Chindi Rug Hack: Crafting for Masochists!

I accidentally fell into a time warp of some kind and haven't blogged in three weeks - I done got the Spring fever!  It's been a whirlwind of day job stress, Flonase and trying to get up the nerve to give myself the first real pedicure of the season.  I still haven't done that part BUT I've been spending most of my time prepping the yard and planning for some major changes in the next month or so.

Looks like I know shit about plants, right?!

This looks waaay more professional than it actually is because graph paper makes everything look very serious.  77% of a solid legal defense is because of graph paper.  It's true.  Hopefully I won't need a legal defense for some plants because I am ripping out bushes so big I had to call the utility people to make sure I don't destroy something vital.  More on all that fucking mess project later!

I did, however, finish a crafty project that took a good chunk of my last remaining wintery nights.  My hallway is getting some love this year after getting a fresh coat of paint and now we're focusing on textiles.  

Unfortunately my hallway is incredibly long and narrow which makes shopping for a runner an exercise in frustration.  I needed a runner that's 2.5' by about 15' which is ornery as hell.  I guess I could have had a piece of carpet bound but most of that shit is boring or expensive and I really just didn't want to google for twelve hours "how to get rug cheap pretty."  

However, something that is not boring or expensive is a chindi rug!  I have a soft spot for chindis (or rag rugs) since they're handmade of recycled materials and delightfully happy for all your funkiest needs.  In this case, an aggressively long hallway.

The good about chindis is that they're knotted together with warp yarn so in (my) theory I should be able to knot them all together to make one loooong chindi, right?  This is a rhetorical question because I did it.  They above picture is a picture of a "seam" but I won't tell you where it is.  Well, I guess it's obvious to me but I'm really selling this DIY and I bet dinner guests won't notice!

What you'll need is a selection of chindis - I found a bunch at Ollie's which is a local discount place kinda like Big Lots - and a disregard for your free time.  Also a yarn needle.

I didn't know I would need this but had one because I was helping my mom with some crochet knots and it came in quite useful because my fingernails were hurting.  You'll see why.

You can see some of the rug fringe on the right that I'm untying, separating the warp and then retying into smaller knots to the opposite rug.  You'll need that yarn needle.  I tried to stitch the rugs together and then just duct taping them together and and then I tried tying them together without untying the fringe knots and nothing really worked well.  

I don't even know why I'm explaining to you how to do this like it's a real tutorial because no one else in the history of DIYing would ever do this.  Hell, I may never do this again.

This is less than a foot of knots.  I unknotted then reknotted about 10 feet of this.  WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!?!?!  I musta been drunk on the fact that these rugs were less than $4 each because this took a long ass mothafuckin time.  Feel free to call me Unbreakable Lacy Sauce because with enough delusion and Netflix, anything is possible.

BUT at the end of it I've forgotten all the pain and the stiff neck and the nights my friends were out partying and I was home alone on the couch underneath a pile of stinky rags because I think it turned out decently (for a $25 investment).

Sorry, poor hallway lighting.

It's a little wonky at the bottom (that was my first one) and I wish it was 8 inches wider but we all have wishes.  

Best of all, now Charlemagne can run up and down the hallway with some traction rather than look like she's Wile E. Coyote running in place.

Pardon the hairball, there was a small window of time when you're photographing cats and it's shedding season.

She would walk NEXT TO the rug for a few weeks but finally has felt okay walking on top of it and dare I say napping on it.  I've since added a rug pad to help it stay put since it drifts on top of the hardwood when we play chase.

So am I happy that I have a rug in this space?  Yes, I want Julie Andrews to add chindis to her list of favorite things.  Would I do this again or encourage someone else to do it?  Only if you're recently unemployed and have nothing to occupy your time and mildly hate yourself.

Just kidding.  Kind of.

If you like to inflict pain on yourself are you a sadist or a masochist?  Or maybe just a character from the Scarlet Letter?

But I bet I have prettier floor coverings than the puritans.

Hello darlin', take a peek at my new jewelry drawer!

Let's talk about something that's really important and will bring light into your cold, snowy life:  COSTUME JEWELRY ORGANIZATION!

As we talked about IN 2014 I wanted to organize my mess of jewelry in concordance with my bedroom redo.  It felt right.  I'm adulting one drawer at a time.  

