DIY – Page 12 – The Interior DIYer

Alex - The Interior DIYer July 20, 2018 DIY

Mini interior sample stash for designing on the go

This is a trick I’ve used a few times so far and figured if I found it handy, someone else out there in the process of [ s l o w l y ] updating their home might also find it helpful!

What I started doing was collecting samples of the main colours and fabrics in our home to keep in one place; a swatch from our Article sofa, sample strips of CIL’s Kitten White and Burgundy paint, some cardboard with Coal Black Fusion Mineral Paint and Pure Gold spray paint from Rust-Oleum and a sample of my faux marble contact paper. Then I neatly stashed them all in a black envelope. This way when I’m heading out to look at something for our home I grab my black envelope, toss it in my bag and I can easily see if whatever I’m looking at will match what I already have.

I especially find this handy when I’m looking at something burgundy. I’m so picky when it comes to burgundy and I really love the shade in our home, so if I find something that’s a shade of red that I’m unsure of, I can quickly see if it’s the good kind or bad kind of clashing. It’s a minor design hack, but one that I use a lot! More importantly, it makes me feel like I have my shit together for a few minutes each day. Worth it.

Alex - The Interior DIYer June 20, 2018 DIY

Contact paper kitchen counters – test run!

I’d like to take 100% of the credit for this, but the first person I saw putting contact paper on kitchen counter tops was Linda of Make Do and DIY in her post the ultimate “new kitchen counter” cheat. It stuck with me in 2015 so well that when we moved into our Lower Town apartment, I knew I’d be adding some to our rental counters.

For me, buying enough contact paper for the kitchen was a mini investment. In my head it was a frivolous thing to want to buy. You have perfectly functioning countertops as is. Why would you want to cover them? But the reality is that our kitchen is a very dark room + the cupboards are really dark [not complaining], but also having dark countertops is just a bit too much dark. For a room that helps if you can see what you’re doing, I should say.

I did some work and once I saved up enough, I bought a few rolls for the kitchen. In the mean time, the One Room Challenge happened and I ended up using a few rolls to cover our dining room table, so this week I finally decided to test out some faux marble contact paper in our kitchen.

We have a single counter unit between the stove and the fridge in our kitchen so I thought this would be a perfect place to test the contact paper for a few weeks before committing to covering the entire kitchen [and hopefully ironing out any issues on a small scale vs. finding it doesn’t suit our kitchen after covering the whole thing].

This is the section of counter that gets the most use so if the contact paper can hold up here, it’ll have no problem working throughout the rest of the kitchen. I’ll use it as I normally would for a few weeks before making up my mind on covering the rest of the counter tops, but let’s face it, it already looks so much better so I’ve 85% already made my mind up! It’s beautiful! Cover ALL OF THE THINGS IN CONTACT PAPER! Now I’ve just got to convince the critical part of my brain that it’ll be practical.

I’ll blog an update in a few weeks regardless of whether I decided on covering the entire kitchen or not and will give honest feedback on it all. But for now, it’s already made this corner of our kitchen so much brighter! I’m crossing my fingers it works out.

If you’re curious to see how to apply contact paper like an expert, you can check out my four-step tutorial here!

Alex - The Interior DIYer May 10, 2018 #DarkRomanticLuxe

One Room Challenge Spring 2018 – Week Six!

This is it. I’m full of a strange mix of relief and excitement. The final week of the One Room Challenge is here and I am SO EXCITED to finally share our dining room! It’s finished and ready and I honestly love it.

For anyone who found me here today thanks to the One Room Challenge, hi! I’m Alex. My husband and I, our daughter and our two cats emigrated to Ottawa [Canada] from Dublin [Ireland] six months ago. Six months ago we had nothing. I mean sleeping on the floor and all sharing the same bottle of water kind of nothing. I’ve been slowly making our rented apartment a home, so when the Spring 2018 One Room Challenge came around it was the perfect ~~excuse~~ opportunity for me to make our dining room, the room we spend the most time in, a bit more homely.

I’ll be including a full source list at the end of this post in case there’s anything you see and would like to know where it’s from! I’ll either link to where I bought it or to where I blogged about it. And if you’d like to know more, feel free to ask!

I was eager to try and source as many things as I could for our dining room secondhand. Because when you’re starting from nothing, everything is hella expensive. I turned to secondhand websites like Kijiji and real life thrift stores like Value Village and The Salvation Army to fill our dining room.

I updated furniture and fittings with paint, contact paper and lazy patches of Sharpie markers when no one was looking.

