DIY Archives - Erika Dale Interior Design

Juniper’s Big Girl Room

Hello all! I hope everyone is staying safe and well out there… and STAYING HOME! We are living in strange and scary times, but I am trying to enjoy the little bubble of uninterrupted home and family life. Sure, there are days we feel a little stir crazy around here but we are generally homebodies anyway, so we like being home all together. The other silver lining is that we have been spending a lot more time and energy finally giving our house some attention for the first time since we moved in. Since we have no budget at all due to current circumstances, we are working entirely with what we already have to make our space feel more homey and happy.

One of the rooms that has been given very little attention since we moved in is Juniper’s room. While a lot of her stuff worked great in her nursery in our Pasadena apartment, for some reason a lot of it didn’t translate here as well. Or more likely we needed those things for other spots in the house because we came here with 820 square feet worth of stuff to try and fill a 2400 square foot house! We haven’t had the means to do any furniture shopping yet, so a lot of things are filling temporary roles in other rooms.

Remember Juniper’s cute little nursery in Pasadena? Loved that space!

Anyway, I digress. Back to Juniper. She has been going through some major “big girl” milestones lately, the newest of which was potty training (wooo! She did such a great job! If there is one thing quarantine is perfect for it’s potty training!). So when Photowall reached out to me a few weeks back, kindly offering to gift us an accent wall of wallpaper, I knew immediately that I wanted to give Juniper a big girl room makeover to celebrate all of her hard work and big milestones. I have always dreamed of doing a wall mural behind her crib, so I got incredibly excited to start designing! It took me a long time to pick out the mural (designer paralysis is a real thing, guys. When interior designers work on their own spaces, we CANNOT make up our minds. I am so decisive when it comes to clients but not when it comes to our house. Ask my poor husband… he finally made me start hanging a picture on the wall each day just to give me a deadline hahahaha!). I knew I wanted something nature-inspired, illustrated (rather than a photo), and not too childish (so it can grow with her). As soon as I saw the little bunnies at the bottom of this Forest wall mural, I knew it was perfect since Juniper is obsessed with bunnies.

Case & point… her birthday bunny party from last year:

Once I had decided on the wall mural, the rest of the design was easy, mainly because we had no budget and planned to work almost entirely with what we already have! Here was my original idea mood board for the space:

And here is where we started when we moved in:

The “Before”… just super empty!

The wallpaper arrived, and I will admit that I was a bit intimidated at the prospect of installing it, especially as it was not pre-pasted paper. However, it came with really clear instructions and a wallpaper installation kit with all of the tools I needed… plus I watched this super helpful installation video like 100 times! I planned to share a little time lapse video with you of the installation but about 5 minutes before I planned to start (i.e. the paste was already setting up and there was no turning back), I managed to drop my phone in the toilet (uggghhhh!), so it spent the next two days in rice (it lived though!).

So my words will have to suffice haha! It wasn’t too difficult but it also wasn’t a walk in the park. Some things were really easy and straightforward, like the actual pasting, smoothing, etc. What was really tricky was getting the first panel hung level in our 110 year old very un-level house. I had to remove and readjust panels 1-3 three times just to get things going correctly. Ugh! But once that was done, the others were quite easy to line up and install. The only really big issue I had with installation were a couple of the seams at the very top. Since we have an angled ceiling, we had to tape the excess wallpaper to the ceiling because it kept trying to curl and fall down. So it was pulling away from the wall at the top 2 inches or so as I installed the rest of the panels. Once I trimmed the excess, I had to go back and re-paste the top few inches of all panels to get them to stick correctly. Oddly enough, this caused some annoying gaps at the top of some of the seams (how?! The rest of the seam is perfect so this makes no sense to me!). Only one is really visible but it is the one right in the center and on a pure white background so I can’t stop looking at it haha! Pro tip: murals and wallpaper with a lot of pattern hide seams WAY better than areas of solid color. Anyway, it’s not perfect but I am SO proud of the way it turned out!

Once the wallpaper was up (phew!), the rest of the design was simply pulling from things we already had in the house! And so, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

In case anyone was wondering where the bunny ended up! June loves that it is peeking out from between the crib and canopy tent! Not an accident, mind you. Math for the win.

