Monthly Archives: February 2016

The perfect bedding solution + one of our new favorite things.

We are so excited to share this post with you because it is our latest obsession, and favorite part of Grace’s whole room. Jenna’s husband built the most beautiful day bed with plans from Ana White. We loved the bed so much, but it was a huge hassle to make every day. My toddler could no way do it by herself, because it was even difficult for ME. So basically her bed was never made, so really, her room was NEVER clean and tidy like I would have liked it. It bothered me to no end. Enter Beddy’s Zip Up Bedding. I had just about reached my limits one day lifting and tucking in her quilt when I remembered about zip up bedding I had seen once on Shark Tank a long time ago. I immediately google’d it and was so happy when I saw all the cute styles available. I chose Chic White for Ms. Grace. The ruffles are just so sweet, and it’s lined with minky fabric, which she is over the moon about.

The best part is the sheets are built in so you just slip on the cover and you’re done. The zipper is really easy to use for her, she loves that she gets to make her bed everyday. Now if I could just teach her how to arrange her pillows just how I like them…. hmm. I’ll have to work on that.

I just love this bedding beyond looks, my mom sanity has gone up a few notches… and I need every once of sanity I can muster these days. Have you ever thought of zip up bedding? Now we want it in all our kids spaces! It is so great!

A colorful + sweet little girl’s room.

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We are SO excited to share Jenna’s little girl’s room today. She is a funny and sweet little five year old, and we really wanted her room to reflect that. My goal was to try to create a girly, colorful space that would foster creativity, but also represent her and her little happy life. Today we’re just going to share the pretty pictures, and the detailed posts will be up later [we especially want to GUSH about the bedding that has made such an enormous difference in my mom-sanity!] I fretted over the little details of this room for a LONG time, but I was inspired from Emily from JDC to just call it done, when she did so with her little girl’s room [which was so super cute, btw.] So thats what I did, and here is how it turned out….

Grace's Room - 1

This room has been in the works for a long time, my sweet husband built this bed last spring for her with plans from Ana White. It’s a knock off of a very expensive, like $4,000 day bed. We are absolutely thrilled with how it turned out. The reason this room was stalled for so long is I just couldn’t get the bedding situation right. In the end, after so much silly frustration of difficulty making her bed, and an endlessly messy looking room… I remembered an old episode of Shark Tank I had seen with, a zip up bedding product called Beddy’s. When I looked at their website, I was so please when I found the sweetest little ruffle bedding set and KNEW it would be perfect.

I love the little antique dresser that I refinished last summer with Rifle Paper Co. wrapping sheets in a similar technique I used with BBFrosch chalk paint powder, and mod podge like this hutch. She has been harder on this dresser than the back of the hutch, so the paper is a little worn but I don’t mind.

Grace's Room - 14

I put together a little mini gallery wall of a couple cute things, my favorite is the framed mermaid towel I found at Anthropologie. I just put it in a large Ikea white frame and I think it’s so fun.

What do you think? Now that I look back, I think it’s so funny all the little things that stalled me for so long with this space. I think it’s perfectly imperfect and that is just fine by me.

New Family Room rug + RugsUSA review

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Today I’m popping in to share our newish family room rug which was quite the drastic change from the sessile rug that was seen in my Fall Home Tour last year. I certainly loved the kid friendliness of sessile, and the natural texture was just the stuff dreams are made of… but I wanted to do something more risky with my space. I like neutral a WHOLE lot, I mean… most my house is grey or white… but I think that provides the perfect situation to bring in a punch of fun. So I went for it, and took the risk on this beautiful rug during a great sale, from RugsUSA around Black Friday. This site has frequent amazing sales, and lots of useful customer reviews on their rugs that are quite helpful when trying to figure out the true color, etc.

When I first unrolled it I was a little taken aback by how BLUE and BRIGHT it was (I mean, I had sessile before… so… quite the change) But it has sure grown on me! It makes me smile every time I take the time to clean up the mounds of kids toys and can take it in… which I’m trying to do more often BTW. But let’s be honest… it’s hard. Good news is covered in tractors and beanie boo’s it’s still pretty.

