Half Assed Tin Backsplash

Here's a picture of our kitchen before we moved in:

The green backsplash definitely wouldn't coordinate well with my existing orange and brown decor from our previous house.  But we're not handy, and once we paid someone to tear down the lovely striped wallpaper, our budget was blown for the kitchen.  What to do?  Well, if you're Half Assed, you simply find a solution that works For Now.

http://youtu.be/vWlJs-fa6Uw

Fun With Spray Paint

I could probably write a thousand posts about spray paint.  And I probably will, as I run out of ideas.  I've touched on this a bit already.  When you're out shopping around for decorative items, scouring those clearance bins and garage sales, be on the lookout for item whose "bones" appeal to you.  That is, don't overlook something because of the color, or even damage to the item, necessarily.  If it's cheap enough, it's worth spray painting.  Once you've decided on some accent colors for your space, pick up a few cans of spray paint in those colors--they will definitely come in handy. Your local craft store will have a much better color selection, so if you're looking to accent with bright colors, you'll need to check there, but if you're looking to accent with brown, black, white, etc.  Home Depot has a bunch of colors, and they also carry spray paint in metallic finishes, hammered finishes, and spray paints designed to adhere to any surface, even plastic.

My old refrain about courage and cheapness making decorating easy definitely applies here.  Whether this item is something you have and hate, or something you bought on the cheap, you're losing nothing by spray painting it.  Look at it this way:  If you own it and it's not your style, aren't you more likely to enjoy it once you've made it your own?  I recently inherited a complete bedroom set in an antique-y style cherry finish.  While my bedroom is more traditional than the rest of the house, cherry wood is most definitely not my style.  Should I have turned it down?  Well, being that I've had my own place for over 23 years now and never owned a bedroom set, that seemed silly.  Should I have accepted it and, knowing what quality, expensive furniture it was, left it alone and silently despised it?  Not bloody likely!  While my mother was horrified, I spray painted the entire set black, which gives it a, while still traditional, more Pottery Barn-esque look.  It's my furniture now.  It might be a crime to spray paint expensive furniture, but it's mine, and I should enjoy it.  I will likely use this furniture for the rest of my life, so who cares if I've devalued it with paint?  Truly quality furniture (solid wood) can always be stripped of paint, anyway.  Or, if I change my color scheme later, I can paint right over it again.  I also have massive paranoia about adding too much to landfills, so the idea of repurposing something, rather than throwing it away and getting something new really sits well with me.

Spray painting furniture, while faster and easier than painting with a brush, is probably not the best method for furniture that sees a lot of action, such as a chest of drawers, since it will show nicks and marks more easily, so if you do it, be sure to give it a couple of good coats of spray poly on top.  Spray painting decorative items is a piece of cake.  I've even seen quite a bit on Pinterest lately about spray painting glass items.  I'll have to give that a shot and get back to you on it.

Here's a list (not comprehensive by far) of things I've dared to spray paint:

-Bedroom set

-Picture frames (when I've changed the accent colors in a room

- Baskets
-A wooden clock

-Decorative finials

-Faux flowers (sprayed them silver and white for Christmas decorations and dipped a few in glitter while the pain was still wet, too)
-Bookshelves
-Piano bench (I brush painted the piano, much to my mother's horror, once again)
-Light fixtures

-Wooden and metal candlesticks
-Wicker (that plastic-wicker) patio furniture
-My patio (using a homemade brick template)

-My metal outdoor fireplace (You can kind of see it on the far right of the above photo)
-Dried palm leaves & pinecones
-Entire Christmas decorations that no longer went with my decor
-Record albums (silver, used as decoration in my son's rock and roll themed room)

And the list goes on...
Grab a can and go for it!

Questions?

I'm happy to answer questions/share ideas with anyone who wants to ask in the comment section.  Let me know if I've left anything unclear, or if you have a decorating dilemma of your own.

Yes You Can: Recovering Upholstered Stools or Chairs

Simple when you have a staple gun and some guts.  Truly, this is one of those "what's the worst that can happen?" projects.  If you cover over the existing fabric (and why not?) and hate it or screw it up, you simply pry up your staples and forget about it.

