Bringing Light to the Dungeon

Last weekend I decided I’d had enough of the creepy laundry room. Something needed to be done. So I figured that with an extra lamp and a piece of furniture to serve as a folding station, my laundry room could be much more enjoyable. Well, things turned out better than expected, and my laundry room project sparked a cleaning mood in both Tyler and me, which made the whole basement a more enjoyable, less cluttered space.

Remember the photos of the dark, dirty, spider-filled laundry area?

I shudder thinking back to the way things were. I can’t believe I ever spent time down there! Yikes. Well, the photos from this project are going to be even more shocking since I didn’t post photos of the first round of improvements (mainly doing something about that awful floor).

Back to the “beautify the laundry room” project of this weekend, I headed down there to take note of what I needed before we headed out to the store. I knew that buying a new piece of furniture to serve as a folding station (aka, countertop) would get expensive, so I brainstormed to think of alternative options (you know, since our basement is filled with junk and there had to be something there that could be repurposed). Lucky for me, we had purchased a shoe cabinet for upstairs that had since been moved downstairs due to redecorating/deciding I didn’t want shoes all over.

The shoe cabinet was currently serving as boot storage, but since it’s July, those have not been needed for quite some time. Tyler really doesn’t have my imagination. He did not look thrilled at the prospect of turning a small, narrow shoe cabinet into a folding station for my laundry room. But I had a vision, and all I needed was a thick piece of plywood.

(Note: Sorry, but I did not take step-by-step pictures, because my camera was at Tyler’s office.)

So we went out and bought a piece of plywood (it was either ½ inch or ¾ inches), which we then centered on the shoe cabinet and nailed in with a nail gun (Tyler’s new toy—it’s great). Of course I didn’t anticipate that the power of the nail gun would create pretty deep holes where the nails went in. I thought I should grab some wood putty and fill them in, but Tyler didn’t feel that was necessary, since he believes this is a temporary solution (haha, too bad I like the end result so much!).

So my next instinct was to cover the whole surface with fabric. And coincidentally, I had some extra fabric lying around from a table cloth I cut up. Also coincidentally, it fit perfectly! So I folded the ends under and used a staple gun to attach the fabric to the bottom of the surface all around. Quick and easy—my kind of project!

Now I have a good amount of room to fold clothes in the no-longer dungeon if I choose, plus we have storage for all of our laundry “accessories” (you know, like dryer sheets, detergent, etc.). So those things don’t have to sit here:

Yes, by “here” I mean all over the place. A nice, organized solution that turned out way better than I ever thought it would. Here are the after photos:

There were a few mishaps with the nail gun, but I am plotting ways to cover up the dangerous nails sticking out, because I'm thinking this thing's a keeper!

Here's a wide shot of the room, with some of those not-so-attractive basement things sneaking into the shot. Soon enough it will all be pretty down there.

And now the sink can actually be used to wash things. The whole sink will be painted as part of my "de-green the basement" project.

Birdcage Veils...not as easy as they look!

I love the look of birdcage veils. They’re so vintage-y and cute. And since they’re so small, I figured, “How hard can it be?” It turns out, harder than it looks. And with such a small amount of material, I can’t mess up over and over.

The good news is that the material is cheap. I bought about a yard on Etsy for $4. And the material even came with a little clear comb to attach the veil to. Now, this was my second purchase of veiling on Etsy. I somehow lost the first veiling when I was carting it back and forth between my house and my mom’s. So who knows where that is now, but I hope it turns up so I have more to practice with!

The first time the veiling came, I think I had read one or two tutorials, so I was ready to take a stab at it. (You should know, I am not very patient, and I often start projects thinking they will be super easy, only to find out I need to go back and rethink things.) With that first try, I sewed a side of the veiling to the comb that came with it and checked out my work in the mirror to see how to proceed. I could not figure it out beyond that first side. There was just a ton of veiling (no, of course I didn’t cut it to size first, since I didn’t know what size I wanted it).

After that, I went back to do more research and find tutorials from people who have actually DIY-ed birdcage veils. It turns out there are a ton of tutorials online. But even with all of those resources, it’s hard to figure out how to get the veil to lay right. I should also mention that I ordered my veiling shorter than I wanted it to hang on my face, so I’m using what I learned from those tutorials a little and improvising a lot.

It seems like most people use one comb to sew the veil to, then attach that one comb to their hair. But since I want my veil to cover my eyes, I’m trying to use that one comb on just one side, then attach the other side to bobby pins. What I have so far is interesting. Here's the look I'm going for:

I really like the one side I've completed with the comb, but I’m not crazy about the cockatiel-like height of the veil on top of my head. I have to figure out how to fix that. I keep trying to wrap my head around how I would make the back shorter while keeping the front from being embedded in my face (I want more of a bubble look), but I haven’t figured it out yet.

This is what I view as embedded in the face

This is the cute bubble look I'm going for

I am not giving up hope yet. I am going to yet again do more research and try to figure out how to make this thing work the way I want it to. However, I may end up compromising and figuring out how to make it work the way other people have. Back to the drawing board…

And if all else fails, I may do this: