Yesterday I was talking on the phone with Jamie per the norm and I was telling her that I am in a dark creative-less life sucking hole right now. (What a fun and uplifting way to start a post yeah?! Happy Wednesday!!)
See I have this theory.
Creativity is like a self charging battery. When you use it, it generates more power, more ideas, more creativity. When you don’t use it, it sort of just drains away and you are left with a hunk of uselessness. (Picture me as this hunk). Knowing myself and my process when I get like this I need something EXCITING to pull me out of the funk. To give me a jumpstart and get things rolling again.
Once the Nugget and Ashy’s Room were finished in Nov. I turned off Creative Mandi and turned on Netflix Watching-Holiday Vegfest Mandi. (Now I want to decorate my entire house in black and braids and dedicate it to Ragnar Lothbrok.)
That Mandi and productivity are like cupcakes and a Whole30. WFF (Worst Friends Forever).
Taking a break from projects was much needed. This isn’t the content producing job style creativity, this is the excited about life because everyday is a new adventure creativity. The kind of inner perspective that lets you look at things, not how they are, but how they could be (and how much fun it would be to get them there)
I have never actually ran a marathon (because why) but my mom has, so this is sort of a parable by proxy. When you get done running, the last thing that you want to do is walk around. But if you don’t then your recovery time is extended far beyond what it is if you stay active for the rest of the day. Keep moving after the marathon and you are so much better off. This is exactly what I didn’t do. I marathoned all of 2014 and come Dec. 1 when the race was over I laid down at the finish line and asked someone to pass the candy. WHHHYYYYYY?!
Now my creativity is all cramped and can barely stand up. And THAT is not a fun way to live my friends.
I am feeling desperate. Desperate enough to have a Manhattan Nest moment (do you read Daniel’s blog? You should, he is the best.) There is this really cute COMPLETELY decrepit abandoned house that I drive past when I take Dyl to dance. Do you know what I did today? I drove over there and looked at it. It has these really adorable windows in the front that I just love. Not going to lie, it was kind of Blair Witch Project-y and I was afraid that someone was going to pop out of a closet and shank me. But all I could see was this house that could be SO amazing (after 100k in repair work).
In all reality, I don’t need a condemned house, I just need a really great project idea, or thrift store find. Something to give me a little jolt.
Or maybe I just needed to get this all off my chest.
If you need me I will NOT be watching Netflix. Probably. (Step #1 is always the hardest)
Here’s the thing. Sometimes when you buy vintage (especially vintage for everyday real life use) its life span can end prematurely.
I have some really sad news. My orange couch has given up the ghost. It’s been a long time coming. At first it happened few and far between. I would be sitting on the couch, working on a post and hear a *POP* and think “That was weird. I wonder what that noise was.” After it happened a few more times I got down and looked underneath the couch. The springs were springing (not the actual term for what was happening but the general idea) The popping sound that I heard was when they hit the hardwood floor.
Do you know what I did? Nothing, cause I LOVE my couch and my living room.
Over the last 2 years I have ignored the fact that when you sit down on it you are literally inches off the ground.
But. The time has come. Every spring has sprung. The orange couch has to be retired. I have literally NO idea what will happen when I lift it up (maybe all of the guts will just fall out?) But I have come to terms with it. The couch has had a good run, but its time to accept the fact that it is giving us all back problems. (Happy Court?!)
Which brings me to the next situation. Can you have Seinfeld without Jerry? How about Cherry Garcia ice cream with out cherries? The orange couch was the star of the space, and without it, everything is just going to be so sad!! Also, I sold a lot of the other furniture at the last Hoard Sale. We are basically starting from scratch. A new living room is on the horizon.
The search for a couch has sort of consumed my thoughts for the last few weeks, there are just SO MANY CHOICES. I think this time I want something leather.
My first choice would be something this style. I love that its vintage, but not super mid-century, but still a leeeeetle bit. (This one is on 1st Dibs for $4k AND its in Brazil, so that a problem. Also not loving the color.)
