The Tina Fey Sexy Librarian Desk

 

Don’t you love Tina Fey? She's sweet and funny and talented and smart, but can totally pull off the whole sexy librarian thing…

 

Kinda like how an old beat up library table that looked a lot like this:

Now has sexy long Tiffany blue legs with brushed brass trim and dipped feet…

Brushed brass drawer pulls…

After much debating, a bright green top…

And a little citrusy surprise inside the drawers…

Put it all together, and you’ve got the Tina Fey Sexy Librarian Desk!

I’m so seriously in love with this desk. I go downstairs every night before bed and just look at it. Yes, I’m weird that way! In fact, I’m totally loving how the whole craft room is evolving. I’ve got more craft room projects to show you soon!

The Tina Fey Sexy Librarian Desk How-To

1. Dismantle the table {mine was already dismantled and had been sitting in the garage in pieces since 2001}.

2. Think about what colours to paint it.

3. Add 6” blocks of wood to the bottoms of the legs to raise the desk height to 36”. This is the perfect height for me to stand at when I paint and do other craft projects – that’s just how I roll! This also conveniently creates “feet” that are perfect for painting with the dipped look.

4. Sand all desk parts with a hand sander. Use a fine grit sandpaper to sand the brass trim on the legs and drawer pulls.

5. Paint all the desk parts with two coats of BIN Zinsser primer. {I was sure I took in-progress pics, but I can’t find them anywhere}.

6. Use the following colours from PARA Paints to paint the desk parts:

	P5216-14D	Climb the Mast	Legs below brass bands	3 coats with a good quality brush
	P5021-41D	Shopping Spree	Desk body & legs above brass bands	3 coats with a good quality brush
	P5072-65	Sunkist	Inside of drawers	3 coats with a good quality brush
	P5044-62	Leek	Top of desk	4 coats with a good quality roller

7. Wax the exterior sides and the bottoms of the drawers so they slide in and out easily. {I used Annie Sloan’s clear soft wax.} I still haven’t decided how to finish the rest of the desk top – wax or varathane. And I may use a sheet of glass on the top.

8. Fall in love with your new Tiny Fey Sexy Librarian Desk!

A big thank you to PARA Paints and Bonds Decor on Bank Street in Ottawa for providing all the paint for my sexy desk project, which is my third project as a member of the PARA Paints Blog Crew. Click here to see my chair makeover and click here to see my striped craft room walls.

Linking up to…

The shower tile dilemma solved!

Thanks to everyone who commented on my shower accent tile dilemma – problem solved! Dawna Jones made the suggestion of combining this layout with two horizontal stripes to frame the white tiles:

Image via Decorpad

I love this idea, because I really like the look of vertical stripes, but wondered if there would be too much similar stripeage {I made that word up} with the floor tiles. Combining vertical & horizontal stripes is the perfect solution :-)

I did some mock-ups using Dawna’s suggestion and creating slightly different layouts. The narrower wall on the left is the end wall and will have two niches tiled in the blue accent tiles and the faucets in between the niches. The wider wall on the right will have the body jets which will probably be positioned to the right of the stripe. What I love about this idea is that the shorter tiles on each side of the end wall are repeated on the long wall, which balances things out.

LAYOUT 1 

LAYOUT 2 

LAYOUT 3

LAYOUT 4

 

LAYOUT 5

I love how putting design dilemmas out there to share with my blog friends can turn a dilemma into a solution :-) So feel free to let me know which of these five layouts you like best! Thanks again Dawna for the suggestion :-)

Happy weekend!

Bump in the bathroom reno road

Our bathroom reno is apparently stuck in limbo till I decide on the layout for the accent tiles in the shower. Although I think that’s just an excuse hubby made up so he can be lazy and stop doing all the grunge work for a while ;-) But in case he's telling the truth, HELP! I can’t decide what layout to go with. Now that the tub is being repositioned into a corner, we won’t be doing tiled niches behind it. So really, the only place where we’ll be using the beautiful blue accent tile is in the shower, and maybe on the backsplash above the vanity.

So my original plan to do this layout might have to be canned because it won’t really showcase the accent tiles:

Image via beautifulremodel.com

This is how the floor tiles will be laid out – porcelain 12” x 24” dark blue-grey tiles with strips of Bianco Carrara marble creating a sort of basketweave pattern.

TThe tile layout is Squirt-approved!

That would also be a lot of narrow band of accent tile, so I’m thinking I need to go with bigger bands of accent tiles in the shower. I’ve posted most of these inspiration pictures before, but here they all are in the same place – which one do you like best?

Vertical

Image via Decorpad

Image via DesignTies | Design by Victoria Lambert, Edin’s House

Image via Drab to Fab Design

Horizontal

Image via Young House Love 

 Image via Arte Styling, designed by Kelly Berg

 Image via Houzz, design by Divine Kitchens

Image via Houzz, design by Harrell Remodeling

No pressure or anything, but I need you to help me decide ASAP! Which layout do you like best? Or have you seen another layout that you love and think would be perfect?

A little bit of this and that

This was one of those weekends where everything went wrong. Hubby and I had a sort of depressing visit with his mom in Guelph on Friday & Saturday – getting old sucks :-( The furry somethings that were supposed to arrive on Saturday night missed their transport and are still in Kentucky. And on Sunday my laptop crashed and burned, along with ALL my pictures. Toby pictures, Malcolm pictures, before & after project pictures… I HATE TECHNOLOGY! Hubby is trying to save as many files as he can from the laptop, so hopefully it’s not a total loss.

That being said, my blog post plans for the week are kinda screwed up. So I’ll be winging it, starting with today’s little-bit-of-this-and-that post…

Heather at Setting for Four and I met up at C&M Textiles last week to look for some drapery fabrics for her new home and for my master bathroom. We both found some nice ones, which of course are super-expensive. Why does that always happen!? In spite of the $151.98/yd price tag (YIKES!), I brought home a sample of Helena, as well as the comparatively bargain priced Zippy at $39.98/yd. And then I remembered I had ordered a sample of a pretty blue fabric called Theo a while back from Tonic Living for another project. And I think we have a winner! Because not only is Theo’s colour a perfect match to the accent tiles in the bathroom, his price is pretty close to perfect too – $17.95/yd.

Speaking of perfect colour matches… I’m seriously in love with the combination of these two colours from PARA Paints: P5021-41D Shopping Spree on the left and P5044-62 Leek on the right.

I’ve been working on another PARA Paints Blog Crew project using these colours that I’ll hopefully finish this coming weekend. Although the way things gave been going lately, no guarantees!

Christine at Bijou and Boheme had a big multi-day giveaway a few weeks ago, and I won a prize – Woot! It’s a book by Canadian designer Eileen Marshall called Dancing with Design.

Not only does the book have lots of great advice on how to create a unique home, but there are some lovely renderings and drawings as well…

Thank you Christine and Eileen!

And I was so happy to receive a wonderful update from Malcolm’s new family yesterday. He’s doing amazing in his new home, and gets along great with his new Catahoula brother :-) Yay Malcolm! ♥