Living Room Update | All White Everything

living room, monochrome, sherwin williams, fireplace, ikea hack, painted white floors, gabbeh, noguchi table, minimalist living room, home style, home decor

Aside from a down and dirty paint job on a super spooky small bedroom, the third floor was the first room we tackled when renovating the house. Originally, we decided to save our efforts (and dollars) to put towards moving forward on the deli. As we realized that timeline was becoming more and more abstract, our imaginations took over and we slowly began undoing the previous home owner’s years of bad paint choices.

living room before, before, renovation, linoleum, fixer upper

Nearly the entire house was covered in linoleum, but this sickening green was reserved for the third floor. After successfully wearing Ed down, he agreed to convert the front room into an office. Focusing most of our efforts installing shelving and a floating walnut desk, we didn’t put a whole lot of thought into color and grabbed a neutral beige on the fly at Home Depot. We kept some of the “charm” of the original wall color by opting for one of the brightest hues we could find for the fireplace: Intense Teal.

We realized the dire shape of the walls on that first go round, but the inital paint job was such a drastic change that we were estatic with our results at the time. And for the next few years the room served as an office / studio, where we predominantly stared at our computer screens toward a single a wall.

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Read about our first round of renovations on this room HERE

A combination of neurosis and practicality, our living room has shifted forms and geography over the last few years, eventually taking up residence in this space. As my gaze continued to settle on the troubling exterior wall, eventually we decided it was time for another refresh.

While I still dream of painting every room pink, age and Ed have me gravitating more towards shades of grey. The “neutral beige” had not grown on us, and in low light still echoes the original green we were trying to hide. The ceilings on this level of the house are about 2 feet lower than our first floor, so wanting to make the room feel more open, we opted to whitewash the room. We removed the bizarre hodgepodge of masonite they had used to “smooth” the exterior wall, and Ed secured the loose plaster and skimcoated the room.

living room, monochrome, sherwin williams, fireplace, ikea hack, painted white floors, gabbeh, noguchi table, minimalist living room, home style, home decor

The cast iron coal fireplace had been hiding behind a plywood board all along! We matched the black and carried it out along the surround with Sherwin Williams Caviar. The rest of the room got a few coats of Sherwin William Snowbound, the walls in flat, the mantle and trim in semi gloss, and the floors in a high gloss floor paint. Unfortunately their store hours didn’t line up with our schedule, otherwise still #benjaminmooreforlife.

Tiling the hearth, we stuck to a basic carrera herringbone from Home Depot. More detail shots to come, but definitely more of a struggle than we anticipated as Ed has freshly completed his sister’s back splash.

living room, monochrome, sherwin williams, fireplace, ikea hack, painted white floors, gabbeh, noguchi table, minimalist living room, home style, home decor

We’re still working on finalizing wall art and tweaking some of the accessories, but overall super pleased with space!

Final Days at Pittsburgh Public Market + New Adventures

Final Days at Pittsburgh Public Market + New Adventures

This past week, the Pittsburgh Public Market collectively decided that the final day of operations will be February 28th. We feel incredibly fortunate for our involvement in such a collaborative environment that has helped us cultivate relationships with local folks pulling off some really great projects. We’ll be going strong until the end of the month and adding drip and iced coffee from Caffe d’Amore.  Hope to see some of your faces as we wrap up this chapter of Steve’s Deli!

coffee, ham, jam, brie, breakfast, english muffin

Caffe d’Amore drip coffee with our Brie, Jam, and Country Ham breakfast sandwich

 

Right now, the future of the deli is still hazy. We’ve starting making the first steps of establishing a permanent location in the first floor of our home in Bloomfield. This has always been our longterm goal for Steve’s Deli, and while our timeline isn’t exactly as we planned, we’re excited to take the plunge. We will try to remain as transparent as possible with our progress as we navigate this transition, and if all goes well hope to reopen mid-Summer of this year. Keep an ear out for pop-up events and catering availability!

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The site of our possible brick and mortar nearly a century ago, via Retrographer

 

 

Hexagonal ceiling molding

Hexagonal ceiling molding

We went through a lot of different ideas about what to put on the ceilings.  We started with tin tiles, which were too expensive, and backing boards seemed like a pain.  Styrofoam faux tin ceilings seemed like a good idea, but were ugly in real life, and needed to be painted and there was no filller available.  One night when we were drinking we decided to put up decorative plaster ceilings and were going to cast them ourselves.

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That one should be sort of obvious to why it wasn’t a good idea.  Then we were going to vacuum form styrene into a decorative pattern.  I still think this is a cool idea, but we priced out styrene and it was going to be over $1000, plus techshop fees, glue and paint for something that we weren’t sure would work all that well.  Maybe for the alcove in our bedroom.