If you look closely at this photo that I swiped from Mod Crib LA (aka Sunbeam_Vintage on instagram) they have a black one that is love seat sized and very much perfection.
But it’s still $1200 and I feel like I would still need another couch because a loveseat would be too little as the main dude in the living room. (You need to follow them on insta, they are literally the poster child for vintage furniture heaven.
And my friend Adri, just bought a great couch from Monarch Sofas (you can see her post here) and I love that you can customize everything. They seem to be pretty reasonably priced and have a lot of great styles. I really love the tufted single cushion on the Kelsey, but in a 3 seater couch, not a sectional.
Craigslist has come up short, except for this guy, but its prices at $1800. WHYYYYYYYY?
So the hunt continues, maybe I’ll score something awesome at the thrift store?
Do you have a couch that you LOVE? Dude, don’t hold out! I need to see all of the options! Also, thoughts on the styles above?
How about a little background for those that have no idea what I just said? About a year ago Cara from the famed beauty blog Maskcara released the most innovative product 3D Foundation. It’s a foundation kit that highlights and contours your face and instantly makes you look like a supermodel. It sold out almost instantly and for the better part of a year the world has been waiting for the newly updated product.
Luckily for us, Cara is sort of my best friend, so I have seen this entire process first hand. There has been SO much work to make the product better. It has been amazing watching her develop this new formula. And might I say from first hand experience that it.is.PERFECTION! The formula is silky smooth with a huge color pay off. I am so excited for you guys to finally be able to get your hands on it!
Cara is hosting a grand re-opening party tonight at 6 PST. If anything has the power to break the internet, it is this. You can get all the info on her blog here.
From left to right: Blush (Dahlia), Illuminator (Pearl), Highlight Foundation (Sunlit) & Contour Foundation (Walnut)
What’s new:
This compact is larger & is made of the highest quality materials so it’s very durable and pretty
It’s magnetic and refillable so you can get the exact colors for your face and refill them individually! Which means you won’t have to re-buy the compact or any product you’re not out of yet.
The blush/lip creme and the illuminator are IN THE PALETTE now which is so much easier! It’s just a one stop shop. Making it a breeze to carry with you and ensuring your makeup routine goes even faster. (but you can also fill the compact with just foundation if you prefer, the world is your oyster:)
The formula was perfected and improved with more pigment (so the product goes on in one swipe and lasts longer) & a smoother creamier finish.
The inspiration for this project came to me in the 3rd grade. Apparently inspiration doesn’t have an expiration date. If you were lucky enough to make one of these string art projects back in the day you are already a professional on these closet doors. Congratulations!
If you’ve never ventured into this geometric string art world, let me be your tour guide.
Basically for a project like this you are using straight lines at lots of different angles to create a rounded shape. (we’ll get into this deeper in a second)
There is one rule for creating art like this. You need to have the same number of holes on your horizontal and vertical axis. That is it.
Because my vertical pieces were roughly twice as long as the horizontal ones, the spacing between holes had to be different but each piece had 44 holes in it. I settled on 44 because that is what I could evenly divide the length of the horizontal board into. And once I had the number the holes on the vertical board were spaced accordingly.
Notice in the picture above that the marks aren’t centered on the board. I compensated the measurement for the boards that fit on the inside of the frame once it’s built (and I wanted to make sure that the string art was far enough away from the back.)
Because we were making 2 doors, we needed holes on 2 vertical and 2 horizontal boards for our frame. Instead of marking all 4 boards, I marked the spaces on one of each and then we stacked them and clamped the corresponding board underneath so that we could drill them 2 at a time. We put a 3rd board at the bottom so that the drill bit didn’t hit the concrete, and a piece of painters tape on the drill bit to mark how deep the bit needed to go.
Once this was done we assembled the doors (see part 1 for more info on that!)
