diy | Hicks House

I don’t know about you, but one of my personal pet-peeves whenever I spend the night somewhere is not having somewhere close to the bed to put my phone. Guest rooms and hotel rooms are harder to sleep in as it is for the simple fact that it’s not your room. Having my phone which I use as both a clock (to see what time it is in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep) and an alarm clock (to let me know when it’s socially acceptable to leave the room). Whether everyone is like this or not, everyone should have the opportunity to do this when they stay at The Hicks House. That’s why we were on the hunt for not one but two end tables.

They had to be white for one to match the dresser we spray painted, they had to look nice, and they had to be cheap. This is the guest room after all, they won’t have the everyday wear and tear that the dressers go through in our room.

This hunt took a lot longer than I would like to admit. I feel like when I was looking for dark wood furniture over the last few years, everything in the stores was white… now that I wanted white everything was dark. Uggghhh. Finally we found something we liked at Target.com it was also on sale score so we ordered it.

Arrived!

The fact that it came Ikea style was ok – I mean it was expected after all and it was cheap. It went together pretty quickly too.

It went together pretty quick

Ken had both put together in about an hour. Then we added some fab lamps we also found at Target – in the store though. The shades are a bit too big, but they were clearance $5 so we made the executive decision that they looked just fine. We had a perfectly perfect lamp that matched bedspread it had the same pattern only in the reverse white on blue instead of blue on white. The problem was that I only got one, and despite a statewide hunt of varying HomeGoods I could not find another.

But these look pretty neat too.

shot of them both

Slowly coming along.

getting closer to the inspiration room…

Some throw pillows for the bed, some paint and art on the wall and some curtains and this room will be the perfect home away from home. But not too perfect – I love my guests but they can’t live here. 🙂

If you’ve been following along with the blog (if you haven’t then shame on you!) you’ve read about the The Living Room Plan, and The Living Room Becoming Livable. As its starting to take shape we we’re talking about what kind of art should go above the fireplace. The builder wired for the cable and TV to go there but we had decided to move the wiring to the adjacent family room which was much bigger.

We both really wanted something abstract and cool. I saw this painting on Joss and Main and we fell in love. With everything but the price and the verticalness of it.

Inspiration Painting

It was just so cool all the random shades of color. But for over $100 plus shipping and no returns I wasn’t sure. And before I could decide how unsure I was the sale was over and it was gone forever. But how hard could it really be? I mean the painting isn’t really of anything so how can you mess it up? So I measured the space above the fireplace, headed to Joann with a 40% single item coupon and bought a huge canvas.

I set up a small folding table in the craft room and covered with some scrap paper to protect it, broke out a 2-inch paint brush and some .50 tubes of acrylic paint (most of which I had at home left over from high school – it doesn’t go bad right?) and got to work. Using the inspiration painting – propped up on the iPad – as a guide I started painting. The great thing about the abstractness of it was the ability to simply paint over areas if I didn’t like the way they looked. The bottom of my canvas has much more paint on it because of this, it was coming out to dark so several extra coats were added to get the effect I wanted. Due to less use of paint on the top you can see brush strokes where I went back and forth real quickly but I kind of like the way it looks.

here’s the finished product

I actually like it better than the original inspiration. It looks much better in our space. I had to place it up on the mantle to admire it.

The statue on the left of the painting we fell in love with while out running errands one day, It helped jump start the painting process and inspired the color choices. The vases were a gift from my Aunt’s who surprisingly had not seen either the statue or the painting, but they look like they were custom chosen for that spot.

actually hung!

We loved it so much we actually hung it, despite not having paint on the walls yet. Ignore those pillows they came with the sofa and were so over-sized for both the sofa and the chairs they will be finding another home. I’m thinking getting a new cover and going on the Guest Bed.