So in true Virgo fashion I began a downward research spiral of all the jewelry organization systems on the market until I wanted to die and then made an impulse decision.

Behold the Ampersand jewelry trays from - wait for it - Bed Bath and Beyond!  I feel so solidly Middle Class!  My 401k immediately gained 3%.  I don't think I've bought anything from BB&B in years but here we are, trying to avoid that one weird dude in a blue apron and all the good candy at the front near the checkout.  

I didn't want something plastic and these looked relatively classy and functional for my needs.  They also needed to stack inside my Malm dresser which is another reason I bought two four-drawer dressers and not one six-drawer.  Swedish space.  It's the ultimate luxury.

Not only did I like BB&B's options best I even signed up for their text alerts to get the 20% off coupon so I could get everything on sale.  I drank the Kool-Aid.  Or more specifically I inhaled that poisonous parfum they pump through their vents.  

I would get a text every few weeks and then head over and add another piece.  It took awhile but I'm not made of money.  I'm made of Cubic Zirconia and bracelets that turn my arm a little green!

The reason I went with this line was because of my bangle collection.  I have a few and if I laid them all down in their own individual compartments I'd need another Malm dresser.  So they needed to stand up like the architecture of jewelry that they are.

This collection had a good deep tray where I could stand everything up and still be able to close my dresser drawer.  [MS sidebar:  when I went to link to the products at BB&B's website I couldn't find this large three-compartment tray so maybe it's only in stores now?  I'm sorry.  That's my luck.]  

But my current setup fits perfectly in my drawer and getting ready is infinitely easier.  I'm like a real adult!

I think I could fit some smaller trays here on the right but for now it's fine with some travel jewelry bags, my sunglasses (all the cool people include them with their jewelry) and a giant bowl of pearls.  I wear them only when I'm feeling extra French vintage soooo... that one Halloween party from 2003.  

I feel like I have a lot of rings but apparently all my new rings (post 2003) have big thick bands and so they don't actually fit in the ring organizer part.  Well, damn.  But I needed those big squares so we had to make a sacrifice.

the basement level contains an even more random assortment of vintage jewelry finds and a real (?) Tiffany box.  Anytime I get too big for my britches I look at the Mr. T chain I got at Goodwill next to it and feel at home once again.

I would like to add more trays for all my earrings because although I aesthetically like looking at this mess of metal I can't actually find shit in here.  Except for my Conway Twitty pin on the middle left.  Best $3 purchase I ever made.

I have one deep tray that's half full on the bottom and is waiting for my Mema's vintage brooch collection as soon as I remember where it is...  

The weird thing is that I felt like I had TONS of jewelry but since it's been organized I feel like it's less than I thought.  So that means I should buy MOAR JEWELRY.

I wish I had this kind of jewelry horde:

Sadly, this seems to be all the way in Texas.

Like an embarrassment of fake riches but in neat orderly boxes.  What a perfect metaphor for my life.

All in all I think I spent about $80 total which was spread out over the course of a couple of months so that's not too bad.

Not only am I an organized and sparkly adult, I'm a financially responsible one!

I bet Conway Twitty liked that kind of woman.

After spending twenty minutes going through Conway Twitty pics and songs I suddenly remembered that my Mema - the same one with lots of costume jewelry I've momentarily replaced - also loved Conway Twitty!  It must be genetic.

This post wrapped up in surprisingly delightful and nostalgic ways!

And if you don't think Slow Hand is the best sexiest song ever then I can't help you.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day with that one.

Everyone else in the country wants to be tied up right now and I'm lusting after the lyrics of old country songs.  

Okay so I DID watch Secretary twice this past weekend because James Spader is JAMES FUCKING SPADER so I'm not afraid of non-vanilla things.  

Sometimes I just prefer things in nicely-lined, imitation-suede boxes.

This post has now gone further down the spiral so I'll stop talking before I drag Trent Reznor into this mess.

Ranch updates and $KILLET KORNBRED

It ain't always glittery decor fun times and glamorous shopping trips here at the Ranch.  It's real life.  And a real life design blogger/house renovator is full of boring and tedious things in case you were confused by reading other blogs.  Sometimes I am.  

So here's an update about all the boring things I've been doing so far this winter that may result in nice things later.  Or maybe just needed to get done.