I am very happy with the great quality of this rug, it has a soft silky feel, and has stood up well to our family of two children, a puppy, and messy adults. I had ordered rugs for design clients from RugsUSA but never for myself, and I am quite pleased with the price points as well as the quality! Rylen has purchased some rugs for her home from the site too.

I love when risks I take around my home end up being so rewarding. This rug is definitely an anchor in our family room space, and has really brought so much liveliness to our home… Isn’t it great how adding a little unexpected item, that may be a little out of your comfort zone can end up being the greatest thing!

New simple floating shelves

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I really wanted to share with you the new Ikea floating shelves we added and I’ve begun to style in our front room today. However, there is a backstory that should be known… because I feel like everyone who is on the quest to decorate their home can probably relate. This room has been a huge challenge… let me explain… I think you really have to “live” in a space for a good amount of time to really understand how you really need it to function for you before you begin to decorate. We bought our home about 3 years ago and it has had many identity crisis’s since then. I would say that’s mostly because I was in such a huge rush to define all the areas and make it all fluffed and pretty, which is totally what happened with this space.

I probably wasted a whole lot of my energy, not to mention money… because here we are 3 years later with a completely different aesthetic and all our main spaces have all been through multiple changes. For the most part, all we’ve done is change the cosmetics of it ~~multiple~~ a couple times… but still it’s totally different now than what it has been in the past. The big changes I would say started with our grey concrete floors and has just totally spiraled from there.

So this space, is our front room that is meant to be a dining/formal living room is larger than our family room space in the back of our home… so we really need it to function like a main living area… even though the builder may have had other plans. A couple months ago I decided to throw caution to the wind, put a tv console in there, and a sectional and make it a playroom.

Well of course the designer in me still needs it to be pretty because well… hello designer issues.. and it’s the first room people see when they walk into our house. I really wanted it to be a comfortable pretty space to entertain guests, as well as a play room for the kids. SO I’ve been working on just that. The idea of these shelves came from the idea to add another surface to put all my pretty ~~clutter~~ things on because you can never have too many styling opportunities, am I right? On my most recent trip to Ikea, I grabbed the Ekby floating shelves. They were $20 each, a total steal, and I would guess they’re each 6ish feet long, so large. They were pretty easy to mount, my husband did that… bless his soul. And then I got to emptying all my stashes of pretty things I had tucked away. The best part is I mostly used what I had, I only purchased a couple things for this area. I love shopping my house, I was playing musical decor all morning. I would still say it has some more final touches to make, but I just love how it looked today so I thought I would share with you the space. So here is how it looks today.

The only items that were purchased were the pillows that I grabbed at Homegoods, and the wooden carved whale… which I love. They both have put me in a Spring mood, or maybe it’s that it’s been 80 in Arizona this week.

Obviously I need to fill that huge frame with something, I already have this print ordered I just need to go get it printed at Staples.

I stole the little dresser from my little boy’s room that may or may not still be full of his clothes because I thought it was the perfect scale to fill between the two sitting chairs. He needs a bigger one anyways, I just need to find the right one to replace it. But hey, quirky things like that are fun… right?

Now every time you see this space in my pictures you’ll know it’s filled with toddler clothes… that makes me laugh.

I love how this little area came together and it was quick and easy. Don’t you love when that happens?

Chalk Paint + Rifle Paper Co. Wallpaper Hutch Reveal

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Today I wanted to share a favorite project of mine that I completed last year, but hasn’t made it onto this blog. I have done a LOT of furniture makeovers in my life time, but this one I’m pretty sure tops them all!

Here is what it looked like before. It had great bones, and was a Thomasville made hutch, so it was high quality and in pristine condition… I almost felt guilty that I wanted to change it so badly. But I had high hopes.

I didn’t want to have to sand or prep the Hutch that much, so I contacted my friends from Lolly Jane, because I knew they carried BBFrosch chalk paint powder (you can order it here). You can find more info here on their blog, but basically it turns any brand any color of paint into chalk paint. Chalk paint is so great because it requires very little prep work, and has a really hard finish. It is a really great option when you’re refinishing furniture. The color I chose was Armitage Grey by Valspar. It is a super pretty grey color, and that was my base coat. I later added White Lime Wax over the top to achieve the unique finish, but we’ll touch on that later.

