Bean Refashioning: Spaghetti Straps to Ruffled Cap Sleeves

Look who's back with a refashioning of her very own (I used to do lots of these, check out the Snips & Tucks section here)!  I found this dress, originally sold at Target, for $6 at Dirt Cheap last year.  I know, steal of a deal.  I love how different it is, with the pleats on one side and color-blocking all over - u to the n to the i to the q to the u to the e.

But as much as I loved it, it never once left our house on me because the spaghetti straps held me back.  It's probably the mom in me or my old age but if I'm wearing a dress like this, I'm usually going to a wedding or church or something like that and I like to cover up my shoulders.  This dress is a hard one to pair with a cardigan and it would have to have the right color scarf.  So, never worn...   

...until this past weekend.  

I spent maybe an hour last week adding ruffle cap sleeves!  I don't know about where you live, but here in the south big ruffled or puffed up sleeves are somewhat of a thing right now (along with Lululemon and pleated tennis skirts...I can see it but I hear it most from my very astute sixth grade girls.)  I don't usually gravite to some"thing" that's trending but this just seemed like a match made in fashion heaven.

Here's how I did it:

When In Rome...

do as the Romans do.  But since I'm not anywhere close to Rome, I'll just hang a (fake) roman shade and call it good.

Have you ever been bothered by something so much that you absolutely had to do something about it real quick like?  That's what happened to me with those cafe curtains I hung in the storage room (see the reveal here...I almost called this post the re-reveal but thought that might be a bit too far).  The curtain fabric was cute (and free!) and it paired nicely with the wall color...but that's it.  They were just wrong in here; not my favorite; best placed somewhere else.

In all reality, they didn't look too too bad but I had couldn't let go of the roman shade look and once you see those up, I think you'll agree that the cafe curtains had to go. 

Skim Coating the Bathroom Ceiling

I'm probably too happy to say that we finally have smooth ceilings in the kids bathroom!!!!!!!  It was a daunting project that we stared down the past month but finally tackled.  It only took us almost five years to get from painted popcorn that wouldn't budge to the leveled plane they are now.  Well, that and a good amount of joint compound and elbow grease.

When we first found out that we wouldn't be able to get the popcorn texture on this ceiling off like we did the others in our house, we talked about maybe covering them with something like tongue and groove planks or some sort of paneling but after researching how to skim coat (putting a thin coat of joint compound on top of the texture to make it look smooth), we decided to go that direction so they'd match all of the other ceilings in the house.  Not that all ceilings have to match because I definitely would not agree with that, but more importantly, putting on a skim coat was the cheapest option coming in (for us, because we had half the tools we needed) at just around $30.

While we should have done this ages ago, what really kick-started it was the fact that the popcorn above the shower was starting to crack and come off thanks to the super hot, super long showers our kids like to take.  At first, we got excited thinking that maybe the added humidity had, over time, dug into the texture making it removable now.  But, as we started chipping away at the stuff coming off above the shower, we realized we could only get so far until we were stuck once again with popcorn that wouldn't budge.

This is as far as we got:

With our hopes of an easy removal dashed, we planned out our first experience putting on a skim coat.

Skirtin' the Issue

The issue is that we have had two skirts in our to-sew pile for ages.  But last weekend after a rousing round of "I have nothing to wear to church!!!" 100% not true of course, we finally made time to take them in so they could be put in rotation.

Here are the skirts in their former state on two of the girls:

Too big.

 

And too big.

The top one is a J. Crew hand-me-down from a friend and the other I found at a thrift store and bought because I liked the pattern.

Our Next Project - the Kids Bathroom

A few years ago we tackled a Phase I makeover in the kids bathroom...and then we didn't touch the bathroom again. Not to mention the fact that we didn't actually get everything done that we wanted to in that phase.  Those plans are here.  We knew at the time that adding another sink to the vanity would happen someday but didn't have concrete plans (that would be an excellent pun if we were planning on concrete countertops in the bathroom like the ones we did in the kitchen...except we're not).  Fast forward to the now and our kids are bigger and double sinks would really, really help the morning routine go a little smoother so we've decided that there's no time like the present to get that ball rolling.

Here's basically what the bathroom looked like last week:

I stole this picture from a post I wrote three years ago and it hasn't changed one bit - except maybe adjust the shower curtain so it's less hanging correctly and toss countless hair accessories on the counter for good measure.

But things are really changing now, not quite yet for the better but changing nonetheless because it looks like this today: