Posts Tagged ‘IKEA

Well hey there! I hope you had a fabulous weekend. We’ve been busy around here just trying to get this place organized once and for all! Maybe by the end of 2012 I’ll feel like everything is in it’s place.

Last week I showed you my 7 year old daughters room makeover progress. I had just hung some floating shelves (IKEA Lack shelves) above a little sofa table. Eventually this area will be for all her jewelry, (play) makeup, nick-knacks, and desk area.

Unfortunately, all this switching around in her room has left quite a huge mess of toys on her floor.

The solution?

Another trip to IKEA.

This time for IKEA Expedit Shelves.

I decided to go with two of the 2×4 squares Expedit shelves.

I wanted to have a lower shelf that Kinsey could reach the top of to act as a table top, but I also wanted one that was taller to maximize the amount of storage she has. The solution was two shelves, one placed horizontally and one placed vertically.

And just as a quick tip, if you are going to be putting together IKEA furniture it is MUCH EASIER if you purchase a Hex Bit Tip set for your electric drill from the hardware store instead of using the manual “Z” shaped Hex bit that comes with the furniture.

I also decided to splurge and get her four IKEA Knipsa baskets. They had cheaper baskets, but I really love the look of these and feel that the overall look of her room will benefit from them (once I finish the room).

The Knipsa baskets are $16.99 per basket, so I could only justify four at the time. Eventually I plan on snagging a few more of these baskets before all is said and done.

Want a closer look at how I’ve sorted out her toys? This is by no means finished or final. Her room is still VERY MUCH a work-in-progress.

On the tall shelf, one of her new baskets holds all her baby doll stuff, while the other is her new barbie doll storage.

The wide shelf holds her music (she LOVES music)…

…and all her American Girl stuff…

I’m really torn on her huge pink Disney Princess framed poster (on top of the shelf). On the one hand she likes it. A lot. In fact, she’s totally in love with Belle.

But on the other hand, it REALLY is NOT the look I’m trying to obtain while decorating her room. I’ve been planning on hanging the poster above these new shelves, but I just can’t stomach it! I am NOT a Disney Princess type of person. In fact, I am opposed to pretty much any character decor of any type.

She loves the poster though, so I will probably end up sucking it up and hanging it for her (I mean, it is her room after all!).

Here’s what her room looks like with her new Lack floating shelves and Expedit shelves.

And from the hall when you are walking into her room, this is what you now see….

Instead of this huge disaster:

Ah, much better already!

My next big goal with her room is to get her a new bed.

(If you want to know why you can read all about it in this post.)

I know this isn’t as exciting as a huge “reveal” and before and afters. But at the rate I get things done around here (really slow) if I waited until her room was finished to blog about it, I’d probably never blog ever again. lol

I figure I’ll just share the progress of my house as I go along the way. This is real life after all, and in real life, things don’t move as quickly as they do on a 30 minute reality show.

One last thing I want to mention…

Please welcome the newest sponsor for House of Hepworths!!

D. Lawless Hardware is an online hardware store with crazy FABULOUS prices! And don’t let the word “hardware” scare you off… they have awesome stuff that you will love including gorgeous glass knobs and handles, coat and robe hooks, & fun collectibles. Of course, they also have tons of hardware stuff that you will need to complete just about any project.

D. Lawless Hardware is the bees knees and has offered all HoH readers an additional 10% off your order! Hot dawg! The discount code can be found on their site through this super-special HoH link.

Have fun shopping and saving money.

When we moved into this house over a year ago my daughter’s room was a huge football field.

After torturing my poor daughter in that room for 15 straight months, I finally started her much needed bedroom makeover by hanging lots of board & batten and giving the entire room a fresh coat of paint (or 20, but I lost count).

I’ve been at it again this weekend. I really want to tie up all the lose ends of her room and get it done once and for all.