As I've mentioned before, be on the lookout for precut pieces of fabric or remnants.  If you have a Hobby Lobby or Ikea in your area, they both carry tons of decorator fabrics in upholstery weight.  Or, as I've mentioned before, keep your mind open.  If the pattern you like happens to be on a shower curtain or a deeply discounted duvet cover, it will do just fine.  In the video below, I am recovering my Ikea dining room chairs with an orange velour remnant I found at Garden Ridge Pottery.  The entire piece (3 yards) was $5.99, which was more than double what I needed for the six chairs.  These chairs had seats that popped right out-- they weren't secured in any way, which made the project a snap.  Your chairs might be fastened in some way.  Take a look at the underside of them.  Usually, it's an obvious set of screws, like this:

 I bought these barstools off a guy selling old, used office equipment for $5 a piece.  I don't remember what they looked like when I got them, but I quickly recovered them with that lovely shower curtain material I had scads of, and it was as easy as finding the screws and removing them.

This will also work on the seat of a wooden chair or barstool, just add some padding first.  I spray painted these wooden barstools, then added a piece of circular foam padding and topped it with fabric.

 Not the most fabulous barstools in the world, but totally functional, and nearly free, since I already had them in the garage.

Here's how:
(You get to see the HAD here...in what amounts to my pajamas at the end of a long day.  One day I'll shoot a video when I'm looking all fresh and pretty.)
http://youtu.be/Lp-Mn77FphY

Quilted Bulletin Board

One of the reasons I've fallen behind on my posts is that the day I launched this blog and linked it on Facebook and Pinterest, I started getting calls asking me to work.  Am I the only one who finds this amusing?  I write a blog about my Half Assed ways, and it inspires people to hire me.  Anyway, we've been quite busy.  One of our current projects is a craft room for a client who scrapbooks, does needlework, etc.  I'm excited about it, it's going to look fab when we're done, but the bulk of the budget has to go to functional items, as opposed to decorative stuff, since she needs a lot of storage for supplies, a large table, chairs, lighting, etc.  That leaves a very small amount left to bring in color, so we've had to make most of our items do a double duty.  She wants something to pin up ideas and works in progress.  Bulletin boards are cheap, but not pretty, and definitely not colorful.  We found a large, colorfully framed corkboard at Marshall's, but it was $50, which was more than our budget could handle.  Right behind it, though, was an identical, damaged one.  The sides were scuffed, there was a streak of glue across the cork, and some of the cork was missing.  We spoke to the manager and asked for a discount.  She reduced the price to $36, and we took it, knowing we could fix it up.  We removed the scuffs on the frame with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  (The generic version, actually.)  That left this:

We figured we'd buy some new cork and glue it on top of the existing stuff, but then we saw a really cool bulletin board that had squares of fabric on it.  I had leftover fabric from another project for that room, so instead of buying a sheet of cork, I bought cork tiles at Target for $6.44.

  I covered three of the tiles with the fabric, using hot glue,

Then I hot glued all of the tiles in place.  This is the final look, minus the last two cork tiles in the lower left and right corners.

Now her functional board is also artwork for the room!  We have some other fun ideas for this room I'll be sharing soon.

Fireplace Makeover

Hate your fireplace?  I did, too.  In case you haven't read my previous posts, for the back story on this project, check this post:  http://halfasseddecorator.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-you-dont-need.html

This project is a bit more complicated that my usual (i.e. it takes longer than five minutes), but it's so worth it.  I get tons of compliments on it, and it really forces you to exercise my #1 tool, courage.  I promise, you'll be so proud of yourself when you're done.  Please, if you have questions, or if I've left something unclear, let me know with a comment.  I will respond.

Since I did this project almost two years ago, I don't have video, or a ton of pictures, so you'll have to trust me on this when I tell you you can do this, assuming you have a fireplace like this one.  I truly had no tile or masonry experience and just dove in like an idiot here, and if I thought I was getting into trouble, asked the guys at Home Depot.  This is a very messy project, so you'll need to protect your flooring well.  Lucky for me, I have concrete floors that clean up easily.

