Furniture Upgrades

Welcome to December!  We've had so much going on and I have SO much to blog about!  I'm hoping to spend a little time in the next few weeks playing catch up, because you know I love to share the projects I've been working on.  Like the furniture I refinished a few weeks ago - weeks!  Aaaaa I'm so behind.  *sigh*
My husband, like most men always wants the biggest and best when it comes to technology, particularly TVs.  So I finally let him upgrade the TV in our bedroom for Father's Day  (Yes have a TV in the bedroom, which I know some say is a No No.  But if that's what it takes to shut my brain off so I can get to sleep at night, I'm all for it.  Plus it's nice to have an extra TV when the husband is watching something I really don't want to see) and eventually I got around to buying the wall mounting bracket for it.  Which happily led to me getting to play Musical Chairs with the furniture as I was then able to move the dresser than we had been using for a TV stand into the playroom.

The dresser matches the nightstand and headboard that are in the guest bedroom (that's through the doorway to the right in the photo above) and is now being used to hold the TV and electronics in the playroom.  I moved all the video games and DVDs into the drawers on the dresser which freed up not only the nightstand that was originally holding the TV, but the small bookcase next to it.  And I knew exactly where I wanted to use both pieces.

The nightstand was a high school shop project that my husband did, so we've had it pretty much forever.  It needed a little work as part of the trim on the bottom was coming off and the doors weren't exactly square - I repeat High School Shop ;)  But my husband is now a much better carpenter and those were easy fixes.  I added a few coats of white paint and now it's good as new!

Pretty!  The nightstand now lives in Tyler's room where he quickly loaded it up with all his stuff.  I actually had to take half it of back off and stow it in the closet before I took these photos :)

And then there is the nightstand.  I think we got it for about $20 for my first room at college to give me some extra storage.  It's dated, but in good shape so out came the spray paint.

 

And then into Kaitlyn's room it went.  She's been trying to find a good spot for her "library" so this was perfect.  She spent a lot of time categorizing her books and she even went as far as to put little code stickers inside each cover so she knows where to put her books away after she uses them.  LOL  This kid is going to be quite the powerhouse when she's all grown up.

So wouldn't you know it right in the middle of all this furniture switcheroo-ing the TV in the living room died.  And now we are left with a completely blank wall where the TV in the bedroom used to be with a sad pile of electronics in the corner including the dead TV that we have no idea what to do with.  Cross one thing off add another to the List, right?

I'm finished!

It's been busy, busy, busy here the past few days. Before leaving for Audrey's house on Friday I had the electrician in. Finally.
You know those TV cords have been driving me nuts and much as I hate paying the money for something we could almost do ourselves, I wanted it done right.

See? Ugly.
So the guys came in and in less than 2 hours had solved my TV cord problem along with adding a few more outlets (including new ones in the garage so I can plug in the freezer yay!). But we were left with a big hole in the wall.

Sam taped and patched it while I was gone, then I sanded and sanded and sanded it. And added a little texture back so it would (mostly) match the surrounding wall. Yesterday I spent the day painting. And now I'm doing my happy dance because that was the LAST room in the house that needed paint! WOOHOO!
Of course it's far from being done and probably won't be for a very long time. But as Kaitlyn said today "it feels all nice and new again."

Here's the Before:

and After paint:

Finishing Touches - Kids' Bathroom

I finished it, I finished it! I have been sitting on the photos of most of the decor pieces for this room for weeks and weeks now, waiting for myself to get around to the last little bit so I could share it all at once. Well, today was the day I quit putting it off in favor of other things - go me!

The kids' bathroom was actually one of the easier rooms to pull together. I would just randomly run across things and think "oh that's perfect for ____!"

The first thing we did was replace the towel bar with a wall shelf and hooks. We all know it's a losing battle, trying to get the kids to hang up their towels, let alone hang them up and expect them to look good. In fact, Tyler is too small to even pretend he could hang up his own towel. I heard about the idea for using hooks for kids towels long long ago and have been so happy to finally get some myself. Then I ran across a shelf I fell in love with on the Idea Room blog.

Perfect, no? My husband actually agreed and had no problem re-creating one. Isn't he fabulous? He built this the same time he built my fantastic drying rack and it went on the wall as soon as the paint was dry. (see! told you I'd been waiting and waiting to show you!)


