Our Office
Make Your Room Look 10 Years Younger
Now! With white spray paint!
Do you expect anything less from us, spray paint it White-ds?
Here’s what we’re talking about. Old HVAC air vents. Luckily ours are in the wall, cut out of the baseboards, otherwise we’d probably be buying a new unit on account of all the dog hair. But that’s another issue altogether.
This fur trap had our room looking a little less 2011 and way more 1951. They probably didn’t have Krylon back then. Wait did they even have HVAC back then? Hmmm… Wikipedia is not giving me a definitive answer.
Either way it looks like it’s been around that long, you can see the age on the vent cover especially well after we unscrewed it from the wall which was pretty easy. It had a patina, but not a cool aged patina like, say our door knobs.
Nope, these air vents are past their patina prime.
Thankfully there are only two of them that were left in this condition, both located in our ignored-by-the-previous-owners office. Besides just being unattractive, the grunge was also holding back our freshly painted office walls, so action had to be taken. This action involved the use of an old Prego jar.
We often use random household items, mostly things rescued from the recycling bin, to prop up our painting projects. Like this Dr. Pepper can from our tin painting project last week.
If you’re ready to tackle your own air vents just remember to use a spray primer before your spray paint for optimal results and go slowly painting in two coats if needed. This way your paint doesn’t glob up in the vent slots.
Once it has had plenty of time to dry, 24 hours for us, just reattach it to the wall. Oh, and don’t forget to make your screws match if possible. We spray painted those too.
Something small for sure, but it made a big impact in this room. Plus it probably saved us about twenty bucks. Maybe more, something tells me these dinosaur air vents are no longer a standard size and replacements would be tougher to find than expected.
In the end our 60-year-old casa is looking at most 50 now, maybe even 49. Who needs Botox when you have spray paint? Ladies you agree with me right?
The only problem now is that the black dog hair is a lot more obvious when it’s stuck to them. You win some you clean lose some.
Check out other simple D.I.Y. tricks and ideas by visiting our projects page here. Have you guys done any small yet valuable projects around your home lately? We’d love to see what you’ve been up to, we are always in need of some new Reader Shout-Out material.
Shelving Test Run
After many months of ignoring our sloppy finishing work, then begging on my part to paint, and finally taping, sanding, priming and painting our office shelves – we’re finished. That is with the easy part. Now comes the work of decorating our many many shelves. 18 if you’re counting. But who’s counting?
In all the excitement of a finished paint job, we started loading them back up tonight and tweaking all the accessories that we already have on hand. For example, I’ve decided to take a lot of my old college text books on non-profit management and public policy to my office in the morning where they are much more likely to be referenced. I also decided to ditch the LSAT study books, who really are we kidding?
After about 45 minutes of restocking our shelves we got to the point of snapping some photos.
Much improved from this, yes?
You can tell that we painted the shelves, recut and installed the molding for a better built-in look and painted the back wall a rich teal color. It’s Plumage by Martha Stewart for Home Depot. We also spaced the shelves in a uniform way all the way across instead of the chaotic uneven heights we had before.
After ditching about a third of the books and also sorting them into piles on the very bottom shelves we’re left with tons of free space. It’s a lot of fun to have so much new room to play with but also a little intimidating. Shelving is hard for sure.
When I was a kid and my mom used to tell me to go clean my room, rather than make up my bed or fold my clothes I would pull everything down off my built-in shelves and reorganize. Sometimes the stuffed animals were on the top sometimes the bottom. Today is not much different apparently. I blame my parents for putting me in front of built-ins at such a young age.
So for now these photos were really just taken to give us a better view of our shelves and to decide how we like the placement of what we have. We don’t plan to go out and buy a bunch of knick knacks to fill empty space, however if we did they would all be white rhinos. Look how good my boy looks up on that top shelf.
Concerns we have at this point:
- Two much brown.
- Is that centered white frame too large and overpowering?
- How to fill dead space?
- Are those three skulls too weird? That’s what my man does for a living.
- How can we really make everything on the shelves pop?
- Should we add a framed photo to the outside in a artful manner like this:
Photo: Emily A. Clark
Painting Built-Ins
is a pain in the arse. Plain and simple. I am reminding myself that I asked to do this. Shamelessly and repetitively.
