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Joanna's Living Room, Part 2

Joanna has a beautiful fireplace in her living room. We both loved the look of stacked firewood, so I bought a couple of reams of wood at a nursery (though they sell firewood everywhere - even Home Depot).

I had to cut a couple of inches off the length of some of the logs because the sides sloped in a little. I'm so happy with this look and think it's a great way to add an organic/rustic element to any room with a fireplace (especially of the non-working variety).

Another great feature in Joanna's living room is the wall of built-in bookshelves. All we did here was paint the shelf backs with Benjamin Moore's Horizon - one of my very favorite blue grays.

We whipped this project out in just a few minutes using this great little tool called a paint edger.

The subtle color really adds a lot to the color balance of the room, I think.

Joanna had this great little captain's mirror hanging in another room, but it just looked so perfect hung here on the shelving moulding. We tapped in a wall brad to hang the mirror, but 3M Picture Hanging Strips would also do the trick if you're worried about damaging the surface of your built-ins.

We liked the idea of creating sort of a reading nook in front of the bookshelves. I found this CRAZY heavy and huge vintage swing arm lamp at an antique shop, and thought the scale would be fun and could hold it's own in front of a wall of books.

I taped up the cord and the bulb inner workings and spray painted it a blue color from Sherwin Williams.

On the opposite side of the room, where you enter the living room, is also near the front door of the apartment. The space was perfect for this vintage brass bar cart, which is sort of dual purpose and acts as an entry console too.

I think every room needs a decent sized mirror to reflect light and brighten a space. The ceilings in this apartment are really high, so we needed a really long and narrow mirror to hang above the bar cart. I found this one for a couple dollars at a local thrift shop.

It looks better than new with a few coats of Benjamin Moore's Gentlemen's Gray (one of my very favorite moody colors).

A little tip for painting mirrors: I used to be really intense about taping off the mirror part before painting the frame. It would literally take me three times as long to tape off the mirror as it would to get the actual painting done! And then I would be so frustrated after pulling off the tape only to see the old finish reflecting underneath the edges of the frame. So now I don't tape anything - I just paint as much as is necessary to cover all the old finish so that it's not peeking out anywhere. I really dig my brush down under the edge of the frame and the paint usually gets all over the mirror, but I still leave it all to dry for a day or two. After the paint has cured, I spray the mirror down with windex and use a paper towel to clean up the mirror surface. It's like magic! The paint comes right off the mirror, but stays on the frame. Sometimes if I'm feeling ambitious, I'll run a razor blade around the borders of the frame to sort of perforate the paint before cleaning it up with the windex. Works like a charm!

Next up: the Nursery!

{Again, a HUGE thanks to Karen Mordechai for taking many of these photos above. Karen is a fabulously talented New York-based photographer. You should check out her portfolio, especially if you have a wedding coming up!}

Considering the Sputnik

Friends, I'm so happy to report that our loft has WALLS!! Hallelujah. There's still some finishing that will take place over the next day or two, but I couldn't be happier to finally have closets to hang up our clothes and put away the second half of our boxes. And then!! Let the decorating begin!

I'm thinking of a pair of sputnik or sputnik-esque chandeliers over the farmhouse table in the dining area. Something like this vintage beauty would be the ideal. But at $4800, this one's definitely not in the budget.

I think this one is cool, from Shades of Light ($350)

And this one from Z Gallerie is similar, for $250

I love the size (36"!!) of this sputnik from Room Service Home ($550).

Faux bamboo meets sputnik in Jonathan Adler's Meurice chandelier ($750).

I'm loving the smoke version of the Lotus Flower Chandelier - It has a sort of feminine sputnik vibe.

The IKEA Maskros is a great size for the price tag ($89). It might be worth a try... Maybe as a place holder until I can afford the real deal sputnik?

Have you come across any great chandeliers lately?

Chandelier at Home Depot

Thank you all so, SO much for your responses to my little survey. If you haven't taken it yet, I'd really love your help. I want to make sure I'm capturing a good sample of my readers. The feedback so far has been amazingly helpful as I'm organizing what to say at Alt.

CLICK HERE FOR THE SURVEY

Also, the overwhelming response to the last question - which asked for constructive criticism about my blog and how it can be better - was that you readers want more photos of my home and my projects again. I hear you! And truthfully, I feel the same way. I know the reason many of you started reading LGN was because of the project sharing. Those projects led to successes in my design business, and I feel as a result of that, I've been less available to focus on sharing with you readers.

Part of my resolution list this year is to get back to basics and focus more energy on original content. So, I guess that's my long-winded way of saying - thanks for hanging in there! Great posts are on the way! Promise.

ANYWAY! Let's talk lighting. This was a fun sight for me last week as I rounded the corner to the lighting department in Home Depot.

I'm a sucker for round chandeliers. This one comes in two sizes 21" and 14". So pretty in an entry, a dressing room or a fancy powder bath! Not cheap at $300 and $400 each, but also not too crazy.

More Maskros Hacks

I love how many different ways a DIY tutorial can be reinvented!

My friend, Vanessa, who I went to high school with, did my sputnik DIY in her gorgeous living room (she used the smaller sized Maskros, which looks perfect here).

Guess what Vanessa used to make the rods look a little more substantial?? She cut straws from QT (a convenience store in AZ with the best drink selection ever - rivals Sonic) down the middle, wrapped them around the flimsy rods, and spray painted the whole thing. I love this!

Another improvement on my project: Vanessa painted the backs of the amuse bouche plates to better hide the little white plastic bits. Genius!

Here's another Maskros hack from the Picket Fence Design blog. It's pink! and OMBRE! What's not to love?!

They cut down the petals a little, like I did and then used three different colors of acrylic paint to give that graduated ombre effect.

Another beautiful project!