For those of you that are now insanely jealous and wanting one for yourself (I know you're out there because I've already had at least 2 people tell me that next time Sam builds anything he needs to just go ahead an make one for them too! :) ), it's not too complicated. We used a wide board for the back (1x10" I think), then used the length of 1x4 for the top. Added a piece of crown molding under the 1x4
and some rope trim around (smaller detail trim is harder to find than you'd think at Home Depot. This piece came from Michael's.) the bottom to dress it up a bit. And of course added the hooks (these are from Target). Then I filled in the holes and painted it all.
Of course, then I had to figure out what to put on top of the shelf. I ran across this bathroom definition printable (free - you can find one for yourself here) and thought it would be fun. So I had that printed the last time I ordered photo prints, matted it with scrapbook paper and stuck it in a frame.
I added a small floral arrangement and filled a couple of cylinder vases with the shells Kaitlyn collected at the beach last week.

And there you have it! I'm so happy with it, now that it's all pulled together. Well, I was happy with it as soon as it went on the wall too, but even more happy now! It probably needs a couple more things to fill out the shelf, but this will do until the right things find me.

For the other wall, I took these fun shots of my kids up to their necks in bubbles in my jetted tub and had them printed on canvas. Then I used my handy dandy vinyl (and Silhouette) to make a couple of flourishes to finish it off and hung it all over the toilet.

Ready for the final Before/After? Ok then.

Before:
After!

Before:
And After!

Cross another room off the list, baby! Happy Dancing now... :)

Linking to:



Tatertots and Jello

Finishing Touches - Powder Bath

It's a Friday. A cloudy, windy, dreary Friday. Usually on Fridays I'm either totally motivated to get tons done or I feel like goofing off all day (especially today which marks the start of Spring Break as soon as the half day of school is over) Today I'm neither - just blah. I think the people that say weather affects our moods are on the right track. So here I sit, having at least done my usual Friday morning bathroom scrubbing (thank goodness!), thinking I should be crafting but not feeling it. So what's the next best thing? Sharing one of my projects that did get finished at some point in the recent past when the motivation was flowing.

This is what I whipped up for my powder bathroom, with the help of my new best crafting buddy, my Silhouette.

It's just a piece of scrap wood that I stained. Cut out some vinyl shapes with the Silhouette (the bird comes with the machine, the cherry blossom branches were from the Silhouette online store) and applied them. Drilled a couple holes and added a ribbon. And hung it all from a hook I already had. Total out of pocket? $0! You gotta love those kinds of projects right?!

I do have to admit the idea wasn't totally original. I saw something similar on a blog, somewhere. Didn't save the link or the photo at the time but it stuck with me. So to someone out there - thanks for the inspiration!

Add a little picnic basket I had laying around to stash the toilet paper in and I declare the powder bathroom...

Done! It's the first room in the house that I can cross off the list as fully complete. Happy Dance! :)

One more time with the Before:
and After:

Linking to:

Before and After - Part 3

Anyone that bothers to read my (lame) status updates on Facebook knows that I've (still) been painting my tail off. And I know you are all (or at least two of you!) anxiously waiting to see how it's coming along.
Here is exhibit 1. Sam calls it WallZilla. To the rest of us, it's our entry. It's two-story and try as I might I couldn't get the right photo angle to show just exactly how intimidating that height is, especially above the stairs. I've been dreading tackling it. Really really dreading it. But Sunday, tackle it we did. I spent way too long at the top of a really tall ladder, super tense, painting with one hand while Sam stood at the bottom making sure it didn't slip. And I won't tell you how I managed to paint above the ledge in the staircase - I don't want you to try it at home. And the parts we couldn't reach even then? We taped a paintbrush to the end of the roller extension pole and free-handed it. Let's just say I'm glad no one can get close enough to any of it to inspect my work because it's far from perfect.
Before: (yes I forgot to grab before photos until I was partially done taping)
Entry

Stairsand upstairs hallway

After:
We used a total of 3 gallons of paint on everything. And in the end, I'm glad we did it (and saved ourselves $1000 for only one day of hard work). Paint always goes a very long way in changing the appearance of a room.

Before the entry, I had tackled the kitchen because that's where we had been testing the paint colors. Took us 3 tries, but we got one we're pretty happy with. I know it's hard to really guage it in photos but it's a khaki color - not too green, not too brown, not too dark but a decent contrast to the white trim.
Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After:

And not to be left out, the kids' bathroom got the same color paint.
Bathroom before:
Bathroom After:

By my calculations I have 5 rooms left to paint, 4 of which will be getting the same paint color. Then I can move on to the accessorizing - yay!