First up: the hallway.  My hallway hasn't been painted in about seven years so I figured it was time.  It's also time to give it some art and a rug and generally make it look like a real space and not just a forgotten space.  I think about 50% of my house is a "forgotten space" so I should probably look into that next...

After I painted my bedroom I wanted to connect it to the hallway in the name of continuity!  And I had some paint leftover.  So the hallway went from a weird dark brown to Valspar's Forest Canopy.  Now it looks like my hallway just couldn't contain itself and spilled over into my bedroom.

Sorry for shitty picture.  It's the same color and looks good, swearsies.

YOU CANNOT CONTAIN ME, NARROW SPACE!

Charlemagne cannot resist a camera or opportunity to sit even three inches higher.

When I first moved in and started working in my house rooms were made livable renovated really far apart so they're kinda disjointed.  Looking to fix that in the future.

The hallway took way longer to paint than I had wanted because the weekend weather got unseasonably warm.  Last year at this time was the Ice Hell in Atlanta and the South, remember?  This year, 60 and sunny.  Because of such glorious weather I decided to get a jump start on my yard projects

I know how to mulch but I only had one bag on hand.  Leniency, please.

I'm spreading the gospel of the Plant Swap/Charity and nabbed these mature Aucubas from a friend's house.  They were cut down for removal purposes and half dead so I hope they survive because I think I threw my back out digging these holes.  Hell, one root nub was too heavy for me to even lift so I drug it from the other end of my house to this spot.  You'd think I'd learn by now.

But what the Madame giveth, she also taketh awayeth.

After much deliberation I put four holly bushes out of their misery.

The small one.

Actually it was MY misery because I loathe these plants.  They were huge - the largest about eight feet in diameter - and almost too tall to trim.  Which they needed often.  And every time that happened I would come away scratched and bleeding.  Makes for a cranky Madame.  

Burn in hell, assholes.

I sprayed the exposed branches with Round-Up and in a few weeks/months a pair of strong young men will come and rip the entire stump mess from the ground with some chains and an F350.  Or just me and a nice friend because we are cheaper.  I love demo.  New landscaping will happen this Spring so YAY!  Buying my chiropractor visits in bulk!

I was hesitant to cut them down because they are probably 50+ years old and that seems wrong BUT then I talked to some smart plant people and they said holly bushes are considered invasive (you can see all those miserable runners on the ground up above) and a pest.  OOOHHH well in that case, buh bye.  There were also SEVERAL privet "weeds" (see in top pic) and other shitty vines growing inside the bush which grew at different rates than the holly itself and required different trimming schedules so fuck all y'all, we done.  

There were whole ecosystems inside the holly bushes apparently but being within Charlemagne's reach was not a smart real estate decision, birds.  I'm doing this for your future!

In news of garden projects that I can actually handle, I took a class and made a miniature garden!

The Barn Nursery (a local garden center for you non-locals) offered a fairy/miniature garden class.  I have no desire to put a fairy having tea and flipping through their miniature ipad in a garden but some people built swing sets and houses and lakes and all kinds of shit.  I just wanted to go because they had free moss, rocks and dirt.  FREE DIRT?!  This is what being a homeowner does to you.

Besides, I already had some gnomes at home (my Christmas gnomes from Salt and Ginger!) that needed a home the other eleven months of the year.  

I didn't do a succulent planting because I have enough of those and why not try something different?  So I tried things with, like, real leaves and shit.

I also started some cuttings from my rosemary bush last Fall and look how good these roots are doing?!

These will go in pots this weekend and hopefully all 6 cuttings I started will grow up nice and healthy.  Please pray for me.  Maybe I should get some gnomes for them too.

When I'm not communing with nature and/or mass murdering plants, I've been purging inside my house.  I've been undergoing a massive closet and beauty supply purge, supplying Goodwill for the next year and generally trying to avoid the allure of thrifting and junkin.  

More closet updates later, I'm sure.

Switched to all velvet hangers (and after the purge) I have sooo much space in my closet now.  Let's not talk about the sweaters...

I'm practically living life like a monk!  

Almost...  

I couldn't quite eliminate ALL thrifting and did acquire a couple of these vintage Biltons ironstone dishes for under a dollar and they are amazing.