Thanks so much, ladies! If you have a project you think I'd love, email me at jenny at jennykomenda dot com.

In related news, today I shared my 15 very favorite chandeliers that won't break the bank (all under $400!)

Dying Lampshades

It's super easy to change the look of cloth lampshades. I saw this beautiful photo in Better Homes and Gardens (and Lindsay from Everything LEB did a post on the subject here).

They suggested doing the whole dye bath thing, but I was feeling impatient the day I wanted to dye my too-simple Target drum shades, so I cheated a little.

I picked up a bottle of this powder form fabric dye at an art supply store here (Blicks). It's called Procion MX Dye. There were so many cool colors! I chose Bright Green for this project.

I just put a tiny bit of the powder in a bowl and mixed it with cold water and then painted it on with an artist's brush. It was so easy and the project finished so fast that I forgot to take pictures of me painting! :)

At it's brightest, the shade I chose is supposed to look like the above, but I went much subtler here. At the time I thought I was going to paint the girls door mint green and I didn't want to go into overkill mode. Since then though I've redyed them emerald green. Ha! More on that later (and on the pretty silver paper lining the insides of the shades).

Off to play with my girls who I haven't seen in a week! They've been in Arizona with my parents while I finished up some work projects here. I missed them so, so much!

Speaking of family, I put my first post up on Babble yesterday. It's a little intro on me and my family - maybe some stuff I haven't shared with you here yet? There also may or may not be a photo of me in airplane pose. Do you play that with your kids?

Anyway, I'll also be posting on Babble's The New Home Ec blog every day, so don't forget to check me out there for more of my home decorating tips!

xoxo

New Shade for the GG Sconces

I had planned to get custom shades made for the Gossip Girl sconces, but every place I called wanted $60-$120 PER SHADE!! What?

So when I stumbled across these vintage chandelier shades at the Chelsea flea, I snatched them up for only a couple dollars.

The shades are sort of wrapped in silk cording, which gives them a super cool texture. I thought about dying them a fun color, but I actually like the more neutral gray-beige.

They have a floral, organic feel to them. My mom said they sort of look like mushrooms now with the new shades which I can totally see. I love them!

DIY Sputnik Chandelier

I've always dreamed of having a gorgeous sputnik chandelier, but they are usually on the smaller side and in the many thousands of dollars. I had planned on investing a little bit more of the house budget on the dining area's light fixture because it would be basically the first thing you'd see when walking into our apartment. I wanted big and beautiful.

After deciding to buy the Gossip Girl sconces, I had sort of eaten up my lighting budget and needed to figure out something very inexpensive for the dining room. I thought the ubiquitous IKEA Maskros (which means dandelion in Swedish) might be a good base for a DIY sputnik.

I had some help from my Mom and Dad, who were in town visiting at the time. We busted out the entire project in a night and had the thing hung in the morning. I love projects like that!! (THANKS Mom and Dad! xo)

It's a pretty simple project, with not a lot of tools required. I went with the 32" diameter fixture because we have a big open space, but I would recommend the 22" fixture (which is only $49!) for more traditional rooms.

Like almost all IKEA products, the Maskros comes disassembled. There are, I think, 124 white flowers to attach to long metal rods.

image via HERE

The white, plasticy paper flowers are about 5" wide. This is totally personal preference, but the thing I don't love the most about the Maskros in it's original state is all the shadows the flowers create and I needed this fixture to be a functional light source first and foremost. So I played around a bit with the proportions to shorten the petals and decided I like a 2.5" diameter best.

I used a clear (making it easy to find the center) plastic cup with a 2.5" base to trace a circle on each of the flowers. A little tip: I find that projects with many steps of many multiples are done best and fastest by focusing on one step at a time. I traced all the flowers first. Then I cut all the flowers, etc. Don't get ahead of yourself in the steps for the sake of accuracy and efficiency.

Once the tracing was all finished, I cut down the flowers. Then I pulled out my trusty old quart of Ralph Lauren Regency Metallics in 'Parlor Gold' to paint out the florettes.

If the weather had been better and if I didn't live in NYC, I totally would have spray painted the whole thing using Rustoleum's metallic line in the Brass finish. But, I am actually really happy with the look of the hand painting. It didn't take that long, and I think the end look is a little less flat than spray paint - more mottled, like real gilded metal.

While one side of the florettes was drying, we painted the rest of the fixture, including the arms (below), the cord and the ceiling mount.

Once both sides of the florettes had been painted and the fixture frame had two good coats of paint, we started gluing these adorable little amuse bouche plates on the florettes. I used two boxes for the larger size Maskros.

Fabritac is hands down my favorite adhesive and it worked really well for this project. Super tight hold and a fast drying time. I needed only a small dollop on the bottom of each plate to attach the flower.

We let the glue set up for an hour or so and then we attached the florettes to the stems as they were designed to be attached. There are little prongs (the button looking pieces in the center) that snap the flowers in place on the arms. Grace was in charge of most of the snapping.

We used a fabric roll on two chairs for holding the arms, which worked really well for letting the paint and glue dry.

My super handy dad took care of the electrical aspects and then we all worked together to attach the huge arms to the frame. It was fun to step down from the ladder and take it all in at once!

The large size was just what my dining space needed. And it's so great to have an additional light source above the table. I was surprised at how much it brightened the space - even with just the one bulb.

I love that the plastic plates have that hint of green! I think they really look like glass and the painted paper/plastic actually kind of passes for brass.

It has that Sputnik vibe, but it's definitely doing it's own thing. Not bad, for about $100 in supplies!

I'm so glad we cut down the flowers. It doesn't scream IKEA Maskros this way and the little shadows are actually quite pretty. Sort of like polka dots (I keep thinking of the Kate Spade Twirl bottle!)