[wip] bedroom

before we bought the house
weird purple color and painted-over wallpaper

after stripping
weird purple color and drywall

after one coat of primer & two coats of paint
awesomeness

Adam and I decided that our first project in the new house (!!!) would be the bedroom. One wall featured some lovely painted-over wallpaper, so with the help of two friends, we stripped the wall. That took awhile, but it wasn't too difficult. After moving in with the help of many wonderful friends, we primed and painted the bedroom walls (with the help of those two awesome friends again!) last night. We just finished up the second coat of paint this morning. I'm crossing my fingers that we won't have to do a third coat. 

I just LOVE the gray color. It makes the room so serene. We chose this color ("Urban Sunrise" by Valspar) because we thought it would make the room calming and sleep-inducing. Also did you know that yellow goes into mixing this color? Isn't that strange? I learned that today while buying a second gallon of paint. I'm always amazed how much paint gets used.

HOUSE

HOUSE ACQUIRED
SO EXCITED

dyeing burlap

orange-pink burlap!

After completing my pink burlap lampshade, my darling sister requested a similar lampshade, only in the orange-to-pink color family. Of course, burlap does not come in any such shade, which meant only one thing: it was time to dye some burlap!
I did some quick searching to make sure that burlap will take dye - which it will, since it is 100% jute, a natural fiber - and then stumbled upon Rit's amazing color guide. Seriously. It's amazing. It has a whole section called "Yellow-Orange-Peach". Perfect!
Intentionally I wanted to a color (#79, if you're curious) out of the "Orange" section. My impatient self wasn't willing to drive all the way to Jo-Ann, so I checked out the Rit dyes at my local Wal-Mart. No cherry red or golden yellow - the only two colors I needed. So I whipped out my phone and checked all the orange-pink colors to see if any of them were a) an acceptable shade, and b) used only colors available to me. Luckily, I found #464, which requires scarlet and sunshine orange, two colors that the Wal-Mart carried. So I grabbed the dye, four yards (yes, four - just to be safe) of natural burlap, and a large plastic bucket.

dye bath

Today, in between bouts of furious packing, I dyed the burlap. That was my "fun" activity for the day. I washed the burlap in warm water, and then I set up the dye bath about 12 quarts of hot hot water, and two tablespoons each of the scarlet and sunshine orange liquid dye. I put the damp fabric into the bath and let it sit for about 45 minutes, swirling the water around frequently. I couldn't stir the fabric because there was simply too much and it was too heavy for my stirrer (an old paint stick) to maneuver around. But as far as I can tell, the burlap took the dye evenly. Then I rinsed the burlap out - which was easy, because it held onto the dye so fiercely - and ran it through a cold water cycle in the washing machine before drying it on a normal setting.

And voila:

gorgeous, right?

 I am SO pleased. It's exactly the color I wanted. Burlap sheds normally, but washing and drying it made it superduper fuzzy, though. Just a warning to anyone who tries this. I have no regrets, though - the end product is worth a little extra vacuuming.

I can't wait to make the lampshade. Sadly, that project might have to wait until I'm situated in the new house. And I still need to figure out what lamp base I'm going to use...