Our (Mostly) Complete Foster Room and Office Combo

We are so close to being licensed, I can taste it. We have both been interviewed and now we just need to pass the home inspection, where our licensor makes sure that we have covers on our outlets, a non-slip thingy in our tub, and all of our sharp things are out of reach, haha. Anywho, our second bedroom is smallish, and is still housing our home office, but I think we did a decent job of setting everything up. Here are some pictures! We're still putting finishing touches on it, so don't judge too hard :)

View into our foster room from the hallway.

These curtains hide Brian's turntables and records. The curtain is just there for aesthetic reasons :) We realize a curtain won't keep curious kids out of it haha.

Here's a close-up of the toy boxes. We will be moving these as they're just awkwardly chilling in front of the curtain right now. Also, I bet it just looks like we threw a piece of white printer paper on the top. Nope. My awesome husband had some Ebay bucks and used it for sticker paper to make stickers for our foster friends :)

Here's the crib/toddler bed. It's currently a toddler bed and oh man, it's so little and cute! You can see the crib railing chilling behind the door. ALSO THE OWL BACKPACK. I'm in love.

We have a dresser with 5 outfits and 3 pairs of jammies for each gender, newborn to 5T :)

Lots of diapers, wipes, socks, and teensy undies.

This was the first thing I painted. I want all of my foster kids to know this!

Here's the project I made with the cork trivets, along with a banner along the top of the closet.

This is a wall I'm going to hang string and clothespins to create an "art wall" leading into the bedroom. I love to color so I guess if my foster kids don't like to, I'll just hang up my own stuff there. No one will know...I can't color in the lines anyway...

So that's about it, folks. It's a small room but I hope it will be functional and awesome for our foster kids. As long as they know they're safe, I think they'll be happy and not mind sharing space with a desk :)

Can't wait to tuck in a little one in this room!

IKEA Hack - Trivets to Wall Decorations

As I recently blogged, Brian and I are in the process of becoming foster parents. Part of this process is turning our office into a dual purpose office/nursery/toddler-friendly room. I'm trying to keep all decorations gender neutral, and nothing too babyish because we adults will still be using it too! I'm also looking at affordable options since we already have to buy stuff like a fire extinguisher, lock box (for our medication), etc. etc.! Haha.

I saw a post in Pinterest a while back that inspired this project. Here's what you'll need:

3-pack IKEA cork trivets ($2.99)

1/2 yard total of fabric 

Staple Gun (shortish staples - the cork isn't too thick)

Scissors

I got half a yard of the bicycle print and the red was about a yard from the remnant bin so that was saweet. Here's a close up of the bike one:

The theme colors I have for the room are teal and red so this was perfect. Cute but not all princesses and lollipops :)

The basic concept is to cut a chuck of fabric leaving some extra around the edges because you're going to staple it to the back. Admire my incredible cutting skills:

Yeah, I can't cut to save my life, but luckily that doesn't matter for this project, ha.

It helps to cut slits in the fabric to make it easier to wrap around. Like this:

Go around the entire circle until all the fabric is stapled. At this point, you can trim some of the excess fabric to make it lie flatter against the wall.

Repeat with all three. I decided to use alternating fabric in the middle but it looked too plain so I cut a bike out of leftover bicycle fabric. Here's the finished product:

I will be hanging these on the wall next to the window. I think they turned out pretty cute, and with the 40% off coupons for Joann, the total cost of this project was under $10!

Grout Renew, I Love You

Before we bought our condo, everything was re-done...new paint, ceramic tile floors, carpet, etc. Whoever did the entry/kitchen tile did not seal the grout. Ugh. It's what my dad calls "Mickey Mousing" AKA cutting corners. So, after a year and a half or so in our condo, the grout was icky. Observe:

Gross, right?! No amount of bleach or skin-dissolving grout cleaner would fix it. Sigh. I decided to roll up my sleeves and re-grout my kitchen floor. While looking online for tutorials, I found a link to a blog that recommended this magic stuffs:

(Insert chorus of angels singing)

I picked up this guy ($10.97) and a grout sponge ($1.97) at home depot, and grabbed a toothbrush from QFC ($1) to help apply it.

