Before and After : Half Bath

Happy Tuesday! I am back to continue my (slower-than-molasses) house tour, with before and after pictures of our half bath downstairs and the hallway leading to the bathroom. Like the other pictures I have shown you, the before pictures were taken before we moved in when my realtor was showing us the house for the first time.

Hallway before:



Hallway after:





Much warmer and more inviting, don't you think? I always love a good gallery wall! I got these frames for free from my wonderful in-laws when they were in the process of moving (and purging). I spray painted them all one color (rust-oleum's eden) then added the vases (syrup jars), photos, wreath and, of course, the letter H (I have previously mentioned that I have a slight obsession with using our initial throughout the house:)).
Let's continue, shall we?

Bathroom before:





Bathroom after:


















Doesn't it feel more open without the vanity? Because we lost storage by taking the vanity out, we added the over-the-toilet cabinet to keep cleaning supplies and toilet paper. We kept the existing light (although I still would like to replace it someday) but we (and by "we" I mean Caleb) spray painted it black to better match the oil rubbed bronze faucet and towel holder. Oh spray paint...it covers a multitude of sins! Hope you like the new hallway and bathroom!

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Flea Market Find

I love flea markets! Can I get an amen? Flea markets are certainly not for everyone (Caleb would consider them some form of torture)...I guess you either love them or you hate them. I love them (as I already said;)). Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of getting to have a "girl's day out" (thank you, Caleb!) with one of my closest friends, Lyndsie. (I just can't bring myself to use the phrase "one of my besties"...I know that's what the kids are saying these days, but I am just not that cool. Hey, I own a pair of Tom's, that's enough 'cool' for me;)). Anyway, Lyndsie and I decided to hit up a nearby flea market. We had so much fun browsing and so much fun buying! In the midst of our browsing and buying, we stumbled upon a full size bed that was priced at 5$. Neither of us was needing a bed, and the bed was in need of a serious makeover, but for 5$? We couldn't pass it up. Our plan was simple: buy it, paint and distress it, and resale it on craigslist for more money. So that's what we did (we are still in the process of selling it, so cross your fingers;)).

Here is our little labor of love:
(unfortunately, I forgot to take pics of her before her little makeover....it was a honey stained bed that someone had attempted to paint black, but it just had one coat of paint so it was very streaky and uneven)

The after...


















Our process---
1. Sanded all surfaces with an electric sander
2. Painted two coats of latex paint (crystal aqua by valspar) using paint brushes
3. Waited for the paint to dry (mostly...we are both impatient;))
4. Distressed the corners and edges and curves by sanding until we achieved our desired look (we also used an electric sander for this step).
5. Wiped on a homemade glaze (brown craft paint mixed with water) with a rag
6. Wiped off the excess glaze with a damp rag (once again, wiped it until we achieved our desired look)
And DONE!

Well, what do you think? Wouldn't it be so cute in a little girl's room? If you are wondering about our awesome backdrop for the bed in the pictures, the pictures were taken in one of the rooms in Lyndsie's house. The room has an old fence wood wall treatment done by Lynds and her hubby, Cory. It is as awesome in person as it looks in the photo! Oh, and in case you were also wondering, the rest of our girl's day consisted of eating and more shopping. Lots of shopping (flea market, thrift shop, local boutique, Goodwill, estate sale, Garden Ridge Pottery, Hancock Fabrics and Home Depot)....our husbands' worst nightmare!

Night night!

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Distressed Dresser

It is definitely (long overdue) time for another blog post! Let's just ignore the fact that I completely skipped May and June;). I have so many projects to share with you that I don't even know where to start! I guess I will start with a project from a while ago...it is one of my favorites. So, let the recap begin.

It was probably about a year ago that I acquired this old dresser:
(I forgot to take before pictures so these are the only pics I could find...sorry that they are so up close)





I got it from my sweet cousin who didn't have a use for it anymore. It looks a little rough but it is big, sturdy, and old...and the best part, it was my mormor's. I was delighted to get the dresser but knew it needed some work!

---Quick Swedish lesson...cause I am half Swedish (and proud of it!)...
Mormor means "mother's mother" in swedish so that is what we used to call my grandmother. Morfar means " mother's father" but we didn't call my grandfather that...he was just Grandpa...especially since my other cousins would've called him FarFar (father's father)...um, yeah, doesn't have a good ring to it ;). Oh how i miss MorMor and Grandpa!
And, by the way, if you have ever heard the saying, " you can always tell a swede, but you can't tell 'em much," it is true ;-). Okay, Swedish lesson (tangent) over...back to the project.---

So, I got right to work on distressing this piece (okay, it was a couple months later). I was delighted to find a couple of layers of paint underneath...apparently my mormor also liked refinishing things! I wish I had taken process pics but I did not. Mind you, there was not a real process involved...pretty random actually. I started by sanding on it a little and started to see the other layers...first white, then blue, then the original wood. At this point I decided to do "chippy" distressing. Basically, I just started scraping in random places with random tools (paint can opener, screwdriver, razor blade)(shall we call it the random method?) and finished it off with LOTS and LOTS of sanding! Oh, and because I was dealing with old paint, I sprayed the dresser with a matte finish just to seal it.

