Furniture

New Bench Seat

My mom and step-dad have been making some changes in their house, one of which was painting the entire kitchen and living room area to an “agreeable gray.” Seriously, I think that was the name of the color. In their mudroom they have a small bench used for storage and an easy spot to put on your shoes. When the first floor was a warmer brown color, the maroon bench seat cover looked nice in their room. But it did not agree with the agreeable gray.

Old Seat

Mom asked if I would mind recovering their bench seat for them. Of course I wouldn’t mind! Silly question. I went to JoAnn’s to pick out new fabric, and ended up with a gray fabric with white dots all over it. Super cute.

To recover the seat, I simply removed the old cover and used a staple gun to add the new fabric.

Check out the difference:

New SeatNow that looks agreeable!

Home Improvement, Paint

Chevron Accent Wall

Last night I was beyond hyper and spontaneously decided to tackle my faux backsplash/accent wall in my laundry room. I think my spontaneity was key in the project, otherwise I would have over thought everything from the design to the colors.

I have seen so many designs online lately for accent walls: quatrefoil, shell, stripes, chevron… you name it, it’s been done. In my cracked out state, I went with a segmented chevron pattern and I LOVE IT. Also, it was way easy. Way.

I was too into groovin’ to my sweet tunes last night to take a ton of photos (imagine a quality mix of Bohemian rhapsody, Baby got back and Beloved)  but here’s the gist of what I did: I wanted the wall color to show through my pattern so it tied the accent wall into the rest of the space, so using 1″ tape I taped vertical stripes on my wall with no intention of filling them in. I spaced my lines out using a small level as my measurement. Honestly, I did this to avoid doing math. It’s about 9″ wide and was a perfect spacer. It also doubled as a level — go figure. I made sure my lines were pretty darn straight. They weren’t perfect, but they were mostly straight.

Then, I started to create my chevron pattern. I grabbed a pen and started marking my tape where other pieces of tape needed to intersect. Again, I used my level as a spacer. I placed it at the top of my cabinet and marked at the bottom, continuing until it wouldn’t fit anymore. I did this for all of the tape, then connected the dots.

Here’s a fun tip — if and when you run out of your painter’s tape, and if you just so happen to have masking tape or washi tape in the same width, you can use it as a substitute for painter’s tape. Yes, this happened. I was sad to paint over my mint tape, but didn’t want to lost my awesome energy and stamina with the project so I made the sacrifice.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up

With my pattern taped and ready to paint, I started to apply my paint colors: metallic gold (Thanks, Martha!) and ivory/manilla. I originally was going to do something with bolder pops of color, but went for the metallic paint as my bold choice. I also was going to add a third color, but my pattern only took up so much room and the third color probably wouldn’t have added anything to it.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up and painted

I painted two coats of each color onto the stripes before removing all of the tape.

*Drumroll*

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall

Love love love love love love love. Love. Had I thought this project out more, I probably would have gone with a mint or teal chevron stripe, but I am so glad I didn’t. I think the gold tones play off the countertop wonderfully, and make the gray cabinets pop even more.

I started this project after dinner at 5:30(ish) and was cleaning up at 7:30 p.m. — not to bad for the fabulous result!

BEFORE:

{A Smith of All Trades} Laundry Room

AFTER:{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall again

Craft Projects

Knockoff: DIY Herringbone Art

I stumbled upon a fabulous blog the other day that you all should DEFINITELY check out. Sarah at While They Snooze is incredibly talented and just recently competed in Creating with the Stars over at East Coast Creative. I was perusing her blog and saw the most magnificent artwork that I wanted so badly for our house. SO BADLY!!!

Here’s one of those times when beautiful things should be admired and not replicated. They never turn out how you want them to. Following her lovely tutorial for her DIY Metallic Herringbone Art, I created my less-than-adequate version of her masterpiece.

Instead of telling you what I did, you can scroll through the photos below of the steps I took. But what you should really do is go and check out Sarah’s art. Because it is amazing. And yeah, you have to click over. I don’t like borrowing photos. Trust me, it’s worth your time.

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art1

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art2

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art3

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art4

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art5

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art6

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art7

{A Smith of All Trades} Herringbone Art8

Now that you see my finished piece… what do you think? I wish I had had gold spray paint on hand. I just might try this one more time, even though it took a while. I just love her finished piece and have TOTAL art envy.