I started by removing the existing tile.  Since I didn't have the proper tools, I used a flat head screwdriver as a chisel and a hammer as a mallet and started chipping away at the grout between the tiles.   Once I'd removed enough of the grout, I wedged the screwdriver behind the tile as far as I could and pulled backward to pry the tile away from the fireplace.    Sometimes I'd wedge the screwdriver behind and hammer on it again to remove the adhesive bond behind the tile.  This did result in some chunks of the sheetrock coming away with the tiles.  Yes, there's sheetrock behind those tiles--who knew??  Don't worry about that, we'll fix it later.  If I remember correctly, I didn't find it any easier to break up the tiles first, but smashing them with a hammer is great for taking out aggression, so if you find it simpler to remove them in small pieces (or if that method seems to result in less loss of sheetrock), then go for it!

Halfway done with the demo:

I then decided it might be nice to patch up the chunks of sheetrock taken out.  I asked in the tile department at Home Depot and was directed to the joint compound.  A quart of premixed stuff costs about $3.50, and that's all you'll need for this project.  You'll probably need one of these, too, to spread it and make it even.  They cost less than a dollar.

While joint compound covers a host of sins, there is no possible way the Half Assed Decorator could have made that surface smooth and level.  Lucky for me, I'd chosen mosaic tile.  The beauty of mosaic tile is twofold.  First, it's so small that there's no need to cut tile.  Cutting tile calls for careful measurement and renting a wet saw, two things that are decidedly whole-assed.  Second, the mosaic tile comes attached to a fabric mesh backing, which makes it very forgiving of bumps and waves in the surface.  If you use anything other than mosaic tile, you're on your own.  Also, I'd recommend  mosaic tile laid out in a grid pattern, rather than staggered, or you'll end up cutting tile a bit anyway.  Theoretically, tile that small could be trimmed using a tool for this purpose (other than a wet saw), but I wouldn't chance it.  You can find mosaic tile in ceramic, porcelain, travertine, glass....pick one that suits your style.  They run about $5-10 for a 12"x12" piece, and you'll need about ten.  I chose this one in glass:

This is a leftover piece, mine were actually 12"x12".  Here's the back:

Now, I decided that the green in this mosaic didn't stand out enough, so I also bought four 4" glass tiles, then I picked off enough of the small tiles in the center of four of the mosaic pieces to fit the larger tiles.

Because I'm half assed, I chose a combination adhesive/grout.  Why go through two steps when you can do it in one?  Premixed, of course.  About $10.  Then, go to town.  Smear a ton of adhesive on the first section, and slap your tile up there,  smashing it into the slop so that it squeezes out through the spaces between the tiles.  More is better with the adhesive, since it cleans up afterwards.  This is very messy.  If you're anal about messes like me, breathe deeply and accept that it will be messy for a while.  If you've removed tiles to make room for a larger one, now's the time to insert that larger tile.  Then, you can move onto your next piece.  When it comes time to trim, the fabric cuts nicely with a regular pair of scissors.

Once you've attached all of your tile pieces, it's time to grout.  You may want to do this in sections, as this is the most labor intensive part.  Take more of the goop and smear it liberally all over the tiles.  Your beautiful tiles are now covered in gunk.  You'll need a large sponge (available in the tile department of your local home improvement store), a bucket of water, and probably a bunch of old towels or rags.  Wet the sponge and wipe away the excess grout.  This is more difficult than it sounds, not because the grout adheres a lot, but because there's so damn much of it.   Keep working at it, rinsing your sponge and changing the water as needed, until there is no longer a haze on the tiles, then move onto the next section.  Don't panic if you run out of time before you finish--even if the adhesive/grout dries, you can still wash it off, it's just a little more difficult.  I did this project over a series of evenings, while watching The Blues Brothers with my youngest, and had to dash out quickly to pick the other son up from rehearsal, so this project had to be abandoned many times.

When you're finished, you'll need to make a nice, clean grout line around the opening of the fireplace.  Run your finger along the perimeter as you would with, say, caulk.   I had to add a trim piece along the bottom (I believe we did it with hot glue) because there's no carpeting on my floor, and it just looked unfinished.  This photo was taken before those finishing touches:

  COST

Tiles               $5-10 per x 10              $50-100

Joint Compound                                $3.50

Joint Compound Knife                      $1

Adhesive Grout                                   $10

Sponge                                                  $2        

                                                               Approx $67-117