Foster Care Visitation Room: Before & After

The foster care visitation room is finally complete! B and I put the finishing touches on it this weekend, but it has been being used by families for a few weeks now. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, I encourage you to read this post. Basically, I was given $150 to redesign a local foster care visitation room. After receiving material donations from artists, blog readers, small business, and friends, we now have a fully functional, kid-friendly room for foster children to visit with their birth parents. This was undoubtedly a labor love and could not have been completed without so many people's generosity (and B's talent with a drill and hammer). Read more about the process that got us to this point here, here, here, and here.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

A huge thanks to these awesome folks that donated good for the project:

1) wall & chalkboard paint- Sherwin Williams (thank you Melinda for setting this up!)

2) bloom & love will save the day prints- Field Trip

3) love candy print- MadeByGirl

4) photographic prints- Our City Lights

5) flapperdoodle prints- Flapperdoodle

6) dandelion wall decal- Cut it Out

7) love bunting- White House Black Cat

8) crate & barrel indoor/outdoor rug- Ike & Jane Cafe and Bakery

9) ferm living fox pillow- Ana from on dressing up

10) scandinavian geese mobile - Lauren from Pegeen 

11) doily framed art- Robayre 

12) hand painted light switch plate- Idillard

13) Ikea storage, mirrors, and extras- my awesome mother-in-law

So, what do you think about the transformation? 
p.s. Check out my flickr page for more photos.
p.p.s who knew taking photos under fluorescent light could be so stinking difficult? Ugh. 

Foster Care Visitation Room: Art Wall

After painting, the second biggest step in the Foster Care Visitation Room was installing the art wall. Thankfully, my handy, trusty husband B helped me this past weekend and we got a pretty good start. The first step was to lay out all of the pieces and take inventory.

I took some tips from this episode of Secrets from a Stylist and cut out the shapes of each frame using kraft paper. I labeled each piece of paper with the corresponding art work so that I could not only get the shapes where I wanted them but so that I could organize the frames by color and print. 

I wanted an art wall that was semi close together so I decided for a 2" space around all of the pieces. It felt like I was doing a brain teaser trying to make everything fit without it being too "perfect", but I eventually figured it out. The great thing about paper and painter's tape is that you can take as long as you want without nailing a bunch of holes and throwing a hammer in frustration (oh wait, am I the only one who's been THERE?)

B was a little skeptical of the amount of time I took arranging the art wall, but once he started hanging and realized it was a breeze, I think he appreciated my preparations (ok, I might be putting words into his mouth here, but I do want to point out that there was no cursing or throwing of hammers). 

We decided to build the wall clock into the art wall because seeing as how this is a visitation room, I really didn't want the clock to be the main focus. Some of these families only see each other 1 hour every week or two and I'm sure they don't want to be constantly reminded of the time. This way, if you need the time, you have to search for it. 

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough hardware to hang all of the pieces so we'll have to finish it up later. You might spy some familiar artists on the wall like MadeByGirl, city.light photography and Flapperdoodle, all of whom donated to the room. The bottom print is by Nan Lawson and I donated it to the room because the colors worked so damn well, don't you think? The art wall wasn't the only project we completed in this room (I mean, I was doing stuff while B was working), but more on that later. What do you think of the progress so far? 

Foster Care Visitation Room: Painting

The Foster Care Visitation Room Project is making progress. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about you can find all about the project here. This past Saturday, I spent 10 hours painting the room with the paint donated by Sherwin Williams. The room itself has no natural light and one "mirror" which is actually an observation window.  

If you'll recall, I decided to paint the whole back wall with chalkboard paint. This wall will serve as a kind of activity wall for the children. The chalkboard paint itself is supposed to apply much like a satin finish paint but it's a bit more viscous and I had to take a lot of care to smooth out streaks created by the roller.

The other three walls received two coats of Sherwin Williams Open Air. This color is a bit more complex than an average baby blue. Unfortunately, a room with no natural light won't allow for the subtleties of this color to come through, but I was pleased with the result nonetheless. 

I painted the frame around the observation window white. The boring beige was looking a little dull against the blue. White never fails to freshen things up a bit! 

The corners between the chalkboard wall and the light blue were a huge challenge for me. I was able to tape off the chalkboard wall when painting (if you've ever painted with black, you know there is little to no room for mistakes) and I couldn't apply painters tape to the fresh chalkboard paint. I was bound and determined to get the painting done in one day so I free handed the corner as best I could. To smooth the corner where the two colors met, I wet a rag and very carefully smoothed the edge which helped blend the line. If you're ever doing this at home, simply waiting a couple of days for one of the walls to fully set and then use painters tape to get a clean edge. 

