About a week ago, it's all about Happy Lulu. If you have no idea what that is, read here. Well, I was not informed that they'll be doing a soft opening and I still have so much to do!! The first week was in chaos, for my mind at least. I have to finish the menu design (they're using temporary ones for the first week), banner design, final decorating, and so much more. One of those is this chalkboard wall.

I know from the start that I wanted a chalkboard wall. I've been practicing my chalk skills on small signage for party carts, and I thought, well, that's easy.  I'm sure it's not a big deal to tackle one wall.

Boy was I wrong. At first I was planning on putting the chalkboard on a much bigger prominent wall, thank goodness I changed my mind. Though that would be so much nicer so we'll probably still do that in the future. But for now, this will do.

We placed it on one wall at the counter area. And since my brother took some photos of me-at-work, well I'm sharing them.

I have zero exercise so this wall killed my arm. Haha... 

The bf taking his own action shots.

Me climbing up the sink to reach the corners.

And here's the finish product taken by my trusty but very old and laggy S3!! Haha

At first, I have no idea of what to draw in here. Of course the first thing I did was the "Happy Lulu". And I added from there. 19 is in reference to our street number. Since Lulu is actually my dad's nickname, I added the speech bubble with "cheers" since that's the entirety of his speech at my brothers wedding. Hehe... Included the items we have on the menu, and for the corner, I thought it would be cute to have a "shelf".

The bf has his contribution as well at the very bottom... TADA!

Haha... But that actually inspired me to add the plants above the sink. The plants are actually one of my favorite part. I love greens, but since we haven't had the chance to have actual living plants in here, those drawing will do for now.

So that's our chalkboard wall. I'm so sooo proud of that wall... But I have no intention of tackling another one very soon. HAHA... 

Did that logo too.. :) Oh and yeah, that's my dad. Haha.... See you there!

Haven't been posting so much DIYs lately, and by lately I mean years, except for a few here and there. I started this blog full of DIYs, I'm very eager to see transformation, add that to the fact that I have so much free time. When I started having real projects, my time for those dwindled, and let's just say I found the bliss in hiring people to execute my ideas. Haha.. 

But for the Tiny House (and this post officially starts the #tinyhousedecoration segment), we're planning to do a little DIY here and there. And since we already have workers doing the house, some parts of the projects we're (will be) allocated to them. Gotta work with what you have right? ;)

Let me introduce you to our light fixture for the office.

Tada! HAHA...

But seriously, that's what our fixture is made of. The bf's family discarded one of their metal shelf during their renovation (forgot to take photo of the actual item but it's just like that only taller), and as the hoarder that we are, we kept it. The Bf is the mastermind of all this, he's the genius in making something out of scrap. Remember this post? Well those are not scrap, but still. I also posted this and this on instagram, he made those as well. Anyway, we'll be doing a lot repurposing for the Tiny House, and this one is first on the list. 

No process photos, but he used the shelf part, cut it in sections, and had our welder welded them together. It really is simple to do but I won't be able to have thought about this, really. I love love the end result.

It's perfect for the space since we wanted a visually light chandelier. Something modern, but not too modern. Geometric and interesting that would pop against the white ceiling, and something that can hold more than 1 bulb since this will be our main office light, it needed to be bright.

It can hold 4 bulbs, yey! Obviously we don't have bulbs yet, that will be next on our shopping list, we'll be going for LEDs, mostly in warm-white. But for the office we're doing this main light in cool-white. I love warm bulbs, but the bf finds them too dark and not condusive to work, in short, nakaantok. Haha

We painted them in gold, because well, we love gold, and it looks great with both our white and black paint colors. Sooo thankful for the bf's wild imagination, now we have a nice light fixture for almost nothing. It cost us a can of spray paint, 4 bulb socket, wires, and an hour of welder labor. Not bad for a very unique piece.

Now that you've seen our very clean looking ceiling, here's the reality of the loft.

Hoards. Lots of them. That's just 2% of what we have. Haha.. See those back to back wood furniture in the middle? Those are old bedside tables that we'll repurpose into our shared desk. But that's still down the road, we have so much more to do, and by we, I mean our workers. So goodluck to us, and them.

These days, most condos and townhouses have these generic closet covered in the cheapest laminate they can find. You inherit those once you buy or rent your space. If you're looking for a more personalized look, there's a very easy solution. Wallpaper. Sticker wallpaper that is.

On one of the units I'm working on, there's this pass through closet going from the bedroom to the bathroom. They wanted to have a sliding door to separate the closet from the bedroom so we can go all-out in the closet since it won't be visible from any other space.

The thing is, they are renting. We can't reconfigure anything permanently. They had some doors removed for a more open concept but it still lacks the wow factor they're looking for. 

Enter wallpaper sticker. I'm thinking of ways on how to update the remaining doors, and while walking the aisle of Wilcon, I saw these rolls of wallpaper sticker. I knew this would work. The size is perfect and it's fairly cheap at around P200 / roll. 

It's so easy to install. Remove the doors and lay it on the floor. Remove the handle. Wipe them down. Lay down the wallpaper, and once it's in perfect position, start peeling from the top. Stick, smooth, and peel again. Repeat process until you reach the bottom. Easy! Just a remainder, do not peel the entire thing at once. You need to peel little by little while sticking in position at the same time.

Here's the "new" cabinet door. Love the pattern. So sweet and pretty.

They wanted to open the closets where they'll put hanging clothes and keep the shelves closed, hence the remaining door.

