Tuesday Link Party #24

Welcome to If It's Not Baroque Tuesday link Party.  Don't you think my party needs a name.  I know a lot of bloggers that have link parties name them.  I think mine needs some pizzazz.  I would love it if you guys would give me your opinion.  I am open for suggestions.  So let me know.

In case you missed it, this is what I have been up to since the last party.

I went over my house painting debacle and showed how we plan to fix it.

I also showed off the Tiny Entry in our house.

Now let's party!

Some party rules:

*Please follow If It's Not Baroque via Google Friend Connect, Email, or Blog Lovin. 

*Please link to a specific post not just your blog
(Anything goes - home decor, recipes, crafts, etc. that were made by you)

*Link up as many projects as you want, old or new.  As long as you haven't linked it here before.

*Please do not link up giveaways, Etsy shops or other link parties.

*Please, please, please put a link back to my blog.  I am helping you get more exposure, please help me get some exposure. 

(use the button above or a text link)

*Please visit some of the other links 

Every week, I will pick a few of the links that I like the most and will feature them the day before the next party.

Link Party #23 Features

It is link party features time again.  My favorite day of the week.  The day that I can show off what all of you are working on.  Last week was yet another great link party.  I guess I have the outdoors on my mind because a lot of my favorites were outdoor related.

Here they are:    

Yellow Patio Table by Something Is Done

New Fence by Little Bitty Damn Houze

Chevron Flag by Coley's Corner

Master Bedroom Reveal by Lilikoi Joy

Lilly Pulitzer Inspired Wreath by Rain on a Tin Roof

If you have been featured, please grab my button. (You can find the button code in the tab above).

I will be pinning the features on my Pinterest page as well.

Thank you to everyone who linked up.  I hope you will come back tomorrow for another link party.

Welcome to the Fun House ~The Tiny Entry Reveal

While I was trying to figure out what to do about our siding debacle, I did manage to finish our tiny entry way.  I should mention that it is an extremely small area (maybe 3x3 feet) and there wasn't a lot of options for what I could do to that space.  But, I spruced it up the best that I could.

Here is what it looked like before:

And here it is now.

I painted the front door red, the walls and ceiling a bright white and all the trim gloss black.  I also stenciled one wall to add some impact.  I used the Hollywood Squares stencil by Royal Design Studio.

When you walk in the house from the outside, you are greeted with this photo booth poster.  I wanted visitors to immediately realize that our house is a fun place to be.  

  
I scanned a photo booth photo that we had taken at an amusement park a few years ago and had my mom (who works at a local photography studio) print this onto a sticky back poster (like a fat head).  It is stuck directly onto this door that leads to our basement.

Obviously, there isn't any room for furniture.  That meant that I had to be creative with what I could do to make this area function as an entry.  In the before shot, you can see that the previous owner had added several hooks onto the wall.  That was fine, but it wasn't very pretty.  I decided to use that concept, but jazz it up.  So, I went to Hobby Lobby and found 6 different knobs.  I painted 3 red and used my sharpie technique on the other 3.

Now guests can hang their coats on something a little bit more fun.  

I store an umbrella and my "work" bag in this space.

I decided to make the spoon sunburst mirror because the entry is right beside the kitchen.  I thought it would be appropriate to tie the two rooms together.  It was really easy to make.  I followed the tutorial by Blue Cedar Lane.  I love the pop of red against the black and white stencil wall.  

It was my husband's idea to add the Kristaller Chandelier from Ikea.  It has been sitting in our garage for months and I didn't really know what I was going to do with it.  There was no lighting in this area at all and it really made a difference.  Isn't my husband the best.  Well, I think so any ways.   

I painted the ceramic tile floor black and I will share how I did that in a future post.  I would have liked to add a small rug, but there just isn't any clearance under the door.  Believe me, I tried.

Well, that is it.  Not much to see.  But it does make a difference in our house.  Because it is the first thing people see when they come in our house, it was really important to cross that off the list.

So what do you think?  Just another crazy room in the fun house.  If you like this room, you should check out the rest of my crazy house.  Chevron Kitchen, Baroque Mudroom, and the Music Inspired Home Office.    

Have a nice weekend.  I'll be back on Monday.

I'm linking up to these link parties: Twigg Studios, Suburbs Mama, A Lived in Home, I Heart Naptime, Nifty Thrifty Things, Flamingo Toes, DIY Showoff, It's So Very Cheri, I Should Be Mopping The Floor, Sew Can Do, Homemaker on a Dime, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, Alderberry Hill, Lines Across, DIY Home Sweet Home, Say Not Sweet Anne, By Stephanie Lynn, Watch Out Martha, Making the World Cuter, Between Naps on the Porch, Craft-o-maniac, Claire Justine oxox, Skip to My Lou, Creating my way to Success, Serendipity and Spice, Rain on a Tin Roof, Our Delightful Home, The Dedicated House, A Stroll Thru Life, Todays Creative, Taylor Made, Homework, Not Just a Housewife, A Diamond in the Stuff, VMG206, A Bowl Full of Lemons, House on the Way, Hickory Trail, Hope Studios, The Winthrop Chronicles, Coastal Charm, Elizabeth and Co, Sugar Bee Crafts, Sarah Lynn's Sweets, New Nostalgia, Funky Polkadot Giraffe, A to Z Celebrations, No Minimalists Here, A Creative Princess, Seven Alive, Mom on Timeout, Live Laugh Rowe, What's Cooking Love, The Shabby Creek Cottage, A Delightsome Life, I Gotta Create, Two Yellow Birds Decor, The Crafty Blog Stalker, All Things with Purpose, House of Hepworths,                     

House Painting Debacle

Today, I planned on showing the progress we have made on painting our house.  Instead, I am going to tell you about the debacle that painting the house has turned into.