But this thinking all turned out to be useful, since we eventually came up with a solution.  Use small strips of molding to make a pattern semi inspired by plaster ceilings.  We thought hexagons would be a good compromise between something easily cut out, visually interesting and fitting with the style of our future chandelier.

Then there was the problem with how to lay them out.  I was stumped for a little while considering laser guides, overhead projectors, string? Nothing seemed to be such a great solution.  Finally I remembered the Euclidian Constructions or Compass and Straightedge Construction I did for a day or so in math class years ago.  There’s a gif of the relevant one right on the wikipedia page.  So, all I had to do was draw a line across the center of the room and start drawing circles.

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You first have to find the center of the room the long way.  I used a laser distance measurer, but you could use another person instead.  Draw a line across the room.  Draw your first circle around your light fixture, or the center of the room.  Then you move to the intersection of that circle and your center line. Draw another circle.  Move to the next intersection, draw a circle.  Basically draw circles centered on every circle intersection until you fill the entire ceiling.  I drew mine with a nail and a makeshift compass that I made out of a scrap piece of wood.  I drew up the hexagons in cad so I could determine the sizing I wanted, then calibrated my compass to that on a piece of cardboard.  I could pound a nail in that spot and then swivel my compass around.  It was surprisingly accurate, though I did have problems with the marker getting worn down.

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After drawing all the circles, I cut all the strips of molding.  There are two pieces to each side of the hexagons.  Since the internal angles of hexagons are 60 degrees, you need a 30 degree cut on each side of the pieces.  I considered painting before I put the pieces up, but since I was nailing them up individually, I decided not to.  It might save some time if you do though.  Check on your pattern to make sure you’re certain of the length of your pieces,  work in batches of about 1/4 of the ceiling.  To set up a template, I clamped a board with a stop onto the rail of my miter saw.  I then took eight-ish boards and cut the first 30 degree angle onto the ends.  Then I could make five cuts between the saw adjustment.  It goes a lot faster that way.  You’re going to need a lot of boards, I got four segments per strip of molding, which is 1/3 of a full hexagon.  I think i bought 30 to do the ceiling, and had a couple left over.

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Now the tedious part. you’ll have to caulk around all the joints.  Pick out some good radio shows to listen to.  It took me about a day and a half to do my room.

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What’s the worst part about painting? Whatever you’re doing right now.  I put on a coat of primer, and still had quite a bit of marker showing through.  You should try to wash as much of it off as you can before you start painting, otherwise you’re going to have to do an extra coat.  Depending on the marker or pencil you use you should be good after a coat of primer and a coat of paint.

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DIY Pendant Light Canopy

DIY Pendant Light Canopy

I like to save dessert diy projects to have after annoying projects.  The crown molding was semi-dessert after skim coating the ceiling.  Putting in these pendant lights was double dessert.  Maggie having jobs at furniture stores has helped us out quite a bit now and again.  We got a really good deal on these Tom Dixon inspired pendants months ago and have been waiting to put them up.  DSCF8869-1

We looked for a while for a canopy for pendant lights and found a couple options, all of which were a few hundred dollars, and not particularly nice.  Eventually we decided that it would be better to use the piece of walnut we had left over from the third floor and make our own.  It was going pretty well, then I took off the old light fixture and found this gas pipe.

Our house was built in the 1880’s and was originally outfitted with gas lamps, which is pretty cool.   All the gas lines are still in the walls and poke out of where I want to put lights, which is pretty uncool.  Finding out that they’re all filled with gas was totally uncool.

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Once that was safely capped again, we were off.  I marked off where the lights should go in the board and drilled them out with forsner bits.  The plan was to find a few studs in the ceiling, install heavy duty eyelet bolts, then install more bolts into the board and connect them with s connectors.  This would allow you to attach half the board to the ceiling and hang it there, making wiring and installation easier.

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We ended up not using the eyelet bolts on the board and not using the S connectors, the whole thing hung too low with that setup. instead we attached aircraft cables to the board, clinched them with some aluminum ferrules and put them through the eyelets on the ceiling.  It’s very sturdy.

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Some tips: Put up one light and set the distance that they should hang.  Put the board on ladders at that distance, now you can place all your lights easily and get the heights adjusted correctly.  Wire the lights in parallel and staple excess cord to the underside of the board.  Follow normal safety guidelines when working with electrical systems.  Use an off-on-off test to make sure you’re turning off the correct fuse. Flip. Is it off? yes. Flip.  Is it on now? yes. Flip. Is it off again? yes.  It’s also a good idea to get an electrical sensing screwdriver thing.  Use the correct size wire nuts, it tells you on the package what their capacity is.

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We’re very pleased with how it turned out.  It’s an easy weekend project for anyone that wants to hang pendants.  Don’t buy something, canopies are a ripoff.