Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Great Outdoors

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After posting the photos of our “new” chairs, I thought it would be kinda fun to share a bit about our yard.

When we moved to Oregon 11 years ago, we were really excited to be moving from a patio yard…

… to a REAL yard.

But then Tyson and I both discovered something about ourselves: we’re not yard people. Tyson spent most of his time growing-up in the desert when he wasn’t in Portland.  And my parents had acreage that they spent most of their energy trying to keep the weeds down and never really got to the fun part of planting.  Neither one of us spent much time tending to gardens and needless to say, we are both pretty clueless about them.

Case in point: Last year we planted three arborvitaes trees and they are in three stages of survival… good, sad and toast.

It seems about every plant that we put in has about a 50/50 survival rate.  I have a unique talent of killing plants that are suppose to be hearty and then there was the time Tyson accidentally sprayed a rogue rose bush (it just randomly cropped up) with weed killer… and it THRIVED. Yard stuff is SO not our thing.

All this to say… that doesn’t mean we haven’t had some adventures in our yard.

When we moved in, the space looked like this:

And then, because the kids were little, we ripped up part of the deck and put in a play structure.

But they eventually outgrew that and we needed more of a place to enjoy instead of the giant mud pit that was forming.  We live on a hill side and get a lot of run off from our neighbors.  We desperately needed to improve the drainage system.  So two years ago we undertook our biggest landscape challenge ever.  In the process, our yard looked like this…

Crazy, right?!  Just for fun… here’s a few more shots:

Such a mess!

Luckily, it only took a few weeks before the hard scape was put in.

Today it all looks like this.

And we love it!  Yesterday I overheard my 12 year old tell her friend, “We have boulders in our yard for style.”  She’s so funny!  They do bring in a lot of style.  Before we were surrounded by a lot of wood:  Wood fence, wood deck, and bark.  Now we not only have the wood fence, but concrete, boulders and, of course, bright red chairs!  I’m trying to improve the plant situation, but it will never be as amazing as others and I’m okay with that.

Project Notes: Garden Color

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A few weeks ago, we were having beautiful weather here in Portland and with summer on the horizon, we started getting the backyard ready to enjoy.  Mother’s Day brought a new umbrella for our outdoor table and Tyson tackled power washing all of the hardscape.

As he was prepping to power wash, he asked if it was time to retire these chairs. They are the first pieces of patio furniture we purchased forever ago.  They have seen A LOT of sun and have held up surprisingly well for being plastic.  Last year no one sat in them.  They are just really sad.

As I was about to concede that it was time to part ways with them, Tyson said “or you could paint them”.  And that my friends, is one of the many reasons why I love that man!  I immediately knew what I wanted to do.

After cleaning them off, I grabbed some Rustoleum…

A little primer…

And a little pop of color.

I was having a hard time finding just the right red that was in my brain and then I saw this post by Natalie at Detail-Oriented Diva!  She did some amazing candlesticks the exact color I was looking for: Sunrise Red

At the store, I kept going back and forth between the Sunrise and Apple Red; at the last minute I chose Apple.

Several light coats later and we have “new” chairs to enjoy just in time for summer.

This was such a fun project since I really had nothing to lose.  The chairs were on their way out the door, so if I hated the color, I was only out a couple of bucks on spray paint.

Also, because of their age and condition, they allowed me the freedom to throw my perfectionism out the window.  It was a good project to practice spraying and not fret over drips.  They just didn’t need to be perfect and I could go for it with the spray can.

During the final coat of spraying, the wind kicked up and since I was wearing flip-flops, my toes ended up looking a bit sunburned.  All a part of the DIY experience.  Since I’m in BAD need of a pedicure, I’ll spare you the photo.  Let’s look at the chairs some more instead.

I’m keeping my eyes open for some fun cushions; I have something new in my brain that I’ll have to see if I can find.  But even without them, I love looking outside at the bright color!

Studio Rug Edition

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For months we’ve been kicking around ideas for an area rug in Tyson’s Studio.  The man really wanted a vintage style oriental rug (something a little rock and roll), but we still needed it to be durable and we were hoping it wouldn’t break the bank.

A friend had recommended FLOR and so we started there.  We picked out a couple of contenders and then sent away for samples.

There were a lot of good ones, but we thought we’d ultimately wait until we got the bookcase built and painted before we made any final decisions.

Now that the bookcase is in, we revisited the topic.  A few months have passed and some new options have become available so we ordered more samples.

Tyson really liked several of these but we still weren’t sure.

Luckily, FLOR’s website has a rug generator so that you can mix and match patterns and come up with a design you like.  This proved to be a huge benefit for Tyson.  A designer being able to play around with the cut and arrangement before making a purchase… score one for FLOR!

The site also allows you to upload a photo of the space the rug is going into so you can see your options even better.

Here are a couple of ideas for your amusement:

Choice 1 – Has some fun Union Jack (yay!) and a lot of grey (not so yay!)