Our dining room gets a lot of light during the day and as I spend most days working with a toddler close by, we spend most of our day in the dining room [as the kitchen and Cora’s bedroom are both next to it]. I wanted this space to be somewhere bright and inviting. I do love dark design and I’ll always love dark spaces, but I don’t think going dark would have worked in such a bright space. I did add some darkness with my most favourite burgundy paint, but I added it in a dark part of the room.

It took me a long time to choose the right colour for the dining room walls. It was something that needed to work with burgundy [that was non-negotiable], but it also needed to work with and compliment the kitchen cabinetry which can be seen from the dining room as well as the hardwood floors throughout. It was a tough task, but I found the perfect nearly-greige paint ‘Kitten White’ by CIL Paints. I can’t stress how perfect it is IRL.

This little vignette has turned out to be my favourite spot in our dining room. And it was one of the last places I focused on. It was one of those uggggh what will I do with this corner? corners, but with some artistic help from Cora one afternoon, I put this little group together and I love it so much.

I can’t write this post without mentioning our Victorian style mirror. We managed to successfully hang it this weekend thanks to two 200lbs hooks [overkill by about 350lbs, but they help me sleep soundly at night so long story short, do whatever makes you sleep better]. I tightened the wires at the back a few times before getting our mirror at just the right height. At 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide, there wasn’t much wiggle room with where we could hang it, so I’m thanking the construction gods that there were two studs along the main wall perfectly centered for our mirror. Anyone who sees it in real life is blown away by how big it is. I don’t know how, but it comes across as smallish in photos. This thing is huge. Like, the size of a human person. I’m just so happy we have it looming over our every meal now.

I’m not going to lie, my first One Room Challenge was tough. It didn’t help that I picked the biggest room in our apartment and that I chose to partake even though our belongings didn’t arrive from Ireland until Y E S T E R D A Y, so yeah, it was stressful. But, it worked out. Yes, I had to compromise with a lot of things [not being able to put a swag on the chandelier and center it over the table, not having enough time (or energy) to paint the rest of the hallway and you can see that in some pictures, etc], but it worked out. And the moment it was finished I was so happy with it. It felt comfortable and it felt like us. It was tough but what project isn’t? I’m a very firm believer in creating a space you love to live in for the sake of your mental health. And I for one am tore up from the floor up about our dining room.

Thank you to Linda for letting me partake in the One Room Challenge as a guest participant. The support, encouragement and community that I’ve seen and experienced from the ORC is so encouraging. Especially knowing I wasn’t the only one crying into my glass of wine at the end of Week Four when the panic really started to set in. It’s been an amazing experience and I can’t wait for the One Room Challenges to come.

You can see the full list of the One Room Challenge Spring 2018 guest participant room reveals here!

Entire source list for our dining room as it currently is …

Wall colours – ‘Classic Burgundy’ and ‘Kitten White’ by CIL
Victorian mirror – secondhand via Kijiji
Dining hutch – secondhand via Kijiji, updated with Fusion Mineral Paint in ‘Coal Black’
Malm 6-drawer dresser – via IKEA
Tobias dining chairs – originally from IKEA, but bought secondhand via Kijiji
Gold circular side table – secondhand via Kijiji
Bird portrait trays – via iBride
Dining table – secondhand, updated with marble contact paper [tutorial coming soon] French provincial style armchair – secondhand via Kijiji
All floral artwork – secondhand via Value Village
Candle sconces – both secondhand via Value Village
Burgundy curtains – discontinued IKEA
Skogsklover roller blinds – via IKEA
Black high chair – secondhand via Kijiji
90’s chandelier – secondhand via Kijiji
Black and white abstract artwork – painted by Cora!
Baby Schylling piano – from Target, but bought secondhand via Kijiji
Cloches – given to me by my excellent blogger friend Pat
Wall clocks, x2 – via EQ3
Glasses in dining hutch – either thrifted or discontinued IKEA
Gold lucky wishbone objet – via Chapters !ndigo
Tassles – via Home Focus
White posey vase – via EQ3
Brass candle holder – via Article

Shop this look!

CIL Kitten White

Lowe’s Marble Contact Paper

CIL Classic Burgundy

EQ3 Posey Vase
$12.99

IKEA Tobias Chair
$99

iBride Isild Tray
€52

Indigo Lucky Charms Wishbone
$12

EQ3 Watch Wall Clock
$29.99

iBride Rosita Tray
€52

IKEA Malm Black Dresser
$199