Was it worth it?

Okay, so I have been posting my recent projects on our family blog, but since I have been working on many projects lately, I figured I better start posting on here again so I don't bore my family and friends who don't care how excited I get about what I did with a can of spray paint.

So here is the run-down on the table project:

It seriously took FOREVER! The first problem I encountered was the heat. It was above 100 and the paint would dry in clumps before I could even spread it. So I ended up painting the table inside. The second problem was that it took FOREVER to paint the chairs! (The table was a lot easier since I could use a roller.) First there were three coats of primer, then 3 coats of paint, then 3 coats of the epoxy sealant. Seriously, painting nine coats on 6 chairs took hundreds of hours! I am usually not a perfectionist but I wanted the table to look flawless. Now that it's done I am glad that I did it, but at the time I just kept thinking, "what did I get myself into?!?!"

Bit by the design bug again...

Well, after we sold our home and moved to Oklahoma, we have kind of been in "transition" so to speak. Which explains my long absence. We are getting ready to move into a new home and I am dying to redo a few of our pieces! I am starting with our kitchen table. (You can see my previous post for the "before" picture.) I am planning on painting it a charcoal black to go with the stainless steel appliances. Best part: I found the color that I wanted in the "oops" section at the Home Depot for $1.00!

I'm crossing my fingers that all goes well and that I don't ruin our dinning table! I will post "after" pics after I finish!

Cheap staging tips

As we are getting ready to put our house on the market, I thought I would share a couple inexpensive (or free!) ideas on staging that I used in my home:

Tip 1: Build around it!
Who says you have to have an exact idea of how you are going to stage an area of your home? Browse around, see what catches your eye, or, more importantly, what is on sale, and build on that! For example, I knew I wanted to stage our dinning room table, and I found these cute table mats for $1 a piece. I then picked out the dishes,centerpiece, and window curtain from there.

Tip 2: Don't purchase new wall accessories. Add art to the frames you already own!
If you are anything like me, you love to decorate your home with framed pictures of your children and family. Since staging rule #1 when you're selling your home is to "de-personalize" your home, you might feel that you need to take down all of your photos and buy all new wall accessories. To save $, use the frames that you already own and add your own art to it. This can be anything from photos of landscapes, flowers, the ocean, pretty much anything! I used these three frames which contained family photos, and for under $3 per 8 x 10 photo, I printed off some black and white pictures that I had taken of the Tetons.
Don't have fancy landscape photos for your frames? Try using old scrapbook paper! I am not much of a scrapbooker these days and my supply is pretty shabby, but I found some paper that matched my wall color, so even though the paper design isn't my favorite, I didn't have to spend any money so I went with it!

Happy staging!

Kid Bedrooms

This is pretty much what all three kids rooms looked like before:

After: (there are still things I would like to do, but there is a HUGE difference so far!)

Baby girl room:

Big boy room:


Big girl room:

Complete chandelier transformation

I have been shopping around for a cute, girly chandelier for Kali's room, but all of the ones that I like cost anywhere from $100 to $200. So I decided to check out craigslist. I found this chandelier for $35:

BEFORE:

And here is the transformation:

I think craigslist is the most ingenious idea ever. So thank you, thank you, Craig of craigslist, whoever, and wherever you are....

Neutral = BORING

"color is the root of great design" - David Bromstad, host of Color Splash on HGTV.

We have been trying to stay neutral with our paint colors, but I just couldn't help myself this time. I am all about color. I had been debating between two different colors for our bedroom, until I watched an episode of Color Splash and David used both of the exact colors that I was thinking of using. So our bedroom colors were inspired by him. I have to say that the yellow turned out fabulous. In person, it looks more brownish-yellow, which is exactly what I was going for.

Then:
You know your room needs a makeover when you are watching a remodeling show and one of the "worst rooms in America" has the exact same wallpaper that you have! True story.

Now:
I am very happy to say that we removed the last of the last wallpaper. If I ever decide to use wallpaper (I don't know how that would ever happen), I am going to make darn sure I move out of the house before it has to come down. I was surprised to find all sorts of wall accessories stored in our basement so I only bought a couple things for the wall. My favorite is this picture I got at my favorite store - Target.

Lighten Up!

I learned from Sabrina Soto (one of my favorites on HGTV) that new curtains are one of the cheapest ways to completely change the look of a room. It was about time that we got rid of our dark, old fashioned curtains and replaced them with light, simple ones.

Before:

After: Also notice that we simplified the room by removing some clutter to make the room feel more open.

Total project cost: $15 ea. for three windows (They were on clearance at Wal*Mart. Score.)