Let’s start with her furniture. She has great furniture. Her matching set has a sleigh bed, a dresser & mirror, a side table, and a large toy chest (4 pieces total). It’s solid wood, perfect for a little girl, and adorable. Initially I planned to paint all of it white, but after lots of debate, the furniture and I have decided to part ways, and here are a few reasons why:

a) the bed doesn’t allow for a trundle under it, and my daughter is the Sleepover Queen.

b) the dresser is too tall, too big, and takes up too much precious floor space for her toys. It also has too many drawers; half of them are completely empty.

c) she really has no use for a side table.

d) the large toy chest was a magnet for kids playing hide-and-seek and made it a little too easy to quickly “clean” her room by piling trash, laundry, and ALL toys into it. Momma didn’t like that at all!

First step in Project Kinsey’s Room? Moving out her furniture to get ready to put on Craigslist.

Of course, now she’s down a dresser. In my opinion, dressers are totally over-rated. I prefer built-ins and shelving in the closet any day over a dresser, especially for children who need the extra floor space to play.

I came up with a simple solution that I think is the bees knees. I drug her bookshelf into her closet and put all her clothing on it. (I’ve also been busy adding stuff to her walls.)

This is the same shelf that she helped put together last year.

Here’s how I organized it:

(The zebra boxes are her Duct Tape Boxes (Tutorial HERE). They have held up amazingly well! They are perfect for her underwear and all her dance clothing. We keep socks downstairs in the mud room.)

And on the other side of her closet:

Stealing the shelf away has now left us with this huge disaster though. Lots of toy storage is now needed (I’ll share the toy storage in the next post.)

A view into her room from the hallway…

(Fluffy coffee filter wreath tutorial can be found here)

The shelf use to be along this wall, but the shelf is now in the closet and I “stole” the sofa table from the game room.

The plan was to get her a cute little dressing table with a mirror, but I opted for the sofa table because (besides the fact that I already own it so it’s essentially free) the sofa table is not as deep as a traditional desk or table and this little space is too awkward for a big protruding desk.

The plan was for a big pretty mirror to hang above so Kinsey can put on her jewelry and spend time primping, but after short consideration I concluded that she owns way too much crap and needed storage in lieu of a mirror.

Ikea to the rescue! I purchased 2 floating shelves (lack) for her room, and it was my lucky day because ikea just lowered the price down to $15 per shelf. Woot!

And now, after they are hung!

What a difference, right?! I’m thrilled with how they turned out. I say “progress” though because the sofa table needs to be painted, more artwork and accessories need to be hung, and my piano bench needs to be returned to my piano room and replaced with a cute little chair for Miss Kinsey to sit on.

(Yellow and Gray artwork of Kinsey above bedroom door, upper left corner of room, can be found here.)

She now {finally} has a place for all those little girlie things that she loves that aren’t exactly toys, but still need a place to call home.

I won’t sugar coat this and lie though, installing those shelves was pretty much a pain in the arse. Apparently ikea changed the design of them from when I bought a longer version for my dining room.

Instead of using basic Phillips Head (plusie) screws under the shelves, they now use Hex screws.

What are Hex Screws? I’m so glad you asked! They are screws that take a Hex bit to tighten them. You can’t use your basic screwdriver, so the shelves come with this little Hex bit to tighten them. Except tightening them by hand is almost impossible unless you are a body builder.

The solution? A $5 trip to Home Depot.

If you put together a lot of assemble-yourself furniture, I highly recommend you purchase a set of Hex bits and a Bit Tip Holder. Heck, I’d purchase a set just to put together ONE piece of furniture. The set is cheap, and made the job so much easier and faster.

To use the Hex Bit set, all you do is find the bit that fits your screw, then insert said bit into the holder.

From there, attach the bit holder to your electric drill.

Now you can assemble your furniture in less than a minute and without pulling a muscle in your arm.

Closet and shelves down…

…toy storage to go…

As soon as I get the toy storage situation under control I’ll be sure to give you an update. After that all I need to do is unload all the furniture on Craigslist, buy a new bed, and accessorize!

I’m really looking forward to getting the room finished. I’ve got a few more little projects up my sleeve too. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to check a room off my list once and for all! Of course, with all this work going on in sissy’s room, big brother Travis is starting to feel a little jealous, so I’ll be starting his room next.

