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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to Work I Go!

Yesterday was an incredibly busy day in our house! For whatever reason I had mounds of energy and decided to get into as many projects as I could. My mom is coming in less than two weeks and I have several things I would like to get done before she gets here - it makes for a good goal day! So, the first thing I did was pull out the power drill and hang new hooks and a clock in the kitchen. Not so hard of a thing, but we have virtually nothing hung in the house right now since we have been painting and I'm anxious to see things look more "homey." Plus, I'm really starting to like using the power drill. :)



Next, I painted the window in our music room. When we moved in, there were long sliding blinds in there - we have since purchased curtains from IKEA to hang. Jason took down the blinds over the weekend and before we hang the new curtains I decided to go ahead and paint while it was all clear. I also had to remove some of the hardware that held up previous shades (no go with the power drill for those, I had to put some muscle into it with a regular flat-head screwdriver). I will have to do another coat before we hang the curtains and then I will post a picture.

Next, I decided to put a coat of paint on Eden's new dresser (hopefully the last coat!). More on that later - I will have a post to show the befores and afters of that project soon!



My last project of the day was to frost the sidelights by our front door. This was a long process. I first got the idea from pinterest, to use contact paper with a pattern cut out to give the panes a frosted effect without having to paint them. Turns out, Kernersville doesn't know what contact paper is, so I ended up buying the frosted paint for windows. I decided to make my own stencil from a design I also saw on pinterest, so Sunday night as most of the country watched the super bowl, I was cutting out the pattern. I emailed the design to my father-in-law who shrunk it down a bit to fit the window panes, and printed it out for me to trace and cut out (about 20 times, haha). After cutting out the pattern, we realized I should have made a border to make the lines look more even and also to give the pattern something to grab onto while taped to the window for spraying, so I cut some strips of paper to make a border around the design. Here is the final stencil I came out with:




I taped up the windows and surrounding door with newspaper to keep it from getting sprayed and got to it.




My first pane was a sore disappointment. I like really clean lines, and this looked a bit blurred. I figure the problem was that my stencil was out of a regular sheet of paper instead of something thick like card stock. The spray went through or around the thin paper and blurred the lines a bit. I decided to forget the pattern and just frost the windows for now to have some privacy and I could re-do them later with a stencil. As I sprayed over the pattern, I noticed you could still see a hint of the design. I kinda liked it! So I decided to go ahead and use the stencil on each pane, and if it was blurry it wouldn't matter because I would be frosting over it anyway and just needed the main idea to show through. As I got to the middle pane on one side, somehow the stencil miraculously held up the clean lines. Then I got another idea - what if I left the middle pane on each side with just the stencil frosted, and the top and bottom panes frosted completely with the stencil showing through? Yippee, I think it's gonna work! I did one side and really liked it. After finishing both sides, I liked it even more. It worked great because there was a lot of privacy, but if we really needed to see who is at the front door there is enough space to see through the middle pane (right at eye level) since it isn't entirely frosted over. So my mishap turned into something I like even better than my original idea and plan.

I have found it is really hard to photograph and capture what it looks like, but this gives you an idea. Although the top and bottom panes look uneven in their coverage, it is just the way the light is hitting. Guess you will all simply have to come and visit and see it in person! :D




3 comments:

  1. ok i want to do this! do you think this process would work on a large window? i have a big window above the jacuzzi tub in my bathroom and i don't want to have blinds hung because they are too hard to reach for cleaning but i'd rather not have the window just open - it's on the second story but i still don't want any peepers, ya know?? i just wonder if this would work?! what do you think?

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    1. Oh yeah, it would totally work! It might be a bit of a pain since you will probably have to move the stencil and make sure it all is lined up correctly and cover the parts you aren't spraying, etc. You might even be able to find a larger stencil that would take up more of the window and you wouldn't have to move it so many times. I've also seen a big design in the middle, with a smaller pattern around it (like a large diamond in the middle and little diamonds surrounding it). I would go to AC Moore or Michaels and see if you could find a stencil you like - SO much easier than trying to make your own!

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  2. Good to know, thank you! It is amazing the things available if you know where to look. :D

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