TA-DA! Juniper’s new big girl room! We are all so thrilled with her new magical forest space. As far as the details in the space, I bought the awesome vintage rattan shelf from my neighbor for $2 (!!) in the fall and a couple months later bought the secondhand canopy tent from another neighbor for $5! The canopy had a bunch of hot pink ribbons hanging off of it, and while it was cute, it wasn’t exactly what I was going for. So I removed them and repurposed the greenery garland from Juniper’s first birthday party to hang around the hoop. The mirror was thrifted for $4 but was originally from Target and, in my opinion, really completes the space! I really debated whether to put it up there because I didn’t want to put a hole in the beautiful wallpaper, but I couldn’t resist… and I am so happy I did it! The pillows and throw were all swapped out for ones we already had, most of which were originally from Target, Pier 1 (store closing sale – got a pillow and throw at 95% off or about $4 TOTAL for BOTH!!), or HomeGoods. Finally, we used an extra sofa cushion (since our whole sectional doesn’t fit in our new living room) for the floor cushion under the tent.

The only thing we bought new for this project was the new pink comforter for the bed. Until recently, Junie has been using a baby blanket but she had majorly outgrown it, feet sticking out and all! So we had plans to get her a real comforter anyway and when I found this one for only $20, I knew it was a perfect fit. So even if I include the secondhand/older purchases from the past few months into this budget, we made over this whole space for only $35!!! Insane.

That being said, the real star of the show here is the incredible wall mural, which was generously gifted by Photowall. They are such a cool company, focused on environmental and social responsibility issues related to the production of their products, which includes using natural biodegradable (or recycled) materials where possible, recycling all waste material, and printing to order (rather than stocking) to reduce waste in the first place. Plus, every purchase supports their work to plant 5000 trees every year in the area surrounding Lake Victoria in East Africa. As an environmentalist, this all makes me so happy and proud to support a company making efforts to take care of our Earth and take accountability for their environmental impacts. Plus, their vast catalog of options is GORGEOUS. It’s not my fault that it took me forever to choose haha! On top of their generous gift of our mural, Photowall has also kindly offered a discount code for my readers in case you also want to tackle a quarantine house project! Use code erikadale2020 to get 25% off of your purchase now through May 25, 2020. And definitely get the wallpaper hanging kit… lifesaver. Thank you times a million, Photowall!

I will leave you with a few photos of our big girl enjoying her new room in her Easter dress (also repurposed haha!) on Sunday! She’s so fun and free… right at home in her new wild forest. Have a great week!

Riding her horse with a basket full of bunnies on the back. Typical.

She looks SO big here!

Such a sweetie.

A more accurate number of bunnies and friends in reality!

Love this little blur of a human!

Make It Work: Custom Open Kitchen Storage for Under $100

Happy Friday everyone! I have been meaning to post this project for a while, but the last two weeks have probably been the busiest weeks of the year! No only do I have the usual school (especially chairing styles… it is heating up! More on that later when I get my head above water), work, and life stuff to worry about, but I have also had about 40 string art orders to manage and complete from the catalog launch! Since they take me 1-2 hours each to do (plus three days of painting in prep), that is a lot of “extra” time to find in my week! I just kept reminding myself of sending out that invoice… :) Needless to say, I have finished the rush and am now back to the usual flow of orders, so I may be around more often.

I am finally getting my act together enough to share our first “Make It Work” project! Sadly, this project was completed almost a month ago, but better late than never, right?!

Like I explained, we don’t have much time or money to invest, but we NEED to find a way to make this apartment work better for us. When we asked ourselves, what’s the first thing we would change, the answer was the kitchen. I have mentioned our major lack of storage before and even proposed a cool counter-height table to add more counter space. However, what we really need is storage space, since we continuously acquire new kitchen appliances, devices and ingredients. Since we typically use the kitchen table to do out prep work, the counter space seemed less urgent.

