The first thing was,  I was scrolling through FindingFabulous posts , I saw that she announced a winner for her give away on June 15 (yes, I am that behind).  I read that it was Judy from DIY by Design, another blog I follow.  I was so excited, so I went to congratulate Judy on her blog, and noticed she hadn’t posted anything about her win.  I mentioned it in my comment and guess what?  She had NO clue she had won!  I was pretty darn excited for her, and that I was able to be the bearer of good news.  I had no clue she followed FindingFabulous, and what were the chances out of all the entries for that giveaway it would be someone I knew.  Weird.

The second thing that happened, was a master bedroom feature on Justagirl that I fell in love with.

Isn’t this room gorgeous?  It is from Haley at The Hills As I was reading through her process of design, she described the fabric she used on the headboard.  The look, the description of the headboard sounded just like the one I did for Shanon and Nate for their master bedroom

I just had to know, did we make we make same exact headboard?  Is there a twin to my headboard somewhere across the country? It looked like the same shape, same fabric, same nail head… so I contacted her.   And sure enough it was the same!  Who would of thought two people who never met, would come up with the same concept and fabric!  See what I mean about blogland being so big yet so small?  {Oh and by the way,  I will never, ever do upholstery tacks again, unless they are the strip kind.}

But what is even more weird, is that Shannon loves grey and yellow, and wanted to do her master bedroom in these colors, but Nate wasn’t so hot on it.  He likes blue, so Shannon compromised and went with grey and blue.  And she really, really wanted a stencil on the wall behind their bed, so I ordered the stencil, but it was the wrong kind.  It was a reverse pattern stencil, meaning if we wanted to have white outlines of the pattern, the wall needed to start out white, not blue.  So we never did the stencil. But if we would of, it would look just like Haley’s but in blue and white…weird.

The other side of Haley’s room looks like this

The other side of Shannon and Nate’s bedroom looked like this

Both rooms have long dresser with a tv  and a drywall niche in the wall.  So similar it is freaky!  We had the niche enclosed with some cabinet fronts though for storage  { the wood cabinet is now  been painted white}

I sure hope seeing Haley’s bedroom doesn’t make Shannon want to change to grey and yellow!  She is in that nesting phase of her pregnancy and is a woman on a mission to get her house in order.

And since I am showing  pictures of their master bedroom, I wanted to show you what we put on the dead space above their door

These numbers are their wedding day.  The numbers are those plastic ones that they used on old gas station signs. I love it. {plus Nate can never have an excuse that he forgot their anniversary lol}  You can kind of see their wedding portrait hanging in the hallway.

I am kind of thinking, that the whole coincidence of the similarities of Shannon and Haley’s master bedroom and me knowing the winner of the giveaway reminds me of the six dregree of seperation, does it you?  And who would of thought that it would apply to blogland…weird

Upholstered Headboard Twin is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post Upholstered Headboard Twin appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..

They are on special right now for $109, {not including shipping} which isn’t so bad.

But a couple of days ago I saw them at Steinmart, of all places, and they were $99.  My daughter Shannon had been looking for a couple of chairs for her dinette table for about 3 months now.  I showed her and Nate them this weekend, they weren’t so hot on them at first.  But I told them to get them, take them home, and see how they looked. They could always bring them back if they didn’t like them.

They put the two chairs around the table and they loved them!  It really tied in the wood tone of the hutch, and the open design of the chair gives the space a visually lighter feel.  A perfect fit, just like I thought it would be {wink, wink}

In case you don’t have a Steinmart near you, I found them on Overstock.com for $85.99 each and only $2.95 shipping.  These chairs are very versatile in style, they would look good with modern, country, or cottage decor, and believe it or not, they are super comfortable.

I just might order me a pair.

Dining room chair love is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post Dining room chair love appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..

She did an awesome job!  Plus I introduced her to the ruffler attachment and she wants to ruffle everything now!  I can’t wait to get this room finished and check it off the list, but it looks like it might be awhile.

One of the other finishing touches I did was in my daughter’s master bedroom. I have been browsing HomeGoods for awhile (daily) looking for a starburst mirror that was about 26″ in diameter.  And the other day I scored one for $24.99.  Woohoo. 

I immediately took it over to my daughter’s house and hung it above their bed.

