Adding Moulding to Your Staircase - Decor Chick Guest Post

Today I want to welcome Emily from DecorChick! Isn't she gorgeous! But, she's not just attractive, she is brilliant! (And fun to hang with.)

Why do I think she's brilliant? Because she has one extra special, creative brain. Just look what she made out of a little lonely drawer!

I love her home and all the changes she's made to it. Especially her staircase makeover! I'm jealous of her staircase because, I live in a two story home, and I spend A LOT of time going up and down the stairs. Every step I take on the stained carpet stairs with an ugly banister and spindles makes me long to live in Texas in Emily's home. I have been wanting to give our staircase a makeover since we moved in. Sadly, I haven't started it yet. But, I know when I do I will be more in love with my home because of it.

Emily has agreed to share her staircase moulding tutorial with you today. So, please give her a big welcoming hug.

Heeeeeeeeeeeres, Emily:

Hi everyone, I'm Emily from Decorchick. I'm so happy to be posting on Brittany's blog today. I've always been a fan of Brittany and her blog, and I was fortunate and got to hang out with her at Blissdom and it was so much fun. Brittany is such a sweetheart, but I know you all know that already. :)

I finished a big project (with the help of my Dad) and transformed our staircase wall with lots of moulding. I couldn't be happier with the results and I will be showing you the makeover today.

So, let's take a look at the before photos.

And now....the after!

Ahhh, don't you love wainscoting??

I was actually smart for once and painted the wall white before we added any boxes. I know, can you believe it? I actually followed my own advice. :)

When you are trying to do wainscoting up a staircase, you are going to have odd angles and cuts. But this new little gadget my Dad introduced me to is so cool. You just set it on your angle, say for instance our staircase banister, and it tells you exactly what angle it's sitting at.

Pretty neat right? Oh, and those are my Dad's hands. I don't have man-hands and hairy wrists.

The angle of my staircase is 37 degrees, so the cuts were all made to compliment that.

For the moulding, I chose to use the foam stuff again. The pieces I bought were 7ft in length and cost $2.38 for each piece. I ended up buying 27 pieces. So that is $64.26 just for the moulding for the stair boxes.

First thing we did was cut all of the pieces for all 21 boxes.

Then we used this make-shift template so we could glue each piece together at the right angle, and on a flat surface.

We glued 2 pieces at a time with hot glue, and let them cool.

Some pieces cooling...

And then we would glue a box together.

And eventually got all of these.

Then we put up the frames temporarily with double-sided tape to get the spacing correct, nailed them in with a nail gun, and added the chair rail. The rail is not an actual "chair rail" but is window casing trim. It is decorative like a chair rail and has a nice ledge to it.

Then came a LOT of caulking and spackling of all of the boxes and chair rail, more painting, and then done! And please, if you need to cover nail holes, use spackle and not caulking. I already knew this but for some dumb reason I used caulk and ended up redoing it with spackle. Caulk does not sand well and it gets rubbery. With spackle, it sands down nicely and you can't even see the holes. Just my little tip!

I'll just show you all more after photos because I know that's what you really care about. :)

And here are a couple of night shots. P.S.- the sconces have flameless candles in them and they are on a timer, so they come on at the same time every day and stay on for 5 hours and turn off.

So what do you think? I think this is one of, if not, my favorite transformation so far. I think I always say that though. :) This wall was always a challenge to decorate, so that's why it's been empty for 2 years now. I think having the wall more as an architectural feature was the way to go.

To see how the design of the staircase came about, you can read about that here. To see a more detailed how-to of the moulding boxes you can read that here.

Source list:

• Starburst Mirror - Pier 1 for $69 (was on sale over half off! The original price was $149)
• Candle Sconces - Hobby Lobby $30 each (with half off)
• Flameless candles - Pier 1. I already had these candles but had to buy one more for about $14. Pier 1 flameless candles are my favorite because they glow from the bottom up, instead of just the top like a lot of others do.

Materials - $64.26 for moulding boxes, and approximately $20 for the chair rail.

Wall color - Baguette from Sherwin Williams -- (But it's soon changing to a different color)

I hope you enjoyed my staircase makeover, and thank you so much for having me Brittany!


Thanks Emily! I appreciate that you shared your tutorial with us. What do you guys think? Pretty fab, huh?! Well, you haven't seen nothin' yet.

Checkout her fabulous pantry! Seriously, I love her pantry (and her Dad who helped her build the custom carousels for her pantry. DecorChick Dad, can you adopt me please!!!)

See for yourself:

Pantry Makeover HERE.

I hope you will hop over to her blog and tell her I sent you. Enjoy your visit!

Stay tuned, we have a few more guest posters helping me with "Falling in Love with Your Home" February!

