Home Decor - Pocketful of Joules

Sunroom on a Budget

Since we moved into our new house at the end of January, I’ve been attacking each room one at a time to make it over. I like our home to feel more like “us” and I’m never satisfied with the way things were set up before.*

Most rooms weren’t too much of a challenge, since we basically moved furniture from our old house into our new house. Throw a little paint on the walls, arrange the furniture, dig up some décor from my stash and we’re good to go.

I kept putting off the sunroom though, even though I had to walk through it at least a half dozen times a day to let the dog out. I couldn’t paint it because it’s basically made of plastic – most of the window surrounds are plastic and even the one wall of the room which connects it to the house is a plastically kind of wainscoting. I was actually thinking of painting it anyways using a latex based paint, but decided against it as that could go horribly wrong and it would be virtually impossible to return the room to its current state.

The room is great though – all of the windows fully recede so that the walls turn into a screened in porch. The flooring is also nice, so I didn’t really have any changes to make there. What I really wanted was to have a seating area so that we could hang out with company on nice days with the breeze flowing through. I also wanted a table area for casual dining. Lastly, I didn’t want it to be too fussy because I envision Jack using the space when he’s a little older to color with crayons or paint with a watercolor set.

I’d love to be able to go out and buy an awesome patio set, like maybe a fun sectional from Crate & Barrel or West Elm, but frankly I’m too cheap to spend a couple thousand dollars on an outdoor couch. However, I’m keeping my eyes peeled for any super clearance deals at the end of the summer.

My parents inherited a beat up set of furniture and decided to take it down to our shared Ocean City house since they had a much nicer set on their deck. However, I begged and pleaded for them to give it to me (and then sent my husband over with his truck to swipe it) since I really needed extra seating for the baptism picnic we had a few weeks ago.

It was really dirty, but I scrubbed the crap out of it and under about 8 layers of dirt came up with a half decent set of furniture. Actually, it was a pretty expensive brand and was super comfortable to sit on. It was just really worn looking and had a super dated pattern on the cushions.

before 4 — Close up of a chair arm — see how it’s all gray and worn?

After the party, we just kind of threw it in the sunroom with our existing leftover table and mismatched chairs. Not exactly a homey look.

So, I decided to do what I always do…bring out the spray paint!

And this is how I remade over our sunroom for less than $180.00

Spray paint existing patio furniture (3 cans of spray paint and one small can of regular paint — Oil Rubbed Bronze color, same as our cabinet knobs) = $29.31
Make super easy slipcovers** out of navy blue sheets from Walmart (2 twin flat sheets and 1 king flat sheet) = $25.97
Bring in an awesome rug I found at Homegoods = $49.99
Add three trays, also found at Homegoods = $18.98
The place totally needed some fun pillows, so I bought two on sale from West Elm = $54.98
Steal stuff from other rooms and my décor stash (green pillow, lantern, glass bowl with balls, yellow antique pitcher, handmade coasters, assorted candles and my fabulous gay sparkle squirrel) = FREE

= Total of $179.23

Here are the before shots:

before 1 — The super dated patio furniture that I scored for FREE

before 3 — The full room view with the seating area and the dining room table (bought off Craigslist a year or so ago for $40 and used as a sewing table at our last house)

And here’s the after:

after 1 — Not so new, but greatly improved!

after 8 — Same dining room table, I just added a fun centerpiece to tie into the rest of the room and removed the old rug.

after 7 — Here’s a close up so you can check out my mad spray painting skillz

Since I made the slipcovers out of bed sheets, you can just take them off to wash them and then throw them back on again. Perfect for what I’m only assuming is going to be a very messy baby/toddler playing on them.

Anyways, it’s only been a few days but I’m totally loving the changes. I have a few more things I’m going to do — like switch out the dining room chairs and maybe make a fun table runner or placemats in a few shades of blue. This is a good start though, because now when I walk through the room to let Potter out it makes me smile.

Totally worth $180.00, right?!

*Unlike the people who purchased our townhouse. I went back a month after we moved to pick up some mail and the buyer wanted to show me around (even though I’d prefer to keep my memories intact with the way it used to be). On the house tour I realized that they left everything exactly the same. Same paint colors. Same furniture placement. They even hung pictures in the exact same spaces and I had filled all the old picture hanging holes and painted them too!. The really odd thing was that they had a picture in one of the bathrooms that was almost exactly like the one I had previously put there. Creepy or flattering… I can’t quite decide!

**To make the slipcovers, all I did was: 1. wash sheets, 2. pin the fabric around the cushion, 3. sew three sides so that it looked like a super long pillow case, 3. put the sewn slipcovers on the old cushions, 4. safety pin the bottom. At some point, I’ll probably buy some velco and use that instead of the safety pins.

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Double Mother’s Day

Even though I’m in my 30’s, I still kind of feel like a kid when it comes to my parents. Although we’ve had our rough patches – mostly during those hormonal teenage years – they’ve always been there for me and my siblings.

