Cubbies

This past week/weekend has been a nightmare.  All I can really say is that I'm tired of dealing with other people problems when my immediate family (Will included) have enough of their own things to deal with.  I really hope things get back to normal soon.

That being said I tried my best at creating normalcy Monday.  I had a real issue with sleeping so I stayed up a full 24hrs from Sunday to Monday.  I had so many ideas running through my head that I decided that 2am was a great time to get started on a ton of projects, or at the very least get all my ducks in a row.
First thing I did was take before pictures of EVERYTHING since I'm horrible at before pictures I thought taking a group photo of all my goodies at once then individually would be a great idea.  That way when inspiration hits me and I start painting without hesitation I have no worries because photos were taken.  Of course that lasted one day.  I started a new project yesterday & primed an item before taking a photo.  Will says no worries it's still a before, however the gray primer is an improvement on the hideous color this item was.  I like to call it baby poo yellow.

Here is a photo of all the goodies I plan on redoing:

Got all this loot in one day: Lamp, picture cube, light switch cover, desk organizer, shower curtain rings, 2 of the wooden trays, bike basket & the rose candle scones. All of these will be redone.

Yesterday I redid the photo cube & a few days before that I painted the light switch cover gray. The other project yesterday was to take this cubby shelf:

and turn into this cute cubby shelf:

The shelf was $2.99 at Goodwill and all the paint & hardware we already had.  We had 2 gallons of the blue so you'll see it used quite a bit.  The knobs I got off of a shelf my mom had bought but had later broke.  This will later go up for sale, however for now I love it too much so we'll be using it to display some of our shabby nick-nacks.

Cost:


Shelf $2.99
Paint  FREE
Knobs FREE

Never hesitate to look around the house to see what you have, left over paint is a god send.

edit

This is currently where the cubby shelf is hanging out.  Please forgive the paneling, that is a future project.  I'm sure the items will vary when we get new finds.

Get on the Floor

After many set backs the floor is more or less complete on our landing/hallway.  We still need to buy new thresholds but we'll get them eventually.  So this may have been a rather cheap update, in my eyes anything was an upgrade.

Have I mentioned I'm horrible with before photos? ...I have?  Good.  This is after the fact but this is what was covering our hallway floor.

It was a quite stunning 1970's green.  Kind of looked like that stuff they use to put in a screened in porch.

2hrs later this is where we were.

Will & I scrapped all the black rubber up then swept & vacuumed. Please excuse the scuffed door frame & the icky doors.  Those are still on my project list.

24hrs after this is our new floor

I got a bit excited & took the picture right after it was done.  We had to replace a few tiles today due to my being unable to cut straight lines.  Once the thresholds have been replaced I'll take a better picture.

As you can see, even in this crappy photo ANYTHING was an improvement.  The tiles were rather cheap at our local Family Dollar store.  I believe it was $12 for a box and there are plenty of tiles left to redo our tiny tiny bathroom floor.  Currently Kmart is also selling these type of tiles for $9 though the box is not as big.  I'm sure many can afford to do more but I think it was a great project for a renter, or a young couple in their first place.

Hectic Times

It's been really crazy around here lately.  My uncle is in the hospital for multiple reasons that I don't want to go into.  Due to that my mom has talked herself horse so I've been helping her deal with all the talking and phone calls that are having to be made.  On the positive side Saturday is Will and I's 3 year anniversary, we are planning to go to dinner for the first time instead of me cooking.  I've also been hitting up the Goodwill's & thrift stores the last few days.  I think I got some rather promising goodies (pics will be coming soon).  We've also started our floor project for the hallway.  We pulled up the ugly horrid green what seems like outdoor carpeting, which didn't take as long as we expected.  It's all prepped & ready for the new tiling to be laid which I will start today.  I'm excited to see it finished because I know it's going to look amazing with the new paint colors. 
We're also going to take down the closet door & put up drapes instead.  I hope it looks as great as I've seen on other blogs.

Stay tuned for pics of my thrifty goodies as well as the before & afters of the hallway/landing floor redo.

Is It Really Easy?

This is a question I asked myself about this deco podging business.  Nearly all the blogs I follow at some point or other there is some mod podge mentioned.  We recently had repainted a dresser that I had painted a beautiful white & pink with gorgeous knobs.  However with the room update the pink had to go.  The dresser still needs a lot of work.  I'm not completely happy with it.  However I knew for sure the knobs tho gorgeous did not work.  You see they were pink with pretty pink flowers in the middle & they cost more than knobs should cost ($18 on ebay).  That being said I knew I could not afford another $18 for drawer pulls.  So I went in search of something cheap but found only 2 pulls for $4.  Sure that doesn't sound bad at first, however they were the wrong color & I needed 8.  So my search continued.  Then once more I hit pay dirt via the local thrift store.  Only this time it cost nothing.  Outside sitting in their trash waiting for our local bulk trash pick up was multiple broken dressers.  Saddly the dresser I wanted to refurb was too broken for my nonpower tool owning self.  It was missing the 2 back legs & the one support for the leg was complete split which would have required some cutting.  I looked more & there was a completely busted dresser but the drawers were still intact as were their drawer pulls!! YES YES YES!! they were exactly the right size.  Later that night Will & I journeyed forth in the heat with screw drivers, collected all the knobs & one drawer and a drawer face for later projects.