I Love Decorating with Books - Guest Post from Honey We're Home

On the heels of my de-cluttering post, I have a special guest who is going to show you how you can keep all your books and make them look attractive instead of cluttered! Hooray for book lovers!!! And once you see how she used her books as décor, you are going to run to your bookshelves and create another reason to fall in love with your home!

Without any further waiting, I'd like to introduce Megan from Honey We're Home
(and her fabulous helper and right hand man, James.) 

Okay, but wait, before I let her talk, I have to tell you that Megan's home is absolutely gorgeous. If you haven't visited her blog, do so NOW!

What, you are still here? Seriously! Look, here are just a few pictures from her home:

Mudroom

Her Office

And, her closet. AKA Mom Cave (Seriously, I could eat, sleep & blog in there!)

Okay, so you are back, and NOW without any further delay, Please welcome Megan!


Although I had admired Brittany’s handiwork and especially her boy’s reading nook for a long time from afar, I was thrilled to get to meet her in person at Blissdom.  Needless to say, she is so down-to-earth and personable and really listens to you when you are talking.  Eye contact and all.  And she really is purely intent on showing her readers how they can accomplish the kinds of projects she does in her home in theirs!

What I’m sharing with you today is how I’ve used books as decor in our home.  I love reading and have amassed quite a collection of books over the years.  It’s funny how you can tell a lot about a person by the books they read.  In my house, you would guess I’m into God/religion/spirituality, decor/interior design, parenting/babies, fashion, and cooking.  My husband’s books are all about business, law, and history.

I’ve received a lot of inspiration for decorating with books from blogland and I especially love those “rainbow” bookshelves and wanted to try my hand at it.  I’m pretty familiar with my books, so I’m sure I won’t have any trouble locating them even though they aren’t categorized by subject.

Here’s my rainbow bookshelf in the upstairs hallway.  All I did was group the books into rainbow order by their spines and then arrange them on the shelf.   I reworked it a couple of times, and ended up with this:

Here’s the close up:

There’s barely a room in my house that doesn’t have books, for example:

My Office

Kitchen

Pantry

James’ Nursery

 

Thanks for having me Brittany!!

Be sure to check out some other ways you can "Fall in Love with Your Home!"

Welcome Guest Blogger - Jessica from Decor Adventures

Hey all, I'm safely at Blissdom now and meeting many other inspiring bloggers. Unfortunately, there is one blogger who, sadly, I won't be meeting. Jessica from Decor Adventures. She is as sweet as can be and a real kindred spirit when it comes to DIY projects. Instead she's staying home to kick DIY butt in her basement, but agreed to take some time to meet you all in my absence. Take it away Jessica!

Jessica

Hello Pretty Handy readers! I'm Jessica from Decor Adventures, a professional by day and project addict by night, decorating my new 111 year old house. Today I want to share with you how to hang plates on a wall.  It's so simple, with no visible hardware, you'll be hanging them up in no time.

When we had a housewarming party last fall, we made our guests participate in a fun little activity while helping to decorate all at the same time. I got some inexpensive plates at the thrift stores and asked our guests to freestyle it!  We had them decorate plates to hang in our house with their well wishes for our first place.

First the secret is Dischangers. They are easy to order online, ship super quick and come in different sizes to hold various weight.

To use them, moisten the disc and secure it to the back of your plate then let it dry overnight. Make sure you wait, even if you want them up right away. You don't want any plates crashing to the ground because the glue is wet!

To make my arrangement I used a technique I saw online where you make a grid of your art on a piece of paper, hang it on the wall, nail in the holes, hang up your art, pull the paper away and presto! Art on the wall. This actually can be done with different wall arrangements, plates, art or photos, etc.

To get started I pulled out a piece of packing paper that came in box from an item I ordered. I was that thick butcher paper. I laid it out on the counter space which was just about as big as my wall area.

Then I arranged the plates on the paper how I wanted them to look on the wall. This way I could move them around without having to hammer a new hole in the wall.





Then I traced each plate onto the paper with a sharpie, making sure it didn't bleed onto the counter underneath. You can write on the plates or art which piece it is. This will help to see what you've got going where.

Then I removed the paper from under the plates and hung it up on the wall with painter's tape. Now you'll see the placement of your art/plates.





After that, measure where each nail hole goes,

mark that spot on your "plate" on the wall,

and hammer one in!

Once you carefully remove the paper, you'll have your nails all ready to go.





Lastly, simply hang up your art and you're done.








This is the little bistro corner in our kitchen. So when our friends come over they get to see their handiwork.







Hoped you learned something today with my plate art. Do you have a technique for hanging things up on the wall? Any tips you want to share?

Thanks again to Pretty Handy Girl for letting me visit!




Please give Jessica a round of applause. Wasn't that a great tip for hanging plates? I think I'll be using this technique to hang our family photo wall soon!

You should hop over to her blog where she and her husband are doing some crazy renovations to their home.