It’s never-ending! Good thing I LOVE IT.

I hope you have a great MLK day and an even better week!

Four long months ago I proclaimed I was going to hang curtains in the piano room.

Sounded simple enough. Hell, I already had the curtains. How long could hanging two curtain panels really take?

I tried them out by hanging them on the wall with some tacks…

They were waiting for Noah’s Flood, so I tested out some gray fabric I picked up at ikea. Yup, this little plan I hatched was going to work out perfectly.

I even added this little curtain project to my list of 24 projects I should have finished by now (project #6) {aka I’m a huge procrastinator}.

So why is it freaking January 2012 and I’m just now mentioning them again?

Because of my life mantra – Nothing I do is as easy as it should be.

Really, there were only two tasks to complete this little should-only-take-an-hour-or-so Project: 1) buy and hang two curtain rods, & 2) attach fabric to the bottom of the curtain panels. NOT THAT HARD, ALLISON. Srsly.

And that’s where things went horribly off track…

First off, the panels were dirty so I carefully read the label and washed them as directed.

When I pulled them out of the dryer, to my horror the toile fabric SHRUNK. Like, a lot.

Oh, this is for real, folks. I can’t even make this crap up.

All FOUR panels shrunk. In a moderate temper tantrum, I threw them on my floor and ignored them for a week or so. But then the curtain bug bit again. There had to be a way to salvage these curtains.

Yup, I went all Freddy Krueger on them and hacked the lining right out.

I had originally planned to use only two curtain panels (though I had 4), but once they shrunk to all hell and then I removed the lining, they seemed really sad and thin, so I ended up using two panels per window (I used all 4 panels instead of just 2).

Well, this pretty much screwed me on the gray fabric. I had enough to cover two panels, not four. No biggie… I headed back to ikea to buy another yard.

{Here comes big issue #2 with hanging these dag-gum curtains}

FAIL. Ikea has been sold out of that gray fabric for four freaking months now!

So now they look like this:

Because of the shrinkage, they are now waiting for an even bigger flood than before. {Maybe I should give up on the ikea fabric and just go get some at the fabric store…}

Well, there has been one semi-good thing to come from all this.

I bought and hung two curtain rods!

I say “semi-good” because, well, I bought these rods and hung them before my DIY curtain rod was even dreamed up…

If I could go back in time, I’d do one long rod on the windows in the piano room (like the DIY one in the dining room) instead of the two shorter rods. {sigh}

Eventually I may swap these out for one long one, but for now, these are paid for and hung, so I’m just gonna go with it.

So, now that I’ve been all Debbie-Downer on the curtain rods, let me tell you all about them!

I found the two curtain rods at Wal-Mart for $14 each.

They are nice rods, but man that $2 conduit pipe rod sure sounds nice right about now…

So anyway, I bought two rods from Wal-Mart…

…and also two packages of rings with clips ($7 a package).

I attached the rings the same way I explained here to create a faux pinch pleat.

That’s pretty much it. After four long months, the rods and curtains are finally hung, but I still can’t check this project off my to-do list because the bottom of the curtains are unfinished.

It’s all good though. This large randomly placed basket with no use hides the unraveling edge pretty well.

On a good day, the piano room and entry way are looking pretty good. Not finished, but better than before. (Ben is in a band, so the piano room is usually littered with at least 2-3 guitars, a large amp, a banjo, and his Russian accordion. Yes, I’m married to a musical wiz. I gave up trying to compete years ago. (I play the piano. But, of course, he does that better too!))

I have exactly two sets of curtains hung in this house (pathetic, I know). And you can see both of them at the same exact time:

I like the way the toile looks in the piano room, but man, I just adore my orange curtains. I could wear them I love them so much.

Posts are always WAY more fun with a good ol’ before and after, so here ya go!

{Before}

{Now}

I’d say that room looks pretty smokin’ hot compared to the “before”. Only a few more tweaks until I can check it off the list!

I guess in four more months I’ll update you again when I finally have the gray sewn to the bottom of the toile curtains. lol

And, as always, thanks for reading! Make yourself at home.