Thank you to a lovely reader, who's email reminded me that I needed to do a tutorial for my ceiling tile mirror, so here is it.
I found these ceiling tiles at a huge flea market thing near Dallas called First Mondays. It's HUGE. Booths and booths and aisles and aisles of stuff for sale. Some craft stuff, lots of vintage, anything you can imagine. I found these for $6 a piece, but offered her $5, and she accepted.
I went to Home Depot and picked up some 2x2's, which I think ran me $12 for 4 of them. My tiles were 12x12, so I built an outer frame that was 36x36 (of course, this measurement is going to depend on your tile size). Next, I made a grid on the inside, so that when I nailed in my tiles, I'd have something to attach it to.
Yeah, see that extra piece on the left? That's there because I didn't put the wood in the right place, so the middle left tile didn't have anything to nail it into. No worries, I just added another piece of wood. It's a very forgiving project.
Now, some of my tiles didn't match up exactly. I'll blame that on the tiles, instead of the more likely fact that my outer wood measurement probably wasn't perfect. So when I had it all assembled, you could see the wood in between some of the tiles. With the tile being super distressed, you wouldn't want to just put one color in there, or it'd be super obvious that you're faking it. So I loosely mixed together some similar colors, and dabbed it in the cracks.
And seriously, when it's hanging on the wall, you cannot tell that I had to fudge it. At all.
For the mirror, I just bought a 12 inch mirror from Michaels (don't forget that you can use a competitors coupon!) and some trim from Home Depot. Measure and cut that wood at a 45ยบ angle. Attach with some glue, paint that bad boy, glue on the mirror. I just used wood glue to attach it to the tile, weighed down overnight with my kettlebell and my medicine ball on the corners.
Don't feel like jacking with the trim and the mirror? I did see a square 13 inch mirror at Walmart for under $10. Grab that and slap that on instead.
And here we are! Seriously, it might have been one of the easiest projects I've ever done.
So, yours truly has made it past the first round of Creating With The Stars! Mine ranked 5th out of 12, which I'm happy with. I won't lose any sleep if I don't win the whole thing, but my goal was to make it past the first round. So woot! Mine was the "Tin Tile Mirror", and I'll be doing a tutorial here shortly.
So now we're down to 9 bloggers, and the week's theme is "Knock Off". I think I've found my perfect project, and with encouragement from my blog star Jamielyn of I Heart Naptime, I'm getting started on it today. I have to admit, it's a little daunting. The project is due Saturday night, so one week after the first was due. But, I didn't want to start on a project if I wasn't advancing. Eek. Time to crank this out!
Make sure you're voting! I'll be sure to post and let you know when and where to vote. We aren't allowed to tell you the project that is ours, so it's not a popularity contest (Whew, no more high school anxiety!). The projects are revealed Monday morning, and voting closes out on Tuesday night. Wish me luck!
Holy. Crap. I woke up this morning, expecting it to just be another day of changing diapers and catching up on Project Runway and Nashville. So there I was, scrolling through facebook, and I see a post that says
"Yay! The contestants and their blog stars have been announced! It was such a hard decision- you guys are all so talented! Did YOU make it?"
So, I click on it, vaguely remembering that I entered my plank wall on a whim, never expecting to actually become a finalist.
And out of 361 entries....
Holy. Crap. That is freaking awesome. The other finalists are some tough cookies, but I'm just honored to be chosen. I Heart Naptime is one of my favorite blogs, so I'm super duper excited to get to know Jamielyn better.
I remember following along with the 2012 contest, and holy cow, I'm super excited.
Each week will have a new theme, and the star will give ideas, suggestions and encouragement. The projects will then shown anonymously, so everyone is on a level playing field, which I love.
Make sure you follow along with the fun!
Am I the only one who's been drooling over all the plank walls that pop up daily on Pinterest? I had plank walls pinned for forever, and a couple of months ago, showed it to hubby, totally expecting him to shoot it down (we don't exactly have the same decorating style. I like awesome stuff, and he likes the exact opposite). But somehow, we both agreed on this idea. Our finished project?
Before I started, I already knew the perfect wall for it. It's in our kitchen, viewable from the living room thanks to a very open floor plan. Most of the walls I saw online were either all white, or all wood tone. I wasn't sure which way to go, so thanks to the magic that is photoshop, I shopped them both up.
First, I tried it with natural planks, but
there wasn't enough personality for me.
Yup, not feeling the white either. Yuck.
So I talked to hubby about doing a mix of boards, almost like we found pieces of wood, each one a different paint/stain, and he agreed it was the personality I was looking for.
There are enough plank tutorials online that I'm not going to walk you through every single step. Cut the wood, work your paint magic, nail it up. But a couple of helpful tips for ya. I got my wood at Home Depot, I believe it was called plywood sheeting. Anyway, it was $11-13 a sheet. Now, I will say to either A. pre-measure and make sure you buy enough wood in the first place, or B. pay attention to what wood you bought the first time so you can buy the same kind the next time. I did not buy enough wood the first time, so when I went back and got one more sheet, it was slightly thinner than my first set. But I rolled with it, and figured if I was going for the "reclaimed wood" look, then having them be different thicknesses wasn't a huge deal. You can kind of see it in this pic, the darker wood from the lower left corner, under the long, natural color plank is slightly thicker. But hey, we're going to roll with it.
My boards were cut at 5 inches, across the 4 foot wide side (the wood I bought was 4x8). Now, it might be up to your Home Depot employee if they'll cut it at 5 inches. Their safety rules say that they can't, but after talking to a few employees, it basically came down to the employee and if they wanted to or not.
I did not use any glue on this, figuring that if we ever got tired of it, or sold the house, I didn't want the wall to be ruined. What I did do is use screws and nails on each corner, and then I did a line of finishing nails where the studs were. Since it's cheaper wood, it did have a bit of a bow to it. No biggie.
If you're totally organized, you could probably lay out all the wood in your garage, figure where each color should be, paint/stain/sand all the boards at one time, and then nail them up on the wall. I do not, however, work like that. I would do one line at a time, figure out what color I'd need next, and then paint/sand/stain/whatever. I did a mix of stained boards, boards left natural, some painted, some painted and sanded. Some of the boards came with some letters stamped on the wood, and yup, I left those on there. Plus, any of the wood that had knots in it I put knot side up. Again, personality and texture, right?
I do have one more thing to do to make this space "done". I bought this light fixture, and just need to have someone install it. Someone, meaning not me, since I want to move it over 6 inches so it's centered over the table, and ya know, don't want to get electrocuted or burn the house down. We're going for an "industrial chic" vibe in the house, so I thought this was perfect.
And what's a good blog post without a photobomb by a certain husband when you're trying to take pics....
Nerd.
Partying at craft-o-maniac.
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