For the actual string part of the string art I bought 3 packages of white cotton clothesline from Home Depot. I made a giant 5 gallon bucket of instant coffee and let the rope sit in it for 12 hours. After 12 hours I took it out and let it air dry completely over night. Then I put it in the bathtub and rinsed it with cold water until the water ran clear.
Then I made a HUGE mistake. I put it in the dryer.
Do you know what 300 feet of rope looks like when it comes out of a dryer?
It looks like a knot the size of a 6 year old.
…we had it separated and ready to go.
Start by numbering your holes (mentally) as follows:
To make things easier I added a piece of painters tape to the end of the rope so that it could fit in the holes, and so that it didn’t fray more.
On the other end I tied a simple knot (always start on the bottom, that way you can hide the knot!)
So if you start (like I did) on the far hole on the horizontal piece, you will take your rope and thread it through the bottom hole on the vertical piece. 1 to 1.
Then you will take your string to the next hole (#2) on the vertical piece and thread it to the next hole (#2) on the horizontal piece.
Keep going all the way up your door, making sure that you are pulling it super tight.
When you are done, tie off a knot and step back and admire your handiwork!
Hey hey!! Lets chat about closets, shall we? Some are good, some are bad, most are completely boring. But guess what? Boring isn’t a word in our vocabulary any more alright?
The closet in Ashy’s room is pretty huge. Not walk in huge, but it takes up an entire wall. When we replaced the carpet with hardwood a year ago, we pulled out the bi-fold doors and made the executive decision that we were not allowing them back inside (think hippy chained to an oak tree style). So for a year Ashy’s closet has been open (its a good think my mother in law likes to keep things organized!) When we did my MIL’s office, we build a lightweight sliding barn door out of conduit from the Home Depot, it is still one of my favorite projects. So naturally the urge to do something similar was ginormous. This tutorial piggybacks a lot of what we did for that project, so check that out if you are trying this out. The difference is that Ashy had 2 doors, not one. And so that meant that it had to be a bypass door. Just for fun, Google bypass barn door hardware.
It is as much as a mortgage payment.
Daaaaaang.
Double closet doors are something that a huge amount of us live with, and so a solution was in order. And not the solution of spend all of your grocery money for the next 6 months. After thinking about it long and hard, I feel like we came up with a pretty great, budget friendly solution.
First things first, lets talk about the doors themselves.
The whole point is to make them as lightweight and sturdy as possible.
Because DIY (at least Vintage Revivals DIY) is full of failures and readjustments I thought you guys might enjoy the real life situation that we had. So lets get that out of the way first, that way there wont be any confusion about the instructions.
When you are creating ideas from scratch sometimes (um…all the time) there can be things that you miss when you are working through the design process. These closet doors had a huge miss. Because I had made the actual door before I used the same measuring technique for these ones. Do you know what that left me with? See if you can guess the problem from the picture below.
2 doors.
No bypass.
A GIANT gaping space. (The doors have to be able to cross in front of each other so one of the doors has to be about 6 inches off of the wall. You could see straight into the middle of the closet from a side view. It was like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.) Also, I may have cropped out Court’s “ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?” face from this picture…but I get the feeling that you’ll be able to sense the frustration coming from his hand.
So there are a few things added to this tutorial that are compensating for this little situation I created (I’ll let you know what is of utmost importance!)
Start by taking 4 measurements.
1. The width of the wall 2. The width of where the closet doors need to be (Make sure that you are accounting for the bypass!) *The actual closet door openings aren’t centered on this wall (look at each corner) But I wanted the doors to be the same size, so they bypass directly in the middle of the entire wall, not necessarily the center of the closet openings. 3. The height of your ceiling. 4. The width from the truss on one side of the wall to the next. We are mounting the hardware into the trusses and they don’t need to be the ones that the walls actually attach to. You can adjust the eyehooks on your doors to compensate for spacing.
The way that we built the doors themselves are part of the string art design. If you aren’t doing something like that on them, I would TOTALLY recommend using this tutorial for the actual door structure.
