Re-Purposed Japanese Screens

I have had this Japanese screen from my Grandmother for many, many years.  I am lucky to have many family heirlooms.  I also have some of her water colors hanging in my family room.  My Grandmother acquired this screen while living in Japan in the early 1950's.  My brother also has one just like it.  They started out brown.  I painted it black.  I've used them in different rooms in my house, but they never quite worked?  My house has ten foot ceilings and the screens always looked out of scale with the tall ceiling height.  Another problem, (maybe it's just me) I like the top detail of the screen, but not the bottom basket weave portion.  It just seemed too busy together?
   

Here's what they look like now.

Grandma isn't around anymore to ask if she minds me redoing them.  This is how I re-purposed them.  I removed all the hinges and used my dad's table saw to cut the bottom basket weave and the top wood extension of the screen off.

I hope Grandma doesn't mind?  She was a very stylish woman so I'm hoping she would approve. 

At this point of the project I was liking the screens better already!

I primed them and painted them white.  I used wood glue to repair some of the loose wood detail. 
Here they are primed.

I planned on using the screens in my powder room.  I painted the powder room  like a castle ten years ago.  OK, before you start laughing remember it was ten years ago.  I wanted to re-paint it sooner, but my kids didn't want me to.  My tastes have changed so the castle went bye, bye last year.

It was my "Old World Tuscan"  period.

Last year I painted the bathroom black. No, I haven't transitioned into a "Goth" period.  I just have always loved black and white.  Sorry about the bad pictures.  This room is small and VERY difficult to photograph.  Black rooms are hard to photograph.  Did I mention photography isn't one of my strengths to begin with? 

 I added the Upholstery tacks to the ceiling detail and around the Ikea mirror.  The light fixture is from Habitat for Humanity.  I painted it silver and swagged it from the ceiling.  The room needed something else? 

 I just wasn't sure what?  I was looking for artwork and was considering painting something myself or stenciling a pattern on the walls?

How about Grandma's screens? 

 Re-painted and Re-purposed.

I hung four of them horizontally on the empty black wall next to the sink.

One behind the concrete shelf (another Habitat for Humanity find) above the toilet.

 Thanks Grandma!

I'm liking the added architectural detail and the contrast of more white.

Although the room is painted black it looks much bigger then when it was painted like a castle.  The black makes the walls recede.  To see other back rooms in my house click here.

 

 This mirror was free and I painted it white many years ago.  It was in my daughter's room in our old house.  I tried to give it away last year because it was sitting unused in my garage.  I found a home for it on the opposite wall from the screens.  It makes the room look larger (just not in pictures).

        

I would love to hear your thoughts. 
Do you think Grandma might be upset with me redoing her screens? 
Have you been faced with the same dilemma with one of your family heirlooms?

Thanks for checking it out!

The Kid's Ocean, I Mean Bathroom

I have many projects planned for 2011. When we first moved into our track home ten years ago I painted the kid's bathroom to look like an ocean. The girls were one and four when we moved in. I know the day is coming when they will have outgrown their Ocean Bathroom and want a different look. Redoing this bathroom might be one of my 2011 projects. It's only paint and I don't get too sentimental about my mural projects.

The movie Finding Nemo was big around the time I painted this. The ocean theme works for both boys and girls. I didn't know how long we would be in this house so I played it safe with a gender neutral theme. If you want to create an "Ocean" in your kid's bathroom, I'll take you through the steps. I started by taping plastic over everything I didn't want paint on, tile floor, molding, doors, sinks, counters, lights, etc. I used a paint sprayer to achieve the background and didn't stop at the walls. The entire ceiling is painted too.

I used two different colors of a lavender blue (the same as their bedroom at the time) to tie the two rooms together. Their bedrooms were re-painted awhile back. The prep. work took about an hour to cover everything in plastic. The actual painting took all of five minutes. I bought the cheapest paint sprayer and used my dad's air compressor. The paint sprayer died a long time ago.

Click here to see Casey's room.

This created my ocean back drop for the coral and animals.

I painted the animals using basic acrylic paint and used pictures from sea life books as my inspiration.

I added painted jellyfish

and coral.

I painted a seal silhouette on the ceiling above the sinks.

and a shark in the shower area.

The shark caused some problems.

It took me awhile to figure out the reason Cami didn't like bath time? She was afraid of the shark. I explained to her he was a nice shark and the friendly dolphins would protect her. I even offered to paint a smiley face on the shark, but she didn't like that idea either. For years she used our bathtub and shower.

Mommy and baby dolphin.

The octopus.


My sea turtle.

Okay, I might miss the sea turtle.