The knobs were in pretty bad shape with some really old ORANGE paint.  We sanded and sanded & just when I thought I had the paint even with the wood I spray painted them all white, that's when I found out that nope I definitely did not sand enough. 

It was okay though because I planned on mod podging something over the front. That being said, prior to this project we had bought a 16oz jar of Plaids Mod Podge for around $11 on Ebay (can you tell we buy a lot on ebay?).  So we let the spray painted knobs sit for 24hrs & then I started the "podging" process.  Now mind you this is my first time and after much investigating via Google I believed I knew what I was doing.  It sounded easy enough.

It's easy, indeed it is.  However I think it takes practice.  My knobs dried kind of flat instead of glossy, also there were brush strokes.  Not that you can see real well unless you have the knobs directly in your eyeball.  Oh & doing round drawer pulls I'd suggest a big whole punch.  I do not own one so I gave it the ole college try & cut them out myself.  I also used a piece of art from my favorite artist that I had saved on my computer.  I just went to photoshop grayscaled it, multiplied it a couple times so the lines were nice and crisp, scaled to fit.  Then I switched to word pasted 12 (in case of mistakes) picture & printed off.  After a couple hours here were my end results.

artist: Kurt Halsey

on the gray dresser drawer

blue & gray.  I'm not content.  I'm thinking about painting the 2 blue drawers gray.

I'm still not happy with this dresser.  I wish now that I had used gray spray paint instead of white.  Also it needs a fresh paint job on the frame.  Not sure if I will do white or a lighter gray instead.  Opinions are welcome & there will be another mod podge project for the top of this old thing soon.

Ending price for this project:

• Knobs: free
• spray paint: free (already had it)
• mod podge: $11 (but it will do a lot of projects)
• artwork: free (used something I had copied on my computer)

Total: $11

The Second Shelf

We live 2 blocks away from a tiny thrift store called The Second Self.  I absolutely adore it, not only for it's great stuff but because the manager is so familiar with my mother & I we get stuff at half price quite often.  Recently Will & I rearranged our bedroom (after we painted) and we were struggling for a shelf to hold my bulky photo printer but also his xbox 360 (did I mention we are avid gamers?).  With no other options we used this ugly little night stand because it gave the xbox room to breathe.  Very ugly set up:

please excuse the bad picture & the bad PS.

As you can see my printer is barely perched up there.  Add to the fact that my cat Bunny likes to sit up there, it's a miracle that it hasn't fallen.  So I searched & searched even went to IKEA, but wasn't willing to spend a lot of money for such a small item.  $30 dollars seemed a bit much for such a smaller shelf, plus it seemed too "new" if you know what I mean.  FINALLY!! I hit pay dirt at the thrift store.  There was a little wooden cabinet for $6.00, then she says to me...I'll give it to you for $3 if you take it out of here. SOLD!!

Just so you all know ahead of time I am horrible at remembering to do the before photos.  That being said this is the door of the cabinet so you at least know what the wood looked like.

Not bad looking wood I know, but there is enough wood in our room.

So we decided to paint it to fit our color scheme.  We also decided not to put the door back on.  We're saving the door however, something tells me it will come in handy at a later date.

My printer fits much better, plus we have an extra shelf for books or games, DVD's or whatever we feel like.

Needing a Little Shade...

We have recently repainted our room.  Prior to it being OUR room it was my very pink room:

Very pink; don't judge me.

 

 

 Then once it was OUR room I decided not to torture him by making him live in that room for to long.  So we painted it a lovely light blue with a gray accent wall:

horrible picture but you can see the accent wall.  You can also see that our room is NOT shabby chic.

 

 

 

 

Now due to this change in color schemes I had a lamp shade that was just not working, so I decided to try my hand at recovering it.

I followed (kind of) the instructions from one of my favorite blogs:

Young House Love

Dark brown shade before:

& After:

whoops is that upside down?

 

there that's better.

I'm not sure I'll be keeping it on the floor lamp, I have refinished a old brass lamp & might consider using that instead.  This is a very easy project but it will indeed take two people.  Also I think a round barrel shade would be easiest to use.

Inspired

weheartit

                                                              The Medowbrook Blog
I am absolutely in love with the curio cabinet.  I saw a corner cabinet in a thriftstore yesterday, tho small it would have held a lot of our shabby plates & vintage china. Hmm might go back & get it see how it takes to a coat of paint.

                                                                           WeHeartIt!

Chic-Mania

 I did this to a coffee can, though we did not put flowers in it, but used it for storage in the bathroom.  However what a great idea.  I think I might be spray painting some more cans.