If you are doing something like the string art, lets get started.
You will need:
Premium 1×4’s for the outer frame Non-premium 1×4’s for the backside (they’re cheaper!) 4×8’ sheets of underlayment (you can have this cut to size at your local Home Depot if you need to) Drill and bits Saw Nail Gun (4) eyehooks (4) 2” fixed wheel casters (make sure that they are fixed, you don’t want the kind that can spin all willy nilly.) (2) 1/2” Steel Conduit pipes cut and threaded to 2” less length of measurement #4 (Home Depot will cut and thread the pipe for you!) (4) 1/2” 90 Degree Elbows (2) 1/2” T fitting (8) Bolts (4) 1/2”x1” pipe nipples (these connect the elbows to the T) (2) nipples that will connect the floor flange to the T fitting (we got a bunch of different lengths and returned the ones we didn’t use) *We ended up using a 3” nipple. (2) Floor Flanges
Start by measuring and cutting the outer frame of your door. We mitered the edges at 45 degree angles, but you don’t have to if you don’t love that look.
I marked and drilled the holes for the string art (I will go into detail about these measurements and how to in part 2 of this tutorial tomorrow)
Once all of the boards were prepped, we started assembly. We used self drilling wood screws, wood glue, and finishing nails the hold everything together. (Wood glue first, then finishing nails, then a few screws)
We attached both the top and bottom frame pieces to 1×4’s that measure the width of the door.
Then we attached the mitered side pieces to complete the frame.
We filled in the frame with 1×4’s to give it stability and something to attach the backboard to.
The underlayment got a coat of paint before it went into the frame (much easier!!)
It was at this point that we moved them inside and saw the giant disaster. I will admit, I about lost it. This was at the exact same time that I was struggling with The Nugget and it just seemed like everything that I touched turned to devastation. But the show (project?) must go on, so I went back to Home Depot, and got a few more pieces of wood and went back to the drawing board.
We ended up redoing the top and bottom frame pieces, as well as the cross pieces to widen each door about 5.5”.
We also added a row of vertical pieces so that there was something to attach the new section of underlayment to. This isn’t necessary, just a fix for our flub. (You can see it in the picture below)
We attached the backboard to the crosspieces using finishing nails, then puttied the holes. (We obviously had to putty the seam that was created by adding the new piece in.)
We added the eyehooks and wheels to each door (see this post for more info on that!) and took the doors back upstairs. They fit perfectly!! I celebrated with an instagram post. (and probably a cookie)
When it comes to attaching the pipe to the ceiling, you need to remember 1 thing. The weight of the door needs to be on the wheels, not on the pipe. The pipe/eyehook situation is to guide the doors, not to support them. Got it?
Once you have your wheels and eyehooks on the doors it is just a simple measurement to figure out how low your pipe needs to hang (I bought pipe nipples in a bunch of different lengths and returned the ones that we didn’t need to make the process easier)
We started by stacking the doors on top of each other and assembling the hardware.
Then we lifted the doors up and made whatever adjustments we needed to (changing out the pipe nipples for something longer etc.) and marked where the pilot holes needed to be drilled. Remember when you are using large bolts a pilot hole is a MUST.
We finished it off by bolting the floor flanges to the ceiling.
Part 2 is coming at you tomorrow! Remember, if you are using this tutorial, you will want to read THIS one too!
I feel like I am clawing my way out of the black hole that is the week between Christmas and New Years (just an FYI, at this point you can only see my fingertips). There is just something that is so great about not having to do anything but hang out and enjoy the fam.
2014 was in a word, amazing. There were so many cool opportunities that came and I felt myself saying “someone pinch me” more than I ever thought possible. I love looking back at the goals that I set last year and seeing how I did, and where I went off track.