Here's what my floor looked like before (yucky):

So, I put on my paintin' clothes (read: Old Navy PJs and an SU t-shirt. Hot.) and got down to business. First you put a leetle dollop on the grout.

 Then use the toothbrush to work it into the grout and spread it out.

Then, take your sponge (or a washcloth...I actually thought the washcloth worked better and switched to it halfway through!) and wipe the paint off of the tile. Work in a circular motion and wipe gently, so you don't pull the paint out of the grout. I smudged up a decent amount of paint but the nice thing is, you can just glob a little more on and cover it up :)

Here's what the difference was:

(Insert more angels singing)

I was so excited. I did my entire floor this way in about two hours. WAY faster than grouting and sealing! This stuff has sealer built in. And it dries really fast. It's important to wipe paint off the tile as you go, but know that it will scrape off fairly easily if it dries a little :) Here's proof it dries really fast...this is about five minutes after application and there no paint rubbed off on him:

Oh hai, am I in your way? Yes, Watson...you are. 

With re-grouting, you have to wait like 24 hours until you can walk on it. I can't live without my kitchen for two hours so this was much better. Anywho, here's the after:

So white, right?! And yes, a box of wine has appeared since I started the project. Hey, it's tedious! :)

Here's the before and after side by side:

aaaaand a close up:

I only used about an ounce or two from the eight-ounce bottle so there is plenty left in the event I need to touch it up. Basically this product is incredible. Some people (cough - my dad) would say this is cheating. Well, this is what I have to say to those people:

And to close this blog, I leave you with another picture of my dog Watson, clearly unaware he's suuuuuper in my way...

Re-Upholstering a Chair...Cushion

Ha, bet you thought when you first saw the title I was actually going to re-do an entire wingback chair or something. If only I was that talented/patient. Nope, just a simple chair cushion but I thought I'd share my process :)

I dropped some stuff off at Goodwill today (summer cleaning yay!) and wandered inside. I saw this sad lonely kitchen chair all by itself. Apparently someone bought its brothers and sisters but left it behind :(

I thought it was cute but the fabric was so-so. Just your generic brown stuff. THEN I saw the price:

Guess what color tag was 50% off this weekend?! Green! I figured for $4 I could go to Joanne and get some fabric I liked. So I used my short arms to drag it off the top shelf and WHAM another light bulb. Goodwill also has really cool fabric, so I dragged my prize over to the linen section. I found this vintage curtain and nabbed it up:

It has people with baskets on their head planting wheat...or something? Who knows. I like it. Okay so now on to how I did the chair.

What you need:

Chair (duh)

Fabric (also duh?)

Staple gun and staples 

Scissors

Some sense of spacial skills (I have none, but they are helpful)

First I threw the curtain in the wash, in hot water, with 2x the detergent I would use for a full load. Yeah, I don't like germs.

I then screwed the seat off of the chair. I actually didn't know if it would work but I figured I'd try and see what happened. I won!

Then I took the chair pieces outside and disinfected them (I know, I know). This step may be skipped :)

When the fabric was dry I placed the cushion in the middle and basically began to staple.

Here's where I made my first mistake. Because I have no spacial reasoning, I didn't realize the cushion was not a perfect square. Whoops. So I got some wrinkles when I stapled up the third side, like this:

I have no real advice or magic solution. I know, I suck. Basically just mess around with it until it is smooth baha. It's what my dad calls "MacGoobering" (from MacGiver). I experimented with different ways to fold the corner until I was wrinkle-free. I got all four corners stapled and the chair cushion looked smooth.

Here's my second (and most infuriating) mistake. There were holes in the wood under the cushion for the screws to go into...which were now under like 4 layers of fabric. Whoops. Time to MacGoober again. Dad would be so proud. I basically hacked into the fabric with a razor blade till i found the holes. After I finally found all 4 I stapled a clean piece of fabric to cover up my massacre.

The screw holes are still accessible and the bottom looks (slightly) better than before.

Then I screwed the cushion back onto the chair and I was done! Super easy. I know the pictures don't look different but I promise the fabric is much nicer. The pattern and texture add character to the chair and it will be nice to have an extra place for guests to sit!

So, for the small price of $8 (around $20 if you have to buy a staple gun) you too can have a cute chair covered with fabric of your choice :) Hehe.