So after a bunch of research for complete solutions under $100 (shelving is expensive! But this was the one place in the house were we were willing to spend a little dough on storage), I ended back at good old faithful: Ikea. I walked out with many shelving pieces in hand to make better use of this area of the kitchen:

KitchenBefore

Five minutes later (SERIOUSLY – the Ivar system is INSANELY easy to assemble. No tools necessary except for the back support brace!), we had a full wall of open shelving in the kitchen! KitchenShelves_WM

I am OBSESSED with it. Not only can we add $4-6 shelves whenever we feel like it, I also love that we were able to customize it so that my school stuff fits right underneath. Oh, and also Bo’s little eating area! :) KitchenShelves2_WM

Thankfully, we already had most of our food and chiles in these jars, so I only had to buy two extra! But like the shelving system, buying more jars as we need them is very inexpensive going forward. GlassJars

One of my favorite parts of the new shelves is the visibility of all of our spices. They used to be on a shelf I could barely reach, let alone see, so I hardly ever got creative. Now we have easy access and (seriously) our food has been better than ever this month! SpiceJars

Thanks to Design Camp, I also had a World Market gift card (woo!) for $10, so I decided to buy this awesome vintage oil container to keep our oil fresh (it likes the dark!) and a new spice shaker for our chipotle powder. OliveOildTin

Also, thanks to all of the new space, we were able to display our new Nebraska shot glasses that we got on our recent trip, as well as a book of my family recipes that my brother gave me one Christmas. NebraskaGlasses

It may seem like a silly thing to be excited about, but I can tell you that it has made an amazing difference in our lives! I already feel a thousand times better in the apartment and love the way it has complemented our cooking process. After a month of living with it, I wouldn’t change a thing, except that I need to find a new place for our “Life Is Good” letters.

I know I have been putting the blog as a low priority, but I really appreciate you sticking with me and riding out this busy time! I will be spending the next hour catching up on other people’s blogs… I MISS YOU GUYS!

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend. We had some lovely guests last weekend (and had a blast!), but we are looking forward to having an Erika & Walker (& Bo) weekend to just relax and spend time together after these busy few weeks!

DIY Heart-Shaped Concrete Planter

As promised, I want to explain in a bit more detail how I made the DIY heart-shaped concrete succulent planter for Walker’s Valentine’s Day gift. While I could have easily gone to the hardware and craft stores for all of the supplies for the project, I chose to simplify my life and buy a “Cast Your Own” planter kit from NativeCast for $10 that included the exact supplies I needed (and the concrete is “green!”).

Photo Source: www.nativecast.com

HeartPlanter1

If you decide to go find the supplies yourself, you will need to find a small bag of concrete mix (good luck on this one… concrete mix is usually sold in large bags of 50 lbs. or more! Keep your eyes peeled for a smaller “patching” kit) and a cardboard mold (craft stores sell cardboard craft boxes like the one pictured above in many shapes/sizes). Thankfully, my kit included just the right amount of concrete mix for my little planter so I didn’t have to hunt it down. HeartPlanter2

Start by wetting the cardboard box mold to ensure that you will be able separate the mold from the concrete after it dries. Then, following the instructions on your concrete mix packaging, add the appropriate amount of water to the mix so that you get a pliable paste. HeartPlanter3 HeartPlanter4

My kit came with a little wooden spreading tool but you can use a disposable spoon or something similar to spread the concrete along the inside of the cardboard mold, adding a drop or two of water to the mix if it becomes too dry. HeartPlanter5

Once all of the concrete has been spread out in the mold, use the spoon to smooth out all of the edges and make a small hole at the bottom for drainage. Set aside your project so that the concrete can dry according to the directions (mine took 12 hours but I left it for 24 hours to be sure). HeartPlanter6

Once the concrete has dried, tear or cut the cardboard mold away from the concrete. If any of the cardboard sticks, use a wet cloth to soak away the remaining pieces. HeartPlanter8 HeartPlanter7

Your planter is done! How easy was that!? I added soil and succulents to my heart-shaped planter before giving it to my valentine. I love the rustic look and the handmade feel of the concrete planter. We may have to order a few more kits and make a bunch of these for our backyard! :) HeartPlanter9_new HeartPlanter10 HeartPlanter2