, it held the structure together so the 2x4 connecters did not need to be structural.

 

Then it was my turn to do the rest.  First there was lots and lots of sanding.  Then I filled all the holes and dings in the wood with wood filler.  Then I caulked all of the joints.  Jackie’s tutorial on her board and batten wall was extremely helpful to me.  I did not realize I needed to caulk and it made a huge impact in the finished piece!  School of Decorating for the win!  The best part of the caulk was that it camouflaged the very uneven cuts in the piece.  Since we used a very basic circular saw, the pieces that were supposed to be the same size were off by as much as a quarter of an inch in some places.

I applied two coats of primer and two coats of teal paint (Dunn Edwards By the Bayou).  We were really impressed with the results.  It was exactly what we had envisioned!


Finally we carried it up the stairs.  My husband assured me it would fit up the stairs since it was smaller than the Cal King mattress.  I understood his logic but I was anxious to make sure that it would actually fit up the stairs.  Yes it fit!  We attached it to the metal bed frame with some large bolts and washers.  I also put some felt pads on the back of the headboard where it would touch the wall. 

When I added the receipts, the total project came in at about $125.  That included all of the wood, screws, metal brackets, caulk, wood filler, paint, and painting supplies.  Certainly we put in quite a bit of labor and sweat!  If you have any specific questions on our construction details, please let me know and I am happy to help answer them.
So, what do you think? Amazing, or what! I´ve dreamed of a headboard for our bedroom for some time now, and this would look so good! The best part is, that Petra promised to come back and share some details on their new bedding and a full bed reveal! So stay tuned!

I have mentioned a few times already our outdoor spaces and next time I´m going to share an inspirational mood board and reveal what I have in mind and what I have already done outdoors ;) So see you here again :)

Warmly,
Jenni

2015/06/03

Concrete and leather


Glad to see you here! It´s unbelievable how fast time flies! It feels like I just yesterday wrote my last post, but it´s actually been a week already. Last week I mentioned that I´m looking for a solution how to hang the towels in our powder room. If you are new here, you may wonder why it´s a problem, hanging towels?. We have lovely concrete wall hooks and they are big, so the only way we could hang a towel was just placing it on the hook. However that way those lovely hooks were hidden under the towels. Not an ideal solution! I wanted something else and it made me thinking...


Here is what I came up with!


Just some leather strips and curtain hooks with clips (like these from Ikea) and we can see those gorgeous concrete hooks again :)


These are so easy to make but I made a simple instruction anyway. Basically all you need is leather strips, curtain hooks with clips, scissors, a small punch (I looked this word from dictionary, so I hope it´s a correct word ;) )


First you have to decide the length of the strip and cut it to size. Next using the punch make holes on both ends for the curtain hook to go through. If you wish you can use pliers to bend the hook "closed" after that. And that´s it! Super easy, right? And what a difference it makes! I like the look of  the rough concrete and smooth leather together. Black on that wall balances the space nicely and ties everything together.


I love these kinds of fixes: easy, affordable and quick! This could be used in many hooks for easy hanging! 

Next time I´m going to show you what I have in mind for our outdoor spaces, so stay tuned! See you here, again!

Warmly,
Jenni