I can’t believe the price and how perfect it fits above their bed.  I can now check that off my list, but now have to think of another excuse as to why I need to go to HomeGoods daily.

A few finishing touches is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post A few finishing touches appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..

They were the perfect size and shape but I wasn’t really digging the “pleather” fabric.  So like I always do, I told my daughter I would put some fun fabric on them for her to brighten them up.  Looked pretty easy to do.  I decided it would be easier and smart to leave the “pleather” fabric on, and just make a slip cover and then staple it under the bar stool.  That way they could easily go back to the “pleather” later if they wanted.

I bought some outdoor fabric from Calico Corners.  Thought it would resist staining and it was pretty inexpensive.  Cut out my pattern, lined it with some backing, I was good to go.

But dummy me, halfway through I realize things aren’t going to be so smooth. I guess it wasn’t the best choice in pattern.  I didn’t even think about having to match the pattern, I just thought about the price and the color.  I tried SO hard to match that pattern up, but then the other side would be slightly off.  In the end {and endless hours of frustration} I just let go of my perfectionism and did the best I could with what I had.

The funny thing is,  you can’t even notice the slight pattern mismatch in the big scheme of the kitchen.  Sometimes I wonder why I make myself so crazy! I have to remember more often what Miss Mustard Seed says, KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid.

So excited to have another textile to link up again with Jami

Not So Easy Bar Stool Covers is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post Not So Easy Bar Stool Covers appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..

When we were doing the renovation at my daughter’s house back in September, I told her that she might want to take out the railing and do a full wall for safety reasons when she has children.  But she said no, that she really liked the openness of the way it looked.  “It is fine” she said.   I knew that this was not a kid friendly design.  But they are newlyweds so it wasn’t a priority to be “kid friendly”

Made me so nervous just even imagining little ones stepping up on the ledge and looking over down into the living room. {by the way, that rug got moved down to the dining room area to match the rug under the couch}

We were slowing working on making this room her office.  Since we already had the Ikea chair, we just bought a new slip cover for it, and added the ottoman.

We scoured Craig’s list to find the perfect bookcase to match the desk she had in there.

Hauling all that heavy furniture up the stairs was not easy.  But the room was coming together nicely.  We purchased fabric to make pillows and curtains for the window.  But guess what I did yesterday?  I went over to their house  to let the contractor in to do this

Yep, Shannon is pregnant!  I am going to be a grandma!  Woohoo.  So no more open loft.  See why I get to own the, “I told you so”?  I felt so bad for the guys having to move all that heavy furniture down the stairs.  Shannon’s office is now in this room off the kitchen.

Eventually she will make this a playroom/office.  But the funnest part is going to be transforming the old loft office into a nursery!  Once they find out the sex of the baby we will start the design.  She is due in mid July. I haven’t done a nursery in so long, and being that this is my first grandchild,  I have a feeling it might be a pretty special design.

“I told you so” is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post “I told you so” appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..

And this is what it looks like now (if you want to get the all the details on the update of the bathroom , click here)

Isn’t that rug so cute!  My daughter bought it at HomeGoods.

I found the shadow box frames at West Elm.  I loved how they are all glass so that you can really see the coral.

The longest piece wouldn’t fit in the glass boxes, and they didn’t have any larger sizes, so I had to go with the white box for the middle one.  I am ok with that.  {It sure was hard to photograph these beautiful pieces in such a small space, let alone the reflection I kept getting off the glass! Yeah, I might of been standing on the toilet to take these}

The estate where I got these from was a cumilation of years of collecting.   The owners had lived in the house since the early 1900′s.  The great grandaughter was there giving a little history every time someone bought something.  She had a lot of memories growing up at this home, so I think she wanted to share those memories as the pieces left.  She told me the coral pieces were collected by her great grandfather over a 100 years ago.  Wow, that made the coral even more special.  I paid $25 for all three pieces, not including the frames.

I love how they reflect in the mirror when you walk by the bathroom.

I think it added some elegance to the room and some character and depth.  Now to find something complimentary for above the toilet because I know that orchid won’t last forever,  but it works for now.

Edited-I forgot to tell you that I am linking up with Centsational Girl bathroom link party!  Go check it out.

Estate Sale Art Work is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post Estate Sale Art Work appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..

