Working in the Red Room

Last week I spent a lot of time cleaning and doing things around the house... boring! But I did make some time to start a roombox renovation.

I started with this, an inherited project that someone didn't finish. I love the lighting and the floor, and of course the 1/144 room in the wall... but not much else.

Happily the wallpaper was easy to remove and the electrical wasn't overly complicated to move for the renovation.

The 1/144 scale room is only temporarily reinstalled. It needs a bit of a makeover as well, but I needed it to help hold the new wallpaper in place while the glue dries.

Next up will be cleaning up and painting all the trim pieces and getting them put back in place. Hopefully that will happen in amongst laundry and other chores this week.

Painting - Before and After

Towards the end of last week I decided that the living room/dining room really needed painting before I bring my dining room set up from down south.  Especially since that room's paint had been sitting in the way since early March.  Here's a look at the former wall color, with some of my autumn/Halloween decor for contrast.

 

Now here's the same view with the new paint on the walls.

 

I love love LOVE the new color!  And as an aside, don't Kat's hats look great in that random Halloween bag I did up a while back?  They look absolutely fab against the new paint too!

 

 

I can't wait to get my dining room furniture here and in place.  The chairs are actually here but need reupholstering... quite literally.  There's nothing left of the original materials, only the wooden frames remain.  That will be an upcoming project, perhaps next week.

I've got to get back to real life house work again.  We're having company for the weekend and I"m hoping to get all the random clutter, laundry, etc out of the way so I can scrub, vacuum, and mop on Friday morning.  I'll also be doing some baking later in the week.

The White Elephant Renovation

In the US there is a tradition of giving "white elephant" gifts from time to time. This means that the gift's cost generally exceeds its usefulness, and generally the recipient didn't want the gift in the first place.

One of our Rendezvous friends was garage sale shopping this summer and found a sad little room box hat had been decorated for display in a bathroom. She decided I should have it and thus brought it to me.

Of course the last thing I needed was another miniature project so I stashed it away until I found it while cleaning.

It was a sad little room that had way too much green in it.
Now I do like green, but this was just too "bleh." If you look carefully you can get an idea of what I thought about the room via the mirror. ;-)

The robe seemed to be suspended by magic since the hanger had fallen off the peg. Those towels didn't look like an person, mini or otherwise, would want to dry their skin with them. The shelves were ok, but too plain. The mirror needed to go.

Lucky for me I received some bath accessories for Christmas this weekend, so between those new treasures and some things in my stash and supplies....
The walls were repainted a brighter shade of green and the frame was repainted bright white. I happened to have the yellow tile stashed and the floor is a scrap of life-sized wallpaper. I reclaimed the white baseboard from another project that got renovated.

The sink and shelves all got repainted a bright white and I added some floral embellishments to the shelves. I did away with the robe, original towels, and the too-large mug but I kept the hairdryer.

I put together all the bottles and jars this morning. I can't find the beads I bought to make nail polish bottles. I know they are in my work room somewhere. Once I find them I will open the room again to add them.

And if you're wondering, the towel bar is made from that errant hanger that the robe was supposed to be hanging from. The robe was too covered in glue to salvage. I had considered making a hand towel and/or wash cloths from it.

Until then this room is hanging in the perfect spot:
The guest bath is a bit more cheerful now. :-)