Here is how she turned out:





I love the way it turned out. As you can see, I also replaced the old knobs with these pull knobs that we had leftover from the dresser in Carter's room. Here are a few detailed photos so you can see all the different paint layers. The above pics do not do it justice!









So, what do you think? I am loving that my mormor's creativity in refinishing this piece is what inspired my creativity to make this piece what it is now. I am also loving that this project was free! Just a little tlc and some elbow grease! I hope you enjoyed this project (and of course, my short Swedish lesson;)). Goodnight. Talk to you again soon (but don't hold your breath;))!

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Location:Distressing, before and after, refinishing

Outdoor table-DIY

I am so excited to share my new outdoor table with you guys! We were in dire need of a new outdoor table (seriously, our old wood table started growing things with all the rain and had basically been rotting away). Why not build our own? I had a vision for a farmhouse-type table but it needed be built on the cheap. My dad had some old treated wood (used to be school bleachers) that I knew would work perfectly for the top of the table (free!). The hubs went out and bought some treated 4x4's and 2x4's for the legs and the frame (around 15$). And the table begins to form!
Daddy's little helper (testing out the sturdiness of the legs...ha!).




Building the frame...








Adding the legs...








Adding support boards...








Adding the top (this is where I took over)...
and when I took over, I forgot to take process pics...




Looks awesome, right? Don't you love how it turned out? Maroon and gold, gooo lions! SACS pride baby (my old high school). Okay, I do love my old high school, but this was not the vision! This table still needed some work, a lot of work!

My next step was to sand the top...and sand the dickens out of it! I used a belt sander so it would strip most of the paint off, then I used a palm sander to smooth it out (and used palm sander on the frame and legs). More pics...








I LOVE the old bolt holes and splits in the wood! The more beat up, the better!




You get the idea, right? This was definitely the time consuming part of the project. Might I mention that Caleb finished his part of the project (building frame and legs) in 20 minutes...seriously? He's a machine! I won't even tell you how long my part of the project took me! Anyway, after I got the boards looking the way I wanted them, I gently smoothed them out with the palm sander and lightly sanded the rest of the table so it would be ready to paint. Next up, painting the legs white and polyurethaning the top.

Here is the difference that the poly makes (looks good and makes the surface wipeable)...








And here is the top after two coats of poly:




I used satin polyurethane and only did two coats because I did not want the table to look shiny, I just wanted to enhance the color and make it a wipeable surface. One coat was not enough because most of it absorbed into the wood. It depends on the type of wood and personal preference!

The last step of the project was distressing the legs a bit by sanding along the edges and corners.
Here it is all finished (in all its glory:))...












Okay, now that I have set some sort of record for the most pictures posted in one blog entry, I will call it good. What do you think of my new (old) table? I love, love, love it! Now, if only it were cool enough outside to enjoy our new table (I mean, maybe I'll sit out there at 6 am before we hit 90 degrees...got to love Texas!). Has anyone noticed how much I love to use parentheses (love them!)? Haha. Goodnight.

Pinterest Success!

Hello again blog world! Miss me? My absence is expected by now:). I am not very consistent (well, I am consistently sporadic:)). Today I want to share a pinterest project that I recently completed. It is easy to go crazy "pinning" things I like on pinterest, but it is much harder to actually produce the items that I have gone crazy pinning. This project however, was cheap and easy once I decided to make a little bit of time for it!


I have four baskets in my entryway that house various items like shoes, Sydnie's collar and leashes (dont worry, sydnie is my dog, not one of my kids!), etc...and I wanted labels for each basket. I had previously made some chalkboard labels out of foam board (I was majorly improvising with this one) and had tied them onto the baskets like gift tags using some twine. These, although I kept them like that for a year, did not work well at all. They would always flip over to the back which I had lazily left white. Plus, they were just not sturdy. Here are the old labels:




One day when perusing pinterest I saw this pin:

Less than perfect life of bliss blog.


Genius! Not long after, I bought some wall plates (98 cents each), used some chalkboard spray paint that I already had from other projects, and presto- new basket labels (or should I say, new and improved basket labels)! Here are my baskets now:




So much better! Here is a close up of my baskets without labels:




And now with:




The only challenge to this project was getting the twine through the weave of the basket. Here is how I solved that problem...




(A large needle that I found in my sewing box.)












Once both ends of the twine were threaded through, I simply tied a knot to secure it in place.




So, that was easy enough! One pinterest project down, 30 to go;). What do think? Do you like the old labels or new? Done any pinterest projects lately? Check back in soon because I will be showing you guys our new outdoor table we built ourselves for under 15$!
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