Nightstand Makeover

Anyone else remember when Young House Love had an article in their book "One Nightstand, Two Ways", about a single piece of furniture that they made over in a couple of different ways? And none of them or their editors picked up on the sexual inuendo in the title? Was it two ways or three ways? Whatever. "Three ways" would've been even better. Anway, THAT happened.

Last time we saw this nightstand, E and I had just tried to DIY some new handles holes and it turned into an epic disaster but eventually ended up alright. Well, now this happened: 

Idk what's going on with the photo quality lately guys, I'm sorry!

Here was my process, in photos (I used frog tape and Martha Stewart craft paint):

And here's a shot from farther away:

It still needs some touch-ups and a coat or two of a sealer or whatever it's called but E is super excited about it and I'm pretty pleased with myself, haha. 

Also, it's 2:15am and I can't sleep and we had a dr appt in the morning and I'm craving, separately: Parmesan, lobster, and balsalmic vinegar and oil to dip fancy bread in. This is clearly one classy kid. 

Clearly Nesting

Welp, here's a post for the second day in a row, and hopefully there'll be a weekly update tomorrow morning which is some kind of record. 

Clearly, I'm nesting. Today we bought a gallon of paint, I painted almost all of the trim in the room, and we attempted to plug the holes in the guest nightstand and drill new ones to fit the handles I bought for it like 2+ years ago. I say "attempted" because... We're apparently pretty useless in the handyman DIY realm. We bought the wrong kind of putty, maybe, and then we broke multiple drill bits tryin the make new holes, and the whole thing turned into a much longer and complicated ordeal than we'd banked on. But, it's mostly done and it's definitely not perfect but it's got character. Or something. Here are some photos, I'll add a finished product one when I eventually finish it (I think it just needs a little paint?).

Here are our plugged holes:

Next, I had this brilliant idea to mark where the new holes needed to go with charcoal:

But that didn't work so well. Oh well. Then we broke not one, but two drill bits:

And that's when E went all MacGyver on it. You can see the first handle installed in the background. It's a little crooked but the bottom one is much better and I think I'm the only person who'll ever notice. 

I can't remember if I posted this last night, but we built the crib!! Here is is in progress: 

E was super excited and cute the whole time. :) I was a stress ball and probably incredibly unpleasant. But I maybe made up for it a little by making a bunch of painting progress tonight while E isn't home! I painted all of the trim and edging all around the room. Well, around like 85% of the room because I couldn't move the trundle bed by myself. But whatever, here's the progress shot:

Maybe I'll actually get you some finished product shots soon! For now, I'm pooped. 

Furbishing!!!

We have the nursery paint color picked!! Finally! 4.5 weeks from our due date! Haha.... Whoops. 

These were the three we eventually narrowed it down to:

Here are the samples painted on the wall:

Please excuse the cruddy photo quality!!! In the end we're going with Misted Green by Benjamin Moore. Whew! Quiet Moments was too light and I was really pulling for Beach Glass but in some lights durin the day it's just a little too baby blue and I was really trying to avoid any baby-like colors. And definitely not baby blue bc I want this room to be gender neutral. I've never been much of a pink fan, so we always knew if we had a daughter there wouldn't be a pink-overload nursery or anything. I think this'll work for either gender (we know what we're having but are leaving room for surprises and hopefully future children!).

Feels good to have this decision made. Tonight we're setting up the crib(!!!) and we also just placed the hanging pad on the desk. With a little box of diapers and diaper cream, etc next to it. Crazy!! This is getting real... 

30 Week Update (!!!)

How far along: 30 weeks 6 days

Size of baby:  Average = 2.5-3.8 lbs, 15.2"-16.7" long, or the size of a cucumber, but the paperwork from our 20 week anatomy scan said he or she was in the >97% size percentile, soooooo....!?!

