Uh, yea that’ll work. Except, yanno, BIGGER.

I looked around and priced large canvases – but in the size I wanted, at least 5′x5′, we were looking at spending at least $300. Yea, no. So I dug around a little more – lightbulb, ding ding! You can stretch your own canvases with stretchers and linen canvas, but even then you were looking at spending at least $120 on a roll of canvas. I don’t want a pretty painting on it, I just want a modern blank canvas for the wall!

That’s when I thought back to painting the dining room a couple weekends ago – the canvas I used to cover the floor is only about $10-$20 at Home Depot and are at least 5′ wide! Add in the stretchers for $7 a pop and we’re talking under $40! Ding ding we have a winner! I already own a staple gun and staples, it’s just time to decide if we should do it now or later. I’m torn.. I really want to try it out now, but we don’t have a place to put it. It would just be good to know if it will turn out right. What do you think?

This is what we started with:

So two weeks ago I decided to tackle the dark, heavy bookcase which would, in the end, help lighten the room up a bit. First thing’s first, remove all the CRAP from the bookcase. Make sure you give it a good wipedown with a damp rag, just to get the dust off. Don’t use dusting spray or any chemicals, as it might make the primer not stick as well.

After I taped off the doors, I pulled out the supplies I needed. Mine included some paint brushes (both bristle and sponge), some mini rollers, a drop cloth for the floor (since I was doing it inside, but helpful none-the-less), my primer and my paint. Oh, and gloves! Since the primer is oil based, it will be a pain to get off your hands, so just grab some latex gloves when you pick up your supplies!

By now you should have your bookcase lying down and ready to paint. Luckily the boyfriend had some cinder blocks in the back yard, so I used those to prop the bookcase up so I could get all around it without worrying about getting the floor.

Then it’s time to start priming!! I think I did 2 coats of primer and a third for touch ups. Mine wasn’t mixed very well — had I known when I purchased it, I would have had the paint counter shake it up for me. It’s a good time to warn about the smell and fumes. I don’t recommend doing this inside if you don’t have to. I was desperate to get it done (and stubborn!) so I went through with it — but it stinks to high heaven, and I had to take a couple breaks due to lightheaded-ness. That’ll bode well for future-me!

The primer didn’t stick as well as I would have liked, and that could have been due to the humidity or my lack of patience in letting it cure long enough. Regardless, the end result turned out decent enough.

Let me tell you — those doors were a pain! I almost said screw it, because they are double sided and the paint and primer kept seeping into the holes and just filling it up. Thank goodness for screwdrivers to clean them out later! (Invest in a powerdrill, kiddies!)

So I had 5 shelves and 2 doors to prime and paint. Hm.. How’d I do it? Well, initially, like this:

Books come in handy, yanno! ;) After that, I just lined them all up on a cardboard box on top of our dining chairs.

Also, make sure to sand between coats! It’ll cut down on the bumps and brush strokes you’ll have in the end.

I’d suggest giving at least 30 minutes between primer coats, an hour before painting and a half hour between paint coats. I’m sure elsewhere you’ll hear wait longer, but, well, I’m impatient, and that timing seemed to work out just fine for me.

In the process of redoing the bookcase I decided I wanted it farther away from the window, so it didn’t crowd that area as much. That really helped! Later this week I’ll show you our living room as it is today.

From far away it looks like a white bookcase, but up close you can see that it was painted, especially around the doors where some of the paint peeled off when I removed the tape.

But it’s made better by the sweet knobs the boyfriend spotted at Ikea in the as-is section for 2 bucks!

So what do you think? Much better, right? I would have loved to purchase a new bookcase, probably something like the CB2 kickstand bookcase, but this is much more economical — and we have a couch to save up for!!

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Here is a breakdown of my costs:

Primer: $10 for a quart — it was just enough, so if you have a bigger piece, get two quarts!

Paint: Already had on hand.

Brushes/rollers/sponges: $8

Paint trays: $2

Gloves: On hand already.

Painter’s tape: On hand already.

So for about twenty bucks, I repainted this bookcase, gave it a new look and helped lighten up our dark living room in one weekend! Hoozah! Stay tuned for an overall shot of the room to see how much it helped me lighten up the space!

I’m still styling the bookcase, but I wanted to share some teaser photos with you! It was a long, arduous process, but Billy is painted! I’m not sure how well it’ll hold, as I noticed some chipping while I was putting things back together, but the shelves are in and the books are on, and that’s the hard part! I should have a more thorough run down of my process later this week!

(We picked up the metal typeset characters at the DC Big Flea this past weekend — only $4!)

He is way too dark! In my old apartment he worked, but now that we have a lighter, airier feel to the space (not yet, that is), I want something lighter! So this weekend, I plan to tackle the bookcase with some primer, some paint, and git-r-done! I was inspired, and plan to follow Centsational Girl’s post on painting laminate furniture.

So Billy, get ready to meet your match! (Wish me luck, DC has been suffering some serious humidity so this’ll be an indoor project..)