Those are brown specks, not blood spatter...

Of course, I can't find any more to buy on ebay and the only plates I found where about $20 a piece so thanks for nothing.  This is my punishment for shopping when I shouldn't have.

In other kitchen "news" I got a cast iron skillet for Christmas this year!  So metal.  I asked for one because everyone - Mormon moms to hipsters to grandmas - seem to have one and rave about it so it seemed like the right thing to do.

What the MS Ranch looks like now.

I must say it's heavier than hell and it seems to require a nightly rub down and is more moisturized than my skin so I'm not sure I made the right request from Santa.  Did I?  I WANT THE $KILLET KORNBRED!

$KILLET KORNBRED is the name of my neo-bluegrass Insane Clown Posse cover band.

Hey, y'all remember when we talked about a haunted pirate house in California that kept burning down called the Cliff House?  Well a reader happened to see the postcard I included and sent it to me!

How cool is that?!  Thank you, J.  I have such great readers.  Please buy my $KILLET KORNBRED album when it drops.

You may also remember that I started working on organizing my jewelry last Fall and I finally have a solution!  We'll talk jewelry trays next week.  See?  I have follow-through!

The life of homeowner: full of destruction and sparkles and mild to moderate procrastination.

Wreath-tacular!

Alert the social media, I HAVE CRAFTED!  After last week's post on wreaths I kinda committed myself so I couldn't risk the embarrassment of failure.  ESPECIALLY around the holidays.  Santa would have been so disappointed.

Fortunately I have a fellow wreath-minded friend - Emily Rose - with a great property for foraging so a craft date was set.  We both foraged our respective yards and met for toast, christmas music and greenery sharing.

I was greeted with homemade jam and this upon my arrival:

Just a bathtub full of ivy, naturally.  Where else would you put it?

I wanted to go for a free-form simple wreath so no ivy for me.  I started with a piece of privet because fuck privet I hate it.  And of course this happened:

Fuck privet.  YOU ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING.  So it was too stiff (that's what she said) and I cracked it in half while trying to work it around (WHAT SHE SAID).

New plan.  I was already going to use cypress foliage so I just used the entire branch instead.  Duh.

Well lah di dah I made a circle!  I just wrapped floral wire around the ends and called it a day.  I did have to gently GENTLY coax/mold the thick part of the branch around to help with the shape just so it wouldn't pull that tightly on the wire.  I'm assuming most evergreens would be this easy to use at this time of year.  And you may need to take off some of the smaller stems on top to clean it up.  Business up top, party on the bottom.  Mullet wreath.

If you're looking to make a specific size of wreath my wreath is about 13 inches in diameter so my branch base to tip was somewhere over 40 inches.  I don't need anything that specific but if you do then don't forget 2(pi)Radius of desired wreath = length of branch.  MATH!  so handy for life's more important situations!

Back to things that are actually fun and interesting: rainbows and nandina!

Nandina foliage and berries look great right now so I mowed down a bunch from my yard and attached them with a small bit of floral wire too.  I think I threw in a small sprig of pine too and ended up with this:

Wonky and wonderful!  Well, close enough.  Maybe it needs a trim on that right side but overall I'm super happy with.  Honestly, excluding the time it took me to murder the privet at the beginning and for eating more toast I think it probably took about 20 minutes?  I bet I could knock one out in about ten minutes now that I have the magic technique.

That was so easy I decided to make another one since we were already destroying the kitchen.

Thanks for letting me ruin your house in the name of greenery, Emily.  That's one branch on the form FYI.

In case you didn't know, critters live in branches.  Every year when I decorate my mantel with cypress I always make a few new friends in the form of some teensy tiny spiders so you're forewarned.  Sometimes they're the tiny white/clear spiders which I think are kinda cute.  Your call.

I stole one of Emily's wire wreath forms - super cheap and reusable - you can see above and decided to do a fluffier option using more of the cypress base.  

I used about three long branches which were really easy to wire into the form.  I added some more nandina, some holly, a bit of cedar and pine and a few sprigs of dried crape myrtle buds.  

I didn't really even wire most of the extras on since they stuck in place fairly well.  Also, that holly is an absolute beast to work with so I was tired of getting my cuticles pierced.