Physical symptoms: A bunch of aches and pains. Constipation. Headaches. Restless legs are occasionally beating my hot water trick and keeping me up. And I'm having these really awesome dizzy spells. Usually if I get hot. So our A/C has to be cranked up constantly, which is going to be an awesome bill. ;) But yeah, I get dizzy and nauseous and either really hot or really cold and have to sit/lay down like right as it comes on or else I start seeing black spots. Super cute. If you Google those symptoms, it's either preeclampsia (yikes) or a vasovagal reaction. I was super concerned but E is in the medical field and has taken my BP and it's always pretty ideal (thank you, thank you), and he spoke to some doctors in his hospital and they all said it's probably just from the baby shifting and kind of pushing on a specific nerve, causing, BINGO, a vasovagal reaction. Soooo yeah that's super fun and not at all terrifying.

Weight gain/loss: According to my home scale I'm still up 20-22lbs.

Maternity clothes: Same- mostly maternity shirts, two denim maternity skirts while elastic waist skirts and normal nylons still somehow fit. Maternity dresses or old non-maternity empire waist maxi dresses. Sleeping in tank tops with "shelf bras". I stillll need to get some maternity/nursing bras but I'm still gonna push that off for a bit maybe. A few friends recommended the Bravado brand... any other suggestions out there?

Stretch marks: I don't think so. There still might be some thinking about happening on my hips but it's hard to tell.

Sleep: Pretty much able to sleep better than I have in months. The past couple of nights I had minor restless leg issues, and had to switch sides frequently throughout the night because one side would get sore, but I'd generally fall right back asleep. Thank Gd. I've still even woken up when E's alarm went off, had a mini conversation or even gone to pee, and fallen right back asleep. Amazing. And thanks to that shower trick I'm generally able to vaguely fall asleep when I want to, so, things are great right now. Still exhausted though.

Best moment since last week: Went on a double date with some friends out in Long Island on Wednesday night. That was fun! And Friday night we had "picnic shabbos" at home, just the two of us (some other plans fell through last minute and E had worked 4 nights this week anyway, so we welcomed the low-key, early night). And Saturday night we vegged and ate some junk food, so that was definitely enjoyable. :) Oh and I taught E how to use eBay this week and he got really into it and "won" us a brand new, organic Ergobaby carrier for like half the price of one in a store. Very cute!

Movement: Holy crap this kid is moooooving. I can feel elbows or something sliding along, there are BIG kicks or punches, he or she is really going crazy in there. I think I might be having some kind of uterine spasms every once in awhile, too... is that a thing??

Cravings/aversions: I still really like lemonade if it's in front of me but I don't really crave it. Same with root beer. I still really just want ice water All. The. Time. Otherwise there have just been momentary things- I really, really wanted whitefish salad for Shabbos. I really wanted those drumstick ice cream cones last week. I wanted pickles a few nights in a row. And Saturday night I wanted Goldfish crackers, chocolate covered doughnuts (Entenmann's style), a vanilla milkshake and fig newtons. And chocolate covered pretzels. Idk what the deal was that night but all I got was the doughnuts. Actually E also tried to get me a vanilla milkshake but it slipped out of his hand literally as he walked through our front door and spilled everywhere, so.... #epicfail

Plain Chicken still grosses me out. And most beef. And fish.

Gender: Confirmed!! But it seems like we're keeping it a secret...

Labor signs: Hopefully not anytime soon.

Belly button:  Innie!

What I miss: I'd still love love love like an extra 3 feet worth of internal body space. My ribs feel like they're going to crack from the internal pressure. There's just no room. 

And cocktails. I definitely miss cocktails. And sushi.

What I am looking forward to: Hopefully going to Canada for a bit sometime in the next month. E's entire family owns a lake cottage up there and E has visited it every summer of his life. :) And going to visit some friends for Shabbos in a couple of weeks too. And E's only working 3 nights this week so I'm looking forward to actually seeing him this week, haha. 

Here's a 30-week bump shot- I actually feel 10x this large:

And Idk if I posted this in the last post but here's a really crappy iPhone pic of how much I've narrowed the nursery paint color options down to!! #winning

Living On the (Paint) Edge(-ing)

Holy crap, you guys, I finally finished painting the hallway trim after like 2.5+ years. There's still a little bit of white trim above the door that I'd somehow managed to miss when I was doing the white trim, but I think all of the blue edging is actually, finally, officially donezo! Gone are the days of our initial paint color mistakes peeking through- a too-light gray, a too-green blue, then a too-dark blue. It was like goldilocks and the four bears. Actually, there might've been a pretty terrible greenish-tan thrown in there somewhere too.... So, five bears? That final blue is Benjamin Moore's Bird's Egg (2051-60), if you're wondering. 