The landlord, when she lived there, must have planted some ivy for ground cover, which would have been all well and good, had it not turned into this:

Completely overgrown! To make matters worse, every time I walked up the front steps to the door I would get whacked in the face with a cobweb from the over grown bushes. Not to mention the little bugs that would nip at my arms and legs as I fumbled to get in the house! Needless to say, after a couple weeks, I was sick of being bitten and entering the house with a mouth-full of spider-web!

So Friday night, the boyfriend and I hustled over to Lowe’s to stock up on things we’d need to get the job done! I actually got out of work a couple hours early that day and made one of my tasks to trim the hedges before we got started with the rest of the work Saturday morning. Once stocked up at Lowe’s, we came home and got to bed to get an early start! Little did I know that the boyfriend’s definition of early start was to get out there at 7am, demolishing the overgrown ivy and various ground cover.

After a cup of coffee to wake me up, I suited up in long-sleeves and pants (don’t want all those misplaced bugs coming after our sweet skin!) to help tackle the task of taking the front yard back from all the buggies! A few hours later we were looking much better! (Well, the yard was at any rate, we definitely weren’t going to win any beauty pageants after all that labor!)

Want to see what we ended up with? Well, here you go!

Look, Ma! No weeds! Boy, does that ivy root itself in there! I’m sure we’ll be picking it out weekly for a while, the only way we would’ve gotten all the weeds out would have been to till the yard, and well, I don’t want to buy a till!

We bought a new hose, since the old one burst apart when I turned it on (which equals me, soaked, ugh), laid some pavers down to prevent the drip-off from creating a muddy pit, and purchased four bags of black mulch to really finish it off! Sadly, those hideous scalloped edgers were already in place, and since it’s just a rental, I’m not going out of my way to purchase new ones!

We may end up planting some flowers, but for now, it’s a low maintenance solution to our front yard. 5 hours of work, 4 bags of yard-waste, and less than $75 later, we have a happy yard!

We also managed to get a lot of our small stuff in this weekend, but with all the dressers and bookcases and everything still at our apartments, we just have boxes lying around.

Silly me packed away my camera cord, so you’ll have to imagine that the dark iPhone photos you are about to see are actually a lot lighter. To recap, this is the old living room and master bedroom:

Pretty plain and boring huh? Personally I think the white makes the space look extremely dingy. But with our new colors, the space has more dimension and warmth.

Sadly the lighting is not very good. These were taken late in the day, and right after a thunderstorm, so it’s very dark. But we’re making progress! And it will all come together very quickly!

Time to get back to packing and cleaning. Such is the life of a perpetual mover!

Under the yellow blanket… see it? Yep! That’s right! I repainted the Bertoia chairs! You may remember them looking more like this:

Well, sans the kitteh. But she makes the photo better, because those chairs, as much as I loved the lines, were gross.  See this, gross:

See those legs?!

So a few weeks ago, after thinking about the color I wanted them for quite some time, I decided to paint them a basic, neutral and oh so graphic BLACK. I scrubbed them good and clean, managed to get the 30 year, rusted bolts undone and went to town on them with my favorite tool: spray paint.

From drab to fab in a few hours, I now have two sleek and sexy chairs that resemble art (to me) rather than junk.

Because we’ll be moving into a home with a lack of carpet downstairs (fine by me!), I’ve since put some felt glides on the bottoms of them to protect our upcoming floors from scratches. Next on the list will be to pick up some seat cushions for them in matching black so that they are actually comfortable to sit on, and don’t require a blanket to hide those gorgeous lines!

I’m sure they would have looked wonderful in a repainted white, but after seeing the grime and general grossness of the white, I wanted to go in a whole new direction. Other colors I considered were orange, green and yellow. What color would you have picked? Something to match your decor, or something more timeless like grey, black or white?

Before you say anything, look at those lines. She’s real wood, baby — from the 1950′s. One owner. Cigarette burns, water marks, smoke residue and marker swirls — but she is a beaut. I promise. Because right now, she’s sitting in the boyfriend’s garage with 3 hours of sanding, 2 coats of stain and the first coat of polyurethane behind her, and later this week, she will be debuting in my apartment, taking center stage. I have been staring at the gorgeous walnut that is under those 50 years of grime, and I gotta be honest ladies and gentlemen, I love her. And once you see the finished product, I hope you will too.

With this group of apps, you’ll be on your way to finishing all those tasks, from getting your paint color just right with that fabulous pillow, to trying to assemble your cords behind your dark entertainment stand with flashlight assistance!

Here are some of my favorites…

iHandy Carpenter
$1.99

This app boasts five different tools, including a plumb bob for verifying the verticality of lines and walls; a surface level for leveling flat surfaces; a bubble level, just like the ones you are used to seeing in toolkits; a steel protractor for measuring angles; and a steel ruler for measuring in both inches and centimeters.