After several days of staring the shelves down, taping the insides, then taping the outsides and applying three coats of white paint OVER the primer we picked up we finally have the painting of the built-in shelves finished. And we’ve decided to keep the back wall painted Plumage by Martha Stewart and see if it grows on us. Because we’re tired.
Gotta love how crisp the white looks against the blue wall though. I feel it growing on me on as I type – okay it was already on me, it must grow on the Texan in order to stay.
What you’re not seeing painted yet is the stack of removable shelves that are not yet painted or primed.
Twenty ounces of Mountain Dew later I’ve got half of half of them primed and painted. This is just a pic of the priming.
I have since crashed off the caffeine high and am now curled up on the couch with Lucy watching the first Sex and the City movie which I DVR’d earlier today. Love it – except it just reminds me of how horrible the second one was. Oh ladies why did you go to Abu Dhabi?
Attempting Double Duty
We re-painted our famously blue office desk a couple of days ago, and finally posted about it last night. Scroll down you’ll see the full post, or just click here.
It went from True Value’s EasyCare in Quiver to Martha Stewart Paint for Home Depot in Plumage.
It was definitely an impulse decision but we love the new darker paint color. I loved the previous bright blue tone but as we started shopping for various other items to join the guest room it became apparent by the accessories we were drawn to that the desk needed to be a couple of shades darker and closer to a peacock-blue. Plus those two coats of Quiver acted as a great primer for the new color. Our like-o-meter for the desk has gone way up, and we didn’t even realize it was low.
My like-o-meter was so high that I thought all this leftover paint would have to look fantastic as a bright accent color behind our newly painted white office shelves.
P.S. The white is ah-mazing. This isn’t a great shot but the shiny semi-gloss white and all the repairs to our trim work have really given the shelves a finished and built-in look. You’d never know that this was the hubs first DIY project. He’s such a stud.
Except that he’s not loving the teal-ness behind his shelves.
Looks like our Plumage paint won’t be pulling double duty after all. So we’re back to the drawing board with what color to paint the back wall of the shelves. We’re planning to pull a color for either the totum pole (of course) or our office rug.
Maybe more of a navy blue? I’m really pushing for a blue-ish shade to compliment the blue tones in our new wall color, but we’re also considering a fun green or even a coral. Something like this perhaps – maybe not.
It Was Good While It Lasted
Our very empty and unattractive 2nd guest bedroom was all ready for its makeover.
And then we decided to tackle and finish another makeover instead.
You might remember that these babies were on our end of the year to do list - for 2010. We’d been putting it off by painting the office, finishing the half bathroom, painting a desk, adding art to our living room, making some curtains, etc. You get the picture.
So before jumping totally face first into that guest bedroom, we thought it would be wise to really finish what we started years ago and get these shelves into order. Which means that the guest bedroom looks like this once again.
Chad built the office shelves all by himself and they are pretty impressive. The dark stain and bland yellow background (which was the same color of the wall in another life) left them pretty dark and disconnected from the room. To pull a term from Vern, we wanted them to look more purposeful. Something like this – which was the photo I used to make my paint ‘em white case to the hubs.
Plus there was some finishing work that never got completed like caulk, crown molding, sanding, etc. For over a year we just loaded them up with books and called it a day. You can see that the HVAC air return cover isn’t even attached to the wall anymore. Yikes.
Of course the bongo drums will remain untouched. Finished photos to come.
Unexpected Inspiration: Pottery Barn Teen
I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect desk chair for a couple of weeks now. Since posting this image of my new super-teal desk, many of you have even emailed to ask what kind of chair we’ll be purchasing.
Right now I am leaning towards something a little trendy compared to my usual taste, by way of a clear acrylic “ghost” chair. Scary right?
I am stalking several varieties on Amazon and Overstock just waiting for one to land on my price point with free or $2.99 shipping. Fingers crossed.
While scouring the interwebs though I also landed on Pottery Barn Teen which is usually one of the last sites I would check, especially for a desk chair. But they actually had some great options, check them all out here. The fur is my favorite. Do you think the Texan would let me put that in his office instead? I really think our house needs one.