Needless to say, E is still traumatized by hardware store paint sections.... And dreading the baby's room paint-picking process. I'm not involving him until I have it narrowed down to two or three DEFINITE choices this time. 

Anyway! Here are a couple of before and afters (don't mind the iPhone quality- I still can't find the cord that connects my camera to the computer!): 

Ps- we're officially 30 weeks as of today... Holy moly!! Let the 10-week countdown begin!

"Hello (Decor), My Old Friend....

...I've come to talk (and plan) with you again."

Welp, here we are again....

(Heads up: The color in this iPhone pic is super inaccurate. For reference, the current wall color is Benjamin Moore's Stone 2112-40.)

Normally I'd be thankful that E rarely goes into this room except to use the printer, but we have a guest coming to stay with us this weekend so he'll probably be in there helping me get the space guest-ready (we have two bedrooms, so the guest room is going to convert to nursery duty, but we'll keep the trundle bed in there... But right now it's sort of been a storage room since before Passover. Whoops!). Wish me luck with his reaction. ;)

Ps have you seen this?

Houston, We Have a Heartbeat!

The RE said it was 122bpm which is "perfect" for 6w3d. And he released us to our OB! Ahhhh! I'm going to miss all of the RE's office staff and nurses!! We're so far choosing to use the OB-GYN we went to when we first figured something was "wrong". We both like him and he (it's two brothers actually) has done my yearly exams anyway. We made our first appointment as soon as we got home from the RE, and go there the 28th (2 weeks from today). Holy crap. Posting today's ultrasound aftre the break (in case you don't wanna see).

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So Blessed.

Last week I had a 6 hour training day at work. We do this a couple of times a year. Considering that I've been working at the same place since 2007, this was my 7th repeat of this same training (with minor tweaks). Needless to say, my favorite coworker and I were bored out of our minds and at some point ended up playing with our phones. That's when she stumbled upon this:

Unfortunately, I have no idea where she found it. It links to the url she sent me, but if anyone knows where it's originally from, PLEASE lemme know. I was instantly obsessed. I dragged E to Michael's that afternoon (which is like an hour-long subway ride, mind you. We're in the heart of Brooklyn and Michael's is on like 98th and Lexington in Manhattan). But... when we got there, my big plans sort of came crashing down around me when I saw how expensive the faux flowers were. Not to mention the price of wooden letters. Feeling defeated, I moped around the store for about a half an hour before stumbling on some glittery gold paper/card stock in the scrap booking department and fell in love. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I bought three sheets.

When I got home, I decided that I was going to cut out letters from it. I debated between a bunch of words... "Home", "Hello", "Breathe", "Howdy", "Sweet", "Lucky", "Adore", etc. I even texte the options to E on multiple occasions while he was at work, but he never responded. Oh well. Eventually I decided on "Blessed"- because, really, we are. I get caught up in the kids things that we don't have, but aside from that, we really do have it good and I could really use a reminder of that.

Here's the finished product, followed by the process:

After selecting a word, I needed to figure out a font. I browsed Pinterest a couple of times before narrowing it down to two: "You Found Me" and one called "LSTK Clarendon" (bold).

 

vs.

Honestly, I normally would've gone with the 2nd option, but I was really craving a hand-written look and ended up going with the 1st. I do want to use the 2nd one for another project though....

Now, there might be a quicker, more efficient way of doing this, but this was my method. First, I blew up the font to size 450 and printed it out lengthwise on paper, like so:

Then I cut out each letter with scissors:

Next, I traced it all, backwards, onto the back of my glitter paper:

And cut it all out with an exacto knife:

Here it is looking a bit like Arabic, haha:

Once it was all cut out and flipped over, it made a lot more sense:

Then I just taped each letter in place, and voila!