This is me after painting for 10 hours straight with no breaks except to scarf down cold pizza. I started painting about 7am which was the best decision I could have made. This photo doesn't do justice to the spatter of painted covering my hair and face. I even had some paint on my contact lens! 

When I got home on Saturday night sore and exhausted, I took a hot epsom salt bath, drank a glass of whiskey and ate dark chocolate simultaneously. It was heaven! Needless to say, I am still very sore but happy that the biggest step in this project is out of the way. Next step is decor and I can't wait! Hopefully everything will be ready to go into the space next weekend. I'm waiting on the last of the donations to arrive and I am so very ready to see this space come together. A few of the social workers stopped by the room while I was painting to let me know how grateful and excited everyone is about the redesign. I have a long list of people to thank for making this happen, but for now, I'm off to frame prints. xo

Foster Care Visitation Room: Color Palette + Update

Wow friends, so much has happened with this project since I first posted about it one week ago. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect when I decided to ask for help. The outpouring of generosity, encouragement, and kind words have blessed me more than you can know. Most importantly, the help and support being given by the blogging and handmade community (and even a big company) will help make this space the very best it can be. Assuming I don't botch the design, of course.
I started out a bit backwards with this project. I started accepting donations without having a color scheme in mind, but I think I've finally nailed down some colors that I'm pleased with. These images have helped come up with a palette for the room:

korut via design for mankind

(ma+cher)

paul de luna

dadu shin

joanna rutter

(ma + cher)

juliana swaney for feed your soul

I've done my best to narrow down a skeleton color palette (obviously there will be lots of colors with the variety of art that is being donated.) Sherwin Williams is donating paint (WAHOO!), so I've picked a color that I think will work well along side the chalkboard wall that the county has requested. I decided to go with a blue/green/grey because B kept saying that my palette was too "feminine" and since I'm trying to stay gender neutral, I wanted to keep the wall color green or blue. 

There is no natural light coming into this room so I'm a little nervous about having one wall be entirely black BUT I think I've secured a white wall decal to help balance the black with the rest of the space. 

I cannot tell you what an exciting week this has been! I've really had to get over my shyness and start emailing people I don't know to see if they're interested in helping (scary!). Every time I've gotten a positive response, I can't help but run around and do a little dance and call B saying, "you will not believe what was just donated!" 

Here are the items that are on my current wish list for this room:

• toss pillows 
• a rug (this is the greatest expense and I'm not sure we can swing it but I'm keeping my fingers crossed)
• a mobile, this one would be perfect 
• shelving and/or storage for toys
• a couple of mini chairs for the little ones?

There's still lots to be done! I can't wait to share with you all of the artists and small business that have donated to this project. Until then, don't miss the Fabric & Handle giveaway. I'll be picking a winner Monday morning. Have a great weekend! xo

D&OC + Foster Care Visitation Room

Happy Friday friends! Today, I want to share a project that I'll be working on over the coming month or so.

I was asked by my friend and old supervisor to help re-design a local county's foster care visitation room. In case you're not familiar with state foster care, I'll briefly explain the importance of this room. Once a child has been taken into foster care (this used to be my job, to investigate child abuse), the child can visit with family members (mostly supervised) in a small, generally dingy and depressing room known as the "visitation room." You can imagine that these visitations are important for the healing of the family, but the visits can be very painful and bittersweet. It doesn't help that these rooms are generally generic, uncomfortable and not very cheerful. Because my friend is an extraordinary social worker who has never settled for status quo, she has asked me to come in and brighten up the space a bit.

The catch is that the county can only afford $150 for the budget. I, obviously, will be donating my time, but I'm also looking for help with resources. I'd love to put up some wall decals and perhaps a child-friendly art wall after I've re-painted the space. I also think some fun toss pillows would help cheer things up and if I had it my way, I'd throw in a rug (I can always dream, right?)

 **If you are an artist, photographer, designer, or someone that wants to help with this project by donating goods that might work for this space, please let me know. I will be happy to offer free advertising space on D&OC for any business that wants to participate. If you have questions, or suggestions, or DIY ideas for the space please leave them in the comments below. I'll be posting ideas and photos as the project progresses. Thanks everyone and have a very happy weekend. xoxo