mirror | Operation Home

Well, folks! It’s my favorite time of month again… Monthly DIY Challenge time!

For any newbies, this is a monthly challenge where several bloggy friends and I are assigned a theme or item and must simply make something of it. And in honor of Earth Day (which was on April 22nd), we chose….

Trash to treasure!!!

Before I get into my project, let me give you a little background on the space where this project will go. Our master bedroom “atrium” as I call it, is an area that I’ve had some difficulty with on the decorating front. This little hallway-ish area of our bedroom (which leads to both our closet and bathroom) looked like this when we first purchased the house…

Very purple and very dark with VERY little natural light. Our master bedroom is pretty large and has only one window. Since our backyard is so shady, it’s often a darker space anyways. Which makes the atrium REALLY dark.

After we moved in, I painted the bedroom a soothing grey color and I relocated our vintage Bassett tall-boy into the space to try and dress it up….

Clearly, it wasn’t finished, but even knowing this, something was still bothering me. The space was dark and lifeless. It just wasn’t doing it for me. I tried painting the mirror white, but never ended up taking pictures because it still didn’t jam (Plus, I really wanted to use that quatrefoil mirror in our hang-out room instead anyways… post to come).

Then, out of nowhere, something random (and totally awesome) happened. If you follow me on Facebook you may have seen this post about it….

#dumbanddumberforever

And the stars began to align (as evidenced by this grainy iPhone shot that I excitedly sent to Joey as I danced with glee — which, in my head, was the most graceful thing ever, BTW 😉 )….

The mirror was the perfect size and shape for above the dresser. The curved top was a great way to add some softness and interest to contrast all of the straight lines that were happening. Plus, the huge size really helped bounce light around the room. And all of the sudden I could see it. A vision of a cool chandelier which reflected off the top of that curved mirror. A linear, light-toned fabric brightening the wall behind it. It ALLLLL started coming together in my head.

Boo-Yeah.

So, now that I’d decided on a location for the mirror, next came the question of color. Obviously, I wasn’t going to leave the mirror as it was. I’m personally not a fan of the sorta-matches-but-not-really-thing. Which is exactly the description of this wood tone. And I knew that I didn’t want it to be a light color as this would emphasize the braided detail seen below….

So, a darker color. I wanted to tie it into the other side of the room (Which looks like this now minus that off-balanced bench in the corner… still lots to do. pleasedontjudge)…

And I decided that navy blue was totally the way to go since I already had some navy accents going on around the space. So, I purchased a can of this spray paint…

I taped off my mirror and elevated it on a few scrap pieces of wood, then applied several thin and even coats of spray paint…

This was taken after about two thin coats… there were many more after that. Once everything was dried and cured, Joey helped me hang it. Which left this…

Notice my little mirrored planter from last month? Still going strong!

And here’s that entire wall now…

Still far from finished, but a step in the right direction. I really love how the mirror turned out, though I do think it could stand to be hung a little higher. We’ve actually been meaning to do that but ran out of time before today’s challenge.

It just never ceases to amaze me what a little spray paint will do to change up a piece, though. That’s what I love the most about DIY… it doesn’t necessarily have to be hard or time-consuming to be effective. It just took a little good luck in finding the mirror and $5 worth of spray paint to take our little atrium from this…

To this…

See how much more alive the space looks now that the mirror is tall enough to reflect the lighting fixture? Me-OW. And speaking of light, you can see that another easy trash-to-treasure hack that I employed in this space was adding an old drum shade to our existing boob light…

I actually followed the same process that my bloggy friend Mary Beth used in this post (which includes the genius use of a simple rubber band). I’m sorta jealous that I didn’t come up with that little tidbit on my own. Lol! I’m not gonna go into details, but you can read her post if you wanna see how I did it.