The master bath.  Oh me oh my.  This bathroom had some good qualities to it.   Two sinks, lots of counter space and storage underneath.  The size of the vanity area was perfect.  It had good bones but needed updating.  On the chopping block was the dated counter tops, the color of the honey oak cabinets, Hollywood bar light fixture, muddy brown looking floor tile and contractor faucets.   The one thing that needed addressing the most, was the shower toilet room.   When you opened the door it almost hit the shower and toilet.  Then once you got in the bathroom, you would have to close the door in order to use the toilet.  It was super squishy and poorly designed.  Once I got in there and accessed the situation, I noticed there was some wasted space in the vanity area next to the window.   Since the wall between the toilet and vanity wasn’t structural, I had the contractor move the wall out 16″, closer to the window and install a pocket door instead of a swing door which saved even more space.

This is the only picture I have to show you how it was before.  The toilet plumbing at this point has not been moved.  See how close it is to the shower? {the round hole in the ground, just in case you didn’t know what I was referring to}  Yeah it left you about 6″ of leg room when the actual toilet was in there to turn on the shower.  Not good. Then the dark line on the floor is where the old wall used to be.  The new wall that was going in is where the newer looking beam is, the recessed area.  The toilet plumbing got moved over into that new little recessed spot.  What a world of difference that made!

Lots more room to walk around in this shower area now.  New shower surround tile and glass doors were not in the budget, {can always be changed out later} but we did change out the shower head and scrubbed and scrubbed the white tiles clean and then re-grouted them after this picture was taken.  To show you how we encroached into the space in the vanity area, here is a picture of the space looking from the master bedroom before we moved the wall.  Look at the left side of the window in the picture

Here is how it looked after the wall was moved.  You can hardly tell the difference.  Now why wasn’t that done when they built this house is beyond me.

And here it is in it’s finished state before they moved in.

I have had a really hard time trying to get good pictures of the bathroom vanity area since it has been re-done.  So this is the best I got.

The flooring is crema marfil marble. They were 18″ x 18″ tiles left over from when we built our house, so that saved a lot of money.  I had the tile guy cut them down to 9″ x 9″ and put them on the diagonal to give the floor a little style.

We changed out the light fixtures to these pretties from lampsplus.com, aren’t they great? They give out an amazing amount of light too.

Here is a design tip: There are a ton of beautiful bathroom fixtures out there to choose from, but one of the things you have to keep in mind is the direction of the light and the projection of the fixture.  If the bulbs are turned up, the light is going to shine on the ceiling, which is good if you have other recessed lights in the room.  But if you don’t you will be lacking light and will hate your bathroom. So go with down lights if that will be your only source of light.  The other common mistake made in purchasing new bathroom light fixtures, is the distance of projection of the light fixture itself from the wall.   You want your light fixture to clear your mirror molding or medicine cabinet.  So make sure you measure how far out from the wall the mirror or cabinet is before you go shopping for a fixture. Most light fixtures will say what the projection is in the description or on the box.

The counter tops are a prefab quartz, which means you go to a prefab slab yard, and they have these already made ready to purchase with a finished edge in different lengths.  Once you purchase the prefab slab, then you have an installer cut your hole for your sinks and faucets.   It saves a lot of money this way, but you are limited on your choices for your edge detail.   The edge detail that came with this slab was just a straight edge.  More of a clean modern look which is what Shannon and Nate wanted.

Usually you can get a 4″ – 6″ high back splash that matches the slab from the slab yard, but this bathroom I opted to go with some 1″ x 1″ glass tiles instead that I got off of Craig’s list for cheap, $20!

The faucets were from overstock.com.  The cool thing about these faucets is that the water spout swivels, how cool is that?  The cabinets got a makeover and sanded down to bare wood and then stained with a dark walnut stain.  My plan was to just put a frame around the existing mirror, but the guys accidentally broke it when they shot their nail gun into the frame.  Oops.   We framed out the space above both sinks with wood molding and stained it to match the cabinets and the contractor paid and for and installed a new mirror.

Since this picture we have hung the towel bars that match the faucets.  On the list to do, is some type of drapery treatment on the window and add the knobs I bought months ago. I hate doing knobs and pulls.  It makes me nervous that I am going to mess up,  even with the cool tools out there to help you do it right.  I think that is why I am putting it off.