 Let's just agree to ignore how badly I need a second coat of paint on those poor walls. I'm really pleased with the results though! As for that first project, should I check eBay for faux flowers? Craigslist? Anyone know of somewhere to buy fake flowers on the cheap? I want to maybe create one for the guest room...

Saying Sayonara with Some Vino

Was that multilingual enough for you? It better be... K so here's the thing. 2013 can bite me. It wasn't a great year. Needless to say, I'm stoked to get rid of it. I'm a little bit of a nut about calendar dates and anniversaries and whatnot, so I'm welcoming the proverbial "New Beginning" with open arms. 

But what's a goodbye party without a little vino? Well, my friends, we now have a brand new way to showcase all of our delicious bottles. A few months ago, I finally managed to find the Ikea VURM wine rack in the store. No, they're not so popular that they're constantly sold out. I just get overwhelmed at Ikea and can never find anything I'm looking for. No offense, Ikea. I am, however, a pro at finding a million things that I don't actually need. Oh well. 

Then came the task of figuring out where to put it. E actually asked me in the store, "Where do you plan on putting that?" and I feigned some semblance of a solid answer with vague, rambling words describing some place in between the kitchen and breakfast nook. But that's all I knew. That's because I ended up moving around a bunch of stuff to make this work. And E was a legend and took the time to carefully hang both of them up.

I'm searching high and low for the before pic. I'll add it when I find it. At any rate, here are the afters:

Puh-lease ignore the unfinished trim/door painting jobs. Never quite got around to cutting in. Guess that's what 2014 is for...

Panorama, Panorama, Everybody's Coming To Get Me.

Remember this song? From the 90's? Okay, so the original might've been about Paranoia, not Panoramas, but just go with it. K? 

Thought I'd finally give you a glance at the living room. Hence the panorama reference. Yeah, I think you get it. Sorry about the poor lighting, but I really don't like the overhead lights and it's super cozy like this in real life.

 

 As you can see, it could use some straightening up. I actually just threw a huge stack of old magazines into the recycling (see those trash bags in the hallway? Proof!).

Aside from tidying, here's my current to-do list:

• Switch the couches. I originally wanted the smaller couch on that wall because we had another end table next to it. But two end tables eventually proved to be too much furniture in a small Brooklyn apartment, so we moved one into our entryway and the lamp was relocated to the guest room nightstand. Good move. Now that we're down to one end table, I think the smaller couch would be better in front of the windows. It'll look like less furniture when you walk into the room. I think.
• Hang more things. We have 3 teardrop hanging vases from CB2 that were hanging up when the living room furniture was in another configuration. I love, love, love them but when we I rearranged the furniture for the 60th time, E made me promise to wait until I was sure I loved this set up before drilling any more holes in the walls. I want to put them next to the mirror, and hang that print between the one of the Chasidic Farbrengen (by the talented Elke Reva Sudin) and the bookcase. I think I'll keep the Ikea Stockholm bowl hanging on the wall, but maybe lower it. 
• Move the floor lamp. I actually did this tonight, right before I took the photos. The floor lamp had been in front of the Ikea bowl, but then all of our lighting was on one side of the room. I want to plug it into a different outlet so the wire isn't in front of the bookcase, but I need E to move the other bookcase in order for that to happen.
• Reorganize the bookshelves. They drive me crazy because they look so cluttered.
• Get things professionally framed. That's something I want to do all around the apartment. Some things just need to be matted, but the Elke Reva Sudin painting really needs a specially made frame because the print is an odd size. 
• Do something with the desk. A big chunk of wood chipped off in our move, so at minimum I'd like to stain that area. Or something. 
• Add something to the back of the bookshelves. My father-in-law actually made those for us as a wedding gift. I love them. They have really pretty detailing. I'd like to get some foam board and cover it with grass cloth or something along those lines. A couple of years ago I did that with a yellow silk fabric and it was nice but it was too much pattern. I want something natural.