In any case, I’m so happy that this area is starting to come together. I still want to add a light-colored, patterned fabric to the wall behind the mirror to brighten up the space and add interest. It’s really just a matter of finding the fabric. And then I want to change the lighting fixture out for more of a chandelier-type aesthetic (The drum shade is a great way to camouflage the boob light in the meantime, though). And I would LOVE to get that weird outlet in the middle of wall beside the dresser (aka: The zit on the nose of our atrium) moved to a normal location behind the dresser. I have no idea why it’s so high. It makes me wonder if there was once a built-in against that back wall or something.

**Update: Wanna see our atrium area now?? Click on this post!**

So anyways, that’s my Trash to Treasure story, now check out the other awesome projects created by my other bloggy friends…

InLinkz.com

You excited??

I am. Why?? Because I finally did something to our laundry room. Woot!

Granted, it’s a little something. But something just the same.

So, let’s start with a basic floor plan refresher. Our laundry room is located directly off of our breakfast nook…

It’s a decent-sized room that houses a spacious pantry and our teeny pool bath. I actually think the pantry is larger than the bathroom. I mean, it doesn’t take much, but still… it’s kind of a strange distribution of space.

Here’s the room when we got the keys (along with some indicators to show you what’s where) ….

And here it is after we plopped down our stuff after we moved in….

And now….

Granted,. the space hasn’t changed much, and most of what’s in there right now (the rugs, basket, and wood shelf) will be switched out eventually. I’m not a huge fan of the dark brown sink mat, but we needed something there functionality-wise (Lucas + sink = puddle = slippery), and it’s what we had on hand. I’m on a use-what-I-got-front for most of the space at the moment. I did, however, manage to hang a new mirror and towel hook above the sink (which will stay)….

Sometimes the smallest additions can seem like the biggest triumphs in a space that’s been stagnant in decorating. In case you’re wondering, the mirror was a Tuesday Morning find for $39.99, and the hook (a clearance Young House Love hook) and towel I got from Target. I wanted to tie in the red and aqua tones from the adjoining pool bath….

And I love how you can see the bathroom’s reflection in the mirror. Heart.

I have to say that up to this point, the laundry room has been the most frustrating room in the house for me because I know EXACTLY that I wanna do with it. We just haven’t gotten there yet. And in the meantime, aside from housing the washer, dryer and a sink, it has little function. I cleaned it up for the pictures in this post, but normally there’s coats, shoes, backpacks, hats, and laundry piled everywhere since there’s no storage or system of any kind.

Last year, the previous owners experienced a flood that affected half the house and started in the laundry room. Apparently, a pipe burst in the attic above it when we had all of those super low temperatures. They had to almost fully gut the laundry room and pool bath. So in the process, the space lost all of its original cabinetry and storage. They just put up drywall when they were putting it all back together again and called it a day. I can’t say I blame them, but it would have been FANTASTIC to have inherited some storage in the space when we purchased the house.

But, on the flip side, we have a totally blank slate to work with, which is also kind of cool.

So, here’s the plan. This space over the washer and dryer will sport some stained wood shelves that’ll extend all the way to the ceiling….

Then, this area where I stuck a random shelving unit, will be the “mudroom” space with hooks, shoe storage, etc.

I’ve been tossing around painting the sink cabinet as well, though I’d like to see how the rest of the room comes together first.

Then, comes the biggie. THE BIGGIE. The thing that I want to do most (aside from adding function).

That exterior door back there (straight ahead in the photo), which leads to our covered back patio. I wanna change that out for an exterior door with a full length window. That right there will be be a game changer. Natural light will flood the land. It will be glorious. And most importantly, it’ll make the space feel like part of our house rather than a dark, cavernous afterthought.

I can’t wait until we get going on this. We’re currently saving our pennies and planning, though we’ll likely have to wait until the other projects that are in progress right now are finished (our pool refinishing along with a few other outdoor projects and the wet-bar… I’ll post an update once we get to it, of course.). In the meantime, I’m thrilled to at least have one small project for this space under my belt. I’m a total proponent for starting small to add personality when you can’t really take on a larger project at the moment. It’s amazing how just a small mirror and hook are enough to make me smile when I enter the room now.

So, tell me, what little changes have you made that made the biggest differences in your space?