Here is what it looked like:

After the grey coat, I mixed some BBFrosch chalk paint powder with Swiss Coffee by Benjamin Moore for the inside of the hutch.

Hutch - 71

After painting the inside, which was probably the hardest part because of all the nooks and crannies I added gift wrap sheets by Rifle Paper Co. (order online here) onto the back of the hutch using matte Mod Podge. It was really simple. The trick is to add a layer of Mod Podge onto the surface you’re applying it to, as well as the back of the paper. Once you apply it, smooth it gently, I used a foam brush from the Craft Store. Once it dries apply another coat over the top of Mod Podge. This is why it’s important to choose the Matte Finish, in order to keep the sheen down.

The final step was to add the white lime wax on the paint, this totally transformed the Grey color to something aged and really unique. You can order lime wax here.
I have to say, I have used the products mentioned in this post for other things from big products such as my kitchen cabinets as well as smaller furniture makeovers and I just can not say enough good things about them!

Ikea Tarva Dresser Hack

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When we started our master bedroom renovation I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted our nightstands to look like. We were down one dresser after selling our old set so I needed our nightstands to function as dressers as well. I had a hard time finding any vintage dressers i liked that were within my budget so I took to searching pinterest. Then I found THESE from Dear Lillie. So I decided to go ahead and try to hack the Ikea Tarva dresser. Here she is in all her glory.

TARVA 3-drawer chest IKEA Made of solid wood, which is a durable and warm natural material.

So it’s nothing special but I liked the idea of having a blank canvas to work with.

Supplies: Ikea Tarva Dresser- Found HERE

White pine trim- This is the slimmest trim available at lowe’s or home depot. Usually comes in about 10ft lenghts

Paint- Benjamin Moore Hale Navy

New hardware- I bought mine at Lowes and Hobby Lobby

Furniture feet and plates- I used THESE plates and THESE feet

Waddell 2.43-in Table Leg Straight Top Plate 4-in Mixed Maple Classic Bun Feet Wood Table Leg

Okay, now to get started…

Follow those awesome Ikea instructions and start building your dresser! By the second dresser I was a pro. The first was not so fun and may have the top on backwards. Oh well….
Do not build it all the way yet. You’ll want to leave off the feet and those little trim pieces on the bottom. (you’ll actually never put these on if you choose to use new feet)
Next trim the drawers. Cut the pine trim to the length of the drawer and then the remaining width. Once all the trim pieces are cut you can nail or glue and clamp the pieces in place. I nailed mine because I am not patient enough for glue. Make sure to fill the holes if you nail them.
Now paint the dresser and legs! I used Benjamin Moore Hale navy. It is quite literally the BEST navy ever. Looks great in every light and doesn’t cast any purple or greys. Come to find out later, it is the same navy Jenna painted her master bedroom!
Turn your dresser upside down and attach the plates. The base of the dresser isn’t super wide so I was only able to get three screws in each plate but it seems to be plenty sturdy.
Screw the legs in. I painted one set of legs to match the navy dresser. The other set my husband kind of liked the raw wood, so I left it for now. We will see if they stay. What do you think?
I distressed my dressers a little bit.
Now you get to add your hardware!! I wanted kind of a his and hers feel so I went with a little girlier hardware on my dresser.

When I first started on this project I went into it thinking it was going to be an inexpensive project. Not true. Okay it is probably a little cheaper than a dresser you would buy brand new. It did end up costing me more than I expected though, which is part of why they took me so long to finish. I sort of had a hard time putting so much money into an ikea product. I do really love how they look in the room though. So my final thought would be this: the quality of the dresser is so-so, you really are paying to have a dresser you can completely customize to your space. For me in this particular space and as a nightstand it works 🙂

The Collected House

Love where you live.

Monthly Archives: February 2016

The perfect bedding solution + one of our new favorite things.

A colorful + sweet little girl’s room.

New Family Room rug + RugsUSA review

New simple floating shelves

Chalk Paint + Rifle Paper Co. Wallpaper Hutch Reveal

Ikea Tarva Dresser Hack