I actually really enjoy my family and love it when we are all able to go on vacation together. We went on a cruise a few years ago, that was pretty freaking awesome. I’m hoping that this summer we’ll all be able to get to the beach so that Jack can join in on the fun.

Now that I’m kind of a grown up, I realize how lucky I am that my parents have been there for me whenever I’ve needed them. And it really feels strange now that I’ve been inducted into the parent’s club myself. Now that I’m a mom, it’s like I’ve finally realized that moms and dads don’t hatch from an egg somewhere with the ability to be a good parent.

This is the first year that I’m celebrating Mother’s Day as both a mother and a daughter. And now that my eyes are open about exactly how much a mom really does, I feel like I appreciate my mom even more.

All my supplies — ready to go. I have Jack’s bathtub ready too in case he goes all crazy on me and ends up covered in paint.

Of course, now my mom is even better than *just* a mom… she’s a grandmother. She has not only been an awesome mom to me, my two sisters and my brother, she is now watching my son a few days a week while I’m at work.

So this Mother’s Day, I wanted to get her a little something from Jack.

So I got my supplies together:

2 small canvases
finger paint
paper towels
a beach towel.

Oh yeah, and a mostly naked baby. You totally need one of those for this project.

I put a glob of finger paint on Jack’s foot and squished it down on the canvas.

Of course blue ended up being the most difficult color to wash off…

Now, in case you didn’t know, babies are really squirmy, so it took me a few tries of this to get it right. Luckily the paint easily wiped off the canvas with a damp paper towel. After getting a good print with one foot, I washed it off and then repeated with the other foot (and a different color).

After a few tries, I had this:

I made two of them – one for me and one for my mom. On my mom’s canvas, I really wanted a quote that would illustrate how important she is in my son’s life. So I did some googling and came up with the perfect quotes.

Here is what I ended up with:

Happy Mother’s Day mom!

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Kitchen Changes, part 2

Doing the happy dance – my additional supplies arrived and I was able to complete the second portion of my kitchen project.

The old boring white backsplash that looked more like a painting mistake

So, what was the hint?

It was a double whammy of the package and the ugly white backsplash walls.

It may appear that I forgot to paint the backsplash area grey like the rest of the kitchen walls, but it was actually a thick white melamine-type of backsplash that had been added by the previous owners.

Check it out in the photo. Useful in keeping spills easily wipeable, but totally boring.

We thought about ripping it out and putting up some tile-work, but it just seemed so permanent. I like to change things around every so often, so I kept holding off on the project because I didn’t want to spend the time and money on something that I might be sick of in a year or so.

Then I heard about a product called Smart Tiles. They sell them at Home Depot and they are basically a super thick, plasticy backsplash. The one I chose looks similar to a mosaic tile wall so I get all that tiley goodness, but could easily switch it out if I get bored.

My package o’ fun contained 4 packs of Smart Tiles

I went back and forth and back again about buying them. They were only sold online, so I had to depend on the reviews (found by typing Smart Tiles Reviews in google, as well as on the Home Depot website) to determine how they would look in person. I found the reviews with actual user pictures of their completed projects the most useful. Even though some people loved them and some hated them, I decided to give it a shot and placed the order.

A couple days later my friendly UPS man dropped them off. The directions on the package were super simple – basically, open package and stick on wall. However, I found a couple online tutorials that I found much more helpful. Here’s one and here’s another.

Of course, right when I wanted to start it was baby feeding time – so I fed Jack a bottle and sent him into a milk stupor/nap.

Jack is very helpful in completing my home improvement projects…

Once he was down I ripped open the tiles and got to work.

It wasn’t too difficult to apply and the melamine backsplash actually made it pretty easy to unstick and restick a sheet if I made a mistake. Once the sheet of tile is on the wall, it’s stuck there really well (in fact, the directions say to remove it you’d use a hairdryer). It does take a degree of concentration to make sure that every piece is applied perfectly. You also need to have mad skillz with a razor knife because it is necessary to cut single strips and even single tiles to fill in some tricky areas. All in all, on a difficult scale of 1 – 5, I’d give it about a 3.

A few hours and baby feedings/dance breaks/diaper changes later and I was almost done. Um, note I said ALMOST done… I had miscalculated the amount of tiles I’d need so I had to order one more pack. Super annoying since I like to just knock a project out and move on to the next thing.

Anyways, as I said at the beginning of the post, the package came! I finished the project pretty quickly and am happy to be able to share the results.

Close up of the same angle as the first picture with the ugly white backsplash — such an improvement!

So, would I recommend Smart Tiles? I’d have to say that I would. They definitely were not cheap, but it was relatively easy to install the tile sheets and I absolutely love the results. With just the little change of painting the cabinet hardware and adding the backsplash, it really changes the entire look of the kitchen.

Remember what it looked like earlier this week:

Ugly gold hardware and boring white backsplash

I still have a couple more things to do before I can call the kitchen complete (mainly buying a new dishwasher and oven), but it feels a lot more like OUR kitchen now and I love it!

2022 Update: I decided to switch out the peel-and-stick backsplash and I’m happy to report that with a little hairdryer heat and some diligent pulling, it all came off easy-peasy!

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