Let me remind you what our house looked like a couple of years ago.

In the past couple of years, we have removed most of the awnings that were completely disgusting.  We removed hedges and old landscaping that was overgrown.  All of this was done in preparation for painting the house this year to start the process of updating the exterior of our house.  Needless to say, we were extremely excited to get the ball rolling.

We picked out a medium gray color that we liked (Almost Charcoal from Lowe's).  We wanted to start out on a small section of our house to make sure it was the right color.

I started with this small section on the back of our house.  I painted 2 coats of the gray on the vinyl siding, 2 coats of white on the gutter and corner piece and 2 coats of black on the foundation.  We were pretty pleased with it.  It was a huge difference from the stained white that it was before.  So we decided to proceed.

I painted all three sides of this small section of our house (the dog's room) and thought it was finally starting to look like a decent house.  We bought a 5 gallon bucket of paint to tackle the largest parts of the house.

We were so excited to paint the front of our house because it is the most visible part of the house.  As you can see in the before shot, the front was in bad shape.  The siding was moldy and stained and the awnings were hideous.  It was going to be such a relief to improve it.

The above photo is after the first coat of paint.  Something strange started to happen at that point.  The siding was starting to warp.  My worst fear was turning into reality.  It doesn't look that bad in this photo.  Let's take a closer look.

As you can see, the warping was all over.  It looks horrible.  If you look back at the other sides of the house there was some warping as well, but not as bad or as noticeable as the front of the house.  We aborted painting at that point.

After some research, I discovered that you can paint vinyl siding ONLY if the paint color is the same color or a lighter color.  Repeatedly, I found this information "DO NOT paint vinyl siding a darker color".  Well, that was a complete bummer.  We had no idea that only darker paint colors would have this effect on our siding.

We were completely devastated.  Painting our house was going to cost less than $200 for the whole house and detached garage.  Now, we are looking at way more money to fix this mess.

After thinking about what to do for several days, we have decided that replacing the siding is our only option.  We don't want to live another couple of years with deformed siding.  The silver lining in this debacle is that we are going to get what we ultimately wanted.

Here is a rendering of what we are planning on doing.

We are going to focus on the front of the house this summer.  It will be done in phases.  We are going to start with adding the deck that we wanted to add for a long long time.  The second phase will be replacing the vinyl siding with LP Smart Side Panel Siding (an engineered wood) which is a vertical siding (what I always wanted).  We will still paint it the medium gray that we bought a 5 gallon bucket of.  The third phase will be adding the pergola over the deck area to add some shade.

I am not sure when we will begin this process, but I will keep you updated.  So what do you think?  Have you ever failed so miserably on a project that it ended up costing you way more money?

Before I go, I want to announce that the winner of the paperback copy of Living in a Nutshell is:

Ingrid@nowathomemom who commented:

WOW! the spaces you showed us are beautiful and unique! :-) I love them! I will go and visit her blog! thank you for introducing Janet to us! :-) & how nice of her to send you a book for your followers! :-)

Congratulations, Ingrid.  I will be in touch.

I'm linking up to these parties: Practically Functional, Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Cheerios and Lattes, Six Sisters Stuff, Be Different Act Normal, Or So She Says, It's Overflowing, Too Much Time, Classy Clutter, Twigg Studios, Suburbs Mama, A Lived in Home, I Heart Naptime, Nifty Thrifty Things, Flamingo Toes, DIY Showoff, It's So Very Cheri, I Should Be Mopping The Floor, Sew Can Do, Homemaker on a Dime, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, Alderberry Hill, Lines Across, DIY Home Sweet Home, Say Not Sweet Anne, By Stephanie Lynn, Watch Out Martha,  Making the World Cuter, Between Naps on the Porch, Craft-o-maniac, Claire Justine oxox, Skip to My Lou, Creating my way to Success, Serendipity and Spice, Rain on a Tin Roof, Our Delightful Home, The Dedicated House, A Stroll Thru Life, Todays Creative, Taylor Made, Homework, Not Just a Housewife, A Diamond in the Stuff, VMG206, A Bowl Full of Lemons, House on the Way, Hickory Trail, Hope Studios, The Winthrop Chronicles, Coastal Charm,  Elizabeth and Co, Sugar Bee Crafts, Sarah Lynn's Sweets, New Nostalgia, Funky Polkadot Giraffe, A to Z Celebrations, No Minimalists Here, A Creative Princess, Seven Alive, Mom on Timeout,  Live Laugh Rowe, What's Cooking Love, The Shabby Creek Cottage, A Delightsome Life, I Gotta Create,  Two Yellow Birds Decor, The Crafty Blog Stalker, All Things with Purpose, House of Hepworths,         

Tuesday Link Party #23

I am so glad you are here at If It's Not Baroque Tuesday Link Party.  I hope you have fun linking up your projects and gathering inspiration.