The reviews show 4.5 stars, which is pretty good, as most people are very particular about their apps — especially when they have to pay for them!

ColorSnap
Free

ColorSnap is a color-matching app that allows you to quickly capture colors from your surroundings and match them to Sherwin Williams paint colors. So whether you have a pillow that you just bought that you want to match paint to, or you are out and are unsure if the colors in a piece will match your decor at home, this app can help!

You can browse your exsisting photo library or snap a new photo. Move with your finger around the image to find the perfect color and ColorSnap will not only find a similarly matching Sherwin Williams paint color, it will also offer a coordinating palette!

It has received 3 stars, with the complaints being more aesthetic and wanting more features than about the app itself.

Flashlight
$.99

This one is both silly and functional. I can list several occasions over the last few weeks where I would have liked this. I mean, how many times have you tried using your cellphone as a flashlight? (Especially if you are under a cubicle, behind a tower trying to connect something to the back of it…) Sure your iPhone or iTouch would work okay, but with this app you can have several different options, including the super helpful all white screen which will give you the most light for your buck. (Actually, only .99 cents — way to save that penny!)

The current version is rated at a 3 star, and at only .99 cents, you will get your money’s worth, especially when you really need that light!

Things
$9.99

I know, I know — I saved the most expensive for last. But this app is highly rated around the web, including the Apple Store itself, Macworld.com and it’s even received the MacLife Editor’s Choice Award with five stars! It comes in multiple languages, including English, German, French, Japanese and a couple more. This app will allow you to track all of those honey-do projects around the house. You can even sync it with the desktop version of Things to keep track no matter where you are!

You can create simple tasks like ‘hang headboard’ or whole projects that include multiple tasks that require multiple steps. The addition of notes and a due date to help to keep you on track to the finish line.

It is a hefty price to pay for a To-Do list, but from the sounds of the reviews, it’s well worth the money you spend on it!

So, have you found any apps for your iPhone or iTouch, or even for your computer, that you have found absolutely amazing? I’d love to hear!

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While I find it silly to have to say this, I just want to clarify that I am in no way paid to write about any of these apps. In fact, I do not have any of them on my iPhone — I am simply sharing a resource I found, and based on the reviews am writing about them. Once again, you can view the full list of apps in the set here, on iTunes.

Once I had the bookcase completely together and secured to the wall (don’t need it falling on kitty during the day!), I cut my fabric to the correct dimensions. This included 2.5″ extra on each end for the wrap around for the dowels. Once I cut my fabric, I broke out the drill and placed the holes for the eye-hooks.

The hooks I used with 5/8″ hooks that were just big enough to allow for a dowel to slide through. I did not want them too big because I was afraid the screw would go too far into the wood of the door and either show through the other side or crack the wood. I picked these up in the ‘screw’ department at Home Deport for only a couple dollars.

Because the shelves on the bookcase hit about an inch into the door when it’s closed, I didn’t want the dowels or the hooks to get in the way of it closing properly. Thus, I decided to place them about 1/2″ to the side of the corners of the glass. Once I finished, I realized I could have gotten away with placing them about an inch down, so you can’t see the final gather of the fabric through the glass. Oh well, lesson learned!

After drilling all eight holes (four on each door), I moved on to the fabric I had cut at the beginning. Ikea offers a product that I know you can get at any craft or fabric store, but also comes with curtains and is sold over in their textile department as well, that allows you to just fold and heat to create a seam. So the boyfriend had some from his curtains that he let me use…

All you have to do is cut it to size, then iron the fabric to create a hem, place the mesh and iron over it.

Once you do this, you should have a nice strong seam. I found that it takes a couple heat-and-cool runs to ensure that it will stick, so have a little patience. :)

After you finish all of the loops, run the rod through the fabric and hook them in place on the bookcase doors. I tend to be an eyeballer when it comes to measurements, so mine where a little tricky and were very taught, but I am faithful that they will stay secure. Oh! The little dowels? I just picked those up at the hardware store as well, where you can cut your own size. I needed two dowels, which were like 60-80 cents a piece and just cut them myself. (Note: you will get looks if you are a female with a saw in hand, a large purse and flip flops on, just FYI. ;)

You’ll notice I left my edges raw. Because I am not going to see the edges except when I open the door to get something, I was not worried about the edges being raw. I also did not have fabric shears, they would have been better than the office scissors I used, but regardless, the final product was not effected by the rough edges or the cheap scissors.

Once the panels were in place, I attached the doors and walah!

A few items on the shelves above, and you have a finished product!

It adds a nice little pop of pattern and whimsy to the space. And because the rods are removable, I can change the fabric out whenever I want to! As you can see from the photos, I change my mind a lot (the layout of things on the shelves) so it’s a super sweet bonus to have the panels removable.

And yes, there are a lot of hidden items in the cabinet. Files, weights, external harddrives — there’s a reason I wanted hidden storage!

Hope I’ve inspired you, what sort of DIY projects do you have on your plate?