I need E to hurry up and eat that Chanukah House. And we have a framed "last name meaning" certificate stuck behind the desk that obviously doesn't belong there. And a hot water urn on the side table that I was using to make tea. :) But otherwise, that's about it... "Short" list, huh?

Pinterest Page Update!

Hey guys! I'll be posting as Fruitful Furbishing from now on so that I can be a little bit less easy to find via Google. Because of this, we've also switched our Pinterest page! From now on, if Pinterest is your thing, please follow the board here:

http://www.pinterest.com/ffurbishing/ 

The old one will no longer be updated. Thanks! It's a little sparse at the moment but I'll be adding boards and fun stuff as time goes on.

Not-so-Expedit'd Process

Okay. Here's a little home decor horror story with a happy ending. A couple of years ago, my husband's friend was moving out of Brooklyn and his wife had a post that they were giving away/selling some of their stuff. One of the items was the Ikea Expedit, and I had this lightbulb moment and absolutely NEEDED it for our bedroom. We had been using two mismatched dressers up until that point, which we'd gotten for free right before our wedding. That's a crazy story too. A friend of mine had just graduated from college but was still living in the college dorm in Manhattan when she heard that the college was closing one of their dorms permanently, and therefore getting rid of all the furniture. I know. It sounds fishy but I swear that's what I was told. So she and I rented a uhaul truck and bravely drove it across the Manhattan bridge in a rainstorm to pillage this dorm. And then, somehow, the two of us lugged back two dressers, a coffee table, two floor lamps, and I *think* there was more but now I can't quite remember what it was. And for some reason I remember the uhaul guy's name was Mike and my friend managed to charm him into giving us a discount. ;)

Those two dressers served us well for about 2.5 years but as our home decor evolved, the mismatching of the dressers started to drive me insane (because I'm a crazy person) and another friend of mine got the 8-cubby Expedit for her bachelorette pad and it was awesome because she could see all of her clothes and therefore pick out an outfit before getting out of her nice warm bed in the morning. Brilliant!

I somehow convinced E to go to his friend's apartment, help him unassemble disassemble it, carry it to our building and up to our 4th floor walkup apartment (it might've taken a couple of trips) and then help me reassemble it in our bedroom. And it was awesome. For a couple of months. Until it started to look like this: 

I'd like to acknowledge that while it became a complete and utter disaster zone, things stayed categorized. My clothing was divided into cool colors (actually just green and blue), warm colors (pinks, orange, yellow and also purple), and neutrals (black, white, tan, gray). And further divided by sweaters vs regular shirts. That's 6 cubbies of classification. But it was really hard to keep it folded nicely, especially when I'd have to grab something quickly. Shimmying a single shirt out of the pile was hard, guys.

SO eventually I decided to bring back one of the dressers instead. We'd given the other one to a neighbor when she had her 3rd baby. I found a way to maximize the drawer space on Pinterest (more on that below) and decided to go for it while E was at work a few months ago.

But nothing's ever easy. I thought I was going to be able to super easily scoot the Expedit out our bedroom door and into our guest room, but no. I was wrong. Oh, was I wrong. You see, there's this little nook right outside our door, and the shelves couldn't squeeze through. So I grabbed a screwdriver and got to work taking the door off it's hinges, thinking that those couple of extra inches would help:
But guess what. They didn't. I don't know what I was thinking, or why I didn't measure:


After that, I sat on the floor and cried a little. #noshame The worst part was that I got it jammed in there so it was stuck, and I couldn't even get to the bathroom which is directly outside our bedroom door. Eventually, I  sucked it up and decided to disassemble it, which was nerve-wracking because if you've ever owned Ikea furniture before, you know that as great as it is for a while, it's not really meant to be taken apart and put back together 20x. And it's not usually a one-girl kind of job. It had taken E and me, working together, a REALLY long time to assemble that first time, so I was really shaking in my boots. But I'd already come so far!

This time, I actually gameplanned. I unscrewed the top, and then I kept the 4 cubby dividers and their shelf together each time. I left the two side pieces attached to the bottom. Then I carefully dragged that "frame" in to the guest room. I wasn't sure it'd work because of the same problem (the nook) but without the top attached I was able to maneuver it enough to successfully get it through.

