diy dream salon

My fabulous friend from California, Jana, posted her new salon on her facebook page and I had to ask her to let me share it with you. Check out what her and her husband Wes put together so she could work from home. Here's Jana:

We bought our house in July of 2011 and building an at home salon was first on our priority list.  I have always wanted to work from home and we kept this in mind while looking for our house.

My husband Wes did everything with the exception of the electrical and plumbing.  His Dad is a contractor so I definitely lucked out with all the skill and knowledge he gained from him.  He split our garage in half so that we still have some storage, but my clients never really have to see it.  I have a separate entrance that they come in from the side which is really nice!  No one has to go through my house at all!  

Wes did insulation and drywall, installed a window, put down the flooring, installed the shampoo bowl, did the lighting, and built my station.  I was in charge of the decor.  I was so stumped with decorating this space at first!  I had no idea what color scheme I wanted or what style to go with.  It's funny because I had been browsing a lot of blogs for baby nursery ideas and I actually found my inspiration there!  I had seen all these beautiful french-inspired girlie nurseries that I fell in love with.  When I found out I was having another boy I was bummed that I couldn't use those ideas.  And let's face it, where else in my house was I going to have a pink room?  I thought the salon would be the perfect place to be super girly (without being too obnoxious).

I scored that awesome mirror from Craigslist for 40 bucks!!  I had seen others on ebay that were $600 and I was almost prepared to spend that until I found that beaut :)  The salon furniture is from minervabeauty.com.  I loved the tufting and nail head trim on the styling chair.

The coat rack and magazine stand are from urbanoutfitters.com.  The magazine stand was turquoise but I spray painted it gold.  

 The armoire was another craigslist find.  I got it for a little under $200 and then  gave it a makeover.  I painted it white and used metallic gold spray paint (rustoleum pure gold) for the inlaid details.  A little hardware from Anthro and voila!  I love it.  It is a pretty old beat up piece of furniture but it works perfectly for what I need. 

The Paris poster on the wall was a random that my Sister in law saw at Joann's fabric.  She thought it was the perfect colors and style for my salon so she bought it on a whim.  It actually worked out perfectly!  I don't know that I would have chosen it myself, so I am glad she picked it up.  It really does fit well with everything.  The three frames next to the window are TJ Maxx finds that I spray painted.  I just framed some scrapbook paper that I liked.

 

And as for the stenciled wall....I used the Elegancia Allover stencil from Royaldesignstudio.com.  I was really impressed with the quality of their stencil and their customer service was fantastic.  The wall color is Bella Pink by Behr at Home Depot and the stencil color is metallic golden pearl by Martha Stewart.  We had to buy quite a bit of the gold paint since it came in small containers, but it really was the best gold I could find.  It is nice and shiny, but still went on fairly evenly.  There are a million blog posts about stenciling a wall (believe me, I read them all!) with some great tips.  All I can say is that it is REALLY hard.  Maybe that's because I'm not a seasoned DIYer, and because my husband HATES painting!  But yeah, that wall almost ended my marriage!  It is definitely a two person job and if I didn't have the "vision" it would not have been worth it at all.  But it was!  And it makes me smile every time I look at it (which is a lot :)  I found that what worked best was for one person to hold the stencil taut against the wall while the other rolls the paint on.  The trick comes in figuring out the right amount of paint to have on your roller and how much pressure to use.  Luckily we practiced a few times on a scrap piece of drywall.  It looks pretty good in these photos, but if you look too closely in real life you can see all kinds of imperfections.  But it was so much cheaper than wallpaper and I loved that I got to choose the colors.  It was a pain, but I would do it all over again!  

I love my little studio so much and so do my clients!  It is awesome to have a private space that reflects me and what I do!

 

Didn't Jana and her hubby do an amazing job? I love it! It has me wanting to paint something in my house gold really bad. Not to mention wanting to stencil...but not wanting to stencil! I'll  bet her clients feel really fancy going into such a pretty space. Thanks for letting me share Jana and best of luck with your new adventure of baby number 2 making an appearance any day now!

photography by Sara C. Walk Photography