I think it turned into a very beautiful usable space for them don’t you?

{now I am going to go link up to Centsational Girls link party}

Masterbath Renovation is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post Masterbath Renovation appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..

A couple of moths ago I had posted a picture of this light fixture I had gotten for my daughter Shannon’s dining room area during the renovation stage of their house.  Loved it.

It was perfect for the space.  It fit both their decorating styles, a little bling for Shannon and stream lined look for Nate.  Here is a picture of it hung during the renovation construction

But unfortunately we had to send it back.  We noticed that once it was turned on and actually was being used, the paper around the shade that had all the bling on it started warping from the heat of the light bulbs.  I guess no one thought of that when they designed it.  We were so bummed, but it just started looking like a really cheap light fixture the more they used it.  Overstock.com let us return the fixture with no problems.  They have the best customer service and you can’t beat their prices!  So for about 2 months now there has been no light fixture in Shannon and Nate’s dining room.  It was hard to find the right fixture to compliment their styles without spending a ton of money and not looking cheap.  The drum shade style of the old fixture really looked good in their house, so I was on the hunt for something along those lines.  I have always loved these type of drum shade chandeliers

via Horchow

But they are pricey!  And the ones that aren’t so pricey look cheap.  I thought I could make one, I mean really, all it is a drum shade with a chandelier inside of it.  There are a lot of beautiful inexpensive chandeliers you can buy.  All I needed to do was find the right shade and chandelier. But I was having a hard time finding a large enough drum shade that would fit over a small chandelier.  Until a week ago, when I saw this lampshade at a local store in Solana Beach, called Bon Bons.  It was pricey, $125, but oh so beautiful.  It is by a designer called Cindy Ciskowoki, here is a picture of it on a table lamp from her website

It is a linen flax color with a slightly shimmery silver/blue damask pattern. It is way more prettier in person, these pictures don’t do it justice.

Then an idea just hit me when I was in the store drooling all over this shade.  I had an old PB Teen chandelier at home that I have been holding on to for 4 years. thinking I would find a use for it someday.  {you know, one of those items you just can’t part with when you are purging and organizing this time of year} I thought it would fit nicely inside this shade but wasn’t certain, and this shop has a no return policy.  So I crossed my fingers and bought the shade. The whole time I was  justifying in my head that the the finished  light fixture is going to be pretty darn cheap compared to those high priced ones I love.   For $125, which was about the cost of the previous overstock fixture,  I could get that classy drum shade chandelier look I wanted for the space.   If worse came to worse, and the chandelier wouldn’t fit inside, I knew I could buy a hanging pendant lamp socket from Ikea and a diffuser from Lampsplus and still have a really nice fixture for them.   Shannon was with me when I bought it and she also feel in love with the shade and loved my idea on how we could use it.

And phew!  The shade fit perfectly over the chandelier.  I swear it was if it was made for it.  I had to have my husband make a slight adjustment to get the shade over the main arm of the chandelier, it took him a whole 5 minutes.  All he had to do was take off the top decorative piece so that the shade could slide on.   It sits just right to show the bottom of the chandelier, just like all those fancy smancy expensive ones.

{this is a picture of the inside of the fixture and how it looks with the shade on}

This chandelier comes with draped beading,  I was going to change it out to crystals chains that I have, but Shannon liked the bead look, so I just added on some hanging crystal drops to the beaded ones it came with.

They both love it!  I surprised them yesterday and had my husband hang it while they were at work and they were blown away when they came home.  Mission accomplished.    I would show you pictures of the whole room, but the lighting was poor (I wasn’t even happy with these pictures I took, the chandelier looks more yellow than it is) and honestly there is nothing sitting under the chandelier but a rug, so it looked kind of funny when I uploaded the pictures.  Now all I have to do is help them find a table and some chairs to go underneath it and that room will be complete.  Day 5 of 2011 and I already have one project done, I think this might be a good year for me.

PS. Anyone surprised the drum shade I fell in love with was a damask print?  I didn’t think so.

Linking up to Jen’s Weekend Wrap up Party at Tatertots & Jello

Drum Shade Chandelier is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

The post Drum Shade Chandelier appeared first on Cre8tive Designs Inc..