Also painted the room a deep rose shade. Unfortunately, we can't paint the insides of the open closet since it's all laminate. But this will do for a personalized rented space. :)

Oh a bonus DIY. I needed a runner rug for the space but it's quite difficult to find the perfect size in a nice pattern, so I just had 3 bath mats sewn together.  

Side by side comparison on what an afternoon can do. 

By the way, I'll try to share where I purchased most of the items found in my posts from now on, so here goes. :) 

PRODUCT SOURCE: Wallpaper roll and pink hangers from Wilcon. Bathmats and storage box from Crossings Home.

Real Living asked me if I wanted to participate in their Mini-Makeover series for their anniversary issue, and of course I said Oh yes yes yes. I love makeovers, I do it just for fun, and now they wanted me to do it for fun and for a feature, ummm... I'm so in.

The deal was, they'll asked 7 designers/decorators, to re-do a piece of furniture or home accessory, with just the guideline of: walnut, blues, reds, yellows. Not all together of course, unless you wanted to.

What I got was this vintage side table. (sorry for the blurry photo, shot this with a phone, at night, and minimal lighting. haha)

I fell in love with its shape- simple rounded corners, with tapered legs. So much potential. The bf and I brainstormed on what to do with it. He mentioned that it looked like a vintage suitcase and that's where the inspiration came from. Originally, we we're looking for suitcase-ish looking hardware, but we found none of those.

Instead, we found these...

Super nice but dirty hardware from old storage dresser. It's perfect.

Buffing goes a long way! Here's before (above) and after (below) buffing.

We don't want to make it like brand new. Just the right amount of patina and shininess. 

As for the piece itself, while stripping everything to raw wood, we noticed that the borders were solid narra while the inside were just ordinary plywood. Which is why we left the borders in stained wood, and painted the side and front drawer blue. Reminiscent of vintage suitcases with their contrasting trim.

The hardware went into the drawer front.  (which the bf installed, thank you!) The corner piece and the statement handle really made the table. Without them, it's just too simple. What I love most about vintage furniture: shape, structure, and hardware.

Here's the table together with the pieces the other designers redid. Really cute set-up!

And here's the table in all it's professionally photographed glory!

If only I could keep it! Haha... This was fun and thank you again to Real Living team for making us part of this series. Grab your copy of Real Living July issue. Full of great stuff, pinky-promise. 

It's been a looooong time since I last did a DIY. 8 months long to be exact. The last DIY was this stool and side table I spray painted gold. I'm not even sure if you can consider it that since it's just spray paint after all. This project we did was from from it! It took us 15 hours of work, haha!

It all started from my ambitious plan of painting a pattern to the floors. Remember the moodboard I did for the showroom? Since we wanted everything to be within budget, we don't want to replace the floors, but the ancient vinyl installed won't do it. So paint it is! We had the floors painted white. 

I did a sketch of the pattern. Since a 12x12 vinyl was the former flooring, it already has a grid. I made the pattern based on the grid so we won't have to do any measuring. 

This is probably the most tedious of all... taping! We used around 14 rolls of masking tape. Most of the masking tape we bought won't adhere properly to the floors, I cursed the tape numerous of times. It did help a bit. Haha

We cut excess tape to prep for the paint. Here's the floor all taped up.

Almost done with the painting!

But before the final reveal, here's another side story. You see, we wore socks the entire time we walked on the newly painted white floors since it doesn't have any top coat yet. But as clumsy/careless as we are, one of each our sock got into a little black paint accident. Which lead us into resorting to this....

A plastic, and paper bag slash sock. Wala lang.. hahaha

Here we are before removing the tape. Souvenir of our little incident and this whole shenanigan. 

Let me just remind you on how we started the moment we first saw the place...

And now here it is with the painted floors, courtesy of me and the bf. :)

The almost done kitchen sans the teal fridge and yellow stove. That story is for another post.

Top view.

Don't be fooled by this photos, the floors isn't perfect, there's a lot of paint bleed and crooked lines since the old vinyl has a lot of chips and cracks, but we love it nonetheless. Though after putting a polyurethane top coat to protect the floors, they are now yellowish. Of course I love white better than yellow, but I'd rather have a yellowish floors than a very dirty hard to clean white one. Sabi nga ni bf... "Kunwari na lang vintage..." haha

There you have it, one step closer to our finish showroom. :)

For the longest time, this girl was standing up while doing her face. She just haven't found the perfect stool for the job.  Well, she wasn't actually looking since her room had taken a decorating backseat when real projects came into the picture.

One day, while doing some sourcing for those said real projects, she saw this piece.

She asked how much was it. Its 100 pesos. She knew exactly what to do with it. Off she went and bought a can of gold spray paint. Within the same day, the stool went from that..

...to this.

She was ecstatic. The spray paint cost more than the stool itself. She got the fabric from some left-over from a previous project.

"Doesn't look like 100 Php now" she thought to herself while giddily smiling in front of the vanity.. sitting down. Finally.

But she wasn't done. The can has more in it and can take more stuff. She look around the house to see what else to goldify. This is the victim.

Her work table doesn't have enough space, and a rolling side table is perfect to house all the other clutter.

Here she is now. In all her STILL uncluttered glory.

And that is what a can of gold spray paint can do.

THE END.

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Now I know I can never be a story teller. Haha

It's a hand-me-down from my grandma. Love the shape, love the size, but the color is all wrong for the room. I know it's a perfect match with the curtain, but that won't stay either.

Here's my coralized TV stand...