You're going to have to bear with me for the next couple of photos. Just look at the shelves, not the paint, mess, etc.

This was the method to my madness: I propped the "shell" up between a stack of boxes and a chair with stuff piled on it to weigh it down.

Then, for each row, I took a couple of buckets, propped up the vertical pieces, and then laid the big horizontal shelf down and shimmied all of the little wooden pieces into place. The Ikea directions explicitly say you shouldn't do it this way, but it worked for me. 

It took awhile (actually, it took way less time than the first time we assembled it) but eventually I was able to screw the top back on and we had a success story!!

Here it is in it's final (hopefully) resting place on a different guest room wall. This poor shelving unit has been through a lot, guys. Right now it's just holding some miscellaneous books (Oh, right... I got rid of an old bookshelf that day too. It was falling apart. For real!) and a bunch of hoarded back-issues of Real Simple. I want to get canvas cubby boxes for the four top cubbies but I haven't decided on a color yet.

Ah! And if you're wondering about that folding method I was talking about, check out this post from Pinterest/Buzzfeed that I used for inspiration. So far, months later, it's holding up. It's a game-changer.
:)

Also, for reference (because these iPhone pics are a bit wonky in the color department, here's a list of our paint colors, although some of them are color matched using Behr paint):
Bedroom: Solitude AF-545 by Benjamin Moore
Guest Room: Stone 2112-40 by Benjamin Moore
Hallway: Bird's Egg 2051-60 by Benjamin Moore
Living Room: Galveston Gray AC-27 by Benjamin Moore (more on that here)
I actually have an upcoming post on this!

Jim Morrison Might Be Proud...

Still here! Haven't forgotten about this. I have a bunch of photos of projects from the past month or so that I just need to sort through and write about. And, I guess, the biggest news is that we started seeing our RE again after a year+ long break. I'll save that post for another day (/month? haha) and keep this one limited to The Doors. Or, really, the door. Our front door. I don't know if I ever posted this "before" pic (from my Instagram, haha), but this is what our hallway looked like....

I have no idea why our front door is open a crack here...

Don't get me wrong, I love this shot. That's our "Family Tree" frame wall over there. And our West Elm runner that I'm thankfully still madly in love with. Note that this was before we I painted the off-white molding white. Such a good move, btw. But we had this leftover quart of paint (Benjamin Moore's Dolphin at 75% strength- I know, it's shocking that an attempt at a custom color didn't work out... ::sarcasm::) that I'd bought while trying to find the right gray for our living room (more on that here) and it was burning a hole in my... storage closet? Long story short, I decided to paint the back of our front door. So I tested it out on the peep hole (I always feel super dirty saying that- is there another word for it??) and it stayed like that for, oh I don't know, 3 weeks? Thankfully, my husband never even noticed it or he would've realized I was up to something and tried to stop me. ;) Here's that look (let's ignore the fact that I still haven't painted that off-white trim a the top of the door):

Yep, those are shelves from a discarded book shelf still waiting to be brought down to the garbage area. 

The other day, a friend texted me a photo of her newly-painted black door, and that lit the fire under my tush. When E ran out to do a couple of errands, I whipped out the paint and a brush and went for  it. Here it is after one coat (yikes):

I was about 1/2 done with the second coat when I heard E coming up the stairs... womp womp. I  opened the door for him (chivalry ain't dead) and told him to come in very carefully. He was surprisingly a bit wary of this project, pre-completion. But once that second coat got up there and everything had dried, voila:

I'm a little obsessed. I started referring to it as "Industrial Chic" bc it kind of looks like a metal door. Which is slightly ghetto but in a cool way (just go with it). I kind of want to marry it. And just for kicks, here's a new version of that Instagram pic:

A few other discrepancies between the new and old views aside from the new door color: the entryway table and art.

I smile at the door practically every time I walk by, even from way back here. It's actually a little worrisome. I was thinking about painting all of the doors this color but I think I'm going to hold off on that now and just let this be the star of the show. Hope you like it as much as we do (because EE is sold on it now too!).