In case you missed it, this is what I have been up to since the last party.

I review the book Living in a Nutshell and a Giveaway

Some party rules:

*Please follow If It's Not Baroque via Google Friend Connect
(if not on blogger follow through email, Blog Lovin or Linky Followers)

*Please link to a specific post not just your blog
(Must be home decor related - DIY projects, room transformations, and any other home related decorating)

*Link up as many projects as you want, old or new.  As long as you haven't linked it here before.

*Please do not link up giveaways, Etsy shops or other link parties.

*Please, please, please put a link back to my blog.  I am helping you get more exposure, please help me get some exposure. 

(use the button above or a text link)

*Please visit some of the other links 

Every week, I will pick a few of the links that I like the most and will feature them the day before the next party.

Link Party #22 Features

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  I hit some snags in what I have been working on and will update you on that here soon.

Last week was another great link party though.  Thank you so much to all of you who spread the word about the party.  It still isn't as big as I would like it to be, but it will get there.  As always, there were so many great projects linked up.  

Here are my favorites:

How to Plank Walls by Three on Grove

Dresser turned TV Console by Domestic Superhero

DIY Bird Bath from a Light Fixture by Upcycled Stuff

Ikea Mirror Makeover by Harbour Breeze Home

Side Table Makeover by Lilikoi Joy

If you have been featured, please grab my button. (You can now find the button code in the tab above).

Since I finally signed up for Pinterest, I will be pinning all my features on my Pinterest page.

Thank you to everyone who linked up.  I hope you will come back tomorrow for another link party.  

Have you entered my 1st giveaway?  If you haven't, you still have time to do so here.

  

Have a great day!

Living in a Nutshell Review and Giveaway

Update:  This giveaway is now closed.  You can find out who won here.

I have been so excited for this post today and to tell you about my new friend, Janet Lee. 

A few weeks ago, I came across a blog called Living in a Nutshell.  A blog about designing outside of the box when you live in a box.  It was right up my alley.  After perusing this blog and loving pretty much everything I saw, I found out that the author of the blog (Janet Lee) had wrote a book with even more cool ideas.

Harper Collins

I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.  Then, I thought it would be great if I could get an additional book to give to one of my lovely readers.  If you follow my blog, you must be into decorating outside of the box like me.  So you guys would love this book too.

On a whim, I decided to email Janet and see if she would be willing to give a book away to one of my readers.  I was pleasantly surprised when she emailed me back later that day and agreed to send me her book for myself and for one of you.  She had some really nice things to say and I think she is awesome.

Why is Janet awesome, you might ask?  Well maybe because she is an Emmy award-winning television show producer.  She has worked with Martha Stewart, Oprah, Nate Berkus and Thom Filicia to name a few.  She has appeared on CBS's The Early Show and Lifetime Television's Our Home.  Her design blog (launched in 2008) was highlighted by The San Francisco Chronicle as one of the top go-to sites for affordable modern design.

In my opinion, I think she is awesome because she has great design style and is very creative.  Her book features over 100 DIY projects that anyone can do.  Here is a few examples.

   

All images by Aimee Herring

Janet has lived in a dozen different pocket-sized apartments over the past 20 years and she has had to come up with innovative, chic and portable designs.  There are so many great ideas in the book not only for renters, but for anyone.  Projects are ranked as "quickies" (one hour or less), "one-nighters" (two to five hours), or "weekenders" (six-plus hours).

Janet's mantra (and now mine) is to delight, dazzle and divert. First, delight your guests with design details so thoughtful, original even outrageous, they'll hardly notice you live in a box.  Next, dazzle them with flattering lighting, luxurious fabrics and accessories that give off a bit of sparkle.  Finally, divert any negative attention from the flaws of your space with whimsical decorative finishes.

Maybe I gravitate toward outrageous design elements to distract people from the small crappy old house I live in.  I didn't even realize that is what I was doing.  But it totally works.

                                *********************

Now, one lucky reader will get their very own copy of Living In a Nutshell (Thank you Janet for being so kind).  If you don't win, I highly recommend you buy this book.  I am sure you will find plenty to inspire you.  I know I did.

Prize: Paperback book, Living in a Nutshell by Janet Lee

To Enter: You must be a follower of my blog (via email, Google Friend Connect, or Blog Lovin and comment on this post (no duplicate comments)

Giveaway Closes: June 12th at midnight

The winner will be chosen using random.org and announced on June 13th.  You will have 48 hours to claim your prize or a new winner will be chosen.

Good Luck.