Pardon the sad picture (hey, it was dark and I'm clumsy) but I'm definitely enjoying the final product: 

Ok it was actually a more round shape to start with but I when I closed the front door after hanging it the plastic hook broke and it tumbled to the ground...  Whoopsy.  Fortunately I think if I give it a haircut on the right side it'll be fine.

I also added these post-Christmas 2013 clearance sale antlers for even more hipster credibility.  I feel so 2013 relevant!  I think I also might add in some fresh rosemary the next time I'm outside in the daylight.  Perhaps even an LED faux candle?!  I'm gettin' outrageous over here.

But it ain't all about me.  Emily made this super adorable wreath for her exterior windows:

This is a wire base like mine above but with ivy and cedar.  I love how the cedar is hairy like a muppet wreath.  What I love even more is the "bow" made out of magnolia leaves and finished with some nandina berries.  That is so damn genius.

She also did a large wreath outside using a grapevine base with ivy, cedar and cypress with equally impressive results. 

This one is about 36 inches wide and I don't think it took her more than an hour just tucking branches into the grapevine. Super easy.  Again, I bet once you've figured out your system the wreaths will go pretty fast.

From Emily's Instagram

It's like we're in Vermont!  

So even including the extra wonk on these wreaths and the cuticle stabs from the holly overall I was super stoked about the project.  I would absolutely make them again next year and maybe even do more this year.  I can't stop.  

I mean, it's essentially free, smells good and it's quite possibly the most Christmasy thing you can do other than prove to Santa in sensual detail how naughty you've been.

But only if you like gift-giving older men more than crafts.

Shit, don't we all?

Dryer sheets and staples are my new best friends.

I hope you've all been busy knocking out your summer bucket list like I have.  It's been a beauty fest every night, I got some swim time in, got my dirty chai IV drip started and have been stalking Neil deGrasse Tyson.  I've also been building shit the saucy way.  

That way is with no clear direction or skills or hope for a good result...

Things are coming along nicely in that bedroom of mine that I've been talking about for 93849384938493 months now.  This week I upholstered a headboard and all of Pinterest creamed their panties in unison.

After shopping around it seemed like the best deal I could get would be about $200 for a headboard and that's one of those microfiber hellbeds of shame so no thanks, internet shopping.  I have staple gun and an inflated sense of my own ability so I got this.

First up, real fabric.  Guess what? It's beige!  Just a nice simple nubby gold/grey weave I got for about $35.  Nothing fancy.  Although I DID find some hand-stitched wool crewel remnant that was on sale so I was FORCED to buy it as well.  No idea where it's going yet but I feel better giving it a good home. 

THIS is why I'm broke.

Crewel fabric was originally $130 a yard and I got it for $50 so... *high five*

I noticed that my headboard fabric is surprisingly similar to the fabric I covered my couch in a long time ago...  It's just beige everywhere!  

It's like a very bland - YET ELEGANT - spa around here.

Now that the important part was covered (upholstery humor!) I needed to figure out the bones.  My plan was to buy a cheap flat headboard and use it as a frame to screw in my desired shape and height.  Well, lemme school ya that finding such a thing is a lot harder than I initially thought.  

Headboards are everywhere when you don't need them and when you do it's nothing but brass cages of doom and $75 pieces of shit.  But I finally found one for $10.  SOLD!  Then I tried to put it in my car and it was about six inches too tall and no way to get it home. 

They told me by the time I would be able to get a truck it would probably be stolen outside so it was now or never. I then asked to return it and they said nope.  Well, poop buckets.  These people are running our charities, y'all.  I guess my $10 was a donation to their cause.

But THEN I found one at another thrift store for $5.  Suck it, asshole charity!  Or suck it, me, since I didn't think to put it in my car before I paid for it...

That's $15, countless hours of my time and gallons of gas and tears all for this baby.  But at least we could get busy!  As soon as I borrowed a staple gun and watched Orange Is the New Black and mowed the grass and played 2048 for 17 hours.

Fun fact: the genius previous owner of the headboard glued what appears to be fabric softener sheets to the bottom of the legs.  Not only does this protect your floors and makes moving the thing a piece of cake it also just smells really damn nice.  I'm doing it to all my furniture now!

The other supporting characters in this production are:

1. 1/2 inch plywood cut to my desired size free of charge thanks Home Depot.

