Field Trip - Jess's Store

My cousin Jess opened a Home collection store in Orem, Utah a few years ago called Alice Lane. The website for the store is Alicelanehome.com or you can check out their very cute blog by clicking here. She offers design services and you can see some of her beautiful work on the blog - (click on the "Show n' tell" link on the left column).

The name of her store "Alice Lane" comes from the street she used to live on, here are a few pictures from that beautiful house and you can see more on the blog as well (click here).

She also has a cute "show n' tell" on her parents home (my aunt and uncle). Here are a couple pictures of their home or you can click here to see more.

If you follow the blog "nieniedialogues" you may have seen Jess's work in Stephanie's home as well. She is incredibly talented and has been featured in the magazine "Utah Style and Design".

The Ugly Duckling Chandelier

The chandelier is done!

Here is the process:

First I took the wood pieces off and sanded them down to the bare wood.

The metal parts I spray painted with a gray primer. I don't think it needed primer I just liked the grey color.

Once the spray paint was dry I put the chandelier back together with the wood parts then wiped everything down with watered down white paint. Finally I did a little brown glaze to antique it slightly. In order to hang the chandelier I had to go to home depot and by a ceiling canopy since it didn't come with one ($5). I gave it the same paint finish as everything else then hung the chandelier.

Once it was hung I decided I didn't want to use the wood balls that came with the chandelier that were below every light bulb socket so I took those off. I decided instead it needed some crystal strands. I found some online here that cost an additional $15 ($10 for 2 yards of crystals and $5 shipping).

So my $5 DI chandelier ended up being $28 including spray paint. By the way the cheapest spray paint I have ever found is at Family Dollar, grey primer is $3 and white, black, and red are just $1.25. They don't have a large color selection but they have the basics.

So the ugly duckling..........

has become a beautiful swan.........

and I returned the $75 JCPenny Chandelier!

The Ugliest Thing I Have Ever Purchased

This baby wins the ugly contest hands down! But for just $5 I couldn't pass it up. Who would have thought I would be so thrilled to find such an ugly chandelier. I couldn't believe how ironic it was to find this at the DI just one day after my "wood chandelier" post. I am going to try to give it some tender loving care and see how it turns out. As soon as I took this picture I chucked the glass things in the garbage and already it was an improvement. I figured if I can't make it look good enough at least I have some wood parts that I can now attach to the JC Penny chandelier that is still on its way (if it does end up looking cute I can return the JC Penny light and keep my $75).

Wood Chandeliers

I still have not been able to make a decision on a chandelier for over our tub in the Master bathroom. I recently spotted this one from overstock - it is $145 and I really liked the look of it.

I also fell in love with this one from Ballard Designs (but did not love the $200 price).

Also found this beautiful one somewhere on line for about $400.

Pottery barn and Restoration hardware also have some beautiful wood chandeliers. I started researching wood chandeliers more and found this post on the Reloved Rubbish blog. I of course started trying to find an old wood chandelier to re-make for cheap but I am not having any luck.

Before and After

So today I went on the JC Penny website. They have a home store and every once in a while sell things for half off. Today was my lucky day I found this cute chandelier for half off - Reg. $150 Now $75 (and free shipping on orders over $69 yeah!).

I know it is not that similar to the wood ones I love - NOT YET at least! My plan is to do a paint treatment on it and add some sort of hollow wood spindle to the strait middle piece. I am now on the hunt! I'll post my results when I have some to show.

By the way this one on JC Penny is also half off (Reg- $300 Now $150) and I thought it was so pretty too. Restoration Hardware and Ballard designs have similar ones for much much more!

Want pretty lighting for even cheaper? Check out this amazing blog post on how to make this pottery barn look-alike light for only $30!!!!

More Trim Work Ideas

I have to give credit to my brother Jon for this idea. If you have small baseboards and want to make them look bigger you can simply add another piece of trim work a few inches up the wall from your existing baseboards. Paint the new trim and the wall between, the same color as your existing baseboards and your eyes are tricked into thinking it is one large baseboard! Same trick can be done at the top of your walls to make your crown molding seem larger. In our other home we had very small baseboards so we added to them throughout our whole house. It really dressed up the house. This particular extra piece of molding was even hung upside down, we felt it looked better and tied into our baseboards better that way.

Because our extra piece was upside down, the thickest part of it was at the top which made hanging vertical moldings easy since they could sit flush on top of it.

Boys Bedroom Transformation

I just finished the boys bedroom and am very happy with the results.

Here is the before

And here are the afters

The inspiration for this room is the picture in the post below. Now you all know my secret - I'm not good at at decorating just copying!

The blue focal wall is Benjamin Moore "Newburyport Blue" and the tan on the rest of the walls is Glidden's "Scroll Beige." I found the brackets for the shelf at Lowes, they were a little over $6 a piece (unfortunately this 10 foot long shelf needed to have one on every mdf grid line so it added up!). If I had planned a little better I could have made the shelf attach to the wall some other way and just used a couple brackets for "looks." The 10 ft. board for the shelf is a 7 foot wide mdf piece from Home depot that cost $9. So the shelf added up to almost $50 (ouch) but it looks cute. Add the shelf to the $60 spent on mdf for the grid and the total for the focal wall is just over $100. Personally I think it looks like a million bucks though!
I love the contrast of the white on that dark blue, so pretty. I was tempted after doing this room to redo my whole basement around the navy blue and white color scheme (especially since it would look good with brown wood tones and leather). Maybe some day!  For more information on how we did the trim work on the blue grid wall click Here!