I should mention for those that have been following this process from the beginning… we haven’t added doors to the base cabinet yet.  Tyson got a little creative with Photoshop so that we could get a good idea of the final look.

Choice 2 – A lot more patchworky (it’s a word) and Tyson really liked the pop of the center square.

Choice 3 – A little more oriental rug pattern mixed with the Union Jack.  Still too grey.

Tyson did about 15 comps so in the interest of time I’ll jump to:

The Crazy Choice – We went from Crazy AMAZING to Crazy NO!

The Final Choice – It has a little bit of everything and picks up the colors we’ve used throughout the studio… blue, green, gold and black.  Subtle, but still fun.

With our options locked in, Tyson sent away for the rugs.  We had decided to do rugs for both the lounge and office areas of the studio.  Tyson picked out similar/complimenting designs for both.

It felt like Christmas when they arrived!

For those (like us) who haven’t used FLOR, it was SUPER easy!

We laid out the squares using the design Tyson had created.

Once we got the carpet tiles set out, we were then able to start playing a bit more with the design.  We realized that the rug in the office was too large for the space, so we peeled off a row.

The most challenging part of the process was working with our “helpers” who wanted to test drive the FLOR before we got everything laid out.

Some of the squares, even though they come from the same overall design, have more pattern on them than others.  We mixed and matched our squares to get them the way we wanted them and then we used the FLOR tabs to stick them all together.

The completed look is exactly what Tyson had imagined for the space.

The pups like it too.

So that’s pretty much it for the studio right now.  We still have a few things left to do… like add the cabinet doors and a booth for meeting with clients on the opposite wall from the bookcase.

However, it’s time to move along to some other items.  I have a summer project on deck as well as a few other stories to share.

But before I do, I thought it’d be fun to share one last before:

And after:

Thanks for following along through the process.  I still can’t get over how much this space has transformed!

It should be noted that we were in no way compensated by FLOR.  We just loved the flexibility of their system for this project and wanted to share the experience with you.

Project Notes: Secret Storage

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Well, I’m back from itch-fest 2012 and so excited to share our latest update…

I’m always captivated watching a movie where someone sneaks into a high security library or office, searching for important documents that are being stored in some sort of hidden compartment.  Things aren’t always what they seem and I love it!  Once, I had the privilege to visit a friend of a friend’s beach house and when you slid out a particular book, a secret door opened taking you down to a hidden wine cellar. I seriously about died!!

So guess who has some secret storage in their new bookcase?  Shhhh… don’t tell anyone… that’s where we are storing our secret documents AND miiiillllllions. (Okay… that’s a lie… please don’t break into our home!)

The original cut-out in the wall is really deep so that it can hold a large screen TV. Remember back in the day when you needed a big space to hold a behemoth TV with all it’s tubes and casing?  They required such a huge space.  But now we’ll be using the area for a flat screen computer monitor… we don’t even have to store a monster hard-drive. We have a ton of room just begging to become a hidden compartment.  Yay!

The plan was to put a shelf in for storage and have space for speakers and whatever else we might need to store in the studio, but don’t need to gain access to often.  Last week, we got the shelf installed and were ready to create a screen to hide the area.

Originally we were thinking about putting in a door, but decided a fabric screen would work better for the speakers.  The screen will go just in front of the wood frame here:

I picked up two tension rods and a yard of black, opaque, polyester fabric to create the screen.

I measured the opening 34″ wide (edge to edge) and determined I would want to cut the fabric 35″ across allowing for a .5″ hem on each side.

I then measured the length which is 29.5″ tall.  I have a little flexibility in the height since I’ll need to leave a gap at the bottom for cords to connect between the power outlet, speakers and computer.

I cut the fabric 32.5″ long so that there is a 1.5″ of extra fabric to fold over on each end, creating a pocket for the tension rod to slide into.  To figure out that magic number, I wrapped a tape measure around the rod to measure how much fabric I would need with a .25″ seam; much like you would when measuring and cutting fabric for piping.

Once both pockets were stitched, I inserted the tension rod and adjusted them to the width we needed.

Then my Hot Assistant climbed onto the book case to finish installing everything.

Thank you, Hot Assistant.

With the screen in place, the space looks like this.  Ta-da!

Oooohhh…. aaaahhhh…. it’s a black screen.  Okay… this may be the most anticlimactic reveal ever.  But that’s exactly the point!  You’re not suppose to see it there.

One rod hangs at the top and the other is at the bottom.  When we need to gain access to the storage area, the bottom rod can easily be moved to the top, folding the fabric in half. Of course, I could’ve taken a photo to demonstrate that, but I clearly needed to make this a little challenging for anyone every needing to break-in to the secret storage.

And once everything is in place, you definitely don’t see anything behind the monitor. The fact that the whole built-in is black helps too.

I’m thrilled to be in the home stretch of this project and have one last item to share before I give it a rest.  It wasn’t my intention to share SO much about the studio when I started this blog, but for better or worse, it’s helped keep me focused on one project at a time.  And the last project is a doozy. (Who say’s doozy?!)