2. Two-inch thick foam.  It comes in rolls at the craft store.

3. Batting.  Cut the yardage you want at a fabric store.  I splurged for the $6 a yard kind but they do have $3 a yard but you'll want to splurge.

4. Spray paint to cover the legs.

Look I done did a thing!  Legs spray-painted and screwed into the wood to the frame.  We're really rocking and rolling!  

Important thing: you gotta ask yourself some tough questions about how tall you want your headboard.  You gotta know yourself.  Learn yourself.  Sleep with yourself.  Or just totally fucking guess.  I picked a number that was just at the top of where a person's head would touch when sitting on my bed and the average height of some Pottery Barn beds.  That dimension was 56 inches.

What I didn't want was it to end up looking like one of West Elm's headboards...

This proportion sets my teeth on fire.  Maybe you have gigantism of the torso and your top half keeps growing but your legs are stunted nubs.  Maybe you like wearing tall hats when you read at night.  Maybe you just don't give a fuck and love it anyway.  Godspeed, my tall-torso'd friend.

Wanna know something crazy?  That West Elm headboard is 56" tall.  DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?!?!?  DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT THIS RANT??!?!?

Anyway, back to me and some power tools.  I couldn't figure out how to create a smooth surface between where I screwed in the plywood on the back and the front of the headboard.  So I cut up some Styrofoam and made a big gigantic mess in my living room and destroyed my favorite crafting ground protector to make this:

And then I realized I should TURN IT AROUND, YOU BRAINLESS FENCEPOST!  Jesus Christ on a croissant.

Welcome to my world where I only use 10% of my brain about 27% of the time.  

Of course then I had to take the entire thing back outside and spray the back side of the legs because I didn't have the forethought to paint the entire thing the first time.  

Welcome to my world where I'm 127% lazy 100% of the time.

So now that we have the logistics worked out I was ready to soften this fucker up.  It'd already fallen on me once so my already-slow brain needed the extra padding.

I laid the batting on the floor and cut the foam to the shape I needed and laid the headboard on top.  Remember, I'm doing this alone so I only have so many hands.

I would recommend cutting the padding about half and inch bigger than the actual shape it's covering just to make the edges smoother because the foam will squish.  I would probably use a spray adhesive to stick the foam to the wood but I just let gravity work its magic.  Also, I don't want to carry this thing outside anymore.

So now we're here!  And there is STILL styrofoam all over the floor even though I've vacuumed.

And then I remembered I hadn't washed the fabric.  Sigh...  this is why it takes me so long to finish anything. 

Fast forward a day later and shit's on and poppin.  Technically on and staplin.

I wish I had a trick or tip for this part but I don't.  Just make sure the weave is fairly straight then work your way down.  It's way less sexy than it sounds.  Partially because you have a high-powered staple gun in your hands and that doesn't even sound like fun kinky.  

I just did a pseudo hospital corner up top to have as small a crease as possible.  You do you.

But on the bottom things got trickier.  

I was tired and my head hurt from the headboard falling on me again so when I had to wrap the fabric around the legs it soooorta looks like I stapled fabric around a dirty diaper but you can't see it from the front so just deal with it.  

And this is my patented ModernSauce technique.  I call it the DOUBLE RAINBOW of staples followed by the duct tape edge.  The DOUBLE RAINBOW of Staples (TM) actually seems like it would be less stress on the fabric but I'm not a fabric scientist.

Here's the final result! 

Big and beige and flat!  Just what I also dreamed of!  I had to insert some extra pieces of foam if you're wondering why the bottom edge looks weird - I needed a bigger size foam piece but it'll be covered by the mattress anyway.  My spirit can only take so many trips to Hobby Lobby before the Dementors come.

I'm so tired of this being in my living room that I really couldn't get any more/better pictures.  But at least you have process so my work is done for now.  More pictures in situ later.

Even though I complained through the entire process, now that I know how to do it I would totally do it again and recommend it to anyone else too.  The sum of everything was about $110.  I would not recommend skimping on the foam or batting but I bet you could cut corners elsewhere and/or buy cheaper fabric.  

But you can do this!  I believe in you.

I just do not believe in oversized headboards.

I believe in you and proportion and staples and taking the cheap way out.