My 2014 goals:
1. Increase blog traffic 2. Start a newsletter 3. More tutorials (vs. talking posts) 4. Feel more connected with you guys
Probably the biggest goal that I had for the blog was to increase overall traffic. I went from posting 2-3x a week to posting 4-5x and added a lot more tutorials to the mix. I am happy to report that my traffic went up significantly, but its kind of one of those give and take situations. I put in more hours this year that I ever thought possible. So while the blog grew, looking back I dont know if hitting the goal really made me happier. I LOVE a challenge. Setting my sights on a target and putting on my blinders is where I really excel, but the problem with that is that I dont really stop to absorb the significance and enjoy the moment when I hit the mark, I am just off to the next one. I feel like that is how this year was as a whole. SO many great moments that I wish I would have enjoyed more.
The newsletter has been awesome (if you dont subscribe you totally should!) It ties in heavily with goal #4 of feeling more connected and getting to feature you guys. Jamie (my assistant that runs the newsletter among other things) has become such an important part of Vintage Revivals, I would shrivel up and die without her.
More projects! I have LOVED this goal. Definitely staying on this path for the coming year.
Feeling more connected. If I had to give myself a grade, it would be a C. There is nothing that makes me happier than seeing what you guys are up to. I love checking out the #myvintagerevivals and #colddeadfingers hashtags, but I think taking out the “talking posts” on VR have made me less connected. The bigger the blog gets, the scarier it is to put yourself out there. It was hard for me to see the harsh reaction to YHL, and I think it made me a little less fearless (not in projects, in sharing) but I know that most of you loved seeing that the struggle is real when everything on The Nugget had to be redone….multiple times.
Which brings me to blog goals for 2015.
Goal #1: Get outside of my head. The most important thing for the blog this year is to share without reservation. It is what I naturally want to do, and I know that its what most of you want too, so I am going to stop stressing about it and just do the dang thing. There is some pretty huge responsibility that comes with having millions of people read what you write, I feel like I am up for the challenge again.
I think that when you love what you do (love like you would do it for free) it is really easy to work all the time. The plan this year is to work smarter. My best Christmas present this year was when Jamie told me that she was moving to St. George!!!!! Up to this point our work has been all phone calls, facetime, and email (she lives in Idaho). To actually have her here working with me? Life changing. And that isnt even the best part. Her amazingly talented sister Janae is moving here with her. This means better (and more!) tutorials, video content, and a lot more behind the scenes secrets.
Goal #2: Stop wearing Court’s sweats. This is really a thing, and while it doesnt seem like a blog thing it totally is. I have these old sweats of Court’s that are HUGE. They are the most comfortable thing I (we?) own and a staple in my life. You know how goldfish grow to the size of their bowl? Yes. Apparently I am a goldfish and growing into these giant sweats. SO. No more. Hopefully the situation can be reversed.
Goal #3: Try something huge. Working on The Nugget last year was a huge step outside of my comfort zone. I loved it. This year I want to do something that challenges me like that again. Something absolutely terrifying.
Goal #4: Post ALL.OF.THE.THINGS. Finishing something that you start. Its hard for most of us right? For lots of people its actually finishing the project, for me it is posting all of the tutorials for the project. So. This year I am going to work so hard on getting ALL of the content on the blog (and posting the tutorials that I missed last year).
Goal #5: Get this freaking site in working order. Jamie and I are in the throws of a site redesign as we speak to make everything better and more functional (mobile friendly anyone!?) plans are to have that wrapped by the end of January.
I love you guys. Thank you for enriching my life so much, seriously.
Merry Christmas!! Every holiday season is filled with traditions right? Well. The most exciting Christmas tradition in the Gubler family is our annual Christmas picture. It’s a present for my Mother and Father in Law (and the entire internet) and is hands down everyone’s favorite gift.
This year we decided to take a little time machine back to 1976…
If you need a laugh or 2, you’ll want to check out these other ones. Pinky promise.
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So there are a few things added to this tutorial that are compensating for this